WordPress Essentials

Explore the fundamentals of blogging and WordPress, from open source customization with themes, widgets, and plugins to three deployment options: WordPress.com, hosting, or local installation.

Explore the front-end and back-end of a WordPress blog, using the dashboard to create posts, edit content, and moderate comments, while shaping the blog's look and feel.

Explore how WordPress powers blogging from the front end to the back end, using the dashboard to create posts, edit content, moderate comments, and control the blog's look and feel.

Set up a free WordPress.com blog without a domain or hosting, create your account, and preview the front end with the Kubrick theme; explore hosting options and local installations.

Install a self-hosted WordPress blog by meeting PHP 4.3+ and MySQL 4.0.12+ requirements on a Linux server, using Fantastico Deluxe to set up admin access and wp-admin.

Set up a local WordPress environment on a Mac using MAMP to run Apache and MySQL, enabling testing and plugin experiments without affecting a live blog.

Set up a local WordPress site on a Mac by creating a MySQL database via phpMyAdmin, configuring wp-config, and running the five-minute install to launch the site on localhost.

Install WordPress locally on a Windows machine using XAMPP, launch the Zahm control panel, start Apache and MySQL, and verify by visiting localhost. Set up the Majeski database next.

Learn to set up WordPress locally on a PC by creating a database and user in phpMyAdmin on localhost, downloading WordPress from WordPress.org, configuring wp-config.php, and running local wp-admin install.

Explore optional tools to use with WordPress, including text editors, FTP clients (fetch, transmit, cyberduck, filezilla, cuteFTP, smartFTP, fireftp), and Dreamweaver for code and image/video software.

Log in to WordPress and explore the dashboard, learning to view the front end, toggle between back end and front end, and customize modules by collapsing, dragging, and adjusting screen options.

Explore the WordPress admin interface, navigate posts, media, pages, and comments, customize appearance with themes and widgets, edit code, and manage plugins, users, tools, and settings, including permalinks.

Explore where to get help in WordPress by using the Codex and the support forums, navigating documentation, search features, and topics like plugins, themes, and troubleshooting.

Update your WordPress profile by setting display name, email, bio, and a strong password, then choose between visual or HTML editors with optional admin color tweaks.

Open settings, general, and customize the blog title, tagline, and admin email; enable or disable registration, assign roles, set time zone, date/time formats, and save changes.

Learn how WordPress themes control your blog's presentation, how to browse, preview, and activate themes, and where theme files, CSS, and templates live in the WordPress directory.

Explore how to find, preview, install, and activate WordPress themes from the admin interface, using search and feature filters to tailor colors, layouts, and styles for a live blog.

Explore where WordPress stores theme files, locate the wp-content/themes/themename directory, and view the PHP templates and stylesheet. Edit these files using the built-in WordPress admin editor.

Explore the free WordPress theme directory on WordPress.org and preview themes. Browse the most popular, newest, and recently updated themes to download, activate, and bookmark.

learn how to manually install a WordPress theme by downloading, extracting, and moving the theme to wp-content/themes, then activating it in the admin dashboard.

Discover how to auto install WordPress themes from the theme directory by searching for a theme, installing it automatically, and activating it to refresh your live blog.

Explore ten awesome WordPress themes, preview the motion theme, and learn posts, tags, links, and categories while exploring themes via Google search and WordPress.org.

Create and publish posts in WordPress using the visual editor, understand the permalink, media insertion, and publish options, and save drafts for later.

Enable and manage post discussions by turning on comments and trackbacks and pingbacks in WordPress, then save your draft to activate audience interaction.

Save WordPress post drafts with autosave, navigate away without losing content, and use quick edit to adjust title, slug, date, categories, and tags.

Shows how to format posts with the WordPress toolbar—bold, italics, lists, alignment, block quotes, and hyperlinks—preview in theme, and manage drafts.

Learn how to insert and edit hyperlinks in WordPress to external sites and email addresses, including opening links in a new window and configuring optional subjects for mailto links.

Master WordPress formatting with the kitchen sink toolbar, toggle show/hide, set headings and alignment, paste from Word or plain text, insert special characters, clear formatting, and preview changes.

Master WordPress publish options by adjusting draft status, visibility, and scheduled publishing. Choose public, private, password protected, or stick to the front page to control who sees your posts.

Explore excerpts, trackbacks, and pingbacks in WordPress, learning how post summaries appear in feeds, how trackbacks notify older blogs, and how pingbacks automatically alert linked content.

Edit existing posts in the WordPress admin with the post editor or quick edit, then preview and update the live post, adjusting titles, lists, links, and comments.

Learn to use WordPress's more tag to create a teaser with a continue reading link, keeping the front page tidy while guiding readers to the full post.

Explore editing posts with WordPress's HTML editor and the visual editor. Learn to insert images, hyperlinks, and other media, and prepare Dreamweaver content for posting.

Use Dreamweaver to create HTML posts for WordPress by copying body content from code view into a new post. Explore inline versus external styles and simple formatting.

Adjust WordPress writing settings to increase the post editor size, set a default category, explore categories, and enable remote publishing and email posting, then save changes.

Discover how to password protect a WordPress post and control access. The lecture walks through setting visibility, entering a password, and testing access with bonus material.

Set up WordPress media options by configuring image sizes (thumbnail, medium, large) and enabling auto embeds to automatically insert YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, and other media into posts.

Insert images into your WordPress posts from computer, a URL, or the media library. Set the image title and alt text, caption, alignment, size, and link, then insert into post.

Learn to add an image from a URL in WordPress, understand hotlinking risks, and insert with title, alt text, and optional caption before publishing to a post.

Upload graphics to the WordPress media library for reuse. Learn the differences between uploaded and linked images and how to insert media.

Insert an image from the media library into a post, customize the title, caption, alt text, alignment, and size, then update.

Edit inserted images in WordPress by resizing with handles or the image editing options, adjust alignment, title, caption, and links, and apply borders, margins, and CSS classes and styles.

Learn to edit images in WordPress using the HTML editor, remove captions and borders, adjust alignment, and update live previews by tweaking the underlying HTML and CSS.

Explore WordPress's built-in image editor to crop, rotate, flip, and scale images in the media library, edit image details, and update media while restoring the original.

Clarifies the raster vs vector debate in web graphics, explains when to use JPEG or GIF, and covers RGB color space, resolution, and file formats for fast loading.

Size blog images in Photoshop to a web-friendly width around 640 pixels, then export via save for web and devices as PNG-24 with alpha transparency in RGB at 72 ppi.

Learn to move artwork from Illustrator to Photoshop using smart objects, resize without quality loss, and export to WordPress for seamless blog graphics.

Explore adding images and adjusting graphics settings in WordPress, and prepare to finish multimedia topics by covering video, audio, and other media types in the next chapter.

learn to add video to WordPress posts by uploading and inserting, and by using auto embed for supported sites; compare linking versus embedding and note plugin options for video embeds.

Enable WordPress auto embeds to automatically convert plain text URLs into video players from YouTube and other whitelisted sites in posts.

Learn to add audio to WordPress posts by uploading audio files or linking to audio, center YouTube embeds with a simple div, and note plugins needed for full embedding.

Learn to link to PDFs and other media types, including Word documents and PowerPoint slides, in WordPress by uploading files, selecting from computer or media library, and inserting links.

Master how to manage uploaded media in WordPress by using the media library to filter by type, locate unattached files, view post attachments, and perform bulk deletions safely.

Explore how to use categories to group and organize posts, assign posts to categories, display them in sidebars and below each post, and manage category RSS feeds.

Create new WordPress blog categories from the posts categories screen by adding a name, optional slug, and optional parent to organize posts and use the category widget.

Learn how to apply and manage categories for WordPress posts, including selecting animation, news and updates, video tutorials, updating posts, and using category-based navigation to organize a live blog.

Set your WordPress blog's default post category from settings, replacing Uncategorized with a preferred option like news and updates, and learn two fast ways to create categories on the fly.

Learn to add post tags in WordPress, understand how tags differ from categories, and use tag clouds and popular tags to boost SEO and post discoverability.