WordPress: The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

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Whether you’re a budding blogger or seasoned web designer, WordPress is a brilliant tool for creating websites–once you know how to tap into its impressive features. The latest edition of this jargon-free Missing Manual shows you how to use WordPress’s themes, widgets, and plug-ins to build just about any kind of site.

The important stuff you need to know:

Set up WordPress. Configure WordPress on your web host or get it running on your home computer. Create your site. Get hands-on instructions for building all types of websites, from blogs to business sites with ecommerce features. Jazz it up. Add picture galleries, slideshows, video clips, music players, and podcasts. Add features. Select from thousands of plug-ins to enhance your site’s capabilities, from contact forms to a basic shopping cart. Build a truly unique site. Customize a WordPress theme to create a site that looks exactly the way you want. Attract an audience. Use SEO, site statistics, and social sharing to reach more people. Stay safe. Use backup and staging tools to protect your content and avoid catastrophe.

From the Publisher

From the Introduction

When you decide to create a website, there are several paths you can take.

You could use a cookie-cutter website builder (like Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace). But if you do, you lose the ability to customize every detail to get what you really want. And because these companies host whatever you build, you also give up final control over your website.

You could hire an expert (or a team of experts) to build a website for you. Find the right person, and you’ll get a great product. But how do you maintain it? How do you make changes, add content, and keep growing your site without asking your expert to make every change for you?

Or, you could choose a third path, and use the ridiculously popular publishing tool called WordPress. WordPress isn’t perfect. But it does an amazing job of keeping things as simple or as complex as you want.

You start out with free themes that have beautiful typography and layouts. You get a content publishing system that makes writing new pages as easy as typing in a word processor. You can snap in more advanced features when you need them, like social media integration, search optimization, and even ecommerce. And, best of all, you control everything.

About This Book

This book is for anyone who wants to learn how to make websites with WordPress. We assume you know your way around a computer (and the internet), but you haven’t yet dipped your toes into the world of WordPress. You don’t need to know HTML and CSS, although these web skills will come in useful if you get ambitious about theme customization (see Chapter 13).

In this book, you’ll learn everything you need to create a new WordPress site, fill it with content, and make it look professional. Notice that we haven’t yet used the word blog. Although WordPress is the world’s premiere blogging tool, it’s also a great way to create other types of websites, like sites that advertise businesses, report news, promote artists, and even sell products.

What you need to use this book

Not much! The absolute bare minimum requirements are a proper computer (please don’t try to build a WordPress site on your phone) and a web connection. It doesn’t matter whether your computer runs Windows, macOS, or Linux, because you’re going to do all your work online in your favorite browser.

One recommended ingredient is a web hosting account. (A web host is a company that rents out space on the web, so you can make your website available to the whole world.) This is likely to cost you a few dollars a month. One account is enough, because you can use a single account to create as many WordPress sites as you want. And it’s easy, so you’ll probably want to create a half dozen test sites to use while you practice the exercises in this book.

If you don’t have a web host yet but would like to sign up, you’ll get the lowdown on how that works in Chapter 2.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O’Reilly Media; 3rd edition (November 17, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 490 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1492074160
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1492074168
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.87 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.17 x 1.22 x 7.05 inches