What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introducing WordPress, explains how WordPress is an excellent software that can run your website (blog or not). It's packed with excellent features and is so flexible that it can really do anything you want, and it has a wealth of online resources. Additionally, it's super easy to use, and you need no special skills or prior experience to use it. Last but not least, it is free!

Chapter 2, Getting Started, explains how to install WordPress on a remote server, change the basic default settings of your blog, write posts, and comment on those posts. It will also show you how to work with sites hosted on WordPress.com, which is one of the branches of the WordPress world.

Chapter 3, Creating Blog Content, teaches everything you need to know to add content to your blog and manage that content, be it about posts, categories, and comments, or tags, spam, and excerpts.

Chapter 4, Pages, Menus, Media Library, and More, explores all of the content WordPress can manage that's not directly about blogging. You can also learn about static pages, menus, bookmark links, the media library, image galleries, and more.

Chapter 5, Plugins and Widgets, discusses everything there is to know about finding the best plugins for WordPress and then using them effectively. Plugins are an integral part of every WordPress site's lifespan, so it's more than hard to imagine a successful site that isn't using any of them.

Chapter 6, Choosing and Installing Themes, describes how to manage the basic look of your WordPress website. You also learn where to find themes, why they are useful, and how to implement new themes on your WordPress website.

Chapter 7, Developing Your Own Theme, explains how to make your own theme. With just the most basic HTML and CSS abilities, you can create a design and turn it into a fully functional WordPress theme.

Chapter 8, Feeds, Podcasting, and Offline Blogging, explains what an RSS feed is and how to make feeds available for our WordPress blog. It also explores how to syndicate a whole blog or just posts within a certain category, and how to create your own podcast with or without the help of plugins. Finally, it goes on to discuss offline blogging and how it can speed up your web publishing experience.

Chapter 9, Developing Plugins and Widgets, teaches everything you need to know about creating basic plugins and widgets, how to structure the PHP files, where to put your functions, and how to use hooks. It also teaches about adding management pages and adding a widget that is related to a plugin.

Chapter 10, Community Blogging, explains how to manage a group of users working with a single blog, which is a community of users. Community blogging can play an important role in a user group or a news website. It also explains how to manage the different levels of privileges for users in a community.

Chapter 11, Creating a Non-blog Website Part One – The Basics, explores the endless possibilities of WordPress when it comes to using it to launch various types of websites. The chapter presents the first batch of our non-blog websites and explains in detail how to build them on top of a standard WordPress installation.

Chapter 12, Creating a Non-blog Website Part Two – Community Websites and Custom Content Elements, goes through some additional types of non-blog websites and also presents some technical aspects of building them (caution! code talk inside).

Chapter 13, Administrator's Reference, covers many of the common administrative tasks you may face when you're managing a WordPress-driven website. This includes backing up your database and files, moving your WordPress installation from one server or folder to another, and doing general problem-solving and troubleshooting. This chapter is the free one available online through a direct download link. Please hop over to our site to get it (http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2407OS_Chapter13_Administrators_Reference.pdf).