Smashing WordPress: Beyond The Blog

Chapter 1. ANATOMY OF A WORDPRESS INSTALL

Installing WordPress is neither difficult nor time consuming, and the available instructions on wordpress.org are more than adequate to guide you through the basic install. That being said, there are some things that you should know and take into account if you want to set up the perfect WordPress site. Therefore, this chapter is all about giving you the solid platform you need for further development. WordPress in itself is a powerful publishing tool, and you can supercharge it with themes and plugins. Running a site on top of WordPress is all about that, so it is important to get the basics right so you can build on top of it. WordPress is the bricks and mortar of the site, but themes and plugins are what make it tick for real.

Also, before moving on, remember that "WordPress" in this book means the stand-alone version of WordPress available for free from wordpress.org. Don't get this mixed up with the multiuser version, called WordPress MU, which is touched upon briefly later, nor with AutoMattic hosted version on wordpress.com. This book is all about the main version available from wordpress.org, and more specifically with version 2.8 in mind.

The Basic Install

As you probably know, installing WordPress is a breeze. There is a reason the "five-minute install" PR talk isn't getting blasted to pieces by the otherwise so talkative blogosphere. In fact, the only reason that the install should take that long is because uploading the files sometimes ...