WordPress: The Missing Manual

Introduction

Throughout history, people have searched for new places to vent their opinions, sell their products, and just chat it up. The World Wide Web is the culmination of this trend—the best and biggest soapbox, marketplace, and meeting spot ever created.

But there’s a problem. If you want a website that’s taken seriously, you need first-rate content, a dash of good style, and the functionality that ties everything together. The first two items require some hard work. But the third element—the industrial-strength web plumbing that powers your site—is a whole lot trickier. Overlook that, and you’ve got a broken mess of pages that even your mom can’t love.

This is where the ridiculously popular web publishing tool named WordPress comes in. WordPress makes you a basic deal: You write the content, and WordPress takes care of the rest.

The services that WordPress provides are no small potatoes. First, WordPress puts every page of your content into a nicely formatted, consistent layout. It provides the links and menus that help visitors get around, and the search box that lets people dig through your archives. WordPress also lets your readers add comments with their Facebook or Twitter identities, so they don’t need to create a new account on your site. And if you add a few community-created plug-ins (from the vast library that currently tops 20,000 items), there’s no limit to the challenges you can tackle. Selling products? Check. Setting up a membership site? No problem. Building ...