Introduction
Welcome to the Absolute Beginner’s Guide to WordPress. Before we dive into the book, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page about who the book is for, how it’s organized, and how I deal with the inevitable updates to WordPress after this book goes to press.
Who This Book Is For
First, who is this book for? Almost everyone. I’ve written the book to be accessible for the novice user but helpful as a reference book for the intermediate user. Advanced users? This isn’t the book for you, unless you’re giving it as a gift to someone you’d like to see jump onto the WordPress bandwagon. I’ve been using WordPress for seven years; I’ve written two books on it, taught hundreds of people how to use WordPress, and given talks at WordCamps all over North America. I’m approaching this book differently than most other introduction to WordPress books. I’m looking at the process of learning about WordPress from the perspective of the average computer user who just wants to make a website or blog and wants to make sure they do it “right.” I go through the steps in the order that I think make sense for people to follow.
How This Book Is Organized
All the above said, this book is written and organized to be flipped through. Think of it as a quick reference to WordPress (which makes it handy for intermediate users). Jump to the section you need right now to solve the problem at hand. So if you get through Chapter 5, “Installing WordPress Themes,” and want to jump right to Chapter 7, “Setting Up Your WordPress Site the Right Way: SEO, Social Media, and More,” no problem! You can circle back to “How WordPress Themes Work” (Chapter 9) and “All About Jetpack Settings” (Chapter 8) when you’re ready. The book is organized like this so you can (if you want) read it start to finish, cover to cover, and have a complete understanding of WordPress. If you’re already pretty familiar with WordPress and need a book to look up something quickly, that works, too.
The Only Constant Is Change...and WordPress Updates
Let’s talk about WordPress updates. At the time of writing this book (fall of 2013), WordPress has just celebrated its 10th anniversary, and WordPress 3.6 has just come out. Ten years is a long time in the software world, and I can honestly say WordPress just gets better and better with each new version. Speaking of versions, I’m starting this book just after WordPress 3.6 (Oscar) has been released and expecting WordPress 3.7 to be released in October and WordPress 3.8 a couple months after that. This means that while writing this book, I’m planning for at least three versions of WordPress that will come out while this book is in production. Challenging? Yeah, you could say that. However, I am going to take the same approach here that I did with Using WordPress, which is to write and cover all the features and facets of WordPress as version agnostic as I can. There are some things that I don’t expect to change in WordPress anytime soon, and some things I know will be changing in coming versions. By the time you read this book, chances are that there will be new versions of WordPress available, so screenshots, steps, and features may look different here versus what you’re seeing in real life. Don’t sweat it. Between the built-in help within WordPress, this book, and updates that I’ll post on my own website (http://trishussey.com), you should be good to go.
Now that those details are out of the way, let’s talk about what this book is really about: Freedom.
This book is all about learning to use one of the best (and easiest) website and blogging platforms around. About 20% of the world’s websites run WordPress, and a good number of the biggest websites in the world (like CNN and The New York Times) use WordPress, making this free, open source tool a great choice for sites large and small. Most importantly, to me, WordPress represents the ability for regular people to be able to install, manage, and customize their own blogs and websites without needing professionals to help them. WordPress is about the freedom to create, build, compose, and publish to the world. You can start out completely free on WordPress.com and move all the way up to a completely customized website like the big players have, all using the same tools and software. Throughout this book, there are tips, tricks, interesting facts, techniques, and tools to help you get the most out of your WordPress-powered website.
A Note About Browsers and Such
I’m a Mac guy, so all the screenshots in the book use Chrome (or Safari) for Mac and Chrome or Safari for iOS (for iPad- and iPhone-related discussions). This doesn’t mean that I’m ignoring all the Windows (or Linux) users out there; it just means that this is what I use, so that’s what I have for examples. Great pains have been taken to double (and triple) check that what you see on a Mac screen is pretty darn close to what you see on a PC screen. Does this mean that there aren’t going to be slight differences? Nope. Buttons and menus might look a little different, but that’s going to be about it. Because WordPress is designed to work within a web browser, it doesn’t matter what operating system (OS) you use. Whether it’s on Mac, PC, or Linux, WordPress itself works the same in all three. As I mentioned previously, I’ve written the book to be as “future proof” as possible. The goal is that the book won’t be worthless to you in six months or a year. I’ve written this book so that you can get years of use out of it before you think, “Wow, things are really different now.”
Conventions Used in This Book
The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to WordPress uses a number of conventions to provide you with special information. These include the following elements:
TIPS
offer suggestions for making things easier or provide alternative ways to perform a particular task.
NOTES
provide additional, more detailed information about a specific WordPress feature.
CAUTIONS
warn you about potential problems that might occur and offer advice on how to avoid these problems.
Sidebars interspersed throughout the chapters cover things that are related to the topic at hand, but go into more detail than the flow of the chapter allows for.