Whether you’re a budding blogger or web development professional, WordPress is a brilliant tool for creating websites—if you know how to tap its impressive features. This jargon-free Missing Manual shows you how to use WordPress and its themes, plug-ins, and widgets to build just about any website you can imagine, from a classy blog to a basic e-commerce site.
The important stuff you need to know:
- Create a blog. Get a free WordPress.com account, choose the right theme, and start publishing content.
- Build a website. Produce a professional-looking business site by customizing a WordPress theme.
- Add features. Choose from thousands of WordPress widgets and plug-ins to extend your site’s features.
- Mix in multimedia. Include slideshows, video clips, webcasts, podcasts, and music players.
- Involve your readers. Let readers leave comments, contribute to your site, and carry on a dialog.
- Build an audience. Learn search-engine optimization, measure your reader’s favorite pages, and publicize your site.
- Create a community. Use social media tools such as “Like” and sharing buttons, and provide RSS feeds of your posts.
Matthew MacDonald is a developer, author, and educator in all things Visual Basic and .NET. He's worked with Visual Basic and ASP since their initial versions, and has written over a dozen books on the subject, including The Book of VB .NET (No Starch Press) and Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook (O'Reilly). He has also written a number of Missing Manual titles on Excel 2007 and Access 2007 (O'Reilly). His website is http://www.prosetech.com/.