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CHAPTER 14 INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING WORDPRESS 383 Extracting the Files Before you transfer the WordPress files to your server, you ll need to expand the archive. The file you downloaded from the WordPress site is an archive, or a compressed collection of files. Then you will need to use FTP to transfer the WordPress files you downloaded earlier to your server. These tasks require the FTP program and expansion software I mentioned earlier as requirements. Extract the WordPress files from the archive into a convenient folder, such as C:wpwork or C:My Documentswpwork. You ll need this folder to work through the examples in this book. You should have approximately 160 files in various folders within C:wpwork. You ll need to copy one of them and edit it before you upload the files. Editing the Configuration File Find the wp-config-sample.php file and make a copy of it called wp-config.php, saving it in the same directory. Load that copy into an editor program a text editor, not a word processor. As I noted earlier, Notepad will work fine for now, if you don t have a specialized text editor. In this file, you need to change the dummy database connection settings to the real values. Find the part of the file that looks like Listing 14-1. Listing 14-1. MySQL Settings in wp-config.php // ** MySQL settings ** // define(’DB_NAME’, ‘wordpress’); // The name of the database define(’DB_USER’, ‘username’); // Your MySQL username define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’); // …and password define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need. to change this value Fill in the details for the database name, database user, and password from the information you gathered earlier. As the comment says, it is very unlikely you will need to change the host setting. I have found only one hosting service that required the host setting to be changed. If you do need to change that setting, your hosting provider will have supplied that information along with your other details. You should end up with something like the settings shown in Listing 14-2. Listing 14-2. MySQL Settings Populated in wp-config.php // ** MySQL settings ** // define(’DB_NAME’, ‘wp_example’); // The name of the database define(’DB_USER’, ‘wp_db_user’); // Your MySQL username define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ’secret’); // …and password define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need. to change this value If your installation of WordPress is going to share a database with another WordPress installation that is, if you plan to keep the data tables for multiple WordPress installations in the same database you ll also need to change the prefix setting just below the database connection setting, which looks like this:
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382 CHAPTER 14 INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING WORDPRESS Figure 14-2. Filling in the database name and selecting the type Figure 14-3. Adding a user to the database If you have the option, create a database user specifically for the use of WordPress. That is, if you can, create a user and assign that user privileges to access the WordPress database you just created. In the end, it doesn t actually matter whether you use an existing database or set up a new one. WordPress will quite happily share a database with any other application, including another installation of WordPress.
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CHAPTER 14 INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING WORDPRESS 381 Creating a Database Now you need a database. Some hosting services allow you to have only one database. Often, this is already created for you when you sign in to your administration page. Others allow you to create your own database. If you have the choice of multiple databases with your own name, I suggest you create one called WordPress, if you can, but it doesn t matter what its name is, as long as you know that name. If you are creating a brand-new database, don t forget to give your database user account permission to access it. These steps are usually carried out through some kind of control panel software running on your server to allow you to administer your hosting space provided by your hosting service. Hosting services provide many different control panels or administration pages. Although you rarely have a choice of which one you get, they should all be capable of allowing you to administer your database in various ways. Two of the most common control applications are Plesk (http://www.sw-soft.com/en/products/plesk/) and cPanel (http://www.cpanel.net/). Figures 14-1, 14-2, and Figure 14-3 illustrate adding a new database and user with the Plesk control panel. Figure 14-1. Adding a new database icon in the Plesk control panel
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380 CHAPTER 14 INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING WORDPRESS Obtaining WordPress Next, you need to get a copy of WordPress. That s pretty easy. Mouse along to http:// wordpress.org/download and download the latest .zip file. The latest release is also available as a gzipped tarball. If your desktop is a UNIX or Linux machine, this may be more appropriate for you. The files inside are all the same. Obtaining Helper Programs You will need an FTP program, a program to expand zipped files, and a text editor of some kind. FTP is the term for the transfer of files from a client, in this case your PC, to a server your hosting server. Actually the acronym stands for File Transfer Protocol, but it is commonly used as a verb, too. FTP software is readily available. In fact, it is likely that your current operating system already includes an FTP program. Unfortunately, it is probably a command-linedriven one. While command-line FTP is straightforward to use, it is much easier to work with a graphical application if you can. If your desktop is Windows, I recommend Filezilla (http:// filezilla.sourceforge.net/) or SmartFTP (http://www.smartftp.com) for FTP. Plenty of other FTP programs are available.. You ll need a program to unarchive the WordPress installation files you download, because they are compressed in an archive. If you download the .zipfile, you will need a program capable of expanding, or unzipping, the archive. WinZip (http://www.winzip.com/) is probably the most popular on Windows, but has a shareware license requiring you to purchase it after a trial period. I recommend 7zip (http://www.7-zip.org/), which is completely free. For a text editor, I recommend nothing more elaborate than Notepad for now. Later, you might want to evaluate some of the specialized PHP and CSS editors. Preparing Your Server You ll need to take a few steps before you install WordPress on your server. These include gathering some information, creating a database, transferring the files, and setting file permissions. So, let s get started. Gathering Information Before doing anything else, you will need to gather some information and make a fairly simple decision. From your hosting service you will need the following information: Your login and password for FTP (you should have been given those when you signed up for your hosting) The name of your database, if one has already been created for you, and your database login details The decision you need to make is simply where to put your blog. By that, I mean that you must decide if your blog will be the only thing on your web site or whether you will want to also have other pages, such as Drupal or phpBB sections. It comes down to the URL of your blog. Will it be http://example.com/ or will it be http://example.com/blog? I almost always recommend the latter (of course, you may wish to call it journal, diary, news, or something other than blog), because it leaves your options open for future changes.
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Installing and Configuring WordPress CHAPTER 1 4 In this chapter, I ll step you through a complete installation of WordPress. I ll list the minimum requirements and a couple of useful extras. After you have WordPress installed, I ll take you on a tour of WordPress options for configuring your blog. Finally, you ll make your first post to your blog. Installing WordPress Installing WordPress on your server is as simple as running its install script. However, first you ll need to make sure that your system meets WordPress requirements, obtain WordPress and some helper programs, and prepare your server. Meeting the Requirements Your system needs to meet some basic requirements to install and run a WordPress blog. The first is hosting. You ll need an account on a server somewhere. This may be shared hosting or your own server, if you have one. WordPress does work on Windows, especially with the same web server and database setup. But because it s the most common and, frankly, the simplest to set up, I m going to concentrate on GNU/Linux-based hosting. Your hosting server needs to have support for PHP version 4.1 or later and MySQL database server version 3.23.23 or later. I recommend Apache as a web server (version 1.3.23 or later), but any web server capable of supporting PHP should work. If you have support for mod_rewrite in Apache, you ll be able to use some especially useful features of WordPress. (See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html for more information about mod_rewrite.) You ll also need to be able to upload files via FTP and change permissions on your files and folders. I don t have a recommendation for disk space or bandwidth. A 1,000-post blog with 2,000 comments and no pictures will fit comfortably in 10MB with room to spare. Bandwidth is too variable to call. Blog popularity ranges from 1 visit a week to 10,000 per day and higher. A huge number of companies offer hosting. Shop around and get the best deal to suit your needs. Always go for more than you think you ll need, but stay within your budget. You never know your blog may become very popular. The last thing you want is to be cut off for exceeding your bandwidth, just as you are building your community.
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378 CHAPTER 13 INTRODUCING WORDPRESS Finally, version 1.5, the current version, was released in February 2005. This version introduced the powerful and flexible templates and theme system, with the default now the beautiful Kubrik theme by Michael Heilemann. This release also saw the introduction of even stronger anti-spam measures. Perhaps one of the most significant parts of this release is that you can now use WordPress to manage static pages on your site. The administration system got yet another overhaul after user feedback, this time introducing the Dashboard, a page displaying news feeds from WordPress s development blog and a summary of your recent posts, comments, and more. Summary This chapter provided an overview of blogging and blogging software, and then introduced WordPress, the software covered in this part of the book. The next chapter will take you through a step-by-step installation of WordPress. I ll cover basic requirements and configuration, and explain some of the more advanced options. I ll introduce the project blog you ll build in this part of the book. Oh yes, I ll also walk you through making your first blog post!
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CHAPTER 13 INTRODUCING WORDPRESS 377 HISTORY OF WORDPRESS WordPress grew as the official successor to Michel Valdrighi s b2/cafelog blogging software. Michel started the b2 project around July 2001. The project s development progressed rapidly, and it built an extensive following. Cafelog.com, the home of b2, supported incredibly busy forums and built a great community. Many people helped report and fix bugs in b2. A few produced add-ons, hacks, and customizations to the core software. In late 2002, Michel found he could not continue to develop b2 because of personal commitments. For a few months, b2 floundered after release 0.6. Some user frustration followed, and pretty much simultane- ously, two forks of the project were proposed. b2evolution was started by Fran ois Planque, and WordPress was started by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little (one of your humble authors). On May 23, 2003, Michel Valdrighi announced, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little are leading the new WordPress branch of b2. That is going to become the new official branch once they get a release out. b2++, started by Donncha o Caoimh, was another variant that began later. This project eventually became WordPress MU, or WordPress Multi User. Michel later returned to online life and is now a contributor to WordPress. WordPress has a drop-in-and-go theme system. Upload one of the hundreds of beautiful themes people have developed and published, and start using it at the click of a mouse button. You can switch from one theme to another with a couple more mouse clicks. The administration interface is intuitive and simple to use. However, if you do get lost, there are help links on every page. WordPress has an extensible plug-in system, allowing developers to add to or change the software s functionality. Hundreds of plug-ins have already been developed, and many more are being created all the time. There are plug-ins for threaded comments, for adding a gallery to your post, to generate Amazon links, and much more. WordPress Releases The first non-beta release of WordPress was 0.7 in May 2003. This version was essentially an update to b2 version 0.6, but it already included semantically correct, validating default templates; a built-in link manager; a new administration interface; and other features. Release 0.71 followed in June and added a 300% speed increase (honest!), draft and private posts, comment status, Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML) import of blogrolls, and many more improvements. The WordPress developer team grew, and more releases followed over the next few months. January 2004 saw the leap to version 1.0, which heralded a massive increase in functionality: search engine-friendly permalinks, multiple categories, the much-touted quick installation, comment moderation, yet more improvements to the administration interface, and so on. By this time, the number of users was quite considerable. The forums were well established and quite busy. May 2004 saw the next major release of WordPress. Version 1.2 was released with subcategories, automatic thumbnail creation for image uploads, the new plug-in architecture, localization, post preview, more importers, and the usual slew of bug fixes, speed ups, and tweaks. The administration interface was yet again improved.
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376 CHAPTER 13 INTRODUCING WORDPRESS WordPress is semantic because it generates XHTML markup with meaning. It produces web pages that work without any style applied, work correctly with screen readers used by blind people, and validate by conforming to published web standards. This makes for lightweight pages that download faster onto a user s browser and that often appear on the screen quickly. WordPress is designed from the start to look good. It comes with two themes, both of which are elegant and simple. It is always important that your readers have a pleasant experience when visiting your blog. Equally important, the WordPress administration interface is good looking, too. That s where you, as blog owner, will spend most of your time, and you will appreciate having a pleasant work environment. If you have a little knowledge and a suitable hosting account, WordPress setup is quite literally a five-minute install. You will be up and running, and making your first post in a matter of minutes. WordPress Features WordPress includes the usual support for blogging, with comments, TrackBacks, and Pingbacks. Here is a summary of its main features: It supports multiple authors and registered visitors with the privilege to comment. You can configure different administration rights for each author. It supports a draft mode for your posts, so you can work on them until you are ready to publish. It supports protected posts, where a reader must supply a password to read the post. It supports private posts, visible only to you. It supports automatic Pingbacks, where all the links in an article can be pinged when the article is published. As well as categories for your posts, it also supports nested categories and multiple categories per post. It supports XML feeds in all the current formats. WordPress supports RSS, RDF, and Atom feeds. It also supports feeds by subject and by author, as well as feeds on comments. It has an integrated link manager, which supports categories, images, descriptions, notes, and XFN (XHTML Friends Network, http://gmpg.org/xfn/), as well as a built-in blogroll manager. It supports RSS enclosures for podcasting. WordPress supports podcasting in a simple, intuitive way. It generates standards-compliant XHTML and CSS, and uses nice-looking, search engine-friendly permalinks. WordPress supports typographic filters for proper formatting and styling of text. You don t need to learn HTML to enrich your postings.
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CHAPTER 13 INTRODUCING WORDPRESS 375 Syndication Feeds: Most blogging software supports a way of reading your blog contents other than with a browser. It uses the concept of feeds, which are XML-based presentations of your blog contents. They are consumed by feed readers or aggregators special software that will regularly retrieve your blog s feed and compare it to the feed read last time. In this way, the software notices changes to your blog and highlights them to you. Feed readers allow you to aggregate the feeds from all the blogs and news sites you regularly read and be informed in a central place of the ones that have changed. A simple click takes you to the site in question with its new content. Another advantage is that it takes a lot less bandwidth for a feed reader to download your XML feed than to grab your web page. Some blogging software or their plug-ins allow you to incorporate the feeds into your own blog. This way, you could have the latest headlines in your own page automatically, instead of just a link to the latest industry news site. Common formats for XML feeds are Really Simple Syndication (RSS), Atom, and Resource Description Framework (RDF). Most feed readers can understand them all. Feed readers are available for many platforms. Some are desktop applications like FeedDemon for Windows (http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/), NetNewsWire for Mac OS X (http://ranchero.com/ netnewswire/), and RSSOwl for UNIX and other platforms (http://www.rssowl.org/). Some are add-ons and plug-ins that add feed reader functions to other packages; for example, RSS Popper for Microsoft Outlook (http://rsspopper.blogspot.com/2004/10/home.html), Safari RSS for Safari on the Mac (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari/), and Wizz RSS for Firefox on all platforms (http://www.wizzcomputers.com/WizzRss.php). There are also online feed aggregators, like Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) and Syndic8 (http:// www.syndic8.com/). Podcasting: Podcasting is where you distribute audio or multimedia content (usually MP3 files) via your RSS feed. You can find tools that will let your readers subscribe to the RSS feed and automatically download the audio files to their MP3 players. Permalinks: A permalink (contraction of the phrase permanent link) is a type of URL designed to refer to a specific information item (often a news story or weblog item) and to remain unchanged permanently, or at least for a lengthy period of time. Permanence in links is desirable when content items are likely to be linked to from, or cited by, a source outside the originating organization. Permalinks are also desirable within organizations when the complexity of web sites grows to more than a modest number of pages. In particular, the growth of extensive commercial web sites built on database-backed CMS necessitated deliberate policies with regard to URL design and link permanence. Moblogging: Moblogging is blogging photographs taken with a mobile phone camera. Often, these can be posted directly from the phone. Why WordPress? And so we come to WordPress, the blogging software this part of the book will be discussing. Why WordPress? WordPress is a state-of-the-art, semantic, personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. That s quite a mouthful, but what does it all mean?
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374 CHAPTER 13 INTRODUCING WORDPRESS Blogrolls: Blogrolls are a convenient way to manage lists of links to other blogs and sites. These lists can often be displayed on your blog in a sidebar on the page. The links are usually to the blogs that you read regularly. Links to other blogs are often reciprocal: You link to me, and I ll link to you. Getting your blog onto many people s blogrolls is good promotion for your blog. Blogrolls can be served from external sites. Some blogroll services will integrate with most blogging software, whether or not it supports its own blogrolls. More sophisticated services and some blogging software allow you to maintain multiple list of links. Thus, you could have separate categories of links, for example. Ping Notification: With ping notification, your blogging software reports to a central service each time you create a new post. The central service then displays a list of recently updated blogs. This allows people to check in with the central service and find blogs that have been recently updated. Most blogging software supports pinging one or more central services. Many services are available, some offering quite sophisticated features. Some services maintain blogrolls, automatically marked to indicate which ones have been updated. The most famous recently updated ping notification list is probably the one at Weblogs.com (http://weblogs.com/). This originally listed only Radio UserLand blogs (it is owned by the same company), but now lists any blogs. One service, Ping-O-Matic (http://pingomatic.com/), when pinged by your blog software will ping dozens more services for you. Thus, you don t need to wait for your software to support all the services out there. Blog Crawlers: Blog crawler services function in a similar fashion to ping notification services, but visit blogs that don t have the ability to ping the central service. They watch for changes to these blogs and update the recently updated listing as appropriate. These services cater to systems that don t ping and to homegrown or hand-edited blogs. Metadata Services: Several new services receive pings from recently updated blogs and also actively crawl through those and other blogs, and then collate the data they ve gathered in interesting ways. For example, they might list the most popular subjects about which people are currently blogging, the most talked about book, or the most popular blogs (based on which blogs everyone links to). TrackBack: TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between web sites. If, for example, Anne has written a post on her blog that is a response to or comments on a post in Bob s blog, she may want to send a TrackBack to notify Bob. This is a form of remote comments. It is a way for Anne to say to Bob, This is something you may be interested in. To do that, her blogging software sends a TrackBack ping (a small message sent from one web server to another) to Bob s software. Pingback: Pingbacks are similar to TrackBacks, but were designed to solve some of the problems that people saw with TrackBacks. The most notable difference between the two is that Pingbacks do not send any content. Pingbacks are generally displayed with a blog s postings comments. Both TrackBacks and Pingbacks allow a form of cross-blog communication, so the various readers of blogs that track and ping back each other can participate in a multisite conversation.
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