No author could complete a book without a small army of helpful individuals. Im deeply indebted to the whole Missing Manual team, including expert tech reviewer Sallie Goetsch, my editor Peter McKie, and numerous others whove toiled behind the scenes indexing pages, drawing figures, and proofreading the final copy.
Finally, for the parts of my life that exist outside this book, Id like to thank all my family members. They include my parents, Nora and Paul; my extended parents, Razia and Hamid; my wife, Faria; and my daughters, Maya and Brenna. Thanks, everyone!
The Missing Manual Series
Missing Manuals are witty, superbly written guides to computer products that dont come with printed manuals (which is just about all of them). Each book features a handcrafted index.
Recent and upcoming titles include:
WordPress: The Missing Manual, Second Edition by Matthew MacDonald
iPhoto: The Missing Manual by David Pogue and Lesa Snider
iWork: The Missing Manual by Jessica Thornsby and Josh Clark
Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mavericks Edition by David Pogue
OS X Mavericks: The Missing Manual by David Pogue
HTML5: The Missing Manual, Second Edition by Matthew MacDonald
Dreamweaver CC: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland and Chris Grover
Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual by David Pogue
iPad: the Missing Manual, Sixth Edition by J.D. Biersdorfer
Quickbooks 2014: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore
iPhone: the Missing Manual, Seventh Edition by David Pogue
Photoshop Elements 12: The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage
Galaxy S4: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla
Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual by Lesa Snider
Office 2013: The Missing Manual by Nancy Connor and Matthew MacDonald
Excel 2013: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald
Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore
Access 2013: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald
For a full list of all Missing Manuals in print, go to www.missingmanuals.com/library.html.
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 trendthe best and biggest soapbox, marketplace, and meeting spot ever created.
But theres a problem. If you want people to take your website seriously, you need first-rate content, a dash of good style, and the behind-the-scenes technology that ties everything together. The first two items require some hard work. But the third elementthe industrial-strength web plumbing that powers a good siteis a lot trickier to build on your own. Overlook that, and youve got a broken mess of pages that even your mom cant love.
This is where the ridiculously popular web publishing tool called 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 your visitors get around, and a search box that lets people dig through your archives. WordPress also lets your readers add comments using their Facebook or Twitter identities, so they dont need to create a new account on your site. And if you add a few community-created plug-ins (from the vast library of more than 30,000), theres no limit to the challenges you can tackle. Selling products? Check. Setting up a membership site? No problem. Building forums and collaborative workspaces? Theres a plug-in for that, too. And while its true that WordPress isnt the best tool for every type of website, its also true that wherever you find a gap in the WordPress framework, youll find some sort of plug-in that attempts to fill it. WordPress is stunningly popular, tooits responsible for more than one-fifth of the worlds websites, according to the web statistics company W3Techs (see http://tinyurl.com/3438rb6). Its 10 times more popular than its closest competitors, site-building tools like Joomla and Drupal. And month after month, WordPresss share of the Web continues to inch upward. In short, when you create your own WordPress site, youll be in good company.
About This Book
This book provides a thorough, soup-to-nuts look at WordPress. Youll learn everything you need to know, including how to create, manage, maintain, and extend a WordPress site.
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