Thord Daniel Hedengren - Smashing WordPress

Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, 2nd Edition

Thord Daniel Hedengren

This edition first published 2011

2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-119-99596-8

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Dedication

There are a lot of people involved in writing a book. Friends, family, lovers, pets, and not to mention patient editors all have had some sort of influence since they have put up with me over this somewhat hectic period. I could dedicate this book to any one of them, or to lost family members that have meant a lot to what I am today.

I wont, though.

This book is dedicated to the wonderful WordPress community. Without them, no WordPress, and without WordPress, no book from yours truly. In fact, if it werent for WordPress in particular, and open source in general, I probably would be doing something entirely different today.

Youve got to love WordPress. I do.

Thord Daniel Hedengren

Publishers Acknowledgments

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Editorial and Production

VP Consumer and Technology Publishing Director: Michelle Leete

Associate Director Book Content Management: Martin Tribe

Associate Publisher: Chris Webb

Publishing Assistant: Ellie Scott

Senior Project Editor: Sara Shlaer

Technical Editor: Thomas Myer

Editorial Manager: Jodi Jensen

Editorial Assistant: Leslie Saxman

Marketing

Associate Marketing Director: Louise Breinholt

Marketing Executive: Kate Parrett

Composition Services

Compositor: Wiley Indianapolis Composition Services

Proofreader: Linda Seifert

Indexer: Potomac Indexing, LLC

About the Author

Thord Daniel Hedengren is addicted to words, which led him to launch his first online newsletter in 1996. It all went downhill from there, with dozens of sites and a career as editor and freelancer in Sweden and abroad.

Going international all started with a blog post, which led to a book deal with Wiley, which in turn resulted in the Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog book and its follow-up Smashing WordPress Themes: Making WordPress Beautiful, and an even stronger voice in the WordPress community. Youre holding the second edition of critically acclaimed Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog in your hands right now. This is really just the beginning since that word obsession keeps Thord spewing out new stuff.

When not obsessed with words, Thord and friends are building cool websites using WordPress at his web design firm Odd Alice. He also edits magazines and writes freelance articles for both print and web publications, in both Swedish and English. You can follow everything Thord on http://tdh.me.

Thord lives in the land of kings, Sweden.

Introduction

Writing a book about WordPress isnt the easiest endeavor one could tackle. When my editor and I first started discussing this project, the idea was to create something that not only acts as an introduction to web developers and professionals who want to utilize the power of the WordPress platform, but also to spark the minds to create things beyond the obvious.

Or go beyond the blog , as it were, which is also the subtitle of the book.

The whole point is really to prove that WordPress is so much more than a blog-publishing platform. You can build just about anything on it, and you should as well if you like fast deployments and great flexibility. It is not always the perfect choice, but it should definitely be considered at all times. The ease with which you can both build and use this platform is a selling point, just as is the living community that can back you up when you run into problems, and the fact that this is open source at its finest.

While I think that anyone with some knowledge of HTML, CSS and/or PHP can learn WordPress from this book, it is important to remember that this is not a beginners book. We start at a pretty high pace to make sure that even professionals get the fundamentals right. It is so easy to stick to familiar territory and do things the way theyve always been done, instead of learning to do it right. And while having the basics in here will help anyone get started with WordPress, you really should know some HTML and CSS, and have at least a grasp of what PHP is and does. If those are alien concepts to you, I urge you to read up on them first.

That being said, Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog is indeed written with the idea that anyone with the suitable background can learn WordPress using this book, as well as take the platform beyond the obvious. When youre done with this book, youre ready to build just about anything using WordPress.

To convey this message , Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog is divided into four parts.

Part I: Getting Started with WordPress

The first part tackles the WordPress essentials, from install to what actually makes the system tick. It gives you everything you need to get started with WordPress, albeit at a slightly quicker pace than traditional beginner books. However, coverage doesnt stop there because there are a lot of things you should be aware of when getting started with WordPress, such as security measures, moving the install, and so on. The idea is to not only help beginners get started, but also enlighten current users to the problems and options available.