Professional WordPress. Design and Development. Brad Williams

You’ll learn the advantages of running your own Multisite network and how to properly install Multisite, work in a network, create sites and users, manage themes and plugins, and even conduct domain mapping. The last part of the chapter explores coding for Multisite and the various functions and methods available for use.

      Chapter 11, “Migrating to WordPress,” looks at the migration process when migrating existing data to a WordPress website. You’ll learn about the migration process and data mapping guides, and how to work with a newer tool, WP-CLI, for larger migrations.

      Chapter 12, “Crafting a User Experience,” looks at a WordPress installation from the perspective of a regular or potential reader. Usability, testing, and the ease of finding information within a WordPress website form the basics, with added emphasis on web standards for metadata and search engine optimization so a page, or a specific post, can be found through an appropriate Google search. This chapter focuses on how to get your content to show up elsewhere on the web. Alternatives for adding search functionality, one of WordPress’s weaknesses, are discussed, along with content accessibility and delivery to mobile devices.

      Chapter 13, “Securing WordPress,” deals with good and bad popularity. Keeping a WordPress installation safe from malicious attackers is a key part of configuration and management, and this chapter covers the general best practices and addresses them with some of the more popular security and anti-spam plugins and features.

      Chapter 14, “Application Framework,” goes beyond blogging to examples of WordPress as an application framework to be used as a base when creating web applications. You’ll explore popular application framework features and how they relate in WordPress.

      Chapter 15, “WordPress in the Real World,” tackles issues of scale and integration. WordPress addresses deficiencies in “enterprise scale” content management tools, and building on the mechanisms covered in Chapter 12, this chapter shows how to use WordPress in real-world situations with confidence.

      Chapter 16, “WordPress Developer Community,” is an introduction to contributing to the WordPress ecosystem by working on the core, submitting plugins or themes, adding to the documentation canon, and assisting other developers. An overview of WordPress sister projects such as bbPress for forums is provided along with a brief summary of other developer resources and a glossary of WordPress context-sensitive terms.

      WHAT YOU NEED TO USE THIS BOOK

      You’ll need at least a rudimentary understanding of HTML and some knowledge of cascading style sheets (CSS) to make use of the theme and user experience sections of the book. Experience in writing and debugging PHP code is a prerequisite for more advanced developer sections, although if you’re just going to make changes based on the samples in this book, you can use the code as a template and learn on the fly. A basic knowledge of databases, especially the syntax and semantics of MySQL, is in order to make the most out of the chapter on data management as well as develop plugins that need to save data.

      It’s helpful to have an interactive development environment in which to view PHP code, or PHP code sprinkled through HTML pages. Choosing a set of developer tools often borders on religion and deep personal preference (and we know plenty of coders who believe that vi constitutes a development environment). Some of the more user-friendly tools will make walking through the WordPress code easier if you want to see how functions used in the examples appear in the core.

      Most important, if you want to use the code samples and examples in this book, you’ll need a WordPress website in which to install them. Chapter 1 covers some basic WordPress hosting options as well as the simple mechanics of downloading the components and installing WordPress on a desktop or test machine for debugging and closer inspection. Chapter 3 covers how to install and configure WordPress locally on your computer.

      Finally, some people might argue that to really take advantage of WordPress you need to be able to write, but that ignores the basic beauty of the WordPress platform: It takes the power of the printing press to an individual level. This book isn’t about what you say (or might say); it’s about how you’re going to get those ideas onto the web and how the world will see them and interact with your blog.

      CONVENTIONS

      To help you get the most from the text and keep track of what’s happening, we’ve used a number of conventions throughout the book.

      WARNING Warnings hold important, not-to-be forgotten information that is directly relevant to the surrounding text.

      NOTE Notes indicate tips, hints, tricks, or asides to the current discussion.

      As for styles in the text:

      ● We italicize new terms and important words when we introduce them.

      ● We show file names, URLs, and code within the text like so: persistence.properties.

      ● We present code in two different ways:

      SOURCE CODE

      As you work through the examples in this book, you may choose either to type in all the code manually, or to use the source code files that accompany the book. All of the source code used in this book is available for download at www.wrox.com. Specifically for this book, the code download is on the Download Code tab at:

      For this edition of the book, Chapters 8, 10, and 11 have companion code files that you can download. The code is in the specific chapter’s download file and individually named according to the code filenames noted throughout the chapter.

      Most of the code on www.wrox.com is compressed in a .ZIP,RAR, or similar archive format appropriate to the platform. Once you download the code, just decompress it with an appropriate decompression tool.

      NOTE Because many books have similar titles, you may find it easiest to search by ISBN; this book’s ISBN is 978-1-118-98724-7.

      Once you download the code, just decompress it with your favorite compression tool. Alternately, you can go to the main Wrox code download page at www.wrox.com/dynamic/books/download.aspx to see the code available for this book and all other Wrox books.

      ERRATA

      We make every effort to ensure that there are no errors in the text or in the code. However, no one is perfect, and mistakes do occur. If you find an error in one of our books, such as a spelling mistake or faulty piece of code, we would be very grateful for your feedback. By sending in errata, you may save another reader hours of frustration, and at the same time, you will be helping us provide even higher quality information.

      To find the errata page for this book, go to

      www.wrox.com/go/wordpress3e

      and click the Errata link. On this page you can view all errata that has been submitted for this book and posted by Wrox editors.

      If you don’t spot “your” error on the Book Errata page, go to www.wrox.com/contact/techsupport.shtml and complete the form there to send us the error you have found. We’ll check the information and, if appropriate, post a message to the book’s errata page and fix the problem in subsequent editions of the book.

      P2P.WROX.COM

      For author and peer discussion, join the P2P forums at http://p2p.wrox.com. The forums are a web-based system for you to post messages relating to Wrox books and related technologies and interact with other readers and technology users. The forums offer a subscription feature to e-mail you topics of interest of your choosing when