Wiley Professional WordPress
Contents
1. MySQL database user although you ll only change the default of root localhost if you have full control over the web and database servers The configuration file also has entries for security keys that are used to provide stronger security for browser cookies Security keys are discussed in more detail in Chapter 11 Editing your wp config php file effects the changes right away Changing the database table prefix for example causes WordPress to instantiate a new set of tables and create a clean slate blog Make those edits and then go back to your top level blog URL and you ll find yourself with new admin user information and logged in to a starter Dashboard as in Figure 1 7 Old tables aren t removed from MySQL so you ll have to do manual cleanup At this point if you want to set your blog s URL to be different from the location in which you installed WordPress you can choose Settings and General from the Dashboard and change the URLs for both your blog s top level address as well as the WordPress installation directory If you dissociate your blog s URL and the WordPress directory make sure you move the index php file to the desired top level URL and then edit the last line to include the proper subdirectory path to WordPress Before creating your first post it s also a good idea to establish a permalink structure so that every thing you write follows the naming conventions you ve chosen to make it relatively easy for r2. WordCamps are a low cost introduction to the local community and often a good opportunity to meet WordPress celebrities 4 CHAPTER1 FIRST POST Less structured but more frequently convened than WordCamps are WordPress Meetups comprising local users and developers in more than 40 cities You ll need a meetup com account but once you re registered you can check on locations and timetables at wordpress meetup com to see when and where people are talking about content management A rich multi language documentation repository is hosted at codex wordpress org The WordPress Codex with all due respect to the term reserved for ancient handwritten manuscripts represents the community contributed tips and tricks for every facet of WordPress from installation to debugging It s a wiki with fourteen administrators and well over 70 000 registered users If you feel the urge to contribute to the WordPress documentation register and write away in the WordPress Codex We hope you ll find this book a cross between a companion and a travel guide to the Codex Finally mailing lists and their archives exist for various WordPress contributors and communities A current roster is available online at codex wordpress org Mailing_Lists of particular interest may be the wp docs list for Codex contributors and the wp hackers list for those who work on the WordPress core and steer its future directions WordPress and the GPL WordPress is licensed und
3. searching selecting and presenting content grew to include 6 CHAPTER1 FIRST POST metadata and content taxonomies the line between vanilla single user targeted blogging software and enterprise grade content management systems blurred Content management systems CMS handle the creation storage retrieval description or annotation and publication or display of a variety of content types CMS also covers workflow tasks typically from an editorial or publishing perspective but equally including actions such as approval and mark ing content for additional editing or review The WordPress Dashboard covered in detail in Chapter 2 provides those elements of workflow management and editorial control WordPress isn t the only open source content management system in widespread use today the Drupal and Joomla projects are equally popular choices Drupal and Joomla start from the perspective of managing content reposi tories they handle a variety of content types multiple authors in multiple roles and getting the content to a consumer that requests it WordPress is at its heart a blogging system and the end focus is on dis playing content to a reader Although areas of functional overlap exist you can integrate WordPress with other content management systems a process covered in detail in Chapter 12 WordPress has established itself as a bona fide content management system through its design for extensibility and the separation
4. consumes the outputs It s not sufficient to install blogging software write a few posts and hope the world shows up on your virtual doorstep you need to create what Tim O Reilly calls an architecture of participation Social networking advertising feeds and taking steps to ensure your site shows up in search engine results will drive readers to your site the design branding and graphic elements coupled with the quality of your content will encourage them to take the steps toward active participation Look at the problem from the perspective of a reader in a world of tens of millions of blogs many of which have a first post and not much else how will you be found heard and echoed Your Twitter followers should want to read your blog and your WordPress blog can update your Twitter feed Getting Started 7 Conversely your Twitter updates may appear in your WordPress blog s sidebar marrying the ultra short content timeline to the more thoughtful one If you re active on Facebook you can import blog entries into a public figure page you re a writer if not a more famous and self promoting category and Facebook readership will drive traffic back to your blog If you cover specific detailed or arcane areas in your writing Google searches for those terms should direct readers to your blog where they ll join the conversation We cover getting content into WordPress from social media and other content syste
5. password authentication issue when using MySQL 4 1 or MySQL 5 0 with some web servers PHP implementations they only support the older MySQL 4 0 password hashing scheme If this is the case use MySQL s oLD_PASSwoRD function to hash your WordPress user s pass word in the backward compatible format the magic SQL incantation at the MySQL command line prompt or within the SQL window of MAMP to address this is SET PASSWORD FOR user host OLD_PASSWORD password where user host is your WordPress database username and database hostname and password is the clear text password you provided in the configuration file WordPress connects to MySQL but can t select the database Just because the web server can log in to the database server with your WordPress database user information doesn t mean that there s neces sarily a database available to that user This is another scenario best diagnosed with mysql_error inserting it in wp db php where the selection error is identified function select db if mysql_select_db db this gt dbh Sthis gt ready false echo mysql_error Sthis gt bail sprintf WP_I18N_DB_SELECT_DB lt h1l gt Can amp 8217 t select database lt h1 gt If your attempts to complete installation result in an error box like that shown in Figure 1 6 after inserting the mysql_error statement as described earlier your MySQL database wasn t created under the appropriate database
6. theme effectively get the source code More important than a WordPress history lesson and licensing examination are the issues of what you can do with WordPress and why you d want to enjoy its robustness The next section looks at WordPress as a full fledged content management system rather than simply a blog editing tool CONTENT AND CONVERSATION Multiple linear feet of shelves in bookstores are filled with volumes that will improve your writing voice literary style blogging techniques and other aspects of your content creation abilities One of our goals for this book is define the visual stylistic and context management mechanisms you can build with WordPress to shape vibrant user communities around your content That context stimulates conversation with your readers It s not just about the words in each post or even if you re an inter esting writer How will people find you How will you stand out in the crowd How do you put your own imprint on your site and personalize it for whatever purpose personal enterprise community or commercially measured WordPress as a Content Management System Blogging systems have their roots in simple content management operations create a post persist it in stable storage such as a filesystem or database and display the formatted output based on some set of temporal or keyword criteria As the richness and types of content presented in blog pages expanded and the requirements for sorting
7. user or the database user doesn t have privileges to use it Double check what MySQL believes using the command line 2 usr local mysql bin mysql u wp_userl p Enter password Welcome to the MySQL monitor Commands end with or g Your MySQL connection id is 174 Server version 5 1 37 MySQL Community Server GPL mysql gt show databases Database test information_schema 2 rows in set 0 00 sec Once we logged in as our designated MySQL database user we didn t see the MySQL database in this case it was probably created by MySQL user root and permissions to access or modify it weren t granted to the WordPress installation s MySQL user If you have MySQL root access or sufficient Getting Started 15 MySQL user privileges to create new databases within the MySQL instance it s easy enough to create a database once logged in on the command line mysql gt create database wp_halstern Query OK 1 row affected 0 00 sec Unknown database wp_halstern Can t select database We were able to connect to the database server which means your username and password is okay but not able to select the wp_halstern database e Are you sure it exists Does the user wp_user1 have permission to use the wp_halstern database e On some systems the name of your database is prefixed with your username so it would be like username_wp_halstern Could that be the proble
8. 6 For now once you are happily connected to MySQL you re ready for some final clean up and first time blog administration FINISHING UP Your MySQL database is up and running there s a home for your content and your web server is happily executing the WordPress core code First Time Administration Once you get the first time admin user information shown in Figure 1 4 proceed to log in and you ll see the basic WordPress Dashboard captured in Figure 1 7 Pork Roll and Friends admin Turbo Log Out WordPress 2 8 6 is available Please update now Screen Options Heip Dashboard x Posts G Media Notice you re using the auto generated password for your account Would you like to change it to something you ll remember easier Yes Take me to my profile page No Thanks Do not remind me again inks Pages Right Now QuickPress amp Comments Ata Glance Title 1 Post 1 Comment Upload insen A n Ed Appearance 1 Page 1 Approved Coment Plugins 1 Category O Pe S Users O Tags O Spam Ti Tools Theme WordPress Default with 0 Widgets Change Theme Tags E Settings You are using WordPress 2 8 4 Update to 2 8 6 5 Save Draft Reset Publish J Recent Comments Recent Drafts Mr WordPress on Hello world There are no drafts at the moment Hi this is a comment To delete a comment just log in and view the post s comments There you will have WordPress Development Blog FIGURE 1 7 Dashboard view upo
9. First Post WHAT S IN THIS CHAPTER gt Appreciating the provenance of the WordPress platform y Choosing a suitable platform for your WordPress installation gt Downloading installing and performing basic configuration of WordPress gt Diagnosing and resolving common installation problems If displaying Hello World on an appropriate device defines minimum competence in a pro gramming language generating your first post is the equivalent in the blogging world This chapter provides a brief history of WordPress and then explores several options for hosting a WordPress installation Common miscues and misperceptions along with their resolutions round out the chapter and put you on the edge of publishing your wit and wisdom Once you ve installed configured and completed the bare bones administration you re ready to take advantage of the code walkthroughs and detailed component descriptions in later chap ters Of course if you already have a functional WordPress blog you can skip this chapter and dive head first into the Dashboard control wonderland in Chapter 2 Functional Overview WHAT IS WORDPRESS WordPress is one of the most popular open source blogging systems available with global and vibrant user developer and support communities Though it can be compared to TypePad Moveable Type Google s Blogger and the Apache Roller project as a user generated content workhorse WordPress distinguishes itse
10. and developers As with other systems written in PHP it is self contained in the sense that installation configuration operation and administration tasks are all contained in PHP modules WordPress s popularity has been driven in part by its simplicity with the phrase five minute installation making appearances in nearly every description or book about WordPress Beyond getting to a first post WordPress was designed to be extended WordPress today is supported by a handful of core developers and just under 100 key contributors Mike Little today runs the WordPress specialty shop zed1 com and he contributes the occasional patch to the code Matt Mullenweg s company Automattic continues to operate the wordpress com hosting service as well as fund development of related content management tools WordPress MU a multi user version of WordPress that is at the heart of the wordpress com hosting system Pronounce it em you or take the rather scholarly myu approach if you want to impress your Greek or mathematically inclined friends Gravatar dynamically serves images tied to e mail addresses providing a hosted icon with a variety of display options Think of it as a service to make hot linking your profile picture technically and socially acceptable As a content management system the WordPress system definition doesn t stop at time serialized posts with comments BuddyPress is a set of themes and plugins that extends Wo
11. bases and each database contains groups of tables it s possible to run multiple MySQL based applications on the same hosting platform using one MySQL instance or even one MySQL database If you want to have multiple WordPress blogs on the same server you can share a single MySQL database instance for all of them provided you configure WordPress to distinguish the MySOL database table names within the MySQL database It s a simple configuration option that we cover in the next section and it highlights the distinction between multiple sets of tables in a database and multiple databases for distinct applications Once you ve secured the necessary foundation it s time to get the code up and running Even if you re using a hosting provider that installs MySQL and WordPress for you it s worth knowing how the server side components interact in case you need to track down a problem when you re deep in plugin development Getting Started 9 Do It Yourself Installation The famous fabled fabulous five minute WordPress installation is a reality when everything is config ured and coordinated properly This section walks through the steps that are often hidden from view when you use a provider with packaged installs and highlights some of the common misfires between WordPress and MySQL instances The installation process is quite simple assuming that your web server and MySQL server are already run ning Download the WordPre
12. blishing Protocol or XML RPC Options for enabling posts to be published remotely are as you d expect in the Dashboard s Settings section under Writing options CHAPTER1 FIRST POST Right Now At a Glance 1 Post 1 Page 1 Category O Tags Right Now At a Glance 2 Posts 1 Page 1 Category O Tags 1 Comment 1 Approved O Pending O Spam 1 Comment 1 Approved O Pending O Spam FIGURE 1 8 Publishing from the QuickPress panel QuickPress Title Jersey s Food Upload insert CD J Content Pork roll is quintessentially Jersey bad for you salty heavily processed and full of lore QuickPress Post Published View post Edit post You can also try Press This easy blogging from anywhere on the Web Title Upload insert H JO Content Click Publish for your own hello world moment Multiple subsystems created that editing pane saved the content in a database generated and saved the referential metadata and then emitted nice looking HTML Most of the user visible pieces are governed through the Dashboard and that s what we re going to cover next in this book so you can change improve or integrate those systems to suit your content management and publishing needs From there we re going to dive into the core of WordPress so that you can take advantage of its extensibility friendliness in design and function
13. d 2 bVGr Gp d Note that password carefully It is a random password that was generated just for you Log In FIGURE 1 4 Administrative information at the conclusion of a clean install The next section covers the MySQL WordPress configuration dance in more detail and is suitable reading even if thinking about SQL gives you hives If you re up and running you can skip the next section and go right into First Time Administration Database Configuration If your hosting provider spun up a MySQL database and created a user for you check your resultant wp config php file to gather this information It is necessary for the MySQL probing covered in this section and it s good to have in case you run into MySQL problems later on There s a username and password combination included in that file so treat it the way you d treat other login information On the other hand if you re going deep on the do it yourself route this section gives you a sense of what s likely to create confusion or consternation as you pull the pieces together In theory MySQL set up for WordPress is trivial make sure MySQL is up and running create a Word Press user in MySQL and then have that user create a database to hold the WordPress tables You can use the MySQL command line or tools like phpMyAdmin for these tasks but bear in mind that MySQL has its own set of users and permissions granted to those users distinct from those used by your or your h
14. eaders to find share and link to your content As expected it s another option in the Settings portion of the Dashboard options for permalink naming and their impact on performance and database schema are covered in more detail in the next chapter Whether it s really been five minutes or a few hours of tracking down mismatches in hostnames user names and database configurations you re now ready to publish the first post of your own writing First Post A successful WordPress installation already has a first post and comment published both assuring that all of the moving pieces are moving in unison and giving your blog some initial content When you re ready to add your own first words either use the right hand QuickPress panel in the Dashboard to post an entry or go to Posts and click Add New to be taken to the built in WordPress editor Figure 1 8 shows an entry in progress in the QuickPress panel followed by the updated Dashboard after it s been successfully posted If your tastes run more old school you can always crank out content in your favorite text editor and then copy it into the editing pane Be careful with WYSYIWIG word processors such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice if you want to copy into the WordPress HTML composition window because the HTML will be riddled with additional tag and style information Finally a variety of standalone blog editors such as illumnix s ecto publish to WordPress using the Atom Pu
15. er the Gnu Public License GPL version 2 contained in the license txt file that you ll find in the top level code distribution Most people don t read the license and simply under stand that WordPress is an open source project however pockets of corporate legal departments still worry about the viral component of a GPL license and its implications for additional code or content that gets added to used with or layered on top of the original distribution Much of this confusion stems from liberal use of the words free and copyright in contexts where they are inappropriately applied We re not lawyers nor do we play them on the Internet or on television and if you really want to understand the nuances of copyright law and what constitutes a conveyance of code pick up some of Lawrence Lessig s or Cory Doctorow s work in those areas We include this section to assuage IT departments who may be dissuaded from using WordPress as an enterprise content management system by overly zealous legal teams Don t let this happen to you again if WordPress is acceptable to CNN and the Wall Street Journal two companies that survive on the copyrights granted to their content it probably fits within the legal strictures of most corporate users as well The core tenet of the GPL ensures that you can always get the source code for any distribution of GPL licensed software If a company modifies a GPL licensed software package and then
16. icanhazcheeseburger com If you looked for a backstory on snowclone apologies but that s also the joy of discovering new facts in a culture of participatory media Where do you get started wordpress org is the home for the current released and in development versions of the code Click down to wordpress org extend for a starting point in finding plugins themes and wish lists of ideas and features to be implemented wordpress com has both free and paid hosting services Over at wordpress org hosting you ll find a list of hosting providers that support WordPress and often include some additional first time instal lation and configuration support in their packaging of the code for delivery as part of their hosting services Intersecting the Community WordPress thrives and grows based on community contributions in addition to sheer usage Like high school gym class participation is the name of the game and several semi formal avenues along which to channel your efforts and energies are available WordCamp events are community hosted locally operated and now happen in dozens of cities around the world Camps that reach critical mass are listed on wordcamp org but you ll do just as well to search for a WordCamp event in a major city close to you WordCamps occur nearly every weekend with bloggers photographers writers editors developers and designers of all experience and skill levels counted among their attendees
17. installed in conjunction with MySQL and a web server The third hosting option is to install everything on servers that you own and operate If your servers live in a hosting facility but you enjoy root administrative access that s equivalent to a do it yourself installation WordPress requires a web server with PHP support a URL rewriting facility and an instance of MySQL Apache is the most popular option for front ending WordPress because it provides PHP inter pretation through mod_php and URL rewriting in mod_rewrite There is growing interest in lighttpd Lighty as a replacement for Apache although the URL rewriting functionality needs a bit of hand holding Finally you can use Microsoft s IIS 7 0 as a web server with its URL_rewrite module The emphasis on URL rewriting stems from WordPress s support for pretty permalinks to blog entries allowing you to create a URL tree organized by date category tag or other metadata Those mnemonic or readable URLs are mapped into MySQL database indices for the corresponding pages using the htaccess file in Apache parlance It s a case of dynamic content generation this time starting from the user path to the page in question and relying heavily on your web server s muscle to map public neatness into internal structure Technically URL rewriting isn t required to install WordPress but it s good to have because it gives you tremendous flexibility in the presentation and naming con
18. irements we ll have to publish those changes You re only required to make the source code avail able for software that you distribute If you choose to make those changes inside your company you don t have to redistribute them On the other hand if you ve made some improvements to the Word Press core the entire community would benefit from them Getting more staid employers to understand the value of community contribution and relax copyright and employee contribution rules is sometimes a bit challenging but the fact that you had a solid starting point is proof that other employers made precisely that set of choices on behalf of the greater WordPress community The GPL will infect content that we put into WordPress Content including graphical elements of themes posts and pages managed by WordPress is separated out from the WordPress core It s managed by the software but not a derivative of or part of the software Themes however are a derivative of the WordPress code and therefore also fall under the GPL requiring you to make the source code for the theme available Note that you can still charge for the theme if you want to make it commercially available Again the key point here is that you make the source code available to anyone who uses the software If you re going to charge for the use of a theme you need to make the source code available under the GPL as well but as pointed out previously users installing the
19. lf with a broad array of hosting options functional extensions plugins and aesthetic designs and elements themes With the rise of self publishing low cost web hosting and freely available core components like the MySQL database blogging software followed the same trend as most other digital technologies moving from high end high cost products to widely available low cost consumer or hobbyist systems WordPress isn t simply about creating a blog so that you can have p 2 CHAPTER1 FIRST POST a digital diary attached to your vanity URL it has evolved into a full fledged content management system used by individuals and enterprises alike This section takes a brief tour through the early history of WordPress and brings you up to speed on the current release and user community A Short History WordPress and Friends WordPress started similarly to many other popular open source software packages Some talented developers saw a need to create a powerful simple tool based on an existing project licensed under the GPL Michel Valdrighi s b2 cafelog system provided the starting point and WordPress was built as a fork of that base by developers Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little WordPress first appeared in 2003 also built on the MySQL open source database for persisting content and PHP as the development platform Valdrighi remains a contributor to the project which thrives and depends on a growing and interested community of users
20. lications wp blog header php May 25 2008 3 50 PM 4 KB Paine nears wp comments post php May 18 2009 4 00 PM 4 KB Dropbox wp commentsrss2 php Oct 14 2008 6 22 AM 4 KB wp config sample php Today 1 22 PM 8 KB Y SEARCH FOR B wp content Aug 12 2009 12 47 AM z wp cron php Feb 7 2009 12 32 PM 4 KB O Today wp feed php Oct 14 2008 6 22 AM 4KB LA Yesterday gt Gi wp includes Aug 12 2009 12 47 AM en Past Week wp links opml php May 5 2009 7 43 PM 4 KB All Images wp load php May 20 2009 4 32 PM 4 KB All Movies wp login php Aug 11 2009 6 03 AM 24 KB All Documents wp mail php May 18 2009 3 11 PM 8 KB wp pass php Apr 20 2009 9 50 PM 4 KB wp rdf php Oct 14 2008 6 22 AM 4 KB wp register php May 25 2008 3 50 PM 4 KB wp rss php Oct 14 2008 6 22 AM 4 KB wp rss2 php Oct 14 2008 6 22 AM 4 KB wp settings php Jun 28 2009 12 44 AM 24 KB wp trackback php May 25 2008 3 50 PM 4 KB xmirpc php Jul 4 2009 2 49 AM 92 KB _ Por 1 of 26 selected 209 61 G8 available WA FIGURE 1 1 A clean but unconfigured WordPress installation What do you do if you already have HTML or other content at your target URL and you want to add WordPress to an existing site Disposition of existing files depends on your desired first user experience upon navigating to your URL If you want visitors to see your blog and to use WordPress as a content management system as we ve described here your best choice is to save existing content and co
21. m If you don t know how to setup a database you should contact your host If all else fails you may find help at the WordPress Support Forums FIGURE 1 6 MySQL database selection error Again it s important to distinguish operating system users from MySQL users from WordPress users MySQL users are defined in the database and granted privileges to create databases muck with tables and otherwise generate useful data WordPress users exist within the WordPress database tables created during install they only have privilege context and meaning once you re logged in to WordPress Once you have a clean WordPress installation you should see a collection of tables named according to the table prefix you set in wp config php again this is easy enough to verify using the MySQL command line mysql gt use wp_halstern show tables Database changed Tables_in_wp_halstern wp_hs_comments wp_hs_links wp_hs_options wp_hs_postmeta wp_hs_posts wp_hs_term_relationships wp_hs_term_taxonomy wp_hs_terms wp_hs_usermeta wp_hs_users 10 rows in set 0 00 sec 16 CHAPTER 1 FIRST POST In this example we set the database table prefix to wp_hs_ if we later add another WordPress blog using the same database user and instance we can simply set a different prefix and have the two blogs co mingled in the same database table We dig into the schema and uses of the ten basic WordPress database tables in Chapter
22. ms in Chapter 9 Content Aggregation and look at how your WordPress content can be more broadly distributed in Chapter 10 Crafting a User Experience GETTING STARTED Before any serious work on presentation style or content begins you need a home for your blog despite the previous discussion about WordPress and content management systems we ll refer to your blog and the actual WordPress installation that implements it interchangeably mostly for convenience and brevity Factors affecting your choice include gt Cost Free hosting services limit your options as a developer and frequently preclude you from generating money from advertising services More expensive offerings may include bet ter support higher storage or bandwidth limits or multiple database instances for additional applications gt Control What tools are provided for you to manage your MySQL database files comprising the WordPress installation and other content types If you want to be able to muck around at the SQL level or manage MySQL through a command line interface you should ensure your hosting provider supports those interfaces gt Complexity You can install the Apache web server with a PHP interpreter MySQL and the WordPress distribution yourself but most hosting providers have wrapped up the installation process so that some of the rough edges are hidden from view If you expect to need technical support on the underlying operating s
23. n a first time login There s an admonition to change your default administrator password which should be your first administrative step If you re not redirected to the Dashboard through the Log In button or if you happen to visit your blog s top level URL first either click the Log In link on your blog or explicitly go to the wp admin subdirectory example com wp admin to be presented with a login dialog box Logging in to your blog takes you to the WordPress Dashboard which is both amazingly simple in its power and rich in its complexity and exposed features What you do next with the Dashboard depends on how happy you are with the basic installation If as in the preceding example you ended up with an older version of WordPress click the Update to 2 8 6 button to do an in place upgrade to the latest distribution In addition to having a strong Finishing Up 17 self installation feature WordPress includes self update functions in wp admin includes update php if you re looking for them WordPress gently reminds you to change the administrative password upon your first login You can also change the name of the admin user if you intend to do most of the editing and control as the same user but want something more descriptive change the username details in the Dashboard while you re setting up a new administrative password You may also decide to change some basic configuration options such as the database name or the
24. ng platform in the world Information needed Please provide the following information Don t worry you can always Change these settings later Blog Title Pork Roll and Friends Your E mail freeholdhal gmail com Double check your email address before continuing Allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati Install WordPress FIGURE 1 2 Basic auto configuration dialog box P WorPress Below you should enter your database connection details If you re not sure about these contact your host Database Name wp_halstern Ta name of the database you want to run WP User Name wp_userl Your MySQL username Password foobar and MySQL password Database Host localhost om chance you won t need to change this Tableprenx wohs italas in a single datapase change this Submit FIGURE 1 3 Database configuration dialog box 12 CHAPTER1 FIRST POST If you used a hosting provider s packaged installation or if you manually created a wp config php file and then navigated to your top level blog URL WordPress should have completed creating the database tables created an administrative user for your blog and set an initial password Upon a successful installation you should see a box like Figure 1 4 that indicates your five minutes of famed installation are done P WorPress Success WordPress has been installed Were you expecting more steps Sorry to disappoint Username admin Passwor
25. nvert it into blog posts or pages effectively making your previous site color commentary and context for your WordPress driven site Alternatively you can install WordPress in a subdirectory keep your existing index html file and direct readers to your blog through a button or link on your extant home page Don t leave this to chance if you have an index html file and then install WordPress you ll have an index php and an index html file side by side and users will see one or the other depending upon the Directory Index configuration of your site s web server Actions on existing content should be informed by how much traffic that content is driving to your site if your pages are responsible for search engine traffic you probably don t want to disrupt the existing URLs that have been cached and should install WordPress in a subdirectory If you feel strongly about making WordPress the wrapper around the user experience move the content and include URL rewriting or redirection for pages that move into the WordPress world We ll cover migrating existing content from a variety of formats and systems into WordPress in Chapter 14 Getting Started 11 P WorPress Welcome Welcome to the famous five minute WordPress installation process You may want to browse the ReadMe documentation at your leisure Otherwise just fill in the information below and you ll be on your way to using the most extendable and powerful personal publishi
26. of content persistence from content display Taking some liberties with the Model View Controller design pattern WordPress separates the MySQL persistence layer as a data model the theme driven user interface and display functions and the plugin architecture that interposes functionality into the data to presentation flow Most important WordPress stores content in raw form as input by the user or an application posting through the WordPress APIs Content is not formatted run through templates or laid out until the page is rendered yielding immense power to the functions that generate the actual HTML At the same time the data model used by WordPress uses a rich set of tables to manage categories taxonomies content tags folksonomies author information comments and other pieces of cross reference value We explore the WordPress database schema that makes this possible in Chapter 6 Although that design gives WordPress incredible power and flexibility as a content management system it also requires knowledge of how those data persistence and control flows are related it was a search for such a dissection of WordPress in functional terms that got us together to write this book Creating Conversation Conversation is king content is just something to talk about Cory Docrorow A robust CMS is measured by the utility of its content Even the richest content types and most well managed processes are of low return if nobody actually
27. osting provider s operating system Once MySQL is installed it will create a default table of users and grants adding a root user on Unix systems that is a MySQL superuser unrelated to the Unix root user However if you re attempting to connect to your MySQL instance as the MySQL root user those connections can only be made from localhost the same machine on which MySQL is running If you want to learn more about MySQL permissions the table governing grants of those permissions to users and how MySQL users are managed refer to the MySQL Reference Manual http dev mysql com doc and the sections on securing the initial MySQL accounts Getting Started 13 No set naming conventions exist for WordPress users or databases hosting providers will typically prepend the name of the package or your account information to distinguish users that benefit from MySQL database co tenancy Again it s possible to have multiple databases owned by the same user or different MySQL users running in a single MySQL database server instance In the example shown in Figure 1 3 we used wp_as a prefix for both usernames and database names at least providing a hint to the database administrator that these belong to a WordPress installation What can go wrong between WordPress and MySQL Three primary root causes of installation failure exist your web server can t even find the MySQL server to begin with it connects to the database bu
28. rdPress into a functional social networking platform allowing registered users to message and interact with each other again with all content managed within the WordPress framework Similarly bbPress is a PHP and MySQL based system designed for forums bulletin boards that is distinct from WordPress but is commonly integrated with it We cover some of these WordPress adjunct systems in more detail in Chapter 15 The WordPress Developer Community but they re included here to provide a sense of how WordPress has expanded beyond a basic single user oriented tool At the same time we re not endorsing or making a commercial for Automattic but delving into the guts of WordPress without a spin of the propeller hat toward Mullenweg and Little is somewhere between incorrigible and bad community behavior Current State This book is based on the WordPress 2 9 major release Each successive release of WordPress has included improvements in the administration and control functions Dashboard backup export and import functions and installation and upgrade features Even if you start with a slightly down rev What Is WordPress 3 version of WordPress you ll be able to bring it up to the current release and maintain the freshness of your install We touch on install and upgrade paths later in this chapter Exactly how popular and prevalent is WordPress usage Popular is always a subjective metric but statistics add some weight
29. redistributes that newer version it has to make the source code available as well This is the viral nature of GPL at work its goal is to make sure that access to the software and its derivatives is never reduced in scope If you plan on modifying the WordPress core and then distributing that code you ll need to make sure your changes are covered by the GPL and that the code is available in source code form Given that WordPress is written in PHP an interpreted language distributing the software and distributing the source code are effectively the same thing Following are some common misperceptions and associated explanations about using WordPress in commercial situations Free software means we can t commercialize its use You can charge people to use your installation of WordPress or make money from advertisements running in your blog or use a WordPress content Content and Conversation 5 management platform as the foundation of an online store That s how wordpress com works it also enables Google to charge advertisers for using their Linux based services You can find professional quality WordPress themes with non trivial price tags or you can pay a hosting provider hundreds or thousands of dollars a year to run your MySQL PHP Apache and WordPress software stack both involve commercialization of WordPress If we customize the code to handle our own content types security policies obscure navigational requ
30. ss package and install it in your web server s directory tree then navigate to your top level URL and complete the configuration One compound sentence describes it completely It s possible and even advisable to install a fully functioning WordPress instance on your laptop or development machine particularly if you are going to be working on the core developing plugins or otherwise making changes that would create embarrassing failures during testing on a public web site MacOS X comes with an Apache web server with PHP and URL rewriting download MySQL from mysql com or use a pre packaged configuration like MAMP mamp info which includes the php MyAdmin tool and you ll have a self contained development and deployment lab For other platforms XAMPP www apachefriends org has a neatly integrated platform stack that runs on Windows Mac OS and Linux foundations Having everything under one hood is a powerful option for examining failure modes as you ll see in the next two sections Installing WordPress Files If you download the WordPress code from wordpress org you ll get a zip or tarball archive that expands into a directory called wordpress The first part of a WordPress installation is to get the code into your web server s directory structure and ensuring you have it in the right place is a critical step Gloss over this part and you ll find your blog ends up with a URL like example com wordpress and you ll either ha
31. t can t log in or it logs in successfully but can t find the named database in which to create the WordPress tables Note that all of these conditions need to be fulfilled at installation time there has to be some basic database structure to contain the admin user before you can log in as that admin Web server can t find MySQL Either you have the hostname for the MySQL server noted incorrectly in the wp config php file or the web server is looking for a local MySQL instance and can t open the socket connection to it Here s a simple example When you run WordPress locally on MacOS MySQL creates the socket tmp mysq1 sock for local connections but the WordPress PHP code is going to look for var mysql mysql sock through the PHP engine s MySQL module Simply symbolically link one to the other In s tmp mysql sock var mysql mysql sock The actual filesystem path to the local MySQL socket is a function of the database configuration when it starts up it creates the local socket Where the PHP engine and therefore any PHP based applica tions look for this socket is PHP configuration dependent If you want to figure out exactly where the mismatch is a bit of heavy handed print style debugging helps Edit wo includes wp db php the set of functions that establish WordPress s database connection If you re seeing the Error establishing a database connection message during installation insert an echo mysql_error s
32. tatement where the error is detected to see the details displayed along with the generic message as shown in Figure 1 5 if Sthis gt dbh echo mysql_error Sthis gt bail sprintf WP_I18N_DB_CONN_ERROR lt hl gt Error establishing a database connection lt h1 gt Can t connect to local MySQL server through socket var mysql mysql sock 2 Error establishing a database connection This either means that the username and password information in your wp config php file is incorrect or we can t contact the database server at Localhost This could mean your host s database server is down e Are you sure you have the correct username and password e Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname Are you sure that the database server is running If you re unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums FIGURE 1 5 mysql_error reporting a socket problem 14 CHAPTER1 FIRST POST The mysql_error function is a PHP library function that spits out the error generated by the last MySQL function called WordPress finds MySQL but can t log in Most of the time the MySQL username or password are wrong particularly when you have to copy some arbitrary username generated by a hosting provider Double check your username data and verify that it is reflected properly in your wp config php file You may also run into a
33. to those perceptions Jason Calacanis claimed 202 million websites using WordPress in Episode 16 of This Week in Startups September 2009 That includes sites using WordPress for content management blogging and personal rants and has to be discounted by those of us who have multiple WordPress installations to their names but even with that order of magnitude estimate WordPress is immensely popular Here are download statistics for the core WordPress system gt 2006 1 5 million source WordPress org gt 2007 3 8 million source WordPress org gt 2008 More than 11 million source Matt Mullenweg s WordCamp NYC keynote Hosted blogs on wordpress com now number over 4 6 million with more than 35 million posts over the 2008 calendar year reaching a run rate of about 4 million posts per month again those statistics are courtesy of Mullenweg s WordCamp NYC keynote available on WordCampTV for your viewing pleasure The plugin population went from about 370 in 2006 to 1 384 in 2007 with more than 6 300 currently registered as reported on WordPress org The combinations of plugins and themes require scientific notation to represent in complexity but at the same time they re all equally simple to locate integrate and use That s the result of a solid architecture and an equally solid community using it Today WordPress powers CNN s blogs the Wall Street Journal s All Things D and the irreverent but snowclone driven
34. ve to start over or e mail ugly URLs to your friends and family If that s what you want to distinguish your blog from other content on your web site or to isolate multiple blogs choosing the filesystem layout is equally important Pick the top level directory where you want to install WordPress Most commonly this is the root directory for your web server and if you re using a hosting provider it s probably the subdirectory called public_html in the file tree If you are using a packaged install where there s a menu asking you for the target location make sure you pick this top level directory and yes you know that it already exists that s the point if you re copying files from your local machine to the web server target using an FTP client make sure you pick the right destination The somewhat obvious move to copy the zip file to the server then unpack it will put everything into a wordpress subdirectory and if you want your blog s URL to be example com rather than example com wordpress move the files up one directory level before proceeding There is a configuration option to have your WordPress installation in a subdirectory to your top level URL so it s not fatal if you drop WordPress into a less than desirable filesystem geography We cover that at the end of this section Once the WordPress files are installed your filesystem browser should show you something like Figure 1 1 with an index php and template
35. ventions used for your content s URLs We cover permalink design and practices more in Chapter 2 but keep the requirement in mind as you select your WordPress substrate Up to this point we ve mentioned MySQL in passing but a brief review of MySQL requirements rounds out the hosting prerequisite list It s worth establishing some terminology and distinguishing between the MySQL software database instances and WordPress instances using MySQL When you install and configure MySQL you have a full fledged relational database system up and running It doesn t have to be configured on the same machine as your web server and some hosting providers will create horizontally scalable MySQL farms in parallel to their web server front ends An instance of MySQL running on a server can support multiple databases each with a unique name When you install Word Press you ll need to know the name of the MySQL database reserved for your content although this information may be auto generated and configured for you if you re using a provider that supports WordPress and MySQL as an integrated package WordPress creates a number of relational data tables in that named database for each blog that you create Confusion results from nomenclature and complexity You or your hosting provider may run multiple MySQL instances on multiple servers and you ll need to know where your database is hosted Because each instance of MySQL can run multiple data
36. wp config sample php file That s the entirety of the WordPress system which runs effectively within the web server s PHP interpreter At this point if you re doing a manual installation you ll want to create your own wp config php file by editing the sample provided and saving it in your top level WordPress directory As an alternative you can navigate to your blog s URL and the WordPress code will realize there s no configuration file 10 CHAPTER1 FIRST POST and present you with a dialog boxes like those in Figures 1 2 and 1 3 where you can fill in the details You ll need the MySQL database name database username and some idea of the WordPress database table prefix other than the default wp_ These lower level details are the guts of the next section on database configuration If you are using a hosting provider with packaged installations you probably won t see this step because the WordPress files will be extracted and the MySQL database information will be automatically inserted into a configuration file no blogger serviceable parts inside 0090 J wordpress eS kale eBo Le a Y DEVICES Name Date Modified Size a Macintosh HD index php Today 1 40 PM 8 KB E iDisk license txt Dec 6 2008 6 47 AM 16 KB readme html Aug 12 2009 12 41 AM 8 KB Y PLACES gt Gi wp admin Aug 12 2009 12 47 AM Desktop wp app php May 20 2009 9 32 PM 40 KB A stern wp atom php Oct 14 2008 6 22 AM 4 KB A App
37. ystem platform find a provider including your own IT department that provides that support in a reasonable time frame This section takes a quick look at some hosting options walks through the basics of a do it yourself installation and concludes with an overview of the ways in which WordPress and MySQL choose to ignore each other when installation goes into the weeds Hosting Options Three broad categories of WordPress hosting exist each with trade offs between administrative com plexity and depth of control The easiest and most popular is to use wordpress com a free hosting service run by Automattic using WordPress MU You can install themes and plugins through the Dash board but you can only enable or disable the choices pre installed for you Further you won t have access to the underlying MySQL databases core code or be able to integrate WordPress with other systems You can redirect one of your own URLs to wordpress com but if you want full control over everything from the code to the URLs used you re probably looking at a paid option For our read ers the free route may be a reasonable first step but we re assuming you re going to want to perform surgery on your installation 8 CHAPTER1 FIRST POST You ll find a starter list of for fee hosting providers on WordPress org including the paid option on wordpress com Most have the latest or close to latest releases of the WordPress core available as a package to be
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