WordPress MU 2.8 : beginner's guide : build your own blog network with unlimited users and blogs, forums, photo galleries, and more! / Lesley A. Harrison.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harrison, Lesley A.

Series:

Learn by doing : less theory, more results

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

WordPress (Electronic resource).

Blogs.

Web sites--Design.

Web sites.

Blogs--Design.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (268 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Birmingham, U.K. : Packt Pub., 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"This book will take you through the setup of a WordPress MU-powered blogging network, using a real, working blog network as an example, so that you can follow the creation process step-by-step. Your blogging network will be complete with professional features such as friends lists, status feeds, groups, forums, photo galleries, and more, to build your own WordPress.com - a place where users can quickly come and create a blog for themselves. The book starts with a clean install of WordPress MU, and as you work through the book, you will build the blog network, and add on more and more features, all seamlessly integrated to achieve a professional, custom-built look"--Resource description page.

Contents:

Intro

WordPress MU 2.8 Beginner's Guide

Table of Contents

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

Preface

What this book covers

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code for the book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Introducing WordPress MU

What is WordPress MU

Making your own social blog network

What is BuddyPress

What is bbPress

Making and hosting my site

Choosing between VPS, dedicated, and grid hosting

VPS

Dedicated servers

Grid hosting

Server requirements for WordPress MU

Recommended WordPress MU hosts

Building our example site: The SlayerCafe

Planning your site

Summary

2. Installing WordPress MU

Tools you will need

Text editors

FTP clients and other tools

Setting up a local web server

Time for action - getting your server set up

What just happened?

Databases with MySQL

Preparing for WordPress MU-creating a database

Time for action - creating a database for WordPress MU

Time for action - subdomains for WordPress MU

Pop quiz - your local server

Have a go hero - getting more from Apache

Preparing your live server

Time for action - working with cPanel

User blogs with subdomains

Time for action - subdomains under WHM

One last thing-wildcards and Apache

Pop quiz - subdomains

Installing WordPress MU

Time for action - getting WordPress MU up and running

Changing the admin password

Time for action - changing the admin password

Letting people register

Time for action - enabling registrations

Testing your site.

Time for action - creating a new user

Have a go hero - doing more with the thing

3. Customizing the Appearance of Your Site

Picking out a theme

Installing your new theme

Time for action - installing a new theme

Styling the sign-up page

Time for action - editing your theme

Have a go hero - it's time to style

Setting the theme for your users' blogs

Time for action - changing the default blog theme

Customizing your home page

Time for action - making a sign-up button

Featured posts

Time for action - featured posts

Have a go hero - styling the featured post

Showing off your statistics

Time for action - simple stats

Have a go hero - adding extra stats

Pop quiz - doing the thing

Displaying recent posts and comments

Time for action - displaying the most active blogs

Customizing AHP Sitewide Recent Posts plugin

Time for action - tweaking the recent post display options

Displaying Sitewide recent comments plugin

Time for action - Sitewide recent comments

The plugin display code

Pop quiz - multiuser plugins

Time for action - our improved home page

Other important points

4. Letting Users Manage Their Blogs

User management basics

Preparing the site for our users

Banned Names

Limited Email Registrations and Banned Email Domains

Media restrictions and upload space

Plugins

Have a go hero - embedded videos

Customization options for your users

Time for action - offering a selection of themes

User editable themes

Time for action - userthemes revisited.

What just happened?

User roles and admin panels

Time for action - setting user levels and changing the user's admin panel

Have a go hero - creating new roles

Hiding the dashboard

Time for action - hiding the dashboard

More user options - privacy and using their own domain

Time for action - domain mapping

Have a go hero - server setup for domains

A few things to consider

5. Protecting Your Site

Signing up for reCAPTCHA

Stopping spam with reCAPTCHA and Bad Behavior

Time for action - setting up reCAPTCHA

Bad Behavior

Time for action - setting up Bad Behavior

Have a go hero - taking spam prevention to the next level

Making sure the plugins run for your users

Time for action - managing your users' plugins

Blocking bad guys with .htaccess

Time for action - .htaccess settings to stop bad guys

Have a go hero - build your own list

Pop quiz - spam blocking

Other useful plugins

Moderating registrations

Taming your default categories

Regular backups without lifting a finger

Time for action - automatic backups

Have a go hero - other ways to do backups

6. Increasing Traffic to Your Blog

Improved tagging

Time for action - tagging blog posts

Sitewide tags

Time for action - sitewide tag clouds

Have a go hero - styling the tags page

Using pings

Time for action - pings

Have a go hero - more sites to ping

Trackbacks

Offering RSS feeds

Time for action - offering RSS subscription options

FeedBurner

Time for action - let's burn some feeds.

Have a go hero - offering more RSS options

Twitter and social bookmarking

Getting your readers to share posts

Time for action - social bookmarking links

Have a go hero - Digg this

Pop quiz - traffic building

More about traffic building

7. Sticky Features for your Blog Network

What do people mean by "sticky"?

Letting readers and authors communicate

Contact forms

Time for action - setting up contact forms

Improved comments

Time for action - IntenseDebate Comments

Activating IntenseDebate on your users' blogs

Have a go hero - tweaking IntenseDebate

Community features-gravatars

Time for action - gravatars in WordPress MU

Have a go hero - gravatars and themes

Encouraging sign-ups with downloads for members only

Welcoming new visitors

Time for action - creating a welcome message

Related posts for visitors from search engines

Other ways to engage the community

Polls

Sitewide searching

8. Adding Forums with bbPress

Installing bbPress

Time for action - installing bbPress

One login for both the forum and the blog

Time for action - user DB integration with WordPress MU

Handling new users

Time for action - blog and forum registrations

Seamless theme integration

Time for action - styling your forum

Have a go hero - more advanced styling and integration

Managing your forum

Time for action - managing your forum

Managing your users

Time for action - setting user permissions

Useful plugins for bbPress.

Time for action - installing plugins

Have a go hero - sharing information between forum and blog

Displaying recent posts in your blog

Creating forum topics using blog posts

9. Social Networking with BuddyPress

BuddyPress

Setting up BuddyPress

Time for action - installing the BuddyPress suite

BuddyPress plugins explained

Working with Extended Profiles

Private Messaging

Friends list

Groups

The Wire

Activity streams

Blog tracking

Forums

Themes for your BuddyPress network

Time for action - installing new themes

Have a go hero - designing your own theme

Putting BuddyPress content on your front page

Hooking up BuddyPress to other social networks

Time for action - Facebook Connect

Integrating with Twitter

Improving your site's performance

Time for action - speeding up BuddyPress

Pop quiz - so many things BuddyPress can do

The future of BuddyPress

10. Monetizing Your Site

Ways to monetize your site

Advertising networks as a revenue source

Selling ads directly

Ads in RSS feeds

Donate links

Revenue sharing

Premium memberships

Selling products via your site

Managing ads on WordPress MU

Time for action - ad management with Advertising Manager

Have a go hero - advertising

Time for action - revenue sharing

MemberWing

EasyPaypal

Time for action - premium memberships

Have a go hero - hiding ads from paid members

Other ways to monetize your site-stores

Things to remember when monetizing your site

11. Site Optimization.

Choosing to optimize your site.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

9786612397356

9781282397354

1282397354

9781847196552

1847196551

OCLC:

659781040