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ByGina Trapani,9:00 AMon Wed Sep 23 2009, 49,402 views
What You're In For
With all the hype around cloud computing and no-configuration-required hosted services, you don't hear about the joys of running great software on your own server very much. The fact is, if you're just a casual user who doesn't know if you'llstick to blogging over the long haul, or if you don't want to spend a little time maintaining WordPress, you should sign up fora hosted blog atWordPress.comorBloggerorTypePad. (Also, this tutorial is not for you.)
But if you're willing tokeep WordPress updated religiously, you get access to a whole world of WP plug-ins that add featuresto your site, the opportunity to create and tweak custom WordPress themes, and a huge sense of accomplishment. In themost recent version of WordPress, keeping your installation up-to-date is a matter of clicking a link when you get notified todo so.Everything you need to know about installing WordPress is right here. Got it up and running? Let's get to customizing.
Initial configuration
The first thing you want to do on your WordPress blog is set up a new author withadministrative access. Don't use the default "admin" user to write your posts; createyour custom username and give it admin privileges. Then, log out of WordPress andback in as your new username. For security reasons, some folks like to delete theadmin user completely (as some WordPress attacks have used it to do bad things to your blog). Once you've got youradministrative account working, add other authors to the list of users who might be posting to your blog.Now it's time to cruise through WP's settings area and configure things just how youlike 'em. First, set up your post permalinks to look prettier for both humans andsearch bots. WordPress' default post permalink looks like
http://example.com/?p=123
. Instead, under Settings>Permalinks, select something like
http://example.com/2009/09/welcome-to-my-blog
.Next up, configure how you want comments to work on your blog. Under Settings>Discussion, you can enable commentsand set other advanced options, like whether or not users have to be logged into your site to comment, or if commentsshould automatically close on posts after a certain number of days, if user avatars show up, or what words in a commentshould automatically mark it as spam.Speaking of, spam comments is a ridiculously epic problem across the internet for all blogs, so how you set up comments You took the leap and installedWordPress to host your own blog because you want complete control over how it looks and
works. Now, it's time to power it up, lock it down, and make your blog completely yours.
will mean the difference between miserable hours spent gardening V14gRa and "check out my sexy webcam!!" comments ornot. Coming from Lifehacker's "must register to post here" model, I checked off "Users must be registered and logged in tocomment." If you don't want to put up the registration hurdle in front of your commenters, make sure you install the Akisment spam-killing plug-in (more on that below).
Must-have plug-ins
Just like you can extend Firefox withfeature-adding extensions, WordPressalso has a pluggable architecture and awhole world of plug-ins that can soupup your blog. When you're logged intoWordPress, click on Plugins, andsearch for the name of the plug-in youwant to install (which you can dowithout involving your FTP client). Youcan also just search on keyword, too—to find Twitter related plug-ins, just enter Twitter. The plug-ins that you use willdepend on how you want your site to work and look, but here are a few that every WP user can benefit from.Finally, to make your site as accessible to Google and other web search engines as possible, a few Search Engine
WordPress Database Backup(Backup):
Running your own server and database means that if things go wrong, it's upto you to have a backup. This plug-in can email a full backup of your WordPress database on a schedule to an address youspecify. I've had great success building my WordPress site locally with the backup this plug-in created; however, the otherresident WP expert here on staff, The How-To Geek, recommends using the old-school
cron job for "mysqldump -uUser -pPassword databasename > filename.bak"
approach. No matter how you do it, make sure you're backingup both your blog's database and files. It's worth consulting with your blog hosting provider about the best way for you todo this, too.
FD Feedburner Plug-in(Feeds):
Google-owned FeedBurneris a must-use for anyone who publishes RSS feeds, like your
blog does. FeedBurner saves you bandwidth costs by hosting your blog's feed and offers statistics about how many peopleare reading it; this plug-in will redirect your blog's feed to FeedBurner for you.
WordPress.com Stats(Stats):
See what posts are most popular using this up-to-the-minute statistics plug-in, right insideyour WordPress dashboard. WordPress.com stats doesn't count visits to your own blog, and unlike the richer Google Analytics service, there's no day-long delay to see what's happening on your site. To run this plug-in, you have toget aWordPress.com API key (it's free)and enter it into the plug-in's settings.
Search Meter(Stats):
If you have a search box on your site, you'll want Search Meter, a plug-in which shows you whatreaders are looking for and finding (or not) on your site. Search meter also offers widgets you can add to your site whichshow readers what other readers are searching for.
WP SuperCache (Optimization):
The first time a highly-trafficked site like Digg links to your blog, you'll wish you hadinstalled this plug-in, which maintains high-speed, database-call free "cached" copies of your WordPress pages on yourserver. Your site will run faster and won't buckle under the strain of a lot of traffic if you're caching it with this excellent plug-in.
Akismet(Comments Spam killer):
Because comment spam can get so bad, WordPress now ships with the Akismet spamfiltering plug-in. Since I'm requiring user registration to leave comments on my WordPress blog, I don't have any experiencewith how good Akismet is (and haven't had any spam at all), but word on the street is it's absolutely essential for sites withopen comments. Like WordPress.com stats, Akismet requiresa WordPress.com API key.
Optimization SEO plug-ins help. I use All in One SEO Pack andGoogle XML Sitemaps.
Make Your WordPress Theme Yours
If you've got HTML and CSS chops,you can make your WordPress themesing your tune. (For advanced stuff,some PHP skills come in handy, too.)First you want to start with a basetheme. WordPress' default theme is ok,but if you google "free WordPressthemes" or take note of what themes sites you like already use, you'll find an insane number of gorgeous and eye-catchingsite layouts. Picking your theme is one of the most fun (and most time-consuming) parts of setting up WordPress. It will behard to choose!Once you've installed the theme you want by downloading the .zip file and putting it in your WordPress themes folder, youcan dig into the CSS and markup and make it your own. WordPress offers a theme editor in its interface which lets youupdate files on the fly (under Appearance>Editor). While this is convenient, it's also dangerous if you hit the wrong key,save the file, and don't have a backup. My recommendation is toset up WordPress and your theme of choice on your own computer, edit it in your favorite text editor, and upload it to your live server when it's perfect. I started my WordPress blogwithLucian Marin's Journalist theme, and made it mine by adding color to the header and tweaking how comments look.If you've got patience and custom HTML you want to turn into a brand new WordPress theme, copy the default theme's filesinto a new folder and get to hacking. TheWordPress Codex is an invaluable resourcefor both starter reading and referenceas you go. That is, when you get to the part where you're thinking "WTF is wp_list_comments?", Google it and you'll findthefunction reference at the codex. It took me a full weekend of pretty intense theming work to get my first custom themedone and ready to go live, so give yourself some time, and most importantly, have fun with it. Here aresome tips and links from my Twitter followers on creating a custom WordPress theme.
Sidebars and Widgets, Oh My!
The easiest way to customize yourWordPress blog without digging intocode or your FTP client is to do so withwidgets. The latest versions of WordPress offer drag-and-drop custommodules you can add to and removefrom your blog. When you're loggedinto WordPress' admin interface, under Appearance, click on "Widgets" to see what's available and add and remove what you want on your site's sidebar (or top baror bottom bar, depending on where your theme puts it).
Advanced trickery
Here are a few more tips for advanced WordPress hackers who want to troubleshoot or try even more customization:
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WordPress' sidebar and widgets feature is very powerful and customizable; in fact,you can create and customize multiple sidebars or site zones to show up on different pages. (For example, thesidebar that shows up on a post page can look different than the one on the front page.)
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Every web developer knows that the Firebug Firefoxextension is absolutely essential when developing any site, and it's true for WordPress, too. When my WP site wentdown because of multiple background 404's doing resource-sucking searches,Firebug revealed the problemand so I
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