Create Your Website In Simple Steps - For Ages 9 To 99!

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CHAPTER 1: Wordpress

Introduction

After this chapter you should have a real good idea about what Wordpress is, why it is indeed an excellent idea to use it for your website. Additionally in order to try convince you of all the above you will see a selection of quality websites using Wordpress as their platform. You shall also get an idea of the basic structure of Wordpress.

What Is This Wordpress?

You might have heard of Wordpress before, if you haven't, no big deal. All you need to know is that it is the most popular CMS platform on the planet.

(W3 Techs, 2012, http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all)

Now, you just read the word CMS and might have nodded in agreement. But hey, what does this mean?

According to the definition on Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Management_System):

A content management system (CMS) is the collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based. The procedures are designed to do the following:

Allow for a large number of people to contribute to and share stored data

Control access to data, based on user roles (defining which information users or user groups can view, edit, publish, etc.)

Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data

Reduce repetitive duplicate input

Improve the ease of report writing

Improve communication between users

In a CMS, data can be defined as nearly anything: documents, movies, pictures, phone numbers, scientific data, and so forth. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, revising, semantically enriching, and publishing documentation. Serving as a central repository, the CMS increases the version level of new updates to an already existing file. Version control is one of the primary advantages of a CMS.

Speaking in plain English (and adapted to our purpose):

A CMS is a system which will enable you to build and easily publish any content (be it texts, documents, movies, pictures etc...) on your website.

This system would hold the following characteristics:

I. Easy publishing of new content

II. Access control to the system with various roles and associated security. Enabling easy contribution to content development by many authors, even external ones

III.Handling of text, documents, videos, pictures, sounds etc...

So basically get yourself a great CMS and you could use it to have a stunning, solid and interactive website!

Now you might have heard the word blog before. Everyone is blogging these days and more often than not, they would do it on some form of Wordpress. OK I hear you say Wait a tick, I do not want to publish a blog on my personal life and stuff...

Right, no problem at all you are quite right! While most people associate Wordpress with the world of blogging, only a few do associate it with a standard website. Yes, this is correct, using Wordpress you can built yourself a very professional looking website, with which no one would have a clue you are in fact running it on Wordpress.

We are talking about a platform where you can publish new text, new photos, new links without any knowledge WHATSOEVER of code and internet technology. All you need, is to be shown how to do it once and then you can just go ahead and create your site.

This is the main reason of being for this book.

Why Wordpress?

If you are like me and you do not like to reinvent the wheel, then you like it when you can focus most of your efforts in the actual creation of the content. You would not want to learn web technologies such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MYSQL just to be able to publish a few pages online to market your service or product.

So, our shortcut to the quick establishment of a powerful website is Wordpress. It is relatively easy to set up, optimize and then publish content into. It is also very flexible and solid.

You can trust the main CMS platform of the world today because of the following reasons:

1. It is completely Open Source, so it means a few important things:

• The code is available to everyone and is scrutinized by security experts. No hidden virus or back door, it is trustworthy. Also when a security hole is found a fix is very quickly released. The more people looking at a piece of code, the cleaner it will be

• It is completely FREE and you do not need any license to use the code for any sort of website (including commercial)

• Because it is so popular, finding help while working on it is not very difficult

2. There are so many plugins (which mean add-ons you can just install to add features to your site, say user ratings) many of which are free. So, if you wanted to add a new functionality to your website or enhance some of its existing functions, chances are you would find such a plugin

3. You can find Wordpress themes, designed by professional artists, which would make your website just gorgeous for free or a reasonable amount. If you want to change the theme so that you have a more unique look you can do it too

4. As a top notch CMS, Wordpress makes updating your website a breeze. You can easily add new content to it without sweating at writing HTML code or doing anything too technical

5. Please take the word of yours truly, Wordpress is very very reliable and stable. You do not want to be patching it and plugging holes or fixing crashes every few days right?

6. It is very scaleable indeed. That means if you manage to become an internet guru and attract an increasing traffic, you do not need to find a new platform, upgrading your servers will do just nicely. So it is future proof!

7. Wordpress is also very regularly updated and maintained. You can feel safe that your time investment (not so much a money thing here) will not be lost

8. Once you set it up you can essentially pilot your website from your iPad/iPhone or Android device. There is a free Wordpress app to do that

They always work on it and strive to make it better with every new release. If you feel like an adventurer, you can even try their BETA releases which means the software is not yet ready for prime release: You can play with it if you wish to see the future of the software before everyone else. However, BETA releases are not recommended for your main production system.

As you can see from the previous table, Wordpress developers are Jazz Fans and they regularly release new versions of their software.

Not convinced yet? The next section is just for you!

Anyone Serious Using Wordpress?

Glad you asked!

Many big multinationals, governments, nonprofit and many other companies worldwide rely on Wordpress' technology to power their corporate website, blog or communication website.

Here are a few examples:

The official website of the UK’s Prime Minister, number10.gov.uk

General Electric’s communication website, GEreports.com

The leading ERP software company SAP, SAP.info

Ampio Pharmaceuticals, ampiopharma.com

Harvard’s official newsletter, The Harvard Gazette, news.harvard.edu/gazette

The Forbes Blog, blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/

Network Solutions

The official blog of the US Air Force, airforcelive.dodlive.mil/

The Toledo Museum of Art, www.toledomuseum.org

The official Rolling Stones website, www.rollingstones.com

The official Kim Kardashian website, kimkardashian.celebuzz.com/

The official Justin Timberlake website, justintimberlake.com/

Not too shabby are they?

So we just established that Wordpress is a solid, reliable solution and professional enough to be trusted by the likes of The Prime Minister of the UK, SAP, Harvard University, the Rolling Stones, the US Air Force and, now, You!

That should do it, before getting started we can now feel we have something professional enough for our needs.

First a small detail. In order to make things easier for the reader, we will build step by step a small business website. This way we will cater to many needs, be it blogger, small business or else. By replicating these steps for your situation, you will be able to have a stunning site easily.

To illustrate my purpose I chose to show you how to build a website for an easy business: a small bakery. You can see the finished website here: theyellowmuffin.com

So let us define the main details of our small business:

• A small bakery called The Yellow Muffin located in New York City in the USA.

• Established in 1999

• Selling the most exquisite cakes of the country

• Services:

• Cakes selling at the store

• Cakes on order for special occasions (wedding, parties, birthdays etc...)

• Home delivery within a 15 miles radius

• Pick up orders

This is a small business, simple to understand and which website should be representative of what can be done with Wordpress for individuals and the small business community.

Wordpress Basic Structure

The main parts of Wordpress are the following:

1. The file system, stored on the server

• The Wordpress code (.php) and associated plugins and themes

• User uploaded files such as pictures, videos, sound files, PDF etc

2. The database side using an MS SQL database

The mapping of who does what or who holds what is explained in the following table:

If you followed well, you should have an idea as to what you should be careful when you want to back up your website.

Is it enough to back up all the physical files? (e.g. Php and user uploaded files)

Not at all!

According to the above table, if you do that you are backing up your PHP Code and all your documents but what about the actual text of your site? All the links to the documents.

That would not work.

You do need to back up BOTH the physical files and the database in order to be safe.

More on this in chapter 21.

CHAPTER 2: Your Domain Name

Introduction

This chapter will explain you how you can literally get your own piece of the Internet. From what is your domain name, how to choose it, to choosing and buying a hosting account. Finally how to link your domain name to your hosting account.

There also will be a small section on the importance of using strong passwords in order to protect yourselves from hackers.

This is a prerequisite if you have neither a domain name nor a hosting account. If you have both of them you can just skip to chapter 3.

However, you could still check in my hosting company criteria whether or not your current one is up to the task and particularly if they support the latest version of Wordpress (highly likely I would say but worth checking nonetheless).

Choosing A Domain Name

This is your first step on the path to your online presence, do it with care.

The domain name, if you wonder, is the part of an internet address after the www.

For example in "www.amazon.com", the domain name is amazon.com

Here, there are 2 main schools of thought:

• Use your business name as domain name

• Use a keyword rich domain name (e.g. bestmuffincakeandsweets.com ) to get an additional credit from search engines and rank better on Google

If your business is well known and people are likely to look directly in Google for your business name then using your name is an easy choice. On the other hand, some people argue that if you are a newly established business or that you are a small business whose name customers are not likely to search for in Google, it might be better to just use a keyword rich domain name to maximize your chances to be found.

In essence, it says that if your Yellow Muffin company name is not known enough, just go with keywords related to the products you sell so for example "bestmuffincakeandsweets.com " so that people looking for muffins, cake or sweets could just find you by looking for best cakes in Google.

While it is known that Google does give some credit for a keyword rich domain name, experts do seem to agree that the weighting of this extra step is quite tiny.

So, unless you want to put a long, probably unprofessional looking address, on your business card, I would advise you to concentrate on the content of your website rather than trying to get an extra quick points from this.

You could also potentially add geographical information to your domain name