What You May Not Know About WordPress

In this article, Linda offers some advice for WordPress users who want to focus on WordPress as a content management system and who want to host that platform on a server. You'll learn about the changes WordPress has made to installation and upgrade processes, along with advice on code changes and themes below.

Getting Started

The Basics

Before you register at WordPress, you need to take care of several other matters. The following check-list can enable you to hit the ground running when you upload WordPress to your server space:

1.Acquire a domain name. It doesn't matter where or how you acquire that domain name, but have it sitting on your server before you upload WordPress. To learn about how to manage domain names, visit a domain registrar and learn from their tutorials. You also can learn how to transfer domain names from a registrar to a server space through those tutorials. Or, you can ask a Web host to do that job for you (many will offer that service to sell hosting space).

2.Make sure your host offers minimum requirements for WordPress. If your Web host does not offer the WordPress upload in its control panel, then you must upload WordPress manually. In most cases, this task requires shell or an FTP client (of your choice) and the host's ability to offer PHP version 4.3 or greater and MySQL version 4.0 or greater for current WordPress requirements. If your Web host does not offer those options, then you may need to find another host.

3.Develop content: Yes, you are building a blog, but you want to have some content ready to upload on the front end. You need information for an "about" page, and you may also need privacy statements and other legal documents. You also need to have some blog entries ready to go, although you may not add them all at once (not wise for optimal SEO, or Search Engine Optimization).

4.Decide upon navigation: Your content can help decide how you want to build your site, too, as it will help you consider how you want to develop that content through categories and tags. Start now to develop categories so you can streamline navigation and make your site usable. Think in terms of an outline, where categories define a subject and subcategories or tags can further break that outline down into a separate yet integrated whole.

5.Pick a theme: Based upon your content and outline for that content, you can decide upon a theme. Call me a curmudgeon, but I have settled upon one set of themes that works no matter the issues. Visit Justin Tadlock's ThemeHybrid site to learn more about this club and its available WordPress themes. You pay a nominal fee to join this club.  If you harbour any hesitance about paying to join, I'll offer one bit of advice: Even though open source is justifiable for many reasons, you usually get what you pay for when it comes to advice. In this instance, you are not paying for a theme, as the downloads are free. You are paying for a world of advice from Justin as well as from numerous Web developers who have flocked to tthis site to build new themes based upon open source code. While I will not share how to use Justin's themes totally, I will expound more on why you should use his themes in the next article.

6.Register at WordPress: When you do register at WordPress, consider building a somewhat static blog (not updated frequently) that contains some pertinent information about your new blog, even though you have not uploaded it yet. Writing about that blog may help you define your content and navigation further. Don't spend too much time here, however, if your goal is to upload WordPress to a server. You can return to tweak that page later, including adding a link to your new WordPress blog after you've completed your tasks.