studionashvegas | design and social media

Photo by Adria Richards

Holly is driving and I’m on the way back home from WordCampAtlanta (well, from staying in Montgomery with her family for a while) and I’m finally getting a chance to reflect and collect my thoughts and what I learned.  WCATL was a fantastic event, and with over 400 people there the number of people I met, saw, and interacted with is too many to put into one post (also, thanks again to everyone who dropped by my presentation – it was a good crowd and I’m glad to hear that you got something out of it!)

But, I’m the first to admit I learn something every time I head to a conference, and this time was no exception. Here are a few of the high points I learned from WordCampAtlanta:

1. WordPress 3.0 is going to be Killer!

Jane Wells (@JaneForShort) gave a fantastic presentation on the future of WordPress, and the future is looking awesome. From the WPMU + WP Merger to a new theme for 3.0, lots of exciting things are in the works.  Her slides are below:

2. The PHP and WordPress communities can learn a lot from each other.

@technosailor gave a fantastic presentation (re: lecture in a discussion-y way) on how the core communities of both the PHP world and the WordPress world could stand to play nicer to each other.  Personally, I think that the problem comes from WP people starting out in WordPress and learning PHP (top down) instead of learning PHP then jumping into WordPress (bottom up). 

3. People will do just about anything for a copy of “Crush It”.

‘Nuff said.

4. The more I talk about WordPress at a conference, the more I realize I know nothing about WordPress.

Getting to meet giants like John Saddington (@Human3rror), talking to Jane Wells, and hearing Mark Jaqueth (@markjaqueth) made me realize that not only do I still have a lot to learn, but by not helping to make WordPress better I am hurting the platform more than I am helping it.  I submitted my first patch to the TRAC, but that’s only a small step in making WordPress even better than it already is.

5. The Atlanta WordPress scene is hopping!

There are a lot of people in Atlanta who are passionate about WordPress, and the community there is fantastic (how could 400 people otherwise justify getting out in the ice and show to come to the SCAD to hear about WordPress, yes?).  I was glad to meet a lot of you, and I hope we can keep in touch.

When you’re working on a development site it’s hard to set things up correctly because you know you’re going to change the site, and putting in elements that are more than likely “stationary”, such as links, will have to be changed, and that causes un-necessary headache when it comes time to move the site live.  But, in the light of wanting to make your lives easier as a developer, there is a WordPress tag that can make your life much easier: ‘bloginfo’.  the ‘bloginfo’ tag can be given various arguments to make it bend to your will.  But, one of the most useful I’ve found:

<?php bloginfo(‘siteurl’); ?>

Instead of putting links in with just a leading slash (/about/), adding <?php bloginfo(‘siteurl’); ?> will automatically append the full site url before the sub-pages. Since most developers have their dev sites as a subfolder of a current site, this allows you to skip adding the development folder before each and every URL.  It’s also good for adding links into hardcoded content, such as graphical navigation, or specially coded front-page templates.

Example code:

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘siteurl’); ?>”>home</a>

this link will lead you to the home page.

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘siteurl’); ?>/about/”>about</a>

this link (if you have custom permalinks) will take you to the about page, no matter what website or server it’s hosted on.

I’ll type this without the normal pleasantries to make sure this gets out quickly.

There’s a WordPress hacker on the loose, and he’s pretty sneaky – he creates a user unseeable to the naked eye (except for the one extra user in the administrator users menu) and masks himself to you, making it easy for him to sneak in and out of the site and do stuff (like change your permalinks) without you knowing.

If your permalinks have some funky stuff going on, like this:

/wordpress %&evalbase64_decode_SERVERHTTP_REFERER.+&%/

then you’ve been hacked. 

Head into your WordPress backend and click on “users” – there are ways to sort the users by their user role, so click on Administrator.  You’re going to compare the number of administrators to the number next to the administrator tab.

If the two match, you’re OK.

If you see 3 grid lines, but the tab says Administrator (4), then you’ve got a hacker in your database.

Click on “View Source” and search the page for “user-1”.  If you’re the only administrator, you’re looking for this code:

<div id=”user_superuser”>

This person is the hacker, and there’s a way to find him and delete him.

Your administrator account is user-1, so find a user around that code that’s not that one and nearby you’ll find a code:

user-edit.php?user_id=NNN

NNN is the user-id.  I know these are vague, but without another account to screenshot, it’s hard to explain.

Replace the URL (http://youriste.com/wp-admin/whatever with http://youriste.com/wp-admin/user-edit.php?user_id=NNN and hit enter.

Enter a fake email address for the spammer, demote him to “Subscriber” and change his password.

Once that’s done, view all users and delete him.

And that’s how to get rid of him.

Better instructions are here:

http://blog.nachotech.com/?p=125

So, you’ve decided you want to use WordPress and have selected a fantastic host.  Now comes the installation phase.  This is where a lot of people get frustrated. In all honesty, a lot of people never have to deal directly with web servers; they just deal with the front end (the web page), so it’s easy to get lost in the myriad of options and settings.  Let’s start with the manual installation, and we’ll work our way back to the one-touch installs offered by some hosts.

Manual Installation

In order to manually install WordPress onto a web server, there’s a few things you’ll need to have handy:

• MySQL Database Host (either an IP address or a URL that leads to the database)
• MySQL Username
• MySQL Password
• FTP Username
• FTP Password
• FTP Host

Let’s start with the MySQL.  Typically, you’ll be entering the database through PHPmyADMIN, which is a tool developed to access the back end of a SQL database. You may also use CPanel, which is an easy-to-use control panel for the back end of the webhost’s server.

If you use CPanel, you actually have a one-touch option of creating the first MYSQL username/password.  If you don’t, you’ll have to get that first user from the hosting company, or create it yourself.  Since every host is different, contact them to get the information you need.

More detailed MySQL information, and detailed instructions on installation, head to the WordPress official site: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Step_2:_Create_the_Database_and_a_User

As far as FTP information goes, 100% of the webhosts I’ve dealt with in the past have sent me an email with the FTP host on it.  typically, it’s your website’s url, but if you are working on a development server, that may be different.  Once again, check with your hosting provider to see what’s going on.

You’ll also need an FTP client, which is a “translator” between your PC/Mac and the Linux server.  I use FireFTP, which runs inside of the Firefox browser, but CuteFTP and SmartFTP are great choices as well.

Once you’ve gotten all the necessary information, it’s time to actually start getting WordPress installed.

Head over to http://www.wordpress.org and get the latest version of WordPress.  Put it on the desktop where you’ll remember where you saved it.

This is a screenshot of the inner workings of FireFTP.  Near the top left is a dropdown menu, and one of the options is to “create a new account”.

The window that pops up asks for your FTP username, password, and host name.  Enter those in and click OK.

You should connect successfully and see two lists of files.  The files on your computer (‘local’) are on the left and the server files are on your right.  Find the WordPress folder you just put on your desktop and navigate to the inside (Editors Note – this tutorial assumes you are installing WordPress in the main file structure.  If you are not, or if you want to install it to a different folder, simply put it where you want it).  Select all of the files and hit the [–>] arrow to begin the transfer.

Once all of the files have been transferred, navigate to http://www.YOURSITE.com/wp-admin/install.php.

After you hit the welcome screen, hit next, and start entering all of the information you’ve gathered:

As far as table prefix goes, leave it unless you know you need to change it.

If everything went OK, it should kick you to the next screen.  What you’ve just done is allowed WordPress to create a ‘wp-config.php’ file.  It controls every aspect of WordPress, and is the main file it goes to in order to validate settings.

And, you should get to this screen:

Enter your Blog’s title in and your email address.  For now, if you want to develop the site before Google gets to it, uncheck the box and click “Install WordPress”.

WordPress will give you a temporary password – copy it to your clipboard.  You’ll need it immediately.

Clicking on the login button will take you to the backend.

enter your username/password, and voila!  You’re in to your newly installed WordPress installation.

The Easy Way

I said all that to say this: GoDaddy, Dreamhost, MediaTemple, and many of the other hosts offer one of two ways to install WordPress automatically: 1) Fantastico (MediaTemple / CPanel) and 2) a one-touch system (Dreamhost / GoDaddy).  All you need to do is navigate to the right section, click the button, and voila! WordPress is installed for you.

Still, you never know when you’ll need to know the manual way, especially if you’re using a local host or an older host that doesn’t have the nice goodies attached.

Installing WordPress for the first time can be daunting, but once you’ve done it the first time, the rest becomes easier and you eliminate the risk for (many) errors.  Good luck in your installation, and tune in next time for another tutorial.  We’ll talk about the admin interface, and go over some of the more valuable features of the dashboard before we actually dive into the posting screen.

In our last session, we covered the basics on what WordPress is and why it’s better than your standard, run-of-the-mill static HTML site.  And now, you want to go out and switch every site you have to a dynamically driven platform.

Hold on there, turbo.  We still have a few things to go over.

For example, if you’ve had a static site on the same server for more than 5-6 years, you may be surprised to know that not all servers are running the latest and greatest technology.  Your server may not even have the right stuff to run WordPress.

There aren’t that many requirements, but you at least need to have the following items:

• PHP 4.3 or greater
• MySQL 4.0 or greater
• The mod_rewrite Apache module

I promised you this in English, so here’s a little more standard information on the server, breaking down the techno speak.

A server environment is either going to be Windows based or Linux based.  Typically, Windows servers are optimized to run .NET and ASP server languages.  I won’t go into detail on these two because they aren’t important to getting WordPress to run correctly – just know that if you see these on your server, there’s a chance it may not run WordPress.

On the other hand, an open source server setup usually consists of 4 components: a Linux Operating System, the APACHE server model, MySQL, and PHP.  If you ever hear a technogeek talking about “The Lamp Stack”, that’s what they are referring to.  This setup can run literally thousands of open-source software packages, and WordPress is definitely included in that list.

The ones we want to focus on are PHP (Personal Home Page) and MySQL (my structured query language, pronounced MY-SEA-QUILL), which are the primary components of how data goes from point A (the database) to point B (the page you bring up).

Basically, instead of content stored in the page, the content is stored by ID number in the database.  WordPress runs a query, which is a test run against the database to determine which content to pull (the default query is the last 10 posts, newest first).  If there are posts, it displays them.  If not, it shows an error message.

PHP4 will work, but PHP5 will allow you to use some of the latest plugins that have taken advantage of the new language. 

If you aren’t sure if your host has it, just send them an email asking them.  If they value your business you can either 1) get them to install it or 2) let you know how to take care of it on your end (if they allow you to).

If your host doesn’t support these technologies, or won’t help you, then here are some great alternatives.  These don’t have affiliate links; I recommend them out of the goodness of my heart, because they work.

GoDaddy

If web hosting is like real-estate, then this would be the college apartment.  It does the job, has a lot of cool features, but you never know who your neighbors will be (porn, spam, etc).  Most of the time that’s not an issue, but sometimes you will run into someone who’s made Google mad, and they take it out on the whole IP server.  However, I still use them for some sites, and it does work well.

MediaTemple

This is more like the condo of the web-hosting world.  It has great customer service, a really snappy interface, and lots of excellent features.  I’m actually switching over to them for most of my web-stuffs.

Next time, we’ll actually go through the install process, but for now, go out there and double check your hosts to see if they can support it.  If so, get it ready for Session 3, because that’s when the real fun starts!

Spend any copious amount of time on this site and you’ll see me talk about WordPress.  Spend any time in conversation with me, and WordPress will come up.  I have a WordPress sticker on my laptop and my Official WordPress iPhone Case is on its way to my doorstep as I type.

So, really, what is WordPress?  And why should you care about it?

This post is meant to be the first of a series dictating just how cool WordPress is, and why you should consider switching / converting your old, static HTML site over.

So, back to the question at hand… what is WordPress?

If you look at the WordPress.org site, here’s the official definition:

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

It’s pretty cryptic, but the next sentence explains it in a nutshell:

More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.

So, how is it different from a standard website?

In a standard website (.html based), a developer/designer creates a template shell, saves each individual page as a separate file, and uploads the content.  When an item needs to be changed, it has to be changed on the individual file and re-uploaded.  If you’re a small business with a small web-budget, you don’t have resources to have someone change a single word every time you need one changed.

WordPress does things differently. Instead of storing the content in files, it stores the content in a database.  The database is either stored on a different part of the server, or sometimes on a different server altogether.  Whereas a static page contains both structure and content, the WordPress theme envelops and wraps the content in the theme files – meaning you can change, edit, delete, and add new content using one set of template files.

OK, it seems cool, but is it for me?

Do you:

• Have a small 3-5 page site that you want to have more control over?
• Do you have content that changes on a regular basis (events calendar, etc.)
• Do you want to add a blog to an existing site?

Then YES, absolutely WordPress is for you.

Over the next few posts I’m going to be talking about hosting, installation,

So, you’ve got a personal blog and want to integrate your iTunes playlist into WordPress, but don’t just want to say that you’re listening to a CD – you want to display the album art too? WordPress has a few solutions that work great.  The easiest way to do that is by utilizing the “scrobbler” built into last.fm – on which an API can export just about any data you need.  Cue last.fm records and last.fm recent album artwork.

These plugins will take your last X number of CD covers from last.fm and displays them.  last.fm records has a nice caching system, and it’s one I’ve used personally, but recent album artwork has gotten a lot of positive reviews.