The Dashboard

The backend of your brand new WordPress website will look like this:

The home page of your admin is called just that, Home, and it is located as a submenu under Dashboard on your admin’s main sidebar menu. You’ll notice right away that there is a welcome box with lots of helpful links and action steps to get you started. Feel free to poke around any of these and refer back to this post if you happen to get stuck somewhere. The easiest way to learn (and retain the information) is to experiment and figure things out. On the other hand, if you like having the full “bird’s eye-view” first, then read on.

In the image above you will notice that I’ve selected the “Screen Options” drop-down tab. This allows me to choose which dashboard widgets I’d like to display and which to hide. I’ve chosen to hide Welcome, Quick Draft, and WordPress News. As I install WordPress themes and/or plugins, more options are likely to appear in the screen options. This is why I like to keep the widgets I choose to remain seen to a minimum, avoiding screen clutter.

The next and final submenu you will find under Dashboard is called Updates. This is where you will be able to update WordPress core files (new versions of WordPress), themes, and plugins. It is always a good idea to run updates as they are released. However, it’s important to always back up your website completely first. To learn more about why that is important and how to do it, check out our tutorial on backing up WordPress.

Posts

There are four submenus under Posts. The first, which is also your post archive, is called All Posts. This is where you are able to see, sort, search, and take bulk actions on all of your blog’s posts.

If you would like to create a new blog post, simply click the Add New submenu or the Add New button at the top of All Posts. This will take you to the post editor, seen below.

This is where the magic happens, you might say. For anyone primarily blogging that is. And thankfully, it’s all relatively simple to navigate and use. There is a title space for your post’s headline, an editor that–if you’re familiar with basic visual editors, like you might find in your email or in a word processor–should be self explanatory. It’s the boxes on the right-hand side that really need explaining.

Starting at the top and working down we have the publishing controls, post format, categories, tags, and featured image. Publish is where you are able to save your post as a draft (or other status), preview what it will look like once published, edit post visibility, choose to schedule your post for a later date, and of course actually publish to your live blog.

Post format is where you are able to choose between eight different types of blog post–depending on what your theme supports (as in, has a stylesheet to display). Unless you want your blog post to be just one item, the standard post will most likely suite all of your needs as you can combine all of the other post elements within a single standard post.

Categories, which we’ll get into in more detail in just a moment, can be chosen and/or created in the category section of the post editor. Ideally you will have already narrowed your blog down into between 5-10 categories before adding a lot of blog posts. In that case you will simply check of the appropriate box and head on down to the tags section.

Tags is where, you guessed it, you can add tags to your blog posts. Tags, as a general rule, should be used sparsely and specifically. Try not to bombard your posts with a massive wall of post tags since they are primarily used as a means of filtering down to just the most relevant content on your site–as opposed to helping your content become discovered on a large social network; like facebook, twitter, or instagram.

Finally, we come to the featured image. If supported by your theme the featured image will be displayed in two places: at the top of your post and as a preview on your blog and/or posts archive page(s). To add a new image simply click on the “set featured image” link and select your preferred image from the media library or upload it from your computer.

Speaking of adding media, let’s take a look at how you can add images, video, audio and more into your blog posts from the Add Media button located above the main text editor box.

As you can see from the image above, when the Add Media button is clicked you are brought to a screen with a few (but powerful) options. To insert media into a blog post all you need to do is set your cursor within the editor at the location you’d like your media to appear, click the Add Media button and then use one of the pictured methods for selecting said media. You can upload it from your computer, use media you’ve already uploaded to the WordPress Media Library (which we will explore together below), or you can insert media via URL.

Now let’s get back to categories, which is the next submenu under Posts. As I mentioned above, you will most likely want to limit yourself to a handful of categories. Ideally, a blog consists of just one or a few closely related topics. The idea should then be to create a hierarchy of information, where each subset gets more and more specific, so that it is easy for your blog visitors to find exactly what they are looking for.

For instance, if you were running a blog about working on cars your over-all blog topic would be auto mechanics. After that you might have categories that broke down into the various sections of auto mechanics: engine, transmission, carburetor, etc. After that, tags are meant to be even more specific while post titles (the most specific) are meant to be unique. In this way visitors to your blog will be able to navigate from broad blog topic, all the way down to the exact information they are looking for by using the categories and tags you provide.

That wraps up the basics of creating blog posts, now it’s time to talk about media.

Media

When you click on Media in the sidebar menu the first submenu it brings you to is Library. This page, sort of like your All Posts submenu, is where all of the media you’ve uploaded to your WordPress website will be archived.

On this page you can change from gallery to list display, sort by media type, search by keyword and execute bulk actions. If you click on an item you are brought to a details page with edit options.

If you click on the “Edit Image” button, you will be able to make some minor edits right within the WordPress backend.

While basic, these simple editing tools can help you to fit your images to the dimensions of your blog posts so that each post appears uniform, creating a more enjoyable reading experience.

And finally, if you’d like to add new media to your library all you have to do is click on the “Add New” button in the media library or click on the Add New submenu. In either case you will be brought to the screen shown above where you can drag files from your computer or select them using the finder button.

Pages

In WordPress, pages are very similar to posts. The All Pages and Add New submenus under the primary Pages menu option are almost exactly like those of the Post menu above it. Obviously, a page is not displayed on the front end of your website as a blog post, but on the backend there are few practical differences.

With the pages archive being so similar to the posts archive, I have instead limited this section to just the new page editor–as seen above. The main difference here being the lack of format, category, and tag boxes. And the addition of the Page Attributes box. This box provides you with the option of choosing a parent page, the page template (if your theme provides any other than its standard) and page order. All of which you can leave on their default setting.

Comments

The Comments section has no submenus. It’s simply an archive of all the comments left on all your blog posts (and pages, if that feature is activated). This archive, like the other archives, allows for quick searching, sorting, and bulk actions. As well as individual comment management; from marking a comment as unapproved, to responding to it, marking it as spam, and more.

Appearance

The appearance section of your admin’s sidebar menu is one you will visit often (at least during initial setup) as it is where all of your primary customization features are located. This of course includes your WordPress theme.

Every new install of WordPress comes pre-loaded with several free WordPress themes. To activate a theme, all you have to do is hover over the theme you want and click “Activate”. To view more details about a given theme, just click the theme’s thumbnail image. You can even see what each one will look like before activating by viewing the theme demo. Once you’ve made your choice it’s time for further customization, which is our next submenu.

Note: adding new themes, such as the one you might have purchased here at WPHub.com, is its own tutorial. To learn how to do that check out our post How to Install and Configure a WordPress Theme.

Clicking on the Customize submenu will take you to a unique visual editor with customization controls on the left-hand side and a large preview window on the right. This is extremely useful for previewing potential changes to your theme/site design before making those changes live. Depending on the theme that you have installed, the customization options on the left-hand side are likely to change.

The next submenu under Appearance is called Widgets. Widgets add content and features/functionality to your sidebars or other widgetized areas. The Widgets submenu is where you are able to drag and drop various widgets into the different widgetized areas of your website. Or, if you do not want a widget to appear where you’ve either placed it in the past or it happens to be by default, you can can simply drag it back into the available widgets section.

Most themes support one or two menus: a primary menu and a secondary menu. Together, these menus are what make up your site’s navigation. To create and manage these (and possibly many more) you’ll want to go to the Menus submenu option under Appearance. In this section you will be able to create and organize menus within a drag and drop environment.

Many, but not all WordPress themes will take advantage of the Header subsection under Appearance. This is where you will be able to make some very basic changes to your header (such as color and whether or not to show the header text) as well as the option of uploading an image header.

Similarly, the Background subsection of the Appearance menu will not be utilized by every theme. In those cases that it is not, as with the header, those options are typically folded into a “theme options” panel that is unique to that particular theme. That said though, for all themes that do take advantage of the built-in background options, you are able to select an image (often a repeating pattern) and/or change the color code.

And finally, we have the editor. This is a section users are often discouraged from using by theme creators. Mostly because any changes you make to files in this editor will be overwritten when you run the next theme update. It is recommended that instead you use a child theme for custom edits that would require you use this Editor. If you are not sure how to create a child theme, check out our tutorial.

Plugins

Plugins are php scripts that extend and expand the functionality of a WordPress website. To learn how to install and configure a plugin, check out our tutorial on that topic. To check out which plugins your fresh install comes with (and the location all future installed plugins will appear) navigate to the primary Plugins menu option; it will default to the submenu Installed Plugins.

On this page you are able to activate, edit, or delete individual plugins as well as take bulk actions on all of your plugins. To add a new plugin, click the Add New button this page or navigate to the next submenu Add New.

As of WordPress 4.0 the Add New submenu section is completely re-worked to make finding and installing the very best free WordPress plugins from the official WordPress Directory easier than ever. On this page you can find plugins by Featured, Popular, Favorites, Tag Cloud and of course keyword search. As mentioned above, learning how to properly install and configure these plugins is covered in another tutorial.

Again, the plugin file editor is often discouraged unless you consider yourself proficient in php and at least an intermediate WordPress user (if not developer). With that being the case, this section is easy enough to understand for those with the know-how to use it. Everyone else is probably best off using their plugins as they are or hiring professional help to make alterations.

Users

The Users section is, as the name would suggest, where you manage all things associated with site users. The default submenu is All Users.

Just like the archives we have seen previously, the All Users archive is a single screen where you can search for all the different users/user type associated with your website. From this page you are able to quickly and easily find and edit any user.

To add a new user simply click on the Add New submenu option or the “Add New” button on the All Users page. The process is simple and straightforward. Simply fill in the required data fields, select your prefered settings, and click “Add New User”.

Once a user signs in they are able to go to the Your Profile link and fill in the fields you see in the image above to complete their profile.

Tools

WordPress does not come with an over abundance of built of tools (that’s what plugins are for) but those that it does come with are housed under Tools. When you click on this primary sidebar menu option, it defaults to Available Tools.

There are only two tools under Available Tools: Press This and Categories/Tags Converter. The first is what’s known as a bookmarklet. You can drag Press This into your browser’s bookmark bar and use it to blog to your self-hosted WordPress blog from any page you might happen to be viewing. The Categories and Tags Converter is meant to make it easy for you to convert your categories to tags or vice versa.

The next option under the Tools menu is Import. Every source shown on this page is a potential source for blog posts. Simply click the appropriate link and follow the step by step instructions.

And finally we have the Export option under the Tools menu. This submenu section is dedicated to helping you create an exportable file comprised of your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, terms, navigation menus and custom posts.

Settings

The Settings menu option is actually one of the most essential sections of your WordPress admin; especially for the initial setup period. Once these items are configured once, there are few occasions in which you will have to revisit them. That said, and while there are many things here that can be left on default, getting the few vital settings right the first time is pretty important.

In the General section almost everything can be left on default. You’ll probably want to delete or change the tagline. You can leave the URL as is. Your email address will be the same one you signed up with. And all other settings can be left alone unless for reasons of you own, you would prefer to change them. From a best practices perspective, they’re fine.

The writing section is the same. Literally everything here can be left on the default settings.

Here is where things begin to get important. If you would rather have a static home page instead of showing your most recent blog posts on the home page, this is the place to make that happen. First you’ll need to navigate back up to Pages and create two pages: Home and Blog. Once those pages are published you’ll want to come back to Reading and change your Front page display settings. Select Static Page and make Home your front page and Blog your posts page. Everything else can stay on default unless you prefer otherwise. Be sure to click “Save Changes”.

Pretty much everything in Discussion can stay as is. On this page there isn’t anything that you have to change, but if you prefer something different then by all means change things up.

You may or may not want to change the media dimensions based on what displays best for the theme you’ve chosen. This will be on a case by case basis though.

Finally we come to one of the most important settings there is: Permalink settings. This is the one case in which you overwhelmingly DO NOT want to keep the default setting. When it comes to publishing your pages and posts and getting the most out of your SEO efforts (that’s search engine optimization for the uninitiated) you’ll want to make sure you choose a permalink option that at least includes the name of your post/page. Our recommendation would be that you choose the post name option. It’s simple and puts the focus on the keywords associated with your post (as long as you’ve included them in your title or made a point to edit your permalink on the post editor page).

And that, is the WordPress admin!

In Conclusion

As I mentioned at the top of this post, new users are often intimidated by the WordPress admin and it can take a while for that feeling to wear off. However, once you take the time to walk yourself through each section you realize that it’s not that any one aspect of the site is too difficult to grasp but that it’s just a matter of becoming familiar with each section/setting and how they affect everything else that takes time. Having done that in this one post though, you are well on your way to mastering WordPress.

Next, we’d recommend learning how to install and configure new themes and plugins. Or perhaps you’d like to get right down to blogging. In that case, we’ve got some fantastic posts on how to approach and master content strategy/publishing in a way that is sure to grow your readership as quickly as possible.

A good rule of thumb to follow when locating a plugin on the official directory is to only install plugins with an average rating of four stars or higher. Granted, some newer plugins may not have had a chance to accrue this rating but as a general rule this should be effective in identifying quality design/development as well as safe/secure plugins. You’ll also want to make sure that the plugin has been updated recently and is compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

Ok, so now that you know what a plugin is and how to determine that you’ve found one of high quality, let’s go over the three ways you can install them on your WordPress website.

Finding and Installing Plugins from the Dashboard

Perhaps the easiest way to find and install the plugin you’re looking for is by completing the entire process within the WordPress Dashboard itself. To do this simply navigate to Plugins > Add New and search for the plugin you’d like to install.

Once you’ve found the plugin you’re looking for, you can install it by clicking the “Install Now” button found to the right of the title of the plugin or, if you’ve clicked on “Details”, at the bottom of the resulting lightbox style information panel.

Once you have installed the plugin you will be asked to “Activate” it. Do so by clicking “Activate Plugin”.

In most instances, after activating your new plugin you will notice that your admin sidebar has a new primary menu or that the menu for your new plugin has been added under the primary menu for Settings. In either case, it is important to configure the settings for your new plugin if you want it to function as desired (or at all, in some cases).

In most cases plugins come with a section, subsection or series of either dedicated to its settings with the appropriate help text included to explain what each option does. To configure your plugin simply review each option, the help text associated with it, make your selections and be sure to click “Save” when a “save button” is provided. If for some reason no new menu or submenu appears then your plugin does not require any configuration.

Installing Downloaded Plugins via the Dashboard

Let’s say you’ve purchased a premium plugin from a third party or that you prefer searching for plugins on the official WordPress plugin directory instead of in your Dashboard. How do you install those plugins?

Simply download the plugin’s zipped file from the directory by clicking the large orange download button on the plugin page or using the download prompts provided by the third party.

Next, in your WordPress Dashboard navigate to Plugins > Add New > Upload. Use the “choose file” option to select the zipped folder you downloaded.

Click “Install Now” and follow the same steps for activation and configuration as before.

Installing Downloaded Plugins via FTP/SFTP

Finally, in certain cases you may wish to have more control over the installation process. At these times it may be necessary or preferable to install your plugin via FTP or File Transfer Protocol (a standard network protocol for transferring computer files from one host to another). To do this you will need an FTP client (a desktop application for your computer that provides an interface for you to use FTP). Popular FTP clients include FileZilla for Windows and Transmit for Mac, but a simple web search will reveal a wide variety for you to choose from; some free, some premium.

Once you’ve downloaded your FTP client of choice you’ll be asked to provide the proper login credentials to access the files that comprise your website. This information can be attained through your hosting account. You will need to provide your site’s domain and/or IP address and the username/password associated with it. Again, this information will be specific to your host; it is not your WordPress username and password.

Once you are logged in (preferrably to the SFTP option, as in secure file transfer protocol, not simply FTP) you will see a local file tree on the left panel representing the files on your computer and a hosted file tree on the right panel representing the files that are being hosted for your website.

Note: any time you are uploading/deleting files via FTP/SFTP it is highly recommended that you first backup your site completely. If you do not know how to do this please refer to this tutorial on backing up your WordPress website.

To install a plugin via FTP/SFTP you will first need to download the plugin files to your desktop. If the files are zipped you will want to unpack them and read the specific install instructions for that plugin. Unless otherwise specified, you will then select the unpacked plugin file from the left panel and drag it into the plugins folder (which can be found within the wp-content folder) on the right panel.

Once the file transfer is complete, navigate within your WordPress Dashboard to Plugins > Installed Plugins and locate the new install.

Click “Activate” and then configure the plugin by finding the new sidebar menu and following the help text associated with each setting, same as the two options above.

In Conclusion

WordPress plugins are fantastic tools for extending and expanding the functionality of your WordPress website. Installing a plugin is easy and can be done in three different ways depending on your preference:

The first and easiest way is to use the built-in plugin installer found in the WordPress Dashboard under Plugins > Add New. The second and nearly as simple method is downloading a plugin’s zipped file from the plugin directory and installing it via Plugins > Add New > Upload. And finally, the third method for installing a WordPress plugin is to use an FTP/SFTP client such as FileZilla or Transmit and manually place the unpacked plugin files directly into your site’s plugins folder, which can be found within the wp-content folder.

No matter which method you choose, they all get the job done in just a few seconds or minutes. And just like that, your WordPress site is equipped with new and useful functionality that extends or expands the way you are able to use WordPress.

We hope you found this tutorial helpful, if you have any questions or need clarification on one of the methods mentioned above, please feel free to drop us a line in the comments section below.

This tutorial will show you how to install WordPress locally. It may seem daunting at first, but as you shall soon see, it’s actually very easy and it will give you a controlled environment to work on themes or plugins.

XAMPP is a great free tool that can be installed easily on a Mac, PC or Linux. This open source package contains all the necessary tools that a WordPress install requires; Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl. The following install was done on a Mac but installing on a PC or Linux machine are virtually identical. Let’s get started.

1. Download and install XAMPP https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html to the /Application/XAMPP

Then run the install wizard.

Then select your components. You will need both XAMPP Core and Developer Files for this install.

You can download the latest version of WordPress right from the bitnami site or download the latest version of WordPress from WordPress.org (https://wordpress.org/)

XAMPP is an Apache distribution that contain MySQl, PHP and Pearl

2. Drag the dmg file to your application folder

This installs by default into these locations:

On Windows:   C:\xampp,

On Linux: /opt/lampp

On OS X:   /Applications/XAMPP

3. Start XAMPP in the application folder

4. Click on ‘Manage Servers’ then ‘Start All’- this will change the red status lights from red to green once all the servers are running.

Apache default is port 80

MySQL started at port 3306

5. Click on ‘Welcome’ tab then click ‘Go to Applications’- this will take you to this page http://localhost/xampp/splash.php Click on your preferred language and you will see this page:

6. In the left column under Tools, click phpMyAdmin

Log in to the admin if asked to

7. Click ‘New’ on top left column then check ‘Create database’ and enter ‘wordpress’ then select utf8_general_ci

8. Click ‘Create’ button

9. Download the latest version of WordPress- https://wordpress.org/download/

10. Open the ‘Application Folder’ for XAMPP here c:\xampp\htdocs\

11. Create a new folder for your WordPress installation- (e.g. wordpresslocal) and copy all of your WordPress files to it.

13. From the folder, open wp-config-sample.php in a text editor.

14. Edit the connection details as follows:

// ** MySQL settings ** //
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘wordpress’); // The name of the database
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘root’); // Your MySQL username
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ”); // …and password
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this

So the connection details should look like this:

15. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php and hit ‘SAVE’

16. Install WordPress- Loading this URL into your web browser: http://localhost/wordpresslocal/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

17. Fill out the form- and voila you have a local installation of WordPress for your testing pleasure.

*IMPORTANT NOTE: In order to update the WordPress core or add/update plugins, you will most likely get all kinds of errors when attempting to do so. These errors are from permission and ownership conflicts with the FTP server, your computer and WordPress. You can spend many hours chasing down all the conflicts or you can follow these easy steps that will show you how to by-pass FTP for your updates.

1) Access /wp-config.php

Open your /wp-config.php file from the WordPress root folder from your installation folder wordpress/wp-config.php

2) Add FS_METHOD direct.

FS_METHOD forces the filesystem method. Paste this line of code below all other lines of code in your /wp-config.php:

define(‘FS_METHOD’,’direct’);

3) Save the changes to the file and close it. When you attempt to upgrade to the most current WordPress version you should see this:

That is all there is to it. Just follow the above instruction and you will have a locally installed fully functioning WordPress website.

This tutorial will walk you through the “Appearance” section of the WordPress admin area and show you how to make basic customizations to your website.

After installing WordPress and configuring your website settings correctly, the next step is to set up your theme. It is best to configure your WordPress theme before activating plugins on your website. You can then choose plugins that complement your theme.

The configuration of your WordPress theme is done in the “Appearance” section of the WordPress admin.

For this instruction we will use the default WordPress Twenty Fourteen Theme

1) Click on ‘Appearance’ menu then Themes

2) There are three themes already downloaded with WP 4.0, Twenty Fourteen, Twenty Thirteen and Twenty Twelve.

3) You can choose one of them to configure. If you want to use a different theme, click on ‘Add Themes’ button.

4) Click on the ‘Upload Theme’ and upload your premium theme from WPHub in .zip format. Make sure that your theme has been zipped correctly. It is common for designers to include documentation, Photoshop files and other things inside their zip file. You want to make sure that your theme folder is located in the top level of your zip file (i.e. at / and not /files/theme-files/your-theme/).

5) File Transfer Protocol is a great tool for uploading new themes. Using an FTP client such as FileZilla, you can upload your theme folder to the /wp-content/themes/ directory. Your theme will then be displayed as an available theme in your WordPress admin under the Themes menu tab.

6) By default Twenty Fourteen is already active in WordPress version 4.0 and when you click on “Customize” on the left menu bar you will see this:

7) Your website title and tagline can be defined through the general settings area. It can also be changed through the customize section. There is also an option to hide the website title in this area.

When you use the “Customize” section you preview changes to your header automatically. It is a great way to see how your title and tagline will look in your header.

8) Twenty Fourteen allows you to change the header text and background colors using a color wheel. Some WordPress themes are more advanced in this regard; allowing you to modify the colors of multiple areas across your design.

9) The customizer also allows you to add a header image.

10) A background image can also be uploaded and aligned.

11) Next, you can set your Widgets on the Primary Sidebar, the Content Sidebar, and Footer Widget Area. You can control your widgets individually in the main Widgets tab under the Appearance section.

12) Static Front Page – Here you can set your front page and preview changes once they have been saved

13) Featured Content – Set your home page for a slider or a grid layout.

14) Appearance > Widgets

Widgets allow you to add content, menus and interactive features to your sidebars, header and footer. Widget areas are defined in your theme’s functions.php file. You will see each widget area available to you down the right hand side of the widget page.

The number of widget zones depends on the theme you are using. At the very least your theme will have a widget area in the sidebar,however some designs come with over a dozen widget areas. For example, a theme could have a widget area in the header, sidebar, footer, below posts, above posts and on the home page.

Adding widgets to your website is straightforward. All you have to do is drag a widget from the available widgets area on the left hand side of the page to the appropriate widget zone on the right hand side of the page. Each widget can be configured correctly once it has been dragged within a widget zone. Once you have saved your widget, load up your website and check that the widget you configured is displaying correctly.

Widgets can be deleted from your widget zones by clicking on the delete link at the bottom of the widget. Alternatively, you can drag the widget outside the widget zone and it will be placed in the inactive widgets area. This allows you to drag the widget back at a later date.

15) Appearance > Menus

The WordPress menu system allows you to easily manage navigation menus. Menus can also easily be inserted into other areas of your website using widgets.

To get started, click on the “Create a new menu” link and enter a name for your menu. I recommend using a name that describes where the menu will be placed or what links will be added. For example, I use “Main Menu” for my top navigation menu and “Information Menu” for the information menu in my footer that links to my about and contact pages. This simplifies things later if you create a lot of menus.

Along the left hand side of the menu page are lists of your pages, links, categories and any post formats you use. All you need to do is select what page, link or category that you want to add to your menu and click on the “Add to Menu” link. Once you have done that, you can rearrange the order of your menu items using drag and drop. By moving a menu item a little to the right of its parent item, it will be listed as a sub-menu. This simple system allows you to create detailed hierarchical menus in minutes.

Do not forget to save your menu at the end or your changes will not be applied to your menu. Once the menu has been saved, you can insert it anywhere on your website.

16) Appearance > Header

Many WordPress themes allow you to insert an image at the top of your website design. Header images are usually static, so to get the best look you are advised to use a defined height and width.

If the uploaded image does not match the suggested size, WordPress allows you to crop the image to the correct dimensions.

WordPress does not force you to an image of sufficient size. Therefore, if the image you use is too small, it may only take up part of your page.

17) Appearance > Background

A background image can be uploaded via the theme customizer or via the “Custom Background” page.

Images can be positioned to the left, centre or right. They can also be tiled and fixed to the background. A background color can also be defined; which is useful if you do not repeat your background image.

18) Appearance > Editor

All of your theme templates can be viewed through the WordPress theme editor. You can also edit templates through the theme editor if you have made your files writeable (through file transfer protocol or through your hosting control panel).
A good place to familiarize yourself with how WordPress templates work is the WordPress Codex. The developer of your theme should also provide documentation on how to manage the theme you are using.

You should obviously be cautious whenever you are modifying template files on a live website, particularly if you do not have experience with HTML, CSS and PHP. Be sure to always make a backup of your template files before applying any changes to them.

Conclusion

All WordPress themes are configured a bit differently. It is common for theme developers to use their own theme framework and use their own custom options page for their designs. Thankfully, more and more theme designers are updating their themes so that they comply with features such as the WordPress theme customizer, custom backgrounds and WordPress menu system so this will give you a good knowledge base to configure other WordPress themes.

Setting on Your Amazon Account for Free:

The first thing you have to do is sign up and start a cloud server on Amazon’s free usage tier. Here is how:

1. Go to aws.amazon.com, signup & login to your AWS Management Console
2. Open EC2 tab and click “Launch Instance”.
3. Select Linux 64bit with the star by it first step of wizard then click Continue 2 times until you see the screen to enter a key/value pair.
4. Leave the first key field set to “name”. Set the value to a name to id your server. Click Continue.
5. If it’s your first time making an instance, choose “create new key pair” and follow the procedure to do so. Otherwise, choose one you created before and continue.
6. If you haven’t created a security key, choose default here and continue to launch pg and click “Launch”.
7. Click on text link that reads “View your instances on the Instances page”.
8. Open Putty and enter the public DNS you were given during instance creation i.e.: ec2-23-50-63-219.compute-1.amazonaws.com into the host field. If you do not have Putty, the command line interface necessary for this step, you can download it at: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
9. In the left column of your Putty interface, expand “ssh” and click on “auth” then browse to where you saved your .ppk file. If you have a pem, use Puttygen to reformat it. Click “open” when done.
10. Enter the user name “ec2-user” and you will get a command prompt if it worked.
11. Type the following command line commands at the prompt:
    
    
    sudo yum install php-mysql php php-xml php-mcrypt php-mbstring php-cli mysql httpd

    sudo yum install mysql-server

    sudo /etc/init.d/mysqld start

    mysqladmin -u root password UrPassWord

    mysql -u root –p

    CREATE DATABASE MYSQL;

    use MYSQL

    CREATE USER ‘MYSQL_admin’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘myadminpass’;

    GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON MYSQL TO ‘MYSQL_admin’@’localhost';

    CREATE USER ‘MYSQL_user’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘myuserpass';

    GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON [DataBase NAME].* TO ‘[DataBase NAME]_user’@’localhost';

    Exit;

    Sudo chown e2c-user /var/www/html

    sudo vim /var/www/html/index.php

At this point if you typed all the above commands correctly you should be in the middle of editing a file with the vim editor. Type “I” to put it into insert mode and type something for the contents of a test php page,

Then hit the Esc key to get out of insert mode and type “:wq” to save your file.

Type:
Sudo service httpd start

Go to your public DNS and see if you see your test page. If you don’t try these possible fixes:

Your test page may not have proper file permissions, so type:
Sudo chown ec2-user /var/www/html/index.php

If it is still not to working, restart the httpd server by typing:
service httpd restart
or
servicehttpd stop
then
servicehttpd start
if it said ok, you are okay, so try again and it should work.

PHPMYADMIN INSTALL:
Now type the following commands to install phpmyadmin if you want it:


cd /var/www/html

Sudo vim /var/www/html/phpmyadmin/config/config.inc.php

Find the line that reads “$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = ”;” and add a value of a secret passcode. It can be anything.

Find the line that reads “$cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword'] = false;” and change false to true.

Now hit the esc key and type :wq to save and quit. Finally go to your public DNS followed by /phpmyadmin and if it worked you will be in your new phpmyadmin area.

Installing a WordPress Blog in the Cloud:

1. Now go to your phpmyadmin and create a new database named wps.
2. Open Filezilla, click on “edit” select “settings” then select “sftp” in the left column and click on “add keyfile…” in the right column. Select your .ppk file and make a private key out of it. If you already have a private key stored in the box above the button, you may be able to use that instead.
3. Go to the site manager, click “new site” and enter the public DNS into the host field. Select “SFTP” as the protocol. Logon type needs to be “Normal” and finally enter the username and click connect.
4. Once connected via FTP using FileZilla or another FTP program, go down two directories to get to the root. Then navigate back up to the HTML dir by going to /var/www/html.
5. Download and extract WordPress from: http://wordpress.org/download/
6. Make changes to files from your desktop – Open the new folder named “wordpress” created on your desktop. Locate the file named “wp-config-sample.php” and rename it to “wp-config.php”. Open the config.php file in notepad and fill in your own database details where they are required. You will clearly see where they go as the file is well notated for this purpose.
7. Upload the WordPress files via FTP – Now create a directory on your server for your blog. If you want your blog to be in the root directory, like example.com, then upload all the files in your WordPress installation to the root folder, but do not include the folder itself, just the files. If you want a separate directory for your blog, make a new directory for your blog, like example.com/blog. Use your favorite FTP client such as FileZilla to upload the files.
8. Run the WordPress installation script – This is done by accessing the wp-admin/install.php file from a web browser. You would go to example.com/wp-admin/install.php or example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php depending on how you uploaded it in the previous step.

Summary

That is all there is to creating you very own free usage tier account with Amazon cloud server and installing WordPress on it. You can use this account completely free if you don’t go over on disk space usage. After that year, you will start accumulating charges. Also, if you go over your allotted disk space in the free usage tier, you will start accumulating charges. Be careful and monitor your Amazon account to be safe. Have fun with your new free WordPress site in the cloud! You will find it goes faster and smoother than on any other server.

Why Not Use WordPress Share Box Plugins

The main argument against using a WordPress plugin for a floating vertical share box, or any share box for that matter, is that too many plugins slow down your site. This is a rather simple task, so why use a plugin? The answer is simple. Don’t. Follow this easy to read tutorial and I will have you up and running with a nice vertical floating share box in no time at all.

Prerequisites

There is not really a lot you need to know before attempting this tutorial. It will help to be familiar with the WordPress admin and HTML however. Other than that, just follow along and have fun!

Develop Your Floating Share box HTML

Open your favorite text editor for coding and start a new html file. You will be adding the HTML code first, then appending the CSS styles above it, so let’s start with the bare bones HTML containers as in the following example:

<div id="sharebar">
	<div class="share-twitter">
		<!-- Twitter: -->
 
		<!-- End Twitter: -->
	</div>
 
	<div class="share-facebook">
		<!-- Facebook: -->
 
		<!-- End Facebook: -->
	</div>
 
	<div class="share-plusone">
		<!-- Google +1: -->
 
		<!-- End Google +1: -->
	</div>
</div><!--end sharebar div -->

That’s your basic structure above. Now go to each respective website and grab your button code. Here are the simple instruction as I did mine:

1. Go to https://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons#tweet and grab a twitter button. I used the “share a link” button because it fit so nice into the vertical side bar I created. If you select a different button, you may have to make your widget wider than I have.
2. Go to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/ and get a Facebook like button. I chose to leave the URL blank because it defaults to the page it is on. Then I deselected send button, set width to 50 and clicked get code. You will see there are two pieces of code in the window that pops up. Grab them both and paste them one after the other in between your Facebook comment tags in the above HTML example layout.
3. Go to https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/+1button/ and get a Google, Plus 1 button. I scrolled down the page to where it said “a simple button” and used the simple short code snippet found there for my share box and it worked just fine. You may want to experiment with the options though for your own custom share box.

All you have to do with the above three steps is grab the code and past it in between the respective comment tags for each of the three share buttons. Once that is done, add your CSS style as I’ll explain next.

Adding CSS Styles to Your Floating Share Box HTML

Add the following style to the top of your HTML document and tweak as desired:

<style>
#sharebar {
	position: fixed;
	right: 10px;
	bottom: 45%;
	width: 85px;
	padding: 10px 5px;
	text-align: center;
	background-color: #dddddd;
	border: 5px solid #999999;
	-webkit-border-radius: 10px;
	-moz-border-radius: 10px;
	border-radius: 10px;
	z-index:9999999;
}
 
.share-twitter {
	height: 32px;
	margin-bottom: 3px;
}
 
.share-facebook {
	height: 32px;
	margin-bottom: 3px;
	margin-left:-12px;
}
 
.share-plusone {
	height: 20px;
	margin-left:4px;
}
</style>

Once you are done with copy and pasting the above style into the top of your HTML document, save it as sharebox.html or whatever file name you desire. Then follow the next section’s directions for uploading it into your WordPress blog.

Adding a Share Box Sidebar Widget in WordPress

The way I decided to tackle my vertical floating share box was to add it as a sidebar widget from my WordPress admin. Follow these three easy steps to get started:

1. Login to your WordPress admin
2. Click on Appearance and then Widgets
3. Under the available widgets in the left column, click and drag a text widget over to the main sidebar area in the right column. Copy and paste the html from earlier into the main textarea and save.

That’s it! You’re done! That was easy wasn’t it? Go ahead and view your site and check out your sidebar widget with the floating share bar. It should work great if you followed along well enough. If not, go back and find your errors and try again. Here is what mine looked like when I was done:

Of course, you can always add other share buttons to your own share box. These are just the ones I prefer.

Summary

Well, I hope you had fun with this tutorial on building and adding an HTML floating vertical share box to your WordPress blog or website. The instructions are fairly straight forward so I hope everyone could follow along and develop a working share box for their WordPress site. Have fun tweaking yours to fit your exact needs. This tutorial should definitely help you get the ball rolling.

Prerequisites

There are some things you need to understand somewhat before attempting to use this tutorial, but if you don’t know everything, don’t worry, this is not a hard tutorial to follow. You can get by with only limited knowledge of PHP and the WordPress infrastructure because I will explain things in a step by step manner. It always helps to have as much knowledge of PHP, HTML, JavaScript and WordPress whenever working with the WordPress core however. So no matter how advanced you are on these techniques, give it a shot. Often times the best way to learn is do so by just doing it. That is how I first learned how do code many years ago and today I am able to code in over a dozen languages.

The Functions.php File

There is a functions.php file in every WordPress theme that I have worked with. It is the commonly used file for adding PHP functions to WordPress themes. It effectively hooks into the WordPress core and adds the desired functionality to your entire site, making a function available for use on any post or page. There are two ways to find your functions.php file. I like to use a FTP application such as FileZilla, but you can also access them directly through the WordPress admin. To locate your functions.php file with an FTP client, navigate to your server’s root directory then go to /wp_content/themes and look for a directory named after the theme you are using. In the WordPress admin, simply open the editor and select your theme from the drop down in the top right of the page. Then look in the left column for the functions.php file and click on it to bring it up in the editor.

Filters and Actions

Functions are commonly called in WordPress by using actions or filters. Actions are hooks WordPress call upon when specific events occur. For example you may want a custom function to be called when publishing a post or showing a page.

Filters are hooks that call upon functions used to modify text. They are either applied to the text before it is saved to a database table or before it is sent to the screen for viewing.

I found a decent reference for filters in the WordPress codex at:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Filter_Reference

There is also a list of actions in the codex at:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Action_Reference

Adding a Function to WordPress

Adding a simple function to WordPress is done by editing the functions.php file. I generally like to add them towards the top of the page, but you can add them where ever you like except of course inside of an existing function. The start or end of the functions.php file are the most practical places to add your functions. Be sure to place a comment before your function so you will know what it does in the future. Also make your comments concise so the others who may end up editing the file will know what it was added for. It is also a good idea to explain any parameters in the comments before a function. Single line comments are added using two forward slashes before the text. Multiple line comments are added using slashes and asterisks as in the following example:

Function for Changing Excerpt Length

<?php
/*
set_excerpt_length function:
 Written by: Ian L. of Jafty.com 
Purpose: changes the length of post excerpts.
*/
function set_excerpt_length($length=70) {
	//the number of words in each excerpt:
	return $length;
}
add_filter( 'excerpt_length', 'set_excerpt_length');
?>

Notice the use of both comment types in the above PHP code as well as the add_filter call after the function to hook it into the WordPress core. The above functions makes use of the excerpt_length filter to change the length of post excerpts on your WordPress blog. The excerpt_length filter is just one example of a collection of hooks. In the above set_excerpt_length function, I set the default length to 70 words by setting the variable, $length to 70 in the functions parenthesis. You can change the value by setting the length when calling the function within the add_filter call as well. For example, if you wanted to set the length to 20 words instead, you would change the add_filter line to read:

add_filter( ‘excerpt_length’, ‘set_excerpt_length(20)’);

Calling a Function on Page Load

The following function demonstrates how you might add some code to the header of each page in WordPress. By using the wp_head action, WordPress calls the function you specify every time a new page is opened.

 <?php
function say_hi($toName){
echo "<script>alert('Hello $toName! Welcome to my WordPress blog...');</script>";
}
add_action('wp_head', 'say_hi');
?>

The function above simply calls the say_hi function when the page loads by adding a JavaScript alert dynamically with PHP in the header of any page that is visited. Obviously that means it will be called anytime any page is opened, so you may want to add more code to the function to limit it to the home page. This is just an example function however. You could use this technique to add something that is more suited to be called into action when any page loads.

Filtering Comment Text Function

This I a handy function to get rid of any unwanted words in comments on a WordPress site. You can use it to filter out foul language or any other words you just don’t want to show up on your blog.

function filter_bad_text($content) {
	$badwords = array('arse','hell','freelancer');
  $content=str_ireplace($badwords,'{censored for content}',$content);
  return $content;
}
add_filter('comment_text', 'filter_bad_text');

If you notice, I used the comment_text filter hook. The coment_text filter hook is applied to comment text before it is presented to the screen so that any words in the badwords array will no longer show up. They will be replaced with {censored for content} instead. You can change the replace text with whatever you wish as well.

Creating an Action Hook

If you don’t see the action hook you need to accomplish your goal, you can add an action hook with the do_action function. For example, if you wanted to add an action to the index.php page that triggers just before the post loop that prints posts to the page. Look for the loop in index.php which starts with a line similar to the following line of code:

if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();

Then add the following line of code just above it:

do_action( ‘before_post_loop’ );

That effectively adds a new action hook named ‘before_post_loop’ to WordPress and it can be called upon simply by using:

add_action(‘before_post_loop’, ‘some_function’);

Notice the parameters. The add_action function takes the action name we created followed by a function that you want to apply before the WordPress loop is called. In this case, the function you name in place of “some_function” will get called in index.php before the posts are displayed.

Summary

After reading this tutorial, you should have a good idea of how to make use of many of the action and filter hooks in the WordPress codex. You should also be able to add your own filter and action hooks which gives you the freedom to alter the look and functionality of your WordPress site in numerous ways. Good luck using hooks and PHP functions in your own WordPress environment and have fun adding useful functionalities to your blog or website. The possibilities are endless.

In this post we’re going to show you how to install WordPress on your host in just a few minutes. Part of what makes installing WordPress so quick and easy is its popularity. WordPress is far and away the most popular content management system in the world and because of this most hosts have created what’s called a “one-click” WordPress installation feature. I’ll show you this method first and then what is known as the manual method of installing WordPress via FTP (file transfer protocol) second.

Using Your Host’s “One-Click” WordPress Installation Feature

Each hosting service is going to have a slightly different looking interface, but the process remains the same.

1. Find the One-Click Install Section

This is sometimes a sub-section such as “goodies” that houses other offerings such as analytics, adwords, etc. Other times it is its own section.

2. Choose WordPress

When you click on the WordPress options you will be asked which domain to install WordPress on. Select the appropriate domain (which much be fully hosted to appear, not simply registered). Unless you choose to create a custom database one will be created for you.

3. Click Install

After clicking it takes between five and ten minutes for the install to complete and an email will be sent to you with a few simple instructions that you can follow along with in order to access the admin section of your new WordPress website!

Installing WordPress via FTP

It has become increasingly rare for a hosting service not to have a simplified WordPress installation process. However, you may have your own server or simply desire to manage the installation manually for a number of different reasons. In any of these cases, the FTP WordPress installation instructions below will have you up and running in as few as five minutes.

1. Download & Unzip the WordPress Package

First, download the WordPress package from WordPress.org. To accomplish this simply click on the link that reads “Download WordPress 4.0” (or the latest version of WordPress).

Next…

For Windows: click save file then left click on the file name in the “Downloads” pop up window and choose the “open containing folder” option to open the folder with your download. Now left click on the zip archive entitled “wordpress-4.0” or the most recent version title and choose “Extract”. In the extract pop up, click the “Browse” button and select “Desktop” to extract the archive to your desktop.

For Mac: navigate to your downloads folder and find the new zipped WordPress file. Then, double-click the zipped file and it will unzip into a folder. You can then drag the WordPress folder to your desktop for easy access.

2. Create a Database & MySQL User on Server

From within your hosting account, navigate to PHPMyadmin and create a table for WordPress. The table name is up to you, but we suggest simply naming it “wordpress” if you only plan to have one installation. Otherwise something like “wordpress_1” would be good for multiple installations.

3. Rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php & Edit

Back on your desktop, open the new folder named “wordpress”. Locate the file named “wp-config-sample.php” and rename it to “wp-config.php”. Open the config.php file in notepad or textedit (for Windows and Mac respectively) and fill in your own database details where they are required. You will clearly see where they go as the file is well notated for this purpose.

4. Upload WordPress Files to Server

Now create a directory on your server for your blog. If you want your blog to be in the root directory, like example.com, then upload all the files in your WordPress installation to the root folder, but do not include the folder itself, just the files. If you want a separate directory for your blog, make a new directory for your blog, like example.com/blog. Use your favorite FTP client such as FileZilla or Transmit to upload the files.

5. Run the WordPress Installation Script

This is done by accessing the wp-admin/install.php file from a web browser. You would go to example.com/wp-admin/install.php or example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php depending on how you uploaded it in the previous step.

What’s Next?

After completing either of the two WordPress installation methods above you now have a brand new WordPress website, on your very own domain, to do with what you will. Those of you newer to WordPress and perhaps unfamiliar with how to configure the initial settings might want to continue on to our overview of the WordPress admin. Others of you may want to learn how to install and configure themes or plugins. While still others may wish to continue learning about the basic infrastructure of WordPress itself.

If you’re already familiar with all of that information and would instead like to experiment with WordPress customizations, themes, plugins and more then you may enjoy our tutorial on how to create a copy of your WordPress website on your local machine; which provides a risk free environment for experimentation.

Whatever your next step, we’ve got you covered. Happy pressing!

This works really well if you have a few hundred of posts, however you will experience timeouts if you try to delete too many at a time.

There are many reasons why you may need to delete a large number of posts in bulk. For example, you may be deleting many old news posts and revamping your blog. Or perhaps you imported posts incorrectly and need to remove them, but are unavailable to revert to a backup.

I recently had to delete a huge number of posts from one of my websites. I had installed an auto posting WordPress plugin that published related YouTube videos every hour. The idea was to generate traffic naturally from Facebook followers. The system worked…at first. However, traffic dropped off once Facebook cleaned up their act and stopped people trying to game the home page.

The other day, I finally got round to removing all the video posts I had added. There were over 15,000 posts that had to be deleted. Due to timeouts, deleting all of these posts would have taken an age using the screen options method.

I therefore turned to a free WordPress plugin called Bulk Delete. It is a fantastic tool that allows you to manage bulk deletes more intelligently. It lets you filter items for deletion in a number of ways.

The first option is post status. This lets you delete posts with a specific status, such as draft, scheduled, or pending.

A number of options are available for deletion. You can restrict deletion to posts that are older than a specific date. Alternatively, you can delete the first X amount of posts. If you are deleting thousands of posts, I recommend limiting post deletions to 500 posts or less so that you do not experience any time outs.

The default selection is to move all items to WordPress trash. Be aware that if you leave this selected, the items will be kept in your trash until it is emptied. The default number of days that items are stored in your trash is 30, however you can alter this by adding define( ‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, 5 ); to your website wp-config.php configuration file.

When I am deleting a lot of posts, I normally select the option to delete the posts permanently so that they are removed from my website database right away.

The plugin also lets you delete posts by category. This is particularly useful if you are removing a specific section from your website.

Posts can also be deleted by tags. There is an option at the bottom of your list to select all tags or deselect all tags. This is useful if you have a large number of tags.

Posts can also be deleted by URL. In my opinion, this is one of the plugin’s best features, as search engine optimization software frequently outputs a list of URLs that you should alter or delete. All you would have to do is enter these URLs into the URL box and then delete then.

Post revisions can also be deleted in this section. This is a quick way of reducing the size of your database by removing unnecessary post drafts.

It is not just posts that Bulk Delete can delete. The plugin also lets you delete pages, custom post types, and custom taxonomies.

A number of additional add ons are available from the developer’s website. These include delete posts by custom field and delete posts by title. Many other add ons are available that will help you schedule the deletion of posts according to certain factors. All of these add ons retail at $15 each (except the delete posts by custom field add on – that costs $30).

If you find yourself in a situation where you need to delete a large number of posts or pages, or simply need a better way to filter the content that is being deleted, then I recommend using Bulk Delete. I have used it on a few occasions and have always found it has saved me a huge amount of time.

Moving a CakePHP/WordPress Site

There are some special precautions to take when moving a WordPress site that has CakePHP installed. First of all is the server configuration. There is often a need to modify the httpd.conf file for your server in order to get the paths to work in your WordPress installation. This is because while a normal server without CakePHP installed has a server root of / while a CakePHP server will have a server root of /app/webroot/. That makes it necessary to alter the line that reads “documentRoot: ….”. You need to change it to have “/app/webroot” after the documentRoot declaration. A simple search in the VI editor at the command prompt for “documentRoot” should do the trick. For those of you not familiar with command line. Here is how to do it on a Linux box or in Putty:

Enter this at command prompt:

sudo vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Be sure to use the correct directory path for your httpd.conf file on your server. That is what is was on mine, but will be different on some servers.

The above command should have opened the VI text editor in Linux with the httpd.conf file opened in it and ready for editing.

Type “I” without quotes to put VI into insert mode.

Use the arrow keys to move down to where the documentRoot declaration is.

Modify the text and hit esc key again to exit insert mode. Then type “:wq” without the quotes to save and exit the file and VI editor.

Restart your server with the following command:

sudo service httpd restart

Moving your WordPress Database

Moving the WordPress database is almost the same as for any WordPress installation. The only small difference is that you may have CakePHP tables to move as well, so look out for those. When you move the database, you have to make some changes to the URLs found in the wp_options table. Simple scroll down the table in browse mode using phpMyAdmin and change any of the site’s old URLs to the new server’s URLs. There is normally at least three that will need changed. Be sure to skim the entire table looking for URLs that are from the old installation and update them in phpMyAdmin. The image below shows one example of a URL that would need changed once the database is on the new server for WordPress to function properly:

Editing CakePHP’s Config Files

In order to make your new WordPress and/or CakePHP database work, go into the app/Config folder on the new server and update the database.php file to reflect your new database connection.

Installing WordPress with CakePHP

Maybe you are not moving a site, but adding WordPress to an existing CakePHP enabled server instead. In that case there is one thing that stops WordPress and CakePHP from working together seamlessly that needs to be addressed in most cases. It is the fact that WordPress uses the double underscore (__) and CakePHP doesn’t allow double underscore conventions. Therefore there is a fix known as the CakePHP WordPress Component that can help. To learn more about it and to see how to install it, go to http://www.kyletyoung.com/code/cakephp_wordpress_component. If you have issues with the double underscore then give this a try.

Where to install WordPress with CakePHP

If you are going to install WordPress with CakePHP, you need to install it in the app/webroot directory for CakePHP to integrate with it. You do not want to put it in the original web root of the server or / because CakePHP rewrites the URLs to all point to app/webroot. Therefore WordPress will not work in the base directory with CakePHP installed on the same server. There are some workarounds if you really want to do this, but it’s not recommended. Besides, what’s the use of having both on the same server if you cannot use CakePHP with WordPress?

Should You Use CakePHP with WordPress

That is a question up for debate. There are some advantages for certain, but there are also disadvantages for some people. It mostly depends on whether you have the patience to learn a framework and whether you know PHP well enough to even bother. CakePHP is nothing more than a PHP framework after all. It was designed to make certain tasks normally done in PHP alone are little easier with helper classes and libraries available through the use of CakePHP. CakePHP is a PHP library, but it is important to distinguish the difference between libraries and frameworks. All PHP frameworks are libraries, but not all libraries are frameworks. A framework implies that it contains an infrastructure to help you do several things in PHP while a library is often a way to accommodate a single need or group of needs in PHP.

If you are good with PHP and looking for a faster way to do tasks such as form validation, database manipulation and enhancing your site’s security, then CakePHP is for you. If you are comfortable with PHP and can do all these things fairly quickly, then you may not want to bother, but if you do these things often, a framework such as CakePHP can certainly speed up your day to day coding. Have a look at the cakePHP manual to see if you think it can help your particular situation or not. I am not a huge fan of frameworks myself, but I try to be fair and give them a chance, so go ahead and give it a try and see if you like it. It might take a day or two to figure it out, but if you end up using it regularly, it will be worth the effort.

Summary

For the most part, CakePHP and WordPress do not integrate on many levels to date. However with increasing users, CakePHP is getting more popular and it is likely that WordPress and PHP enthusiasts will find ways to make CakePHP and WordPress work together in more ways in the future. There are several advantages that a good developer could make use of with CakePHP and WordPress combo even though not too many have taken the opportunity to put them together as of the time that this tutorial was written. The reason for this tutorial was not so much to integrate the two infrastructures, so much as to make them work side by side on the same server. It is necessary in cases where you have a CakePHP application on the same server as a WordPress installation where they are both supported by the same root directory. That root directory will need to be that of the CakePHP installation in most cases unless you know some mod-rewrite or .htaccess file tricks. I hope this tutorial helped some of you with your WordPress and CakePHP issues. I know there are a few grey areas. That is why I decided to write on this subject.