An open source content management system (CMS) like WordPress can be a
great resource for anyone who would like to create a blog. It used to be that, to put
content online, you had to manually assemble all the files and develop a fair
amount of technical expertise; but a CMS can automate and significantly simplify
many parts of the process.
The open source community surrounding WordPress has made it into a powerful
and flexible product, ranging from the community of free blogs at www.
wordpress.com, to the thousands of “hosted” blogs using WordPress software,
supported by Internet hosting companies. The countless hours that volunteer
programmers have put into developing plugins have resulted in an array of
features that will meet just about any need.
If you're a beginning blogger looking for an easy-to-follow, friendly guide to help you produce an attractively designed blog or website, this is the book for you. You'll learn the basics of WordPress, one-click installs, and customizations. There's also coverage of SEO, categorizing blog posts, and social media promotion strategies, such as importing your blog into a Facebook page. This book's approach starts out simple using step-by-step examples and builds from there, enabling you to gain confidence in building your blog. You'll soon feel comfortable with a variety of helpful techniques: writing the text for your blog, adding pictures to your posts, publicizing your blog, tracking the number of visitors you've had, customizing the look and feel of your blog, managing comment spam, and even exploring ecommerce. You'll see sample blogs in the book and on the companion website so you can get an idea of what other bloggers are doing. Readers await your blog!