Looking for ways to streamline your work so you can focus on maximizing your time? In Depth provides specific, tested, and proven solutions to the problems you run into every day–things other books ignore or oversimplify. This is the one book that you can rely on to answer the questions you have now and will have in the future.
In Depth offers
- Comprehensive coverage with detailed solutions
- Breakthrough techniques and shortcuts that are unavailable elsewhere
- Practical, real-world examples with nothing glossed over or left out
- Troubleshooting help for tough problems you can’t fix on your own
- Outstanding authors recognized worldwide for their expertise and teaching style
- Quick information via sidebars, tips, reminders, notes, and warnings
In Depth is the only tool you need to get more done in less time!
Includes coverage on blog creation, widgets, plug-ins, themes, SEO, the WordPress.com platform, and WordPress.org software
Price: $21.59
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Build your own blog network with unlimited users and blogs, forums, photo galleries, and more!
- Design, develop, secure, and optimize a blog network with a single installation of WordPress
- Add unlimited users and blogs, and give different permissions on different blogs
- Add social networking features to your blogs using BuddyPress
- Create a bbPress forum for your users to communicate with each other
- Part of Packt’s Beginner’s Guide Series, with step-by-step, detailed instructions for building a blog network from scratch
In Detail
WordPress MU enables you to build a complete, professional blog network. Each user gets their own blog, and can choose their favorite templates and plug-ins, and develop their own content. WordPress MU powers some of the largest blog networks in the world, including the mighty WordPress.com – home to thousands of bloggers.
This book will take you through the setup of a WordPress MU-powered blogging network, using a real, working blog network as an example, so that you can follow the creation process step-by-step. Your blogging network will be complete with professional features such as friends lists, status feeds, groups, forums, photo galleries, and more, to build your own WordPress.com – a place where users can quickly come and create a blog for themselves.
The book starts with a clean install of WordPress MU, and as you work through the book, you will build the blog network, and add on more and more features, all seamlessly integrated to achieve a professional, custom-built look.
You will find new themes and plug-ins added to the site, as well as customization of the WordPress multi-user code. The book will also look at ways you can manage your community, and keep your site safe and secure, ensuring that it is a spam-free, enjoyable community for your users. In the later chapters, you will add a forum using the bbPress script, and add BuddyPress social networking components to your site.
Imagine how good you’ll feel when your first WordPress multi-user blog network launches.What you will learn from this book?
- Set up and run your own blog network using the multi-user version of the most popular open source blogging platform
- Monetize your blog network and earn revenue from using simple banner advertisements to paid upgrades and revenue sharing models
- Give users a chance to interact with each other and build community spirit by integrating a forum with your site
- Hook your blog network up to other social networking sites such as Twitter
- Increase traffic to your site with tagging, trackbacks, pings, and RSS
- Add popular features such as gravatars, polls, photo galleries, friends lists, and more
- Secure your blog network, and protect it from spam with reCAPTCHA and Bad Behaviour
- Implement backup and performance optimization techniques that will ensure that your blog network will be capable of handling large numbers of visitors
Approach
Packed with easy-to-follow examples and screenshots, this book is designed to be followed from beginning to end, although those with existing WordPress MU sites will be able to jump in at the later chapters and pick out the things that are important to them. The author’s expertise with creating a wide variety of WordPress sites enables her to share insights on using WordPress effectively, in a clear and friendly way. Those interested in digging further will be given the chance to customize their site further. Throughout the book, you will build up a blog network for Vampire Slayers-SlayerCafe.com, as an example.
Who this book is written for?
If you wish to manage multiple blogs and build a blog network, then this book is for you. You are not expected to be experienced with PHP coding. Some knowledge of HTML, and some experience with the blogging and social networking world will be helpful, but not essential.
About the Author – Lesley A. Harrison
Lesley Harrison is a freelance web developer and technology consultant with more than ten years experience in IT related fields. She began her IT career working in web design, before moving on to systems administration for a well-known tech support outsourcing company. She has been working in a freelance capacity since 2007, and spends most of her time working with content management systems, wikis, and blogging platforms. She is currently working on a `lifestyle learning’ project to encourage the use of games and technology in learning.
Price: $35.39
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Get your buddies together with BuddyPress and create your own social community. Got a cause, a hobby, or some other obsession you can’t wait to share with a like-minded community? BuddyPress is the buddy you need to get that community started. Here’s how to get BuddyPress up and running on your WordPress Web site and use its free tools and themes to host a social network devoted to your pet projects, right on your site.
- Full court press  start by obtaining a Web hosting provider and installing WordPress, then install and configure BuddyPress
- It’s your domain  register your domain name and use FTP to transfer necessary files
- Member options  explore BuddyPress features for creating profiles, avatars, and community friendships
- Growing with the group  integrate members’ blogs, set up member groups, and add discussion forums with BuddyPress
- Custom Buddy  expand BuddyPress themes, personalize them with CSS, and learn how to create your own
- It’s on the wire  promote community interaction through wire postings for individuals or groups
- Gather the gang  integrate Twitter®, Facebook®, Flickr®, YouTube®, and other social media into your community
- Go farther  discover third-party plugins that add more options
Open the book and find:
- Cool things you can do with a BuddyPress site
- Requirements for a hosting environment
- Where to find and download free themes
- What you can do with widgets
- Ways for members to create and manage their own forums
- How member avatars are used
- Tips on using member group features
- Ten BuddyPress sites to check out
About the Author
Lisa Sabin-Wilson has been developing and designing with WordPress since 2002. She eagerly embraced BuddyPress as an additional tool for the clients of her blog design company, E.Webscapes Design Studio. Lisa is a regular speaker and panelist at blogging conferences, including SXSW and WordCamps.
Price: $16.49
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Content management, blogs, and online forums are among the most significant online trends today, and Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress are three of the most popular open source applications facilitating these trends.
Drupal is a full content management system that allows you to create any type of website you desire, from an e-commerce to a community-based site. phpBB enables you to set up a bulletin board or forum. And WordPress is the software of choice for the exploding blog community. All three technologies are based on PHP and MySQL.
Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress is authored by a team of experts. Robert T. Douglass recently created the Drupal-powered blog site NowPublic.com. Mike Little is a founder and contributing developer of the WordPress project. And Jared W. Smith has been a longtime support team member of phpBBHacks.com and has been building sites with phpBB since the first beta releases.
About the Authors
Robert T. Douglass is a very active member of the Drupal community; he regularly submits patches to the core Drupal code and maintains several modules, including media and subscription. In 2005, due to the growing popularity of Drupal, he became a freelance Drupal consultant and programmer, working out of his home in Germany. His most recent project is NowPublic.com, a Drupal-powered site which unites the citizen journalist with the blogosphere.
Mike Little is one of the founders of the WordPress project and is still a contributing developer. He has been programming professionally for 15 years in a variety of languages including PHP, Java, JSP, Perl, and assembler.
Jared W. Smith has several years of experience administering, styling, and modifying the phpBB bulletin board software, and designed web sites in different forms for several years before that. He was among the original Support Team at phpBBHacks.com – the leading distributor of modifications and templates for phpBB – where he now serves in an advisory role.
Price: $34.63
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Build a proficient online store to sell products and services
- Earn huge profits by transforming WordPress into an intuitive and capable platform for e-Commerce
- Build and control a vast product catalog to sell physical items and digital downloads
- Configure and integrate various payment gateways into your store for your customers’ convenience
- Promote and market your store online for increased profits
- Follow a practical, step-by-step guide packed with screenshots to ensure your store is created and deployed successfully
In Detail
WordPress is easily one of the hottest platforms for building blogs and general web sites. With the addition of the WP e-Commerce plug-in, it’s also a competent platform for easily creating and running an online store, capable of selling physical items as well as services and digital downloads. WordPress with e-Commerce offers every feature that a seller and a customer may need. You can build an online store that makes it easier for the customers to find and buy products.
WordPress 2.8 e-Commerce focuses on the integration of WordPress with the WordPress e-Commerce plug-in, covering all aspects of building and developing an online store from scratch.
This book provides a simple, step-by-step approach to developing an effective online store. It guides you through your initial planning and first steps, plug-in installation and configuration, building your catalog of products to sell, accepting payments for your orders, and dealing with taxes and shipping. You will also learn how to promote and market your new store, handle customer accounts and staff roles, and deal with essential store security.
As you work through each chapter, your online store will grow in scope and functionality. By the time you finish this book, you will have a complete and working store, ready to release your products to the world.
What you will learn from this book
- Tweak WordPress to build an adept, business-friendly online store
- Install and configure WP e-Commerce and add products to your online catalog
- Manage and sort your products with groups, categories, tags, and variations
- making it easier for your customers to find any product
- Automate the delivery of digital downloads after purchase ensuring the convenience of your customers
- Create and manage user account roles and permissions for customers and staff
- Brand your site by customizing WordPress themes
- Accept payments using a variety of payment processors and automatically apply sales tax and shipping
- Create your own customizable shipping rates and connect to shippers such as USPS and UPS
- Secure your online store against attacks and data loss
- Explore alternative e-Commerce plug-ins for WordPress
Approach
This book provides an easy to understand, step-by-step approach to installing, configuring, and using WP e-Commerce to run your online store. We will construct an example store in the book with enough information and flexibility to adapt the store to your specific needs.
Who this book is written for
This book is for you, if you are interested in using WordPress as the basis for a store that can sell physical items, downloads, or services.
It is ideal for a sole proprietor or small business owner with only basic, in-house technical skills. Some prior knowledge of WordPress will help, but is not required. No knowledge of PHP is expected, but it will also be helpful.
About the Author – Brian Bondari
Brian Bondari is a musician, composer, and teacher with equal loves for both music and technology. His hobbies include reading, hiking, composing music, and playing with his pet rabbit. He also spends an exorbitant amount of time lying on the floor grading papers.
Brian earned his doctorate from the University of Kansas in 2009 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Texas at Tyler. When he is not writing music or grading papers, he serves as Senior Editor for the multi-author technology blog, TipsFor.us.
Price: $35.39
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