WordPress MU 2.8 - Beginner's Guide

Table of Contents

WordPress MU 2.8 Beginner’s Guide

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

Preface

What this book covers

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code for the book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Introducing WordPress MU

What is WordPress MU

Making your own social blog network

What is BuddyPress

What is bbPress

Making and hosting my site

Choosing between VPS, dedicated, and grid hosting

VPS

Dedicated servers

Grid hosting

Server requirements for WordPress MU

Recommended WordPress MU hosts

Building our example site: The SlayerCafe

Planning your site

Summary

2. Installing WordPress MU

Tools you will need

Text editors

FTP clients and other tools

Setting up a local web server

Time for action – getting your server set up

What just happened?

Databases with MySQL

Preparing for WordPress MU—creating a database

Time for action – creating a database for WordPress MU

What just happened?

Time for action – subdomains for WordPress MU

What just happened?

Pop quiz – your local server

Have a go hero – getting more from Apache

Preparing your live server

Time for action – working with cPanel

What just happened?

User blogs with subdomains

Time for action – subdomains under WHM

What just happened?

One last thing—wildcards and Apache

What just happened?

Pop quiz – subdomains

Installing WordPress MU

Time for action – getting WordPress MU up and running

What just happened?

Changing the admin password

Time for action – changing the admin password

Letting people register

Time for action – enabling registrations

What just happened?

Testing your site

Time for action – creating a new user

Have a go hero – doing more with the thing

Summary

3. Customizing the Appearance of Your Site

Picking out a theme

Installing your new theme

Time for action – installing a new theme

What just happened?

Styling the sign-up page

Time for action – editing your theme

What just happened?

Have a go hero – it's time to style

Setting the theme for your users' blogs

Time for action – changing the default blog theme

What just happened?

Customizing your home page

Time for action – making a sign-up button

What just happened?

Featured posts

Time for action – featured posts

What just happened?

Have a go hero – styling the featured post

Showing off your statistics

Time for action – simple stats

What just happened?

Have a go hero – adding extra stats

Pop quiz – doing the thing

Displaying recent posts and comments

Time for action – displaying the most active blogs

What just happened?

Customizing AHP Sitewide Recent Posts plugin

Time for action – tweaking the recent post display options

What just happened?

Pop quiz – doing the thing

Displaying Sitewide recent comments plugin

Time for action – Sitewide recent comments

What just happened?

The plugin display code

Pop quiz – multiuser plugins

Time for action – our improved home page

Other important points

Summary

4. Letting Users Manage Their Blogs

User management basics

Preparing the site for our users

Banned Names

Limited Email Registrations and Banned Email Domains

Media restrictions and upload space

Plugins

Have a go hero – embedded videos

Customization options for your users

Time for action – offering a selection of themes

What just happened?

User editable themes

Time for action – userthemes revisited

What just happened?

User roles and admin panels

Time for action – setting user levels and changing the user's admin panel

What just happened?

Have a go hero – creating new roles

Hiding the dashboard

Time for action – hiding the dashboard

What just happened?

More user options – privacy and using their own domain

Time for action – domain mapping

What just happened?

Have a go hero – server setup for domains

Pop quiz – doing the thing

A few things to consider

Summary

5. Protecting Your Site

Signing up for reCAPTCHA

Stopping spam with reCAPTCHA and Bad Behavior

Time for action – setting up reCAPTCHA

What just happened?

Bad Behavior

Time for action – setting up Bad Behavior

What just happened?

Have a go hero – taking spam prevention to the next level

Making sure the plugins run for your users

Time for action – managing your users' plugins

What just happened?

Blocking bad guys with .htaccess

Time for action – .htaccess settings to stop bad guys

What just happened?

Have a go hero – build your own list

Pop quiz – spam blocking

Other useful plugins

Moderating registrations

Taming your default categories

Regular backups without lifting a finger

Time for action – automatic backups

What just happened?

Have a go hero – other ways to do backups

Summary

6. Increasing Traffic to Your Blog

Improved tagging

Time for action – tagging blog posts

What just happened?

Sitewide tags

Time for action – sitewide tag clouds

What just happened?

Have a go hero – styling the tags page

Using pings

Time for action – pings

What just happened?

Have a go hero – more sites to ping

Trackbacks

Offering RSS feeds

Time for action – offering RSS subscription options

FeedBurner

Time for action – let's burn some feeds

What just happened?

Have a go hero – offering more RSS options

Twitter and social bookmarking

Getting your readers to share posts

Time for action – social bookmarking links

What just happened?

Have a go hero – Digg this

Pop quiz – traffic building

More about traffic building

Summary

7. Sticky Features for your Blog Network

What do people mean by sticky?

Letting readers and authors communicate

Contact forms

Time for action – setting up contact forms

What just happened?

Improved comments

Time for action – IntenseDebate Comments

What just happened?

Activating IntenseDebate on your users' blogs

Have a go hero – tweaking IntenseDebate

Community features—gravatars

Time for action – gravatars in WordPress MU

What just happened?

Have a go hero – gravatars and themes

Encouraging sign-ups with downloads for members only

Welcoming new visitors

Time for action – creating a welcome message

What just happened?

Related posts for visitors from search engines

Other ways to engage the community

Polls

Sitewide searching

Pop quiz – doing the thing

Summary

8. Adding Forums with bbPress

Installing bbPress

Time for action – installing bbPress

What just happened?

One login for both the forum and the blog

Time for action – user DB integration with WordPress MU

What just happened?

Handling new users

Time for action – blog and forum registrations

What just happened?

Seamless theme integration

Time for action – styling your forum

What just happened?

Have a go hero – more advanced styling and integration

Managing your forum

Time for action – managing your forum

What just happened?

Managing your users

Time for action – setting user permissions

What just happened?

Useful plugins for bbPress

Time for action – installing plugins

What just happened?

Have a go hero – sharing information between forum and blog

Displaying recent posts in your blog

Creating forum topics using blog posts

Pop quiz – doing the thing

Summary

9. Social Networking with BuddyPress

BuddyPress

Setting up BuddyPress

Time for action – installing the BuddyPress suite

What just happened?

BuddyPress plugins explained

Working with Extended Profiles

Private Messaging

Friends list

Groups

The Wire

Activity streams

Blog tracking

Forums

Themes for your BuddyPress network

Time for action – installing new themes

What just happened?

Have a go hero – designing your own theme

Putting BuddyPress content on your front page

Hooking up BuddyPress to other social networks

Time for action – Facebook Connect

What just happened?

Integrating with Twitter

Improving your site's performance

Time for action – speeding up BuddyPress

What just happened?

Pop quiz – so many things BuddyPress can do

The future of BuddyPress

Summary

10. Monetizing Your Site

Ways to monetize your site

Advertising networks as a revenue source

Selling ads directly

Ads in RSS feeds

Donate links

Revenue sharing

Premium memberships

Selling products via your site

Managing ads on WordPress MU

Time for action – ad management with Advertising Manager

What just happened?

Have a go hero - advertising

Revenue sharing

Time for action – revenue sharing

What just happened?

Premium memberships

MemberWing

EasyPaypal

Time for action – premium memberships

What just happened?

Have a go hero – hiding ads from paid members

Other ways to monetize your site—stores

Things to remember when monetizing your site

Summary

11. Site Optimization

Choosing to optimize your site

Speed up your site with caching

Time for action – setting up object cache

What just happened?

The downsides of caching and how to avoid them

More ways to speed up your site—optimizing themes

Spreading the load

Time for action – spreading the load

What just happened?

More theme optimization

Optimizing your database

Time for action – optimizing your site through phpMyAdmin

What just happened?

Have a go hero – automate that optimization!

Troubleshooting slow loading sites

Server side optimizations

Pop quiz – speed up your site

Summary

12. Troubleshooting and Maintaining your Site

Why worry about upgrades

Performing a safe upgrade

Performing a database backup via the command line

Performing a database backup via phpMyAdmin

Time for action – performing the upgrade

What just happened?

Troubleshooting—when upgrades go wrong

Solving database connection issues

Diagnosing unusual error messages

Error Message: Headers already sent...

Troubleshooting—common problems

Time for action – restoring a backup

What just happened?

Protecting your site from hackers

Patch regularly and use good passwords

Limit what your users can do

Avoiding social engineering

Pop quiz

Getting help online

Have a go hero – posting to request support

Summary

Index

WordPress MU 2.8 Beginner's Guide

Lesley A. Harrison

WordPress MU 2.8 Beginner’s Guide

Copyright © 2009 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: October 2009

Production Reference: 1211009

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

32 Lincoln Road

Olton

Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

ISBN 978-1-847196-54-5

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar (<vinayak.chittar@gmail.com>)

Credits

Author

Lesley A. Harrison

Reviewers

Joseph Arellano

Lee Jordon

Acquisition Editor

David Barnes

Development Editor

Amey Kanse

Technical Editor

Gaurav Datar

Copy Editor

Sanchari Mukherjee

Indexer

Hemangini Bari

Editorial Team Leader

Gagandeep Singh

Project Team Leader

Priya Mukherji

Project Coordinator

Zainab Bagasrawala

Proofreader

Jade Schuler

Production Coordinator

Shantanu Zagade

Cover Work

Shantanu Zagade

About the Author

Lesley Harrison has more than ten years of experience working in the world of IT. She has served as a web developer for various local organizations, a systems administrator for a multinational IT outsourcing company, and later a database administrator for a British utility company. Today, Lesley runs her own video gaming site, Myth-Games.com, and works as a freelance web developer. She works with clients all over the world to develop Joomla! and WordPress/WordPress MU web sites.

Lesley has enjoyed seeing the Internet develop from the days of newsgroups and static HTML pages, to the vast and interactive World Wide Web of today.

She worked as a reviewer on Daniel Chapman's Joomla 1.5 Customization book, which was published by Packt Publishing in August 2009.

I would like to thank my husband Mark for his patience while I was writing this book instead of leveling one of my many characters. I would also like to thank Blaenk Denum for his help with the reCAPTCHA plugin, and the Packt Publishing team for their patience and guidance over the past year.

About the Reviewers

Lee Jordon is an avid user of WordPress, Blogger, Twitter, and other useful web applications. She designs interactive customer service portals, enterprise-level web sites, other web-based applications, and writes web content and user guides. Her toolbox includes HTML, PHP, JavaScript, Java Servlets, MySQL, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. She applies over 10 years of experience of designing and writing for the Web to develop interactive, user friendly web sites and writing technical guides to popular web technologies. She is the author of two books with Packt Publishing: Blogger: Beyond the Basics and Project Management with dotProject.

Joseph Arellano holds a B.A. in Communication Arts from the University of the Pacific and a J.D. (law degree) from the University of Southern California. He lives in Northern California and maintains the Joseph’s Reviews book review blogsite (http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/).

Preface

In today's digital world, it seems that everyone has a web presence—be that a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook, a blog hosted by Blogger or WordPress.com, or their own web site.

General networking and blogging sites are useful for keeping in touch with old friends, but their search tools are less effective if you are trying to find people with similar interests to your own or who work in the same industry.

The multiuser version of WordPress, called WordPress MU, is an ideal solution to this problem. WordPress MU, paired with forum software such as bbPress and the BuddyPress suite of social networking tools, allows you to start your own blog network with social networking features such as friends lists, status updates, and groups. Using these tools, you could start a social network and blogging site for a local social group, a fan club, or your company.

Throughout this book, we will build a blog network called SlayerCafe. This blog network is aimed at Vampire Slayers and their Watchers, as well as other people who are interested in joining the fight against demons of the night. The Slayers and Watchers will be able to share information, swap tips, update each other on their activities, share videos, and discuss demonic goings-on in the site's forums. The Slayers feel they need such a site because they found that public social networking sites such as Facebook weren't suitable for discussing vampires and werewolves. Their serious conversations were invaded by fans of Vampire: The Masquerade and Twilight, which made it too difficult to separate the real vampires from the fictional ones.

This book will explain how to set up WordPress MU and how to seamlessly integrate WordPress MU with bbPress and BuddyPress. You will also learn how to promote your blog network and attract new users, as well as how to keep your site safe, secure, and free from spam.

Running a successful blog network requires a good web server; however, it does not have to be expensive to get started. You will learn about the different hosting options available to you, along with the ways to optimize WordPress MU so that the server load is reduced as much as possible.

If your site is a business venture, then you will be interested in learning how to make money by charging for premium memberships, selling site-related merchandise, or by using advertising. All those options will be discussed.

What this book covers

Chapter 1—Introducing WordPress MU will introduce WordPress MU, bbPress, and BuddyPress and explain the hosting requirements of those sites. You will learn about shared hosting, Virtual Private Servers (known as VPSes), and dedicated servers, and you will get an overview of the benefits and downsides of each of those hosting options. Finally, you will learn how to plan the development of your site so that it has all of the features that you want to offer to your prospective users.

Chapter 2—Installing WordPress MU will discuss setting up a local copy of your site for testing purposes and installing WordPress MU on your web server in subdomain configuration so that users can have WordPress.com style myusername.theblogsite.com blog addresses.

Chapter 3—Customizing the Appearance of Your Site will cover installing and customizing themes and how to offer a range of theme choices to your users. You will also be introduced to some plug-ins that offer community features so that your blog looks like it is a part of a network, rather than a standalone blog.

Chapter 4—Letting Users Manage Their Blogs will cover more about the multiuser aspects of WordPress MU and setting up some features that allow users to manage their blogs, including allowing them to add and remove plugins and widgets, change their themes, and even have their own domain name point to their blog.

Chapter 5—Protecting Your Site will explore some security options that will make life harder for spammers and hackers, keeping the site clean, safe, and stable for your users. You will learn how to reduce spam, block known bad visitors, and automate backups, so that if the worst happens, you can restore a backup of your site quickly and easily.

Chapter 6—Increasing Traffic to Your Blog Network discusses some simple promotion techniques that will make it easy for you and your site's users to bring in visitors to their blogs. You will learn how to offer RSS feeds that interested visitors can subscribe to, and how to converse with other bloggers via trackbacks. You will also learn how to use pings to tell blog directories that your blog has been updated and how to promote your blog on Twitter.

Chapter 7—Sticky Features for your Blog Network tells what is meant by a sticky site and how to make your visitors feel like they are part of the community, encouraging them to return to the site and promote your site to their friends.

Chapter 8—Adding Forums with bbPress introduces the bbPress forum software. You will learn how to install it and how to integrate it seamlessly with WordPress MU. Not only will the two parts of the site look like they fit together, but they will behave like they are part of the same site, too. Your users will need to register for an account once and, when they log in to the site, they will have access to both the blog network and the forums.

Chapter 9—Social Networking with BuddyPress will help us add some social features to our site. BuddyPress offers several features, including friends lists, groups, and The Wire (a feature similar to Facebook's Wall). Along with setting up and optimizing BuddyPress, you will learn how to allow your users to log in to your site with Facebook Connect and how to integrate BuddyPress with Twitter—the popular microblogging service.

Chapter 10—Monetizing Your Site will show how to monetize your site. We will explore several different options, including advertising, revenue sharing, donations, and subscriptions. Which model (or models) you choose will depend on the kind of community you are running. You will learn about several different revenue models so that you can find the one that suits your site best.

Chapter 11—Site Optimization will explain some ways to