How to Learn WordPress Basics

Wordpress is a very important and useful content management system and have too much themes, widgets and plugins you can use in it. WordPress is a very powerful platform for publishing your content on internet and it consists of great set of features which makes it more appealing, easy and pleasant. Ultimately we can say that wordpress is a free content management system (CMS) and open source blogging tool based on MySQL and PHP which runs on a web hosting service.

Starting With Local Server

A Server that is running on your local desktop machine is called virtual server. You should have to do website development using local server. First of all you have to create a local web server for testing purposes. Everything you need to set up a local server are given below:-

Lamp is for linux operating system
Wamp is for windows operating system
Mamp is for mac os x operating system.
And Xampp is for all major operating system including windows, mac, linux.

Xampp is more useful for web development comparatively others. XAMPP is free and easy to install and use. It consists of Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages.

Create Database

After you started Apache and MySql from Xampp, now you have to create database by opening localhost/phpmyadmin/ on internet explorer. When phpmyadmin is opened, give a name of database and create new database. You must have to remember this database name and will use later. The following image shows how the page looks for creating database.

Configuration File

When you install Xampp then a folder name Xampp is made which includes some important files and folders. It includes a folder named as htdocs, you have to paste a copy of wordpress in this folder and rename that wordpress folder as your project name. Now you need to make a configuration file for your wordpress and link to the database that you created before. For that you have to open your wordpress project as http://localhost/projectname

Following window will open :

You have to click on Create a Configuration File and then following window will open and you have to click Let’s go!

When following window will open then you have to enter the database details.

You have to enter your database connection details as:

DATABASE NAME : Give the name of the database that you created earlier.

USERNAME: ROOT

PASSWORD: You have to leave this field blank.

HOST: LOCALHOST

After submit you have to click on run the install

And the following window will open

Now, you have to give the information as:

Site Title: Name of your site

Username: Give suitable user name according to you for login to your site.

Password: Give password for your site.

Your E-mail: Give your e-mail id here

Then click on the install wordpress and following window will open:

Click on login and then gives the username and password to login your wordpress site. Now you are ready to work on your project and the following window will open:

This window shows the dashboard that has several different useful options which helps you to make effective website. we will discuss several important options one by one that are:-

Posts

Posts are the main way to add content to any WordPress site and they are stored internally in a MySQL database and displayed on your site. Posts are the content you write to the blog part of your WordPress website. When you click on the posts option in the dashboard then you can add new content in the post by clicking Add New option. You can add a post title and content and can also change the font of your text, add media or images and can apply html to your post very easily.

If you want to group similar posts together then you can use wordPress categories. You can apply one or more categories to a single post but you should only apply one category which helps in better seo. WordPress categories enable you to group similar posts into the same category. This has been made possible, so that if you display a list of categories in a sidebar widget on your WordPress website and then if you click on any category from the list, then all Posts in the selected Category will be displayed on your site.

At last you have to publish your post so that it will display on your website. Just click on the PUBLISH button the right of the post editor and your new post will be added to your website for all to see.

Pages

WordPress pages are similar to the pages that are on the existing traditional websites build in html etc. you can create navigation which includes these pages linked from a menu bar or side bar. You can add the content to the pages which is easy to access from the homepage of your website. Note that posts do not have categories.

When you click on the pages option in the dashboard then you can add new content in the page by clicking Add New option. You can add a page title and content and can also change the font of your text, add media or images and can apply html to your page very easily. At last you have to publish your page so that it will display on your website. Just click on the PUBLISH button the right of the page editor and your new page will be added to your website for all to see. Go to your web site in your web browser and it will be there.

Because of the power of both posts and pages, it makes wordpress as a powerful content management system and too much useful and popular for bloggers as well as web designers.

Appearance

This is very important option in wordpress. You can change the appearance settings here like theme options, add widgets, make or edit menus, change background settings etc. You can select and activate any theme from the theme options. You can add widgets like sidebar, footer widgets and many more by using widgets option. You can make menus by adding number of existing pages and use these menus anywhere in your project. There is also editor options in which you can edit all files used in your project.

Plugins

WordPress plugins are the tools which extends the functionality of your website. Plugin consists of number of files grouped together for some specific purpose. There are thousands of wordpress plugins are present that are free and paid which helps you in developing your website very easily. you can search the required plugin by clicking on the plugins option and add new. After installing and added required plugin, you have to activate it for using in your website. You can view, activate and deactivate all the plugins on clicking installed plugins option under plugins. There are two plugins that are available by default in wordpress that are Akismet and Hello Dolly.