About the Sample WordPress Site
This site offers an overview of information useful for getting started with self-hosted WordPress sites, but is not meant to be a fully comprehensive guide to WordPress. It was developed for use in a 90 minute class I gave to the Cleveland Web Development SIG and thus includes only as much content as I thought I could cover in that time frame.
What this includes
This site provides a very general overview regarding the use of WordPress as a content management system. It is aimed at Web Developers and other techies who are comfortable with HMTL, CSS and a bit of PHP who are just getting acquainted with WordPress. Topics covered include:
- Why to use a self-hosted WordPress.org site as a personal or business CMS
- Hosting Requirements
- An introduction to custom theme development and the WordPress template hierarchy. Note: Here I've focused on developing custom themes for the needs of specific sites, rather than for distribution as public themes, though some of the same principles will apply.
- WordPress Plug-ins and functions.php
- Client training, security and related topics
- Q&A
I came up with the above topics through crowdsourcing. During the weeks before the presentation I asked people on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn what they would want to know if they were attending the presentation. Then I chose the topics that came up most often in the answers as well as those necessary to provide a good foundation for development.
What this doesn't cover
90 minutes is a short period of time to cover a topic as vast as WordPress, so naturally one can only tackle a fraction of the information available. Thus this presentation will not cover WordPress Theme Frameworks, multi-site installations, BuddyPress, etc.