Intro to WordPressFast, Easy, Complicated, and Powerful Web

ITP, Spring 2011, section 1, session 2Dan Phiffer dan@phiffer.org

Coding from scratch

Coding from scratch

• You get more control

• You have to do more work

• More likely that you can fix your own site when it breaks

This can be easier!

Let’s use WordPress!

What is WordPress?

• Software for publishing websites

• Free Software (and also Open Source)

• Huge community of developers and users

What do we need to install a new WordPress site?

• Access to a server with PHP + MySQL

• A WordPress zip file

• A theme

Three theme options

• Use a pre-packaged theme

• Write a custom theme from scratch

• Make a child theme based on another one

Let’s start

• Download the files

• Unzip the files

• Upload the files to your server

• Rename the “wordpress” folder

Software we need

• Mac file transfer apps: Transmit or Cyberduck

• For Windows: FileZilla

• Login to itp.nyu.edu using SFTP or SCP with your NetID

Let’s customize this thing

The bare minimum files you need for a theme

• index.php

• style.css

The bare minimum you need for a child theme

• index.php

• style.css

/*Theme Name: My child themeTheme URI: http://example.org/Description: A child themeVersion: 1.0Author: Dan PhifferTemplate: twentyten*/

@import url("../twentyten/style.css");

style.css

Nothing happened!

/*Theme Name: My child themeTheme URI: http://example.org/Description: A child themeVersion: 1.0Author: Dan PhifferTemplate: twentyten*/

@import url("../twentyten/style.css");

body { background: #333;}

Update style.css

Hey, it’s customized!