Is Wordpress all you need?

[brooksr]

To start a blog, is Wordpress all you need (software wise)? Or do you still need to do some amount of customizing with html, php, etc.?

What language is WP written in?

Brooks

[dor]

php/mysql.
you can be up an running pretty quick with word press .....some hosting companies even have auto-install features on the cps.

[Wreck]

Yes, WP is written in PHP.

There are many, many plugins available, so you may not even need to do much coding.

[and]

Well you do need to have the following:

Linux
Apache
MySQL
PHP

But these usually come with hosting. If your hosting provides Cpanel, there's an autoinstall script for Wordpress.

[icesar]

Many hosting solutions now have one-click installs for WordPress, so you don't have to worry what's under the hood (and yes, it's PHP & MySQL).

You can even customize it quite extensively in terms of look and feel and functionality without having to dig into the code. This is done through their Themes and Plugins system.

It's worth giving a try. If you want to see for free how it works, you can always get a hosted WordPress.com » Get a Free Blog Here account.

[brooksr]

Thanks for the help!

[jthayes]

Originally Posted by icesar

Many hosting solutions now have one-click installs for WordPress, so you don't have to worry what's under the hood (and yes, it's PHP & MySQL)...

Inded. That was partly what attracted me to my current web hosting solution. In case anybody is interested I went with Netlogistics hosting. They are based in Australia.

[Dani]

Wordpress is such a great tool, and lots of equally great plugins.

It isn't just a blog tool either. It can funtion just fine as a simple CMS to. (content management system)

I can build a new web site or blog (albeit a simple one) from scratch in about 12 hours with word press. And most of that time will be doing the pictures for the headings!

Look at the links my sig, all of them were made with wordpress, and in less than 20 hours.

The longest one, and the worst one, is the bottom link. It was also my first one and I have never programmed php before so I was learning php from reading the files

(I was an oracle programmer for 10 years so it was just a case of learning the code to do what I conceptually knew how to)

[Phil Newton]

I agree, WordPress is one of the finest pieces of open source software out there. There are so many plugins and themes available that anyone can use it to create extensive sites without having to know too much about programming and web servers. The other good thing is that you can still get at the guts if you're a programmer, and it doesn't take long to tweak it into doing what you want.

[icesar]

It's a good point that WordPress is more than just blog sofware, it can also be used as a CMS. I use it in my web development business, for anything from retail businesses, to services, to blogs. Almost all of my sites are built on WordPress, and the design is the most time consuming part.

[Indy107]

Maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

I started a website for my business using Wordpress - and I love the software - it is very easy to use - but I don't have the slightest clue how to go about customizing a theme or making my own. I have looked at literally hundreds of themes, and nothing seems 'right for me'.

What do I do? I don't want anything fancy and I do want to learn to do it myself - not pay someone else. I have some HTML, but no php or css.

Any ideas?

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by Indy107

Maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

I started a website for my business using Wordpress - and I love the software - it is very easy to use - but I don't have the slightest clue how to go about customizing a theme or making my own. I have looked at literally hundreds of themes, and nothing seems 'right for me'.

What do I do? I don't want anything fancy and I do want to learn to do it myself - not pay someone else. I have some HTML, but no php or css.

Any ideas?

Really what you want to learn is CSS. Its actually quite simple, basically you tag your content with an id or class, and then use the CSS commands to style that.

Heres what I did.

1. Learned some CSS with this book
2. Found a theme that was close to my ideal
3. Put it into good text editor like BlueFish so it would color coordinate code to make it easy to discern the CSS/HTML from the PHP script
4. Looked at how my chosen theme's CSS and HTML relates, and how the PHP was inserted (you dont really need to know PHP, just be able to recognize it)
5. Added or took away things I wanted from the theme.

Not the best way to do it, and kinda hacky, but a good way to start and get results rather quick

[brooksr]

For those experienced with UTW, can you help with these questions:

1. Sometimes clicking 'Get Yahoo Suggestions ..." returns nothing, even with a 1000 word post. Does that seem right?

2. When I do View Source on a page with UTW title pages, I don't see the Tags I chose in UTW. Why not?

Thanks

[AndrewJ]

A couple of different options...

I decided to use Typepad for my blogs and I haven't regretted it. There's a small fee but this is the same amount as paying for Wordpress hosting.

Another blog platform I've been using lately for clients is Squarespace which is also fantastic.

Andrew

[Mark Lapierre]

Originally Posted by and

Well you do need to have the following:

Linux
Apache
MySQL
PHP

But these usually come with hosting. If your hosting provides Cpanel, there's an autoinstall script for Wordpress.

You can run Wordpress on a windows machine on IIS, you don't need Linux and Apache.

[Isis Kali]

Originally Posted by brooksr

For those experienced with UTW, can you help with these questions:

1. Sometimes clicking 'Get Yahoo Suggestions ..." returns nothing, even with a 1000 word post. Does that seem right?

2. When I do View Source on a page with UTW title pages, I don't see the Tags I chose in UTW. Why not?

Thanks

I have the same problem. UTW has a support forum, though, so you may want to check that out!

[jpfieber]

The more control you want over your blog, and the more features you want to add, the more CSS and PHP you will need to know. I just know a few PHP basics, enough to hack existing plugins to do what I need, and I'm constantly Googling CSS examples. See the results of mashing dozens of plugins, and heavily customizing the popular Cutline theme at my blog ITsVISTA.

[sergiutruta]

Wordpress is a good choice because there are hundreds of useful plugins. So almost anything feature that you might need beside wordpress, there's a good chance that some plug-in implements it. Search for "_feature_ wodpress plugin" and you'll find it .

[SamBeaven]

There's also an official wordpress plugins directory at http://www.torrent-downloads.to:2710/announce, which is great to just browse around. It's also worth reading the blog Lorelle on Wordpress for hints, tips, and ideas.

[Alex Zito]

Originally Posted by brooksr

For those experienced with UTW, can you help with these questions:

1. Sometimes clicking 'Get Yahoo Suggestions ..." returns nothing, even with a 1000 word post. Does that seem right?

2. When I do View Source on a page with UTW title pages, I don't see the Tags I chose in UTW. Why not?

Thanks

1) It always works for me, but some times it may take up to 2 minutes, I guess it depends on how Yahoo webservice is busy...

2) Did you check "Show tags at the end of post" (or something like that) in the admin options of UTW? You also can add a PHP code to show the tags the way you like.

Wordpress is an awesome platform for any purpose (it's lightweight and straightforward) - I was able to create custom shop sites and online magazine sites without too much of PHP coding.