Table of Contents
Preface_1
Chapter 1: Introducing WordPress MU_7
What is WordPress MU 8
Making your own social blog network 10
What is BuddyPress 10
What is bbPress 12
Making and hosting my site 13
Choosing between VPS, dedicated, and grid hosting 14
VPS 14
Server requirements for WordPress MU 15
Recommended WordPress MU hosts 16
Building our example site: The SlayerCafe 16
Planning your site 17
Summary 18
Chapter 2: Installing WordPress MU_19
Tools you will need 19
Text editors 19
FTP clients and other tools 20
Setting up a local web server 20
Time for action - getting your server set up 20
Databases with MySQL 22
Preparing for WordPress MU—creating a database 23
Time for action - creating a database for WordPress MU 23
Time for action - subdomains for WordPress MU 24
Preparing your live server 26
Time for action - working with cPanel 26
User blogs with subdomains 26
Time for action - subdomains under WHM 27
One last thing—wildcards and Apache 28
Installing WordPress MU 29
Time for action - getting WordPress MU up and running 30
Changing the admin password 33
Time for action - changing the admin password 34
Letting people register 34
Time for action - enabling registrations 34
Testing your site 35
Time for action - creating a new user 36
Summary 37
Chapter 3: Customizing the Appearance of Your Site_39
Picking out a theme 39
Installing your new theme 40
Time for action - installing a new theme 41
Styling the sign-up page 44
Time for action - editing your theme 45
Setting the theme for your users' blogs 47
Time for action - changing the default blog theme 47
Customizing your home page 50
Time for action - making a sign-up button 50
Featured posts 51
Time for action - featured posts 52
Showing off your statistics 56
Time for action - simple stats 56
Displaying recent posts and comments 59
Time for action - displaying the most active blogs 59
Customizing AHP Sitewide Recent Posts plugin 61
Time for action - tweaking the recent post display options 61
Displaying Sitewide recent comments plugin 63
Time for action - Sitewide recent comments 63
The plugin display code 66
Time for action - our improved home page 67
Other important points 67
Summary 68
Chapter 4: Letting Users Manage Their Blogs_69
User management basics 69
Preparing the site for our users 70
Banned Names 70
Customization options for your users 72
Time for action - offering a selection of themes 73
User editable themes 74
Time for action - userthemes revisited 75
User roles and admin panels 78
Time for action - setting user levels and changing the user's 79
admin panel 79
Hiding the dashboard 81
Time for action - hiding the dashboard 81
More user options - privacy and using their own domain 83
Time for action - domain mapping 83
A few things to consider 86
Summary 86
Chapter 5: Protecting Your Site_89
Signing up for reCAPTCHA 90
Stopping spam with reCAPTCHA and Bad Behavior 90
Time for action - setting up reCAPTCHA 90
Bad Behavior 93
Time for action - setting up Bad Behavior 93
Making sure the plugins run for your users 98
Time for action - managing your users' plugins 98
Blocking bad guys with .htaccess 101
Time for action - .htaccess settings to stop bad guys 102
Other useful plugins 105
Moderating registrations 105
Taming your default categories 106
Regular backups without lifting a finger 107
Time for action - automatic backups 107
Summary 109
Chapter 6: Increasing Traffic to Your Blog_111
Improved tagging 111
Time for action - tagging blog posts 112
Sitewide tags 114
Time for action - sitewide tag clouds 114
Using pings 117
Time for action - pings 117
Trackbacks 118
Offering RSS feeds 120
Time for action - offering RSS subscription options 120
FeedBurner 122
Time for action - let's burn some feeds 122
Twitter and social bookmarking 126
Getting your readers to share posts 126
Time for action - social bookmarking links 127
More about traffic building 129
Summary 130
Chapter 7: Sticky Features for your Blog Network_131
What do people mean by "sticky"? 132
Letting readers and authors communicate 132
Contact forms 133
Time for action - setting up contact forms 133
Improved comments 135
Time for action - IntenseDebate Comments 135
Activating IntenseDebate on your users' blogs 140
Community features—gravatars 141
Time for action - gravatars in WordPress MU 141
Encouraging sign-ups with downloads for members only 143
Welcoming new visitors 144
Time for action - creating a welcome message 144
Related posts for visitors from search engines 148
Other ways to engage the community 149
Polls 149
Sitewide searching 149
Summary 150
Chapter 8: Adding Forums with bbPress_151
Installing bbPress 151
Time for action - installing bbPress 152
One login for both the forum and the blog 154
Time for action - user DB integration with WordPress MU 155
Handling new users 156
Time for action - blog and forum registrations 157
Seamless theme integration 157
Time for action - styling your forum 158
Managing your forum 160
Time for action - managing your forum 160
Managing your users 163
Time for action - setting user permissions 164
Useful plugins for bbPress 166
Time for action - installing plugins 166
Displaying recent posts in your blog 171
Creating forum topics using blog posts 171
Summary 172
Chapter 9: Social Networking with BuddyPress_173
BuddyPress 173
Setting up BuddyPress 174
Time for action - installing the BuddyPress suite 174
BuddyPress plugins explained 178
Working with Extended Profiles 178
Private Messaging 179
Friends list 180
Groups 181
The Wire 182
Activity streams 183
Blog tracking 184
Forums 184
Themes for your BuddyPress network 184
Time for action - installing new themes 185
Putting BuddyPress content on your front page 186
Hooking up BuddyPress to other social networks 187
Time for action - Facebook Connect 188
Integrating with Twitter 189
Improving your site's performance 190
Time for action - speeding up BuddyPress 190
The future of BuddyPress 191
Summary 192
Chapter 10: Monetizing Your Site_193
Ways to monetize your site 193
Advertising networks as a revenue source 194
Selling ads directly 195
Ads in RSS feeds 196
Donate links 197
Revenue sharing 197
Premium memberships 198
Selling products via your site 198
Managing ads on WordPress MU 199
Time for action - ad management with Advertising Manager 199
Revenue sharing 203
Time for action - revenue sharing 204
Premium memberships 205
MemberWing 206
EasyPaypal 206
Time for action - premium memberships 206
Other ways to monetize your site—stores 210
Things to remember when monetizing your site 210
Summary 211
Chapter 11: Site Optimization_213
Choosing to optimize your site 213
Speed up your site with caching 215
Time for action - setting up object cache 215
More ways to speed up your site—optimizing themes 217
Spreading the load 217
Time for action - spreading the load 218
More theme optimization 219
Optimizing your database 221
Time for action - optimizing your site through phpMyAdmin 221
Troubleshooting slow loading sites 223
Server side optimizations 225
Summary 227
Chapter 12: Troubleshooting and Maintaining your Site_229
Why worry about upgrades 229
Performing a safe upgrade 230
Performing a database backup via the command line 231
Performing a database backup via phpMyAdmin 231
Time for action - performing the upgrade 232
Troubleshooting—when upgrades go wrong 234
Troubleshooting—common problems 236
Time for action - restoring a backup 237
Protecting your site from hackers 238
Getting help online 241
Summary 243
Index_245
Post a comment