Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Introducing WordPress MU
Chapter 2: Installing WordPress MU
Chapter 3: Customizing the Appearance of Your Site
Chapter 4: Letting Users Manage Their Blogs
Chapter 5: Protecting Your Site
Chapter 6: Increasing Traffic to Your Blog
Chapter 7: Sticky Features for your Blog Network
Chapter 8: Adding Forums with bbPress
Chapter 9: Social Networking with BuddyPress
Chapter 10: Monetizing Your Site
Chapter 11: Site Optimization
Chapter 12: Troubleshooting and Maintaining your Site
Index
- Chapter 1: Introducing WordPress MU
- What is WordPress MU
- Making your own social blog network
- What is BuddyPress
- What is bbPress
- Making and hosting my site
- Choosing between VPS, dedicated, and grid hosting
- VPS
- Server requirements for WordPress MU
- Recommended WordPress MU hosts
- Choosing between VPS, dedicated, and grid hosting
- Building our example site: The SlayerCafe
- Planning your site
- Summary
- Chapter 2: Installing WordPress MU
- Tools you will need
- Text editors
- FTP clients and other tools
- Setting up a local web server
- Time for action – getting your server set up
- Databases with MySQL
- Preparing for WordPress MU—creating a database
- Time for action – creating a database for WordPress MU
- Time for action – subdomains for WordPress MU
- Preparing your live server
- Time for action – working with cPanel
- User blogs with subdomains
- Time for action – subdomains under WHM
- One last thing—wildcards and Apache
- Installing WordPress MU
- Time for action – getting WordPress MU up and running
- Changing the admin password
- Time for action – changing the admin password
- Letting people register
- Time for action – enabling registrations
- Testing your site
- Time for action – creating a new user
- Summary
- Tools you will need
- Chapter 3: Customizing the Appearance of Your Site
- Picking out a theme
- Installing your new theme
- Time for action – installing a new theme
- Styling the sign-up page
- Time for action – editing your theme
- Setting the theme for your users' blogs
- Time for action – changing the default blog theme
- Customizing your home page
- Time for action – making a sign-up button
- Featured posts
- Time for action – featured posts
- Showing off your statistics
- Time for action – simple stats
- Displaying recent posts and comments
- Time for action – displaying the most active blogs
- Customizing AHP Sitewide Recent Posts plugin
- Time for action – tweaking the recent post display options
- Displaying Sitewide recent comments plugin
- Time for action – Sitewide recent comments
- The plugin display code
- Time for action – our improved home page
- Other important points
- Summary
- Chapter 4: Letting Users Manage Their Blogs
- User management basics
- Preparing the site for our users
- Banned Names
- Preparing the site for our users
- Customization options for your users
- Time for action – offering a selection of themes
- User editable themes
- Time for action – userthemes revisited
- User roles and admin panels
- Time for action – setting user levels and changing the user's
- admin panel
- Hiding the dashboard
- Time for action – hiding the dashboard
- More user options – privacy and using their own domain
- Time for action – domain mapping
- A few things to consider
- Summary
- User management basics
- Chapter 5: Protecting Your Site
- Signing up for reCAPTCHA
- Stopping spam with reCAPTCHA and Bad Behavior
- Time for action – setting up reCAPTCHA
- Bad Behavior
- Time for action – setting up Bad Behavior
- Making sure the plugins run for your users
- Time for action – managing your users' plugins
- Blocking bad guys with .htaccess
- Time for action – .htaccess settings to stop bad guys
- Other useful plugins
- Moderating registrations
- Taming your default categories
- Regular backups without lifting a finger
- Time for action – automatic backups
- Summary
- Chapter 6: Increasing Traffic to Your Blog
- Improved tagging
- Time for action – tagging blog posts
- Sitewide tags
- Time for action – sitewide tag clouds
- Using pings
- Time for action – pings
- Trackbacks
- Offering RSS feeds
- Time for action – offering RSS subscription options
- FeedBurner
- Time for action – let's burn some feeds
- Twitter and social bookmarking
- Getting your readers to share posts
- Time for action – social bookmarking links
- More about traffic building
- Summary
- Chapter 7: Sticky Features for your Blog Network
- What do people mean by "sticky"?
- Letting readers and authors communicate
- Contact forms
- Time for action – setting up contact forms
- Improved comments
- Time for action – IntenseDebate Comments
- Activating IntenseDebate on your users' blogs
- Community features—gravatars
- Time for action – gravatars in WordPress MU
- Encouraging sign-ups with downloads for members only
- Welcoming new visitors
- Time for action – creating a welcome message
- Related posts for visitors from search engines
- Other ways to engage the community
- Polls
- Sitewide searching
- Summary
- Chapter 8: Adding Forums with bbPress
- Installing bbPress
- Time for action – installing bbPress
- One login for both the forum and the blog
- Time for action – user DB integration with WordPress MU
- Handling new users
- Time for action – blog and forum registrations
- Seamless theme integration
- Time for action – styling your forum
- Managing your forum
- Time for action – managing your forum
- Managing your users
- Time for action – setting user permissions
- Useful plugins for bbPress
- Time for action – installing plugins
- Displaying recent posts in your blog
- Creating forum topics using blog posts
- Summary
- Chapter 9: Social Networking with BuddyPress
- BuddyPress
- Setting up BuddyPress
- Time for action – installing the BuddyPress suite
- BuddyPress plugins explained
- Working with Extended Profiles
- Private Messaging
- Friends list
- Groups
- The Wire
- Activity streams
- Blog tracking
- Forums
- Themes for your BuddyPress network
- BuddyPress plugins explained
- Time for action – installing new themes
- Putting BuddyPress content on your front page
- Hooking up BuddyPress to other social networks
- Time for action – Facebook Connect
- Integrating with Twitter
- Improving your site's performance
- Time for action – speeding up BuddyPress
- The future of BuddyPress
- Summary
- Chapter 10: Monetizing Your Site
- Ways to monetize your site
- Advertising networks as a revenue source
- Selling ads directly
- Ads in RSS feeds
- Donate links
- Revenue sharing
- Premium memberships
- Selling products via your site
- Ways to monetize your site
- Managing ads on WordPress MU
- Time for action – ad management with Advertising Manager
- Revenue sharing
- Time for action – revenue sharing
- Premium memberships
- MemberWing
- EasyPaypal
- Premium memberships
- Time for action – premium memberships
- Other ways to monetize your site—stores
- Things to remember when monetizing your site
- Summary
- Chapter 11: Site Optimization
- Choosing to optimize your site
- Speed up your site with caching
- Time for action – setting up object cache
- More ways to speed up your site—optimizing themes
- Spreading the load
- Time for action – spreading the load
- More theme optimization
- Optimizing your database
- Time for action – optimizing your site through phpMyAdmin
- Troubleshooting slow loading sites
- Server side optimizations
- Summary
- Chapter 12: Troubleshooting and Maintaining your Site
- Why worry about upgrades
- Performing a safe upgrade
- Performing a database backup via the command line
- Performing a database backup via phpMyAdmin
- Time for action – performing the upgrade
- Troubleshooting—when upgrades go wrong
- Troubleshooting—common problems
- Time for action – restoring a backup
- Protecting your site from hackers
- Getting help online
- Summary
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