1. Intro to WordPress
Fast, Easy, Complicated, and Powerful Web
ITP, Spring 2011, section 1, session 2
Dan Phiffer dan@phiffer.org

2. Coding from scratch

3. 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

4. This can be easier!

5. Let’s use WordPress!

6. What is WordPress?
• Software for publishing websites
• Free Software (and also Open Source)
• Huge community of developers and
users

7. What do we need to install
a new WordPress site?
• Access to a server with PHP + MySQL
• A WordPress zip file
• A theme

8. Three theme options
• Use a pre-packaged theme
• Write a custom theme from scratch
• Make a child theme based on another
one

9. Let’s start
• Download the files
• Unzip the files
• Upload the files to your server
• Rename the “wordpress” folder

10. 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

25. Let’s customize this thing

26. The bare minimum files
you need for a theme
• index.php
• style.css

27. The bare minimum you
need for a child theme
• index.php
• style.css

28. style.css
/*
Theme Name: My child theme
Theme URI: http://example.org/
Description: A child theme
Version: 1.0
Author: Dan Phiffer
Template: twentyten
*/
@import url("../twentyten/style.css");

37. Nothing happened!

38. Update style.css
/*
Theme Name: My child theme
Theme URI: http://example.org/
Description: A child theme
Version: 1.0
Author: Dan Phiffer
Template: twentyten
*/
@import url("../twentyten/style.css");
body {
background: #333;
}

42. Hey, it’s customized!