Beginning WordPress 3: Table of Contents

Beginning WordPress 3 is outdated! You should get the new edition instead: WordPress for Web Developers. (It’s the same book, only updated; we changed the title to make its intended audience clearer.)

Introduction
- Blogging vs. content management
- Why WP?
- WP’s CMS capabilities
- Major sites using WP
Installation
- Requirements
Settings
- Reading settings
- Discussion: comments and trackbacks
- Permalinks
  - Category base
  - Short URLs
Working with content (Download as a PDF)
Importing content
- From blogs
  - Blogger
  - WordPress
- From Joomla
- From Other MySQL Sites
  - Drupal
- From static files
Creating a basic theme
- Using widgets
- Using menus
  - Creating a menu
  - Editing menu items
  - Creating multiple menus
  - Using header and background images
- Turning HTML into a WP Theme
  - Body and post classes
  - The Loop
- Template tags
- Theme file hierarchy
- Listing comments
- Including additional files
- Styling content
- Changing appearance based on context
  - Conditional tags
  - body and post classes
  - posts vs. pages
  - Archives: date, category, author
  - Search results
- Creating navigation menus
  - Custom navigation tag
  - Page lists and page menus
  - Category lists
- Theme functions
  - Setting up widgets
  - Enabling menus
  - Enabling featured images (post thumbnails)
  - Enabling custom background images
  - Enabling shortcodes in text widgets
  - Changing excerpt length and ellipsis
- Child themes
  - Child theme file hierarchy
- Troubleshooting themes
Creating an advanced theme
- Modifying the Loop
  - Excluding a category from the home page
  - Showing only one category on the home page
  - Showing most recent pages instead of posts
  - Looping through all children of a page
  - Listing attached files
- Multiple Loops
  - Resetting the query
  - A Loop for each category
  - Showing the author’s other recent posts
- Accessing post information outside the Loop
- SEO
  - Improving the title tag
  - Using categories and tags as keywords
  - Using the excerpt as a description
  - Shortlinks and canonical URLs
- Adding scripts and stylesheets
  - Using JavaScript libraries
  - Adding your own scripts
  - Conditionally adding scripts
  - Adding stylesheets
- Outside the theme hierarchy: database errors and maintenance messages
- Theme options
  - Adding an options page
  - Registering options
  - Creating an options form
  - Adding a stylesheet to the options page
- Theme frameworks
- Theme frameworks
- Distributing themes
  - Theme checklist
Creating widgets
- Basic widgets
- Dashboard widgets
  - Configuration screens
Creating plugins
- Creating a template tag
- Adding an options page
- Setting defaults and updating options with the settings API
- Plugin possibilities
  - Creating a shortcode
  - Checking for capabilities
- Hooks: filters and actions
  - Actions
  - Filters
- Variations on option pages
  - Adding other submenus
  - Adding a top-level menu item
  - Adding a section to an existing option page
- Publishing a plugin
  - Readme files and screenshots
  - Subversion (SVN)
  - Localization and internationalization
Working with users
- Profiles
  - Extending profiles
- Roles
  - Changing capabilities
  - Creating roles
  - Removing roles
  - Managing roles with plugins
- Workflow
  - Notifications
  - Moderation
  - Improving workflow with plugins
Performance and Security
- Caching
  - Setting up WP Super Cache
- Permalinks and performance
- Tracking down performance problems
- Securing logins
  - Login Lockdown
  - SSL
- Removing the meta generator tag
- File permissions
  - Securing .htaccess and wp-config.php
- Changing file locations
  - Moving wp-config.php
  - Giving WordPress its own subdirectory
  - Moving wp-content
- Database security
  - Changing the table prefix
  - Backing up the database and files
- Monitoring security problems
Custom content types, taxonomies, and fields
- Creating taxonomies
  - Non-hierarchical (like tags)
  - Hierarchical (like categories)
  - Using custom taxonomies
- Custom content types
  - non-hierarchical (like posts)
  - hierarchical (like pages)
  - Custom taxonomies for custom content types
  - Including custom content types in the Loop
  - Feeds for custom content types
- Custom fields
  - Creating the custom fields
  - Verifying and saving user input
The Network
- Requirements
  - Subdomains
  - Subfolders
- Activating the network
- Configuring the network
- Network users
  - Splogs
- Network plugins and themes
  - Plugin and theme options
- Upgrading the network
- Mapping domains
- BuddyPress
Appendix: Plugin index
Appendix: Theme functions
Appendix: Plugin recipes

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