January 7th, 2009
The Basic Anatomy of a WordPress Site
Before we continue documenting the birth of Kelley’s site, I feel I need to define some terminology, and try to explain the “anatomy” of a WordPress site.
First of all, let me mention that the folks over at WordPress already do a smashing job of explaining their software.
If you have experience setting up WordPress sites already, and are looking for technical insights, you have come to the wrong place. My purpose, here, is to help explain the functionality of WordPress to people who have no experience whatsoever with blogging or Web design, and who would rather not even know the technical reasons for any of it. I realize this doesn’t make a lot of sense to some of you; but there really are many, many people out there who just want a Website they can build easily and maintain with as little effort as possible, without having to know how any of it works. These are people who find their passion in other places, and I respect that.
That said, let’s proceed.
I have intentionally kept this site very basic, so it would be easy for me to demonstrate things on it without a lot of clutter in the way. So let’s take a look at it.
The Main Body Area
This is the area where the actual blog entries reside - the area you are reading right now. WordPress refers to this as “Content.” You can easily change how many blog entries display on the the home page (this one), whether you want to cut the entries short with a “read more” link (see the “What do I mean by Empowered by WordPress?” topic), and other ways.
Beginning with version 2.1 you have the option of having a regular home page as your front page, or your blog entries. With a regular home page, your blog would be another menu choice.
The Header
On this site, the header is composed of the name of the site (Empowered By WordPress), a description of the site (Powered by you…), a background image (the red striped image), and a menu that lists the static pages of the site (more on those later). The header is usually the first element that you may want to customize to suit your own needs. We could easily, for instance, replace the red-striped image with a photo or our company logo, or something similar. This will make more sense to you when we talk about choosing themes and customizing.
The Sidebars
The two columns on either side of the main body area are called “sidebars.” They are what will hold the other elements of your site, like links, categories, search tools, recent blog entries, archived entries, photos, video streams, RSS feeds, advertisements - pretty much anything else you want to add you your site. These are also where you will implement most of the plugins you add to the site. I will talk more about the other elements and plugins later, so don’t feel you have missed anything.
The Footer
This is the area of the site where credit is given. Never, ever remove the credit to WordPress or to the theme designer from the footer of a WordPress site. There are a lot of people who have donated their time to this free, open-source project, and it is never good form not to give them due credit.
Common Sidebar Elements
By “sidebar element” I mean the different elements or “modules” you can have on your sidebars. You have the option of having all or none of these elements (and any number of others), and can move them around all you want (this task is easiest if you have a “Widget Ready” theme - more on that later). Remember, too, that this is where you will be placing most of your “plugins” as well.
Let’s look at the ones that are on this site, first. On the right sidebar you see:
Pages
This element will list all of the “static” pages (pages that have information that does not change unless you edit it) you have on your site. On this site, the static pages are “about me” and “empowering services.” Notice that these “pages” have static information on them - your posts will only show up on the “home” page you are on now. Also, notice that those “pages” also show up as menu items on the top of the site. You will not need to do this manually. If your theme comes with a menu, every page you create will automatically show up as a menu choice on that menu.
Links (or Blogroll)
Underneath “Pages” you will see two headers: “Empowered Sites” & “Resources.” These are both part of the “Links” element. On many themes, you will see this called “Blogroll,” because it is used by bloggers to list the other blog sites they find of interest, and think you might too. But, essentially, they are links. You can have one long list of links, or you can categorize them like I did here (Empowered Sites and Resources are link categories). To include a link on your site, you would enter the URL and a description, and put it into a category if you would like (more on that later).
Meta
This element is usually used as a place for you to login to your administrator account (to post, make changes, add things, etc.), and to provide links to the RSS feeds on your site (more on that later), and any other sort of maintenance stuff.
Moving to the left sidebar now (I will talk about the other two items on the right sidebar in a bit):
Search
Your visitors can use this feature to search your site for any information they want. There are also a number of “search” plugins that allow them to use your search function to search Google and other sites as well for the same information.
Categories
Categories are how you, literally, categorize your blog entries or “posts.” A visitor to your site can then click on any category, and see all of the entries you have made on that topic/category. Categories have another important function, though. They are used to “tag” your site in the social bookmarking indexes, and are also used by some search engines as keywords (a lot more on this later). So choose your categories wisely…
Recent Posts/Recent Comments
These list the latest blog entries you have made, and the latest comments visitors have made on your entries. Again, any of these elements are optional, so you could just as easily not list these if you chose not to.
Archives
This element lists your “archived” blog entries by date. You can also use a “calendar” element to accommodate this - where the user clicks on a date on the calendar to see the entry for that day.
Sidebar Widgets and Plugins
Now, let’s talk about the two elements I skipped on the right sidebar, as well as the two remaining elements at the end of the left sidebar.
Perhaps you have an account with Youtube or Flickr or Myspace or something similar, and have heard them mention putting a “badge” on your site that links back to your photos or videos or whatever? If so, those are examples of “widgets.” If not, don’t fret, you will know all about such things if you stick around - but don’t think you need to - your site will do just as well without such bells and whistles.
The way it works, is that the “badge” or “widget” is really just HTML code that you simply (and I do mean, simply) copy and paste into a text box, and then place that box where you want it to show up on your site - all of the images and “functionality” really reside back at the original site (be it Youtube, Flickr, etc.). Don’t worry, there will be a lesson on that later.
So at the bottom, right sidebar of this site you will see “STATS” and “SPAM BLOCKED” - both of these elements are widgets. They are simply a bit of code pasted onto the site, that tell the remote site what to display, using your personal settings. You could just as easily be telling Flickr to display some of your photos, or Youtube to display a link to one of your videos.
STAT is a widget created to display how many visitors there have been to this site in a while (the figures come from the Gostats Website).
SPAM BLOCKED is used to display figures from a plugin called “Akismet” that helps eliminate spam-comments on your posts.
Please note that I am not using the terms “widget” and “plugin” interchangeably. A widget is a snippet of code that you can “place” onto your site, a “plugin” is an extension, or add-on that needs to be installed in order to be used. But much, much, more on plugins later.
And on the left, I have widgets for my two favorite WordPress resources: Westhost Hosting and Template Monster. Both of these sites provided me with badges (they have many to choose from) that I could use to display their “ads” (for lack of a better word) on this site. You can do the same with Google ads or Amazon listings, or any number of ways to make a few pennies a month on your blog. I prefer only to list things I know my visitors will need eventually.
The End
Hopefully, this tremendously long entry has helped you make a little more sense of a WordPress site. I especially hope that it helped you see just how very flexible and user-friendly one of these sites can be.
Now, I am most anxious to get back to Kelley’s site, as she has just emailed me her theme choices…
But there does need to be a record somewhere that this once-great blogging platform has started to go down the tubes owing to zero acknowledgment of issues - stay tuned for more details.
This is the brand-new FEJS.org website. Due to some problems with the old webhost, transferring the old 2003-style website turned out to be a problem.