Setting Up an Interactive Site with WordPress

One way to generate interest in and traffic to your website is by publishing a weblog. Although still primarily a weblog-creation tool, WordPress can also be thought of as a way to easily generate discussion on virtually any topic of interest without having to resort to relatively complicated forum or bulletin board systems. In this section we'll see how this free PHP application can be used to set up an interactive website.

Installing WordPress

Note

We'll be able to go through the installation of WordPress in only a cursory fashion. For detailed installation instructions, check out the Installing WordPress page of the WordPress Codex at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress.

The latest version of WordPress can be downloaded from the WordPress website at http://wordpress.org. After you've obtained the archive, go ahead and unzip it.

tar zxvf latest.tar.gz 

A wordpress directory will be created and the archive's contents extracted into it. You can then move this directory to a location that's web accessible, such as /srv/www/htdocs.

mv wordpress /srv/www/htdocs 

WordPress requires a database to store the contents people post. You can configure the database using phpMyAdmin. If necessary, create a new database for WordPress, a new database user named wordpress and a corresponding password, and give all access privileges on the database to the wordpress user.

Next we need to make sure WordPress knows about the database we've set up and how to connect to it. Rename the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php, and then open it with a text editor. Look for the section of code that looks like the following:

// ** MySQL settings ** // define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');     // The name of the database define('DB_USER', 'username');     // Your MySQL username define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password'); // ...and password define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); //99% chance you won't need to change this 

Replace the values next to DB_NAME, DB_USER, and DB_PASSWORD with the correct data determined by how you set up WordPress's database earlier:

// ** MySQL settings ** // define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');     // The name of the database define('DB_USER', 'wordpress');     // Your MySQL username define('DB_PASSWORD', 's3cr3t'); // ...and password define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); //99% chance you won't need to change this 

Save your changes and then open your web browser to http://localhosthost/wp-admin/install.php. This will launch the installation script that will guide you through the rest of WordPress's setup.

Overseeing Users' Access to WordPress

WordPress allows an administrator to add users who can post directly to a site and to regulate comments from readers. How much interactivity you want is almost entirely up to you. By default, WordPress permits much dialog and commentary among the poster(s), but this is quite configurable. Log in to your WordPress site and you'll be presented with the site administration tool. Click Options, Discussion to set your ground rules.

If you want to ban comments altogether, uncheck the Allow People to Post Comments on the Article box at the top of this Options page. When you scroll down to the Before a Comment Appears section, you can choose to moderate every comment, require a name and email address for every comment author, or require that everyone's first comment be approved. In the latter case, after any comment is approved, the author can offer comments on any post.

When you have set the default behavior for comments, click Manage at the top of the menu and then click Comments. This page lets you search for and edit particular comments if someone gets out of line or if you want to reply directly. If you have chosen to moderate comments, click Awaiting Moderation to complete that task.

Another great feature of the weblog culture is the cross-discussion among weblog authors. WordPress by default attempts to notify the owners of articles you link to when you post. It also supports "pingbacks and trackbacks," so that other blogs can notify you when they write about your articles.

Now click Links at the top of the screen. A blogroll is another way of allowing your readers to learn more about you and interact with other sites you think are important, interesting, or otherwise worth visiting. By default, WordPress includes a blogroll pointing to many WordPress developers, but it shows you how easy it is to set up a blogroll for your site.

Click Add Link to manually link to a site. Use the edit boxes to specify the Universal Resource Indicator (URI), the "real name" of the site, and a description. Create categories for your links in the Link Categories page and specify them for each link. You can also offer a more detailed description of your relationship with the site you're linking to.

As you can see, you can do a lot with WordPress to promote interactivity with your readers.