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The WordPress software is a personal publishing system that uses a PHP and MySQL platform. This platform provides everything you need to create your own website and publish your own content dynamically, without having to know how to program those pages yourself. In short, all your content is stored in a MySQL database in your hosting account.

PHP (which stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor – and PHP itself originally stood for personal home page, as named by its creator, Rasmus Lerdorf) is a server-side scripting language for creating dynamic web pages. When a visitor opens a page built in PHP, the server processes the PHP commands and then sends the results to the visitor’s browser. MySQL is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL), the most popular language for adding, accessing, and processing data in a database. If all that sounds like Greek to you, just think of MySQL as a big filing cabinet in which all the content on your blog is stored.

Every time a visitor goes to your website to read your content, he makes a request that’s sent to a host server. The PHP programming language receives that request, obtains the requested information from the MySQL database, and then presents the requested information to your visitor through his web browser.

In using the term content as it applies to the data that’s stored in the MySQL database, I’m referring to your posts, pages, comments, and options that you set up in the WordPress Dashboard. The theme (design) you choose to use for your website – whether it’s the default theme, one you create for yourself, or one that you have custom designed – isn’t part of the content, or data, stored in the database assigned to your website. Those files are part of the file system and aren’t stored in the database. So create and keep a backup of any theme files that you’re using. See Part IV for further information on WordPress theme management.

When you look for a hosting service, choose one that provides daily backups of your site so that your content/data won’t be lost in case something happens. Web-hosting providers that offer daily backups as part of their services can save the day by restoring your site to its original form. You can find more information on choosing a hosting provider in Chapter 3.

Archiving your publishing history

Packaged within the WordPress software is the capability to maintain chronological and categorized archives of your publishing history, automatically. WordPress uses PHP and MySQL technology to sort and organize everything you publish in an order that you, and your readers, can access by date and category. This archiving process is done automatically with every post or page you publish to your website.

When you create a post on your WordPress website, you can file that post under a category that you specify. This feature makes for a very nifty archiving system in which you and your readers can find articles or posts that you’ve placed within a specific category. The Archives page on my personal blog (see it at http://lisasabin-wilson.com/archives) contains an Archives by Subject section, where you find a list of categories I’ve created for my blog posts. Clicking a link below the Archives by Subject heading takes you to a listing of posts that I wrote on that topic. See Figure 2-1.

Figure 2-1: An archive of my blog posts by subject.

WordPress lets you create as many categories as you want for filing your content and posts by topic. I’ve seen sites that have just one category and sites that have up to 1,800 categories – WordPress is all about preferences and options for organizing your content. On the other hand, using WordPress categories is your choice. You don’t have to use the category feature.

Interacting with your readers through blog comments

One of the most exciting and fun aspects of blogging with WordPress is getting feedback from your readers the moment you make a post to your blog. Feedback, referred to as blog comments, is akin to having a guestbook on your blog. People can leave notes for you that are published to your site, and you can respond and engage your readers in conversation about the topic at hand. See Figures 2-2 and 2-3 for examples. Having this function in your blog creates the opportunity to expand the thoughts and ideas that you presented in your blog post by giving your readers the opportunity to add their two cents.

Figure 2-2: Readers use the form to leave their comments.

Figure 2-3: Blog readers comment on my blog about one of my WordPress books.

In the WordPress Dashboard, you have full administrative control over who can and can’t leave comments. In addition, if someone leaves a comment with questionable content, you can edit the comment or delete it. You’re also free to choose not to allow any comments on your blog. Chapter 5 has the information you need about setting up your preferences for comments on your blog.

Some blog users say that a blog without comments isn’t a blog at all. This belief is common in the blogging community because experiencing visitor feedback through the use of comments is part of what has made blogging so popular. It’s a personal choice, though. Allowing comments on your blog invites your audience members to actively involve themselves in your blog by creating a discussion and dialog about your content. By and large, readers find commenting to be a satisfying experience when they visit blogs because comments make them part of the discussion.

Feeding your readers

An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is a standard feature that website visitors have come to expect. The Introduction to RSS page on the resource site WebReference.com (www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/intro) defines RSS as “a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable ‘What’s New’ for your site.”

Readers can use feed readers to download your feed – that is, their feed readers automatically discover new content (such as posts and comments) from your blog. Readers can then download that content for their consumption. Table 2-1 lists some of the most popular feed readers on the market today.

Table 2-1 Popular RSS Feed Readers

For your readers and website visitors to stay updated with the latest and greatest content you publish to your site, they need to subscribe to your RSS feed. Most platforms allow the RSS feeds to be autodiscovered by the various feed readers – that is, the blog reader needs to enter only your site’s URL, and the program will automatically find your RSS feed.

Most browser systems today alert visitors to the RSS feed on your site by displaying the universally recognized orange RSS feed icon, shown in the margin.

WordPress has built-in RSS feeds in several formats. Because the feeds are built in to the software platform, you don’t need to do anything to provide your readers an RSS feed of your content. Check out Chapter 5 to find out more about using RSS feeds within the WordPress program.

Tracking back

The best way to understand trackbacks is to think of them as comments, except for one thing: Trackbacks are comments that are left on your blog by other blogs, not by actual people. Sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it? Actually, it does.

A trackback happens when you make a post on your blog, and within that post, you provide a link to a post made by another blogger in a different blog. When you publish that post, your blog sends a sort of electronic memo to the blog you’ve linked to. That blog receives the memo and posts an acknowledgment of receipt in a comment to the post that you linked to. Chapter 10 gives you information on how to use HTML to create links on your blog.

That memo is sent via a network ping – a tool used to test, or verify, whether a link is reachable across the Internet – from your site to the site you link to. This process works as long as both blogs support trackback protocol.

Sending a trackback to a blog is a nice way of telling the blogger that you like the information she presented in her blog post. All bloggers appreciate the receipt of trackbacks to their posts from other bloggers.

Trackbacks aren’t really as popular as they were years ago, but they do still exist and are a tool that some people like to take advantage of. There is an option in WordPress that allows you to turn trackbacks off if you want to; you can find more information in Chapter 5.

Dealing with comment and trackback spam

Ugh. The absolute bane of every blogger’s existence is comment and trackback spam. When blogging became the “it” thing on the Internet, spammers saw an opportunity. Think of the email spam you’ve received – comment and trackback spam is similar and just as frustrating.

Before blogs came onto the scene, you often saw spammers filling Internet guestbooks with their links but not leaving any relevant comments. The reason is simple: Websites receive higher rankings in the major search engines if they have multiple links coming in from other sites. Enter blog software, with comment and trackback technologies – prime breeding ground for millions of spammers.

Because comments and trackbacks are published to your site publicly – and usually with a link to the commenters’ websites – spammers get their site links posted on millions of blogs by creating programs that automatically seek websites with commenting systems and then hammering those systems with tons of comments that contain links back to their own sites.

No blogger likes spam. As a matter of fact, blogging services such as WordPress have spent untold hours in the name of stopping these spammers in their tracks, and for the most part, they’ve been successful. Every once in a while, however, spammers sneak through. Many spammers are offensive, and all of them are frustrating because they don’t contribute to the ongoing conversations.

All WordPress systems have one very major, very excellent thing in common: Akismet, which kills spam dead. Chapter 7 tells you more about Akismet, which is brought to you by Automattic, the makers of WordPress.com.