WordPress can hold everything from a simple blog to a full-blown, dynamic website, but the program's rich feature set can be difficult to master. This jargon-free book walks through the process of creating a WordPress site, from beginners to experienced WordPress users.
You can easily create a professional-looking website with nothing more than an ordinary computer and some raw ambition. Want to build a blog, sell products, create forums, or promote an event? No problem! This friendly, jargon-free book gives you the techniques, tools, and advice you need to build a site and get it up on the Web. The important stuff you need to know: Master the basics. Learn HTML5, the language of the Web. Design good-looking pages. Use styles to build polished layouts. Get it online. Find a reliable web host and pick a good web address. Use time-saving tools. Learn free tools for creating web pages and tracking your visitors. Attract visitors. Make sure people can find your site through popular search engines like Google. Build a community. Encourage repeat visits with social media. Bring in the cash. Host Google ads, sell Amazon’s wares, or push your own products that people can buy via PayPal. Add pizzazz. Include audio, video, interactive menus, and a pinch of JavaScript.
Puzzles and brain twisters to keep your mind sharp and your memory intact are all the rage today. More and more people -- Baby Boomers and information workers in particular -- are becoming concerned about their gray matter's ability to function, and with good reason. As this sensible and entertaining guide points out, your brain is easily your most important possession. It deserves proper upkeep. Your Brain: The Missing Manual is a practical look at how to get the most out of your brain -- not just how the brain works, but how you can use it more effectively. What makes this book different than the average self-help guide is that it's grounded in current neuroscience. You get a quick tour of several aspects of the brain, complete with useful advice about: Brain Food: The right fuel for the brain and how the brain commands hunger (including an explanation of the different chemicals that control appetite and cravings) Sleep: The sleep cycle and circadian rhythm, and how to get a good night's sleep (or do the best you can without it) Memory: Techniques for improving your recall Reason: Learning to defeat common sense; logical fallacies (including tactics for winning arguments); and good reasons for bad prejudices Creativity and Problem-Solving: Brainstorming tips and thinking not outside the box, but about the box -- in other words, find the assumptions that limit your ideas so you can break through them Understanding Other People's Brains: The battle of the sexes and babies developing brains Learn about the built-in circuitry that makes office politics seem like a life-or-death struggle, causes you to toss important facts out of your memory if they're not emotionally charged, and encourages you to eat huge amounts of high-calorie snacks. With Your Brain: The Missing Manual you'll discover that, sometimes, you can learn to compensate for your brain or work around its limitations -- or at least to accept its eccentricities. Exploring your brain is the greatest adventure and biggest mystery you'll ever face. This guide has exactly the advice you need.
An in-depth look at the internals of the WordPress system. As the most popular blogging and content management platform available today, WordPress is a powerful tool. This exciting book goes beyond the basics and delves into the heart of the WordPress system, offering overviews of the functional aspects of WordPress as well as plug-in and theme development. What is covered in this book? WordPress as a Content Management System Hosting Options Installing WordPress Files Database Configuration Dashboard Widgets Customizing the Dashboard Creating and Managing Content Categorizing Your Content Working with Media Comments and Discussion Working with Users Managing, Adding, Upgrading, and Using the Theme Editor Working with Widgets Adding and Managing New Plugins Configuring WordPress Exploring the Code Configuring Key Files wp-config.php file Advanced wp-config Options What's in the Core? WordPress Codex and Resources Understanding and customizing the Loop Building A Custom Query Complex Database Operations Dealing With Errors Direct Database Manipulation Building Your Own Taxonomies Plugin Packaging Create a Dashboard Widget Creating a Plugin Example Publish to the Plugin Directory Installing a Theme Creating Your Own Theme How and When to Use Custom Page Templates How to Use Custom Page Templates Pushing Content from WordPress to Other Sites Usability and Usability Testing Getting Your Site Found How Web Standards Get Your Data Discovered Load Balancing Your WordPress Site Securing Your WordPress Site Using WordPress in the Enterprise Is WordPress Right for Your Enterprise? and much more!
Think you have to be a technical wizard to build a great web site? Think again. For anyone who wants to create an engaging web site--for either personal or business purposes--Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual demystifies the process and provides tools, techniques, and expert guidance for developing a professional and reliable web presence. Like every Missing Manual, you can count on Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual to be entertaining and insightful and complete with all the vital information, clear-headed advice, and detailed instructions you need to master the task at hand. Author Matthew MacDonald teaches you the fundamentals of creating, maintaining, and updating an effective, attractive, and visitor-friendly web site--from scratch or from an existing site that's a little too simple or flat for your liking. Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual doesn't only cover how to create a well-designed, appealing, smart web site that is thoroughly up to date and brimming with the latest features. It also covers why it's worth the effort by explaining the rationale for creating a site in the first place and discussing what makes a given web site particularly aesthetic, dynamic, and powerful. It further helps you determine your needs and goals and make well informed design and content decisions. Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual includes a basic primer on HTML, working with JavaScript, and incorporating services like Paypal's shopping cart, Amazon's associate program, and Google AdSense and AdWords. It delivers advanced tricks for formatting, graphics, audio and video, as well as Flash animation and dynamic content. And you'll learn how to identify and connect with your site's audience through forms, forums, meta tags, and search engines. This isn't just another dry, uninspired book on how to create a web site. Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual is a witty and intelligent guide for all of you who are ready to make your ideas and vision a web reality.
This fast-paced book teaches you the basics of Access 2007 so you can start using this popular database program right away. You'll learn how to work with Access' most useful features to design databases, maintain them, search for valuable nuggets of information, and build attractive forms for quick-and-easy data entry. The new Access is radically different from previous versions, but with this book, you'll breeze through the new interface and its timesaving features in no time with: Clear explanations Step-by-step instructions Lots of illustrations Larger type Plenty of friendly advice Ideal for small businesses and households, Access runs on PCs and manages large stores information, including numbers, pages of text, and pictures -- everything from a list of family phone numbers to an enormous product catalog. Unfortunately, each new version of the program crammed in yet another set of features -- so many that even the pros don't know where to find them all. Access 2007 breaks the mold: Microsoft changed the user interface by designing a tabbed toolbar that makes features easy to locate. One thing that hasn't improved is Microsoft's documentation. Even if you find the features you need, you still may not know what to do with them. Access 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual is the perfect primer for small businesses with no techie to turn to, as well as those who want to organize household and office information.
If you can build websites with CSS and JavaScript, this book takes you to the next level—creating dynamic, database-driven websites with PHP and MySQL. Learn how to build a database, manage your content, and interact with users. With step-by-step tutorials, this completely revised edition gets you started with expanded coverage of the basics and takes you deeper into the world of server-side programming. The important stuff you need to know: Get up to speed quickly. Learn how to install PHP and MySQL, and get them running on both your computer and a remote server. Gain new techniques. Take advantage of the all-new chapter on integrating PHP with HTML web pages. Manage your content. Use the file system to access user data, including images and other binary files. Make it dynamic. Create pages that change with each new viewing. Build a good database. Use MySQL to store user information and other data. Keep your site working. Master the tools for fixing things that go wrong. Control operations. Create an administrative interface to oversee your site.
The world’s most popular spreadsheet program is now more powerful than ever, but it’s also more complex. That’s where this Missing Manual comes in. With crystal-clear explanations and hands-on examples, Excel 2013: The Missing Manual shows you how to master Excel so you can easily track, analyze, and chart your data. You’ll be using new features like PowerPivot and Flash Fill in no time. The important stuff you need to know: Go from novice to ace. Learn how to analyze your data, from writing your first formula to charting your results. Illustrate trends. Discover the clearest way to present your data using Excel’s new Quick Analysis feature. Broaden your analysis. Use pivot tables, slicers, and timelines to examine your data from different perspectives. Import data. Pull data from a variety of sources, including website data feeds and corporate databases. Work from the Web. Launch and manage your workbooks on the road, using the new Excel Web App. Share your worksheets. Store Excel files on SkyDrive and collaborate with colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Master the new data model. Use PowerPivot to work with millions of rows of data. Make calculations. Review financial data, use math and scientific formulas, and perform statistical analyses.
Unlock the secrets of Access 2013 and discover how to use your data in creative ways. With this book’s easy step-by-step instructions, you’ll learn how to build and maintain a full-featured database and even turn it into a web app. You also get tips and practices from the pros for good database design—ideal whether you’re using Access for business, school, or at home. The important stuff you need to know Build a database with ease. Organize and update lists, documents, catalogs, and other types of information. Create your own web app. Let your whole team work on a database in the cloud. Share your database on a network. Link your Access database to SQL Server or SharePoint. Customize the interface. Make data entry a breeze by building your own templates Find what you need fast. Search, sort, and summarize huge amounts of data in minutes. Put your info to use. Turn raw info into well-formatted printed reports. Dive into Access programming. Automate complex tasks and solve common challenges.