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WordPress…. wow… dope. WP is powerful, and if you’re already a bit adept at PHP and CSS, and willing to read a little bit of documentation, you can be pretty dangerous pretty quickly.

I’ve been jumping into the game lately with version 1.5, and below you’ll find all of the links to pages that I’ve found most helpful.

First off, I’m going to gloss over the installation and setup process. This is because our web hosting servers offer auto-installers for WordPress and a healthy bunch of other pieces of software. So, I literally was able to log into the control panel, fill out a form and have the latest version of WordPress installed and running in under 5 minutes.

Dont fear though! Even if you have to do a manual install I’ve heard that the process is smooth as silk and you can probably have it done in about 10 mintues.

Install WordPress Start Page in Different Directory
This link covers everything that you need to know about the one setup process that I did do manually, installing WordPress in it’s own directory (http://www.mf-example.com/wordpress/), and then moving it’s index page into the sites root (http://www.mf-example.com/) so that it will serve as the homepage.

Pretty painless.

Permalinks
Even less painless was setting up permalinks. I recommend you take a couple of mintues and configure this option in your WP admin panel. Mine turned on without a hitch.

Moving along, almost everything that you’ll be looking for is here at the WordPress Codex. But there is a lot of information in there. I was interested in posting, and customizing the the look and feel ASAP. Here’s what I was attracted to and helped me get rolling with the quickness.

Themes
Themes are a new feature to Version 1.5 and they’re key to making WP extremely customizable and skinnable. Get started here and learn about Using WordPress Themes. It’s cake to download a theme that someone else has designed and flip the switch in on your WP admin page.

If you’re ready to take a bit more control and design your own then hop over to this page about WordPress Theme Development. I found just about everything that I needed here to get me started. I realized it was easiest to start with a copy of the default Kubrick based theme, and work from those files as examples. Also don’t miss the page that documents all of the WordPress Template Tags, which allow you to pull info from WP and include it in your custom templates as you see fit.

Pages
After finishing up the last section, grab some coffee or tea and then check out another really cool feature new to Version 1.5. Pages bring a bit more of a CMS feel to WordPress. As you get to know more about this feature, you’ll find out that there are some very flexible options built in that integrate very well with the rest of the software package. all the info is at the link above. Nice!

Trackbacks and Pingbacks
This is the best bit of information that I’ve come across so far that accurately describes the differences between Trackbacks and Pingbacks, two things that seem quite similar. My approach is this. Always leave the pingback option on, and when you really want to make your comments known, manually add the URL(s) in the optional Trackbacks field. Easy as pie.

WordPress Links Manager
WP has a really nice links manager including everything from a very simple link library to more advanced categorization and management functions. I definately suggest that you put it to use!

Defining Relationships with XFN
I’m all for making content more semantic and in-turn expressing more meaning. This topic covers an option that is available in WPs link archive. You can consider this extra credit, which if you recall, from school always pays off in the long run. I’ll put it this way. Fom my experience, Search Engines like Google eat up semantic well structured content and make good use of it. This is usually to the benefit of your site in terms of improved search result rankings and the findability.

Plugin - the_excerpt_reloaded() plugin from guff
If you’re trying to find a way to list the summaries posts, and still show any related links, pictures, images, graphics, etc… then this this is the plugin that you’re looking for! It replaces the stock “the_excerpt()” template tag, which you would typically use in your WP index page.

Well that’s about it! It took WordPress no-time flat to start impressing me. If you’ve been thinking about setting up your own blog, or if you’re looking for a unique twist on a basic CMS I think that you’ll be thrilled to take WordPress for a test drive. I had pretty high expectations, and it looks like the team at Wordpress does as well!