Last updated on May 15th, 2026 at 10:02 pm
Book
Sabin-Wilson, L. (2024). WordPress all-in-one (5th edition). John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Description
With the help of WordPress All-in-One For Dummies, you can get your first WordPress blog or website set up in no time. Fully updated for the latest WordPress releases, this 8-books-in-1 guide walks you through all the features of this powerful web builder. You’ll discover how to choose and customize a theme, pick the perfect web host and URL, and manage multiple websites with multiple authors. Use WordPress as a content management software (CMS) platform, work with multimedia formats, and add plugins to your site. With state-of-the-art features, WordPress has become the go-to platform for website owners and bloggers who want to be noticed. This beginner-friendly Dummies guide gives you the know-how to make WordPress work for you.
- Build a website or blog with WordPress, the leading open-source web builder
- Discover the powerful, customizable features of the latest versions of WordPress
- Allow multiple people to contribute to your site and keep your content organized
- Easily make changes and modifications with the WordPress interface
- Both WordPress novices and more experienced users looking to dive into new features will love the easy-to-follow instructions and tips in WordPress All-in-One For Dummies.
(Dummies | WordPress All-In-One)
Books, chapters and sections
The structure of WordPress All-In-One is designed to present content about WordPress into parts, referred to as Books. Each book covers a specific aspect of creating a WordPress site from scratch.
- About This Book p. 1
- Foolish Assumptions p. 2
- Icons Used in This Book p. 2
- Beyond the Book p. 3
- Where to Go from Here p. 3
Book 1: Understanding WordPress basics p. 5
- Discovering Blogging p. 8
- Understanding WordPress Technologies p. 10
- Archiving your publishing history p. 10
- Interacting with your readers through comments p. 12
- Feeding your readers p. 12
- Tracking back p. 14
- Dealing with comment and trackback spam p. 14
- Using WordPress as a Content Management System p. 15
- Defining Open-Source p. 20
- Understanding WordPress Licensing p. 23
- Applying WordPress Licensing to Your Projects p. 25
- Discovering WordPress Release Cycles p. 30
- Upgrading your WordPress experience p. 30
- Understanding the cycles of a release p. 31
- Finding WordPress release archives p. 32
- Keeping Track of WordPress Development p. 33
- Downloading Nightly Builds p. 35
- Finding Other WordPress Users p. 38
- Finding WordPress news and tips on community websites p. 38
- Locating users on social networks p. 39
- Users Helping Users p. 39
- WordPress support forums p. 40
- WordPress user manual p. 41
- Make WordPress p. 41
- Discovering Professional WordPress Consultants and Services p. 42
- WordPress designers p. 44
- Developers p. 45
- Consultants p. 45
- Contributing to WordPress p. 46
- Participating in Live and Virtual WordPress Events p. 47
- Comparing the Two Versions of WordPress p. 50
- Choosing the hosted version from WordPress.com p. 50
- Self-hosting with WordPress.org p. 54
- Hosting Multiple Sites with One WordPress Installation p. 56
- Discovering WordPress VIP Services p. 59
Book 2: Setting up the WordPress software p. 61
- Establishing Your Domain p. 64
- Understanding domain name extensions p. 64
- Considering the cost of a domain name p. 65
- Registering your domain name p. 65
- Finding a Home for Your Site p. 66
- Getting help with hosting WordPress p. 69
- Dealing with disk space and bandwidth p. 70
- Managing disk space p. 70
- Choosing the size of your bandwidth pipe p. 71
- Understanding SFTP Concepts p. 73
- Setting Up SFTP on Your Hosting Account p. 75
- Finding and Using Free and Easy SFTP Programs p. 77
- Connecting to the web server via SFTP p. 78
- Transferring files from point A to point B p. 82
- Editing files by using SFTP p. 82
- Changing file permissions p. 83
- Exploring Preinstalled WordPress p. 88
- Installing WordPress Manually p. 91
- Setting up the MySQL database p. 91
- Downloading the WordPress software p. 93
- Uploading the WordPress files via SFTP p. 93
- Running the installation script p. 95
- Understanding the Basics of Web Security p. 104
- Updating WordPress p. 105
- Installing patches p. 106
- Using a firewall p. 106
- Using Trusted Sources p. 107
- Managing Users and Passwords p. 107
- Hardening WordPress p. 108
- Enabling multifactor authentication using the Two Factor Authentication plugin p. 109
- Limiting login attempts p. 111
- Disabling theme and plugin editors p. 112
- Filtering by IP address p. 113
- Killing PHP execution p. 114
- Getting Notified of an Available Update p. 118
- Backing Up Your Database p. 120
- Updating WordPress Automatically p. 122
- Updating WordPress Manually p. 124
- Migrating Your Existing Site to WordPress p. 128
- Movin’ on up p. 128
- Preparing for the big move p. 129
- Converting templates p. 130
- Moving your site to WordPress p. 131
- Importing from Blogger p. 131
- Importing from LiveJournal p. 133
- Importing from Movable Type and TypePad p. 135
- Importing from Tumblr p. 136
- Importing from WordPress p. 138
- Importing from an RSS feed p. 139
- Finding other import resources p. 140
- Moving Your Website to a Different Host p. 141
- Creating a backup and moving manually p. 141
- Moving the database and files to the new host p. 142
Book 3: Exploring the WordPress dashboard p. 145
- Logging in to the Dashboard p. 148
- Navigating the Dashboard p. 149
- Welcome to WordPress! module p. 150
- Site Health Status module p. 151
- At a Glance module p. 152
- Activity module p. 153
- Quick Draft module p. 154
- WordPress Events and News module p. 155
- Arranging the Dashboard to Your Tastes p. 156
- Changing the order of modules p. 156
- Removing Dashboard modules p. 158
- Finding Inline Documentation and Help p. 158
- Configuring the Settings p. 162
- General p. 162
- Writing p. 166
- Reading p. 166
- Discussion p. 169
- Media p. 175
- Permalinks p. 176
- Privacy p. 181
- Creating Your Personal Profile p. 183
- Setting Your Site’s Format p. 186
- Posts p. 187
- Media p. 187
- Pages p. 188
- Comments p. 188
- Appearance p. 189
- Plugins p. 189
- Users p. 189
- Tools p. 190
- Understanding User Roles and Capabilities p. 194
- Allowing New User Registration p. 194
- Adding New Users Manually p. 196
- Editing User Details p. 197
- Managing a Multi author Site p. 199
- Tools that help authors communicate p. 199
- Tools to promote author profiles p. 200
- Tools to manage multi author blog posts p. 201
- Deciding to Allow Comments on Your Site p. 204
- Positive aspects of allowing comments p. 204
- Reasons to disallow comments p. 205
- Interacting with Readers through Comments p. 206
- Tracking Back p. 206
- Managing Comments and Trackbacks p. 207
- Tackling Spam with Akismet p. 209
- Activating Akismet p. 210
- Configuring Akismet p. 212
- Archiving Content with WordPress p. 214
- Building categories p. 215
- Changing the name of a category p. 216
- Creating new categories p. 219
- Creating and Editing Tags p. 221
Book 4: Publishing your site with WordPress p. 223
- Using the Block Editor p. 226
- Discovering available blocks p. 226
- Discovering core blocks p. 228
- Inserting new blocks p. 236
- Configuring block settings p. 239
- Paragraph block settings p. 239
- Image block settings p. 247
- Composing Your Post p. 253
- Refining Your Post Options p. 256
- Publishing Your Post p. 260
- Being Your Own Editor p. 262
- Understanding the Difference between Pages and Posts p. 265
- Creating the Front Page of Your Website p. 266
- Creating the static page p. 268
- Setting page options p. 269
- Assigning a static page as the home page p. 270
- Adding a Blog to Your Website p. 272
- Adding New Files to the Media Library p. 276
- Getting to know allowed media file types p. 276
- Uploading a new file to the Media Library p. 276
- Uploading multiple files at once p. 279
- Understanding Media Library Features p. 281
- Filtering options in the Media Library p. 281
- Other Media Library view settings p. 287
- Other Media Library view settings p. 287
- Viewing and Editing Media File Details p. 288
- Editing file details on the Edit Media page p. 288
- Editing images in the Media Library p. 290
- Discover Some Great Plugins to Manage Media p. 292
- Inserting Images into Your Content p. 297
- Uploading an image from your computer p. 298
- Inserting an image from the Media Library p. 301
- Using the Columns Block to Insert Multiple Images in a Row p. 307
- Inserting a Cover Image into a Post p. 310
- Inserting a Photo Gallery p. 311
- Inserting Video Files into Your Posts p. 312
- Adding a link to a video from the web p. 316
- Adding video from your computer p. 319
- Adding video using the embed block p. 321
- Inserting Audio Files into Your Blog Posts p. 322
- Inserting Audio Using the Embed Block p. 325
- Podcasting with WordPress p. 327
Book 5: Examining social media and SEO p. 328
- Understanding the Importance of Analytics p. 331
- Exploring the Options for Tracking Data p. 334
- Understanding Key Analytics Terminology p. 334
- Adding Google Analytics to Your WordPress Site p. 336
- Signing up for Google Analytics p. 337
- Installing the tracking code p. 337
- Verifying that you installed the code properly p. 337
- Using the data from the plugin p. 341
- Exploring Reasons for a Social Media Listening Hub p. 342
- Eavesdropping on yourself p. 342
- Keeping tabs on your brand p. 344
- Exploring Different Listening Tools p. 344
- Monitoring with Google Alerts p. 344
- Tracking conversations on Twitter with RSS p. 346
- Searching communities with Boardreader p. 347
- Creating Your Own Personal Monitoring Mix p. 348
- Editing the Dashboard to Create a Listening Post p. 350
- Understanding the Importance of Search Engine Optimization p. 354
- Outlining the Advantages That WordPress Presents for SEO p. 354
- Understanding How Search Engines See Your Content p. 356
- Using links as currency p. 359
- Submitting to search engines and directories p. 360
- Optimizing Your Site under the Hood p. 360
- Metadata p. 360
- The robots.txt file p. 361
- Researching Your Niche p. 361
- Creating Search Engine Strategies p. 363
- Setting up your site p. 363
- Improving your site’s SEO practices p. 364
- Dealing with duplicate content p. 366
- Creating an editorial SEO list/calendar p. 367
- Establishing a routine for publishing on your site p. 367
- Creating a link-building strategy p. 369
- Exploring Must-Use Plugins for SEO Best Practices p. 372
- Yoast SEO p. 372
- XML Sitemap Generator for Google p. 375
- Redirection p. 377
- WPOptimize Cache Clean Compress p. 379
Book 6: Customizing the look of your site p. 383
- Getting Started with Free Themes p. 386
- Understanding What to Avoid with Free Themes p. 388
- Previewing Themes on the Themes Page p. 390
- Installing a Theme p. 393
- Browsing the free themes on the Dashboard p. 396
- Previewing and activating a theme p. 397
- Exploring Premium Theme Options p. 399
- Discovering Block Themes p. 403
- Why block themes are different p. 404
- Finding block themes p. 404
- Finding available options in block themes p. 405
- Exploring the Site Editor p. 407
- Using the Site Editor p. 409
- Navigation screen in the site editor p. 409
- Applying styles in the site editor p. 413
- Managing pages in the site editor p. 416
- Working with and creating templates p. 418
- Understanding Block Patterns p. 423
- Discovering Block Patterns p. 425
- Synced and unsynced block patterns p. 426
- Block patterns and template parts p. 428
- Using Existing Block Patterns p. 429
- Creating Block Patterns p. 432
- Finding New Block Patterns p. 436
Book 7: Using and developing plugins p. 439
- Extending WordPress with Plugins p. 442
- Identifying Core Plugins p. 443
- Distinguishing between Plugins and Themes p. 444
- Finding Plugins on the WordPress Website p. 446
- Searching for plugins from the Dashboard p. 447
- Search p. 447
- Upload plugin p. 448
- Featured, popular, recommended, and favorites p. 449
- Finding plugins through WordPress.org p. 450
- Searching for plugins from the Dashboard p. 447
- Evaluating Plugins before Installing p. 450
- Details p. 450
- Ratings p. 451
- Active installations p. 452
- Advanced View p. 453
- Support p. 454
- Finding Plugins Outside the WordPress Website p. 454
- Comparing Free and Commercial Plugins p. 456
- Installing Plugins from the WordPress Dashboard p. 459
- Manually Installing Plugins p. 461
- Finding and downloading the files p. 462
- Reading the instructions p. 464
- Upgrading Plugins p. 465
- Updating on the Plugins screen p. 465
- Updating on the WordPress Updates screen p. 467
- Updating manually p. 468
- Activating and Deactivating Plugins p. 469
- Deleting Plugins p. 470
- Deleting via the Dashboard p. 470
- Deleting manually p. 472
- Exploring Activate-and-Go Plugins p. 475
- Discovering Settings Screens p. 476
- Akismet p. 477
- XML Sitemap Generator for Google p. 478
- Yoast SEO p. 481
- Using Widget Blocks p. 483
- Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs p. 483
- Spotlight Social Feeds p. 483
- Additional widgets to try p. 485
- Enhancing Content with Shortcodes p. 486
- Gallery shortcode p. 486
- Embed shortcode p. 487
- Embed Twitter links p. 489
Book 8: Running multiple sites with WordPress p. 491
- Deciding When to Use the Multisite Feature p. 494
- Understanding the Difference between Sites and Blogs p. 496
- Setting Up the Optimal Hosting Environment p. 496
- Checking out shared versus dedicated hosting p. 497
- Exploring subdomains versus subdirectories p. 498
- Choosing Linux Apache MySQL and PHP server environments p. 498
- Adding a virtual host to the Apache configuration p. 500
- Configuring PHP p. 502
- Enabling the Network Feature p. 504
- Exploring the Difference between Subdirectories and Subdomains p. 505
- Installing the Network on Your Site p. 506
- Disabling the Network p. 509
- Exploring the Network Admin Dashboard p. 511
- Managing Your Network p. 513
- Settings p. 514
- Operational settings p. 515
- Registration settings p. 515
- New site settings p. 517
- Upload settings p. 519
- Sites p. 520
- Users p. 524
- Themes p. 527
- Plugins p. 527
- Settings p. 514
- Stopping Spam Sign-Ups and Splogs p. 530
- Setting Default User Permissions p. 532
- Registering users p. 533
- Controlling access to sites p. 534
- Importing users p. 535
- Changing Defaults p. 538
- Site-specific sign-up p. 538
- User role management p. 539
- Exploring Default Site Settings p. 540
- Using One Theme on Multiple Sites p. 542
- Enabling themes for individual sites p. 543
- Installing themes for network use p. 545
- Setting the default theme for sites p. 546
- Gathering and Displaying Network-Wide Content p. 547
- Adding posts from network sites p. 548
- Listing network sites p. 548
- Using and Installing Network-Wide Plugins p. 550
- Discovering Handy Multisite Plugins p. 552
- Finding Your Way with Domain Mapping p. 553
- Setting up a custom domain p. 554
- Editing DNS records p. 556
- Setting the Site Domain p. 559
- Setting Up Multiple Networks p. 560
About the Author
Lisa Sabin-Wilson is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of WebDevStudios, a company specializing in custom WordPress plugins, themes, and deployments. Lisa is a popular conference speaker and bestselling author of WordPress For Dummies, WordPress All-in-One For Dummies, and WordPress Web Design For Dummies. (Dummies | WordPress All-In-One)
Lisa Sabin-Wilson
Where to find
The Libraries SA network holds multiple copies of this book. Although not within Alexandrina libraries, it is available as an inter-library loan. See this search: WordPress All-In-One by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.
Where to buy
WordPress All-In-One is available in through the for Dummies online, at local bookstores, and through online resellers.
References
- WorldCat 2026, WordPress all-in-one, viewed on 5 March, 2026, https://search.worldcat.org/title/1419725281. This WorldCat search yields information about the 2024 book user guide for WordPress technology by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.
- For Dummies 2026, WordPress For Dummies, 8th Edition, viewed on 6 March, 2026, https://www.dummies.com/book/technology/programming-web-design/blogging-website-platforms/wordpress/wordpress-all-in-one-for-dummies-4th-edition-281904/. This page provides information about the book: WordPress for Dummies.
- For Dummies 2026, WordPress all-in-one for dummies cheat sheet, viewed on 6 March, 2026, https://www.dummies.com/article/technology/programming-web-design/blogging-website-platforms/wordpress/wordpress-all-in-one-for-dummies-cheat-sheet-207989/. This page provides links to the WordPress.org pages which discuss core WordPress concepts.
- Libraries SA 2026, WordPress All-In-One / by Lisa Sabin-Wilson., viewed on 6 March, 2026, https://onecard.network/client/en_AU/sapubliclibraries/search/results?qu=Sabin-Wilson&te=&dt=list. This Libraries SA search yields information about the WordPress All-In-One publication also including the specific libraries within the network where the book is located and their loan status.