In previous session of WordPress tutorial I discussed the very basic, as if get to know WordPress stuffs. In this session I will focus on the installations, and features/capabilities of WordPress. Since current public release version of WordPress is 2.0.4, so you can assume that when I refer the WordPress it will be that version.

Installation
WordPress installation is very easy; literally don’t take even 3 minutes. Every WordPress installation package contains installation instruction step by step. So if your hosting server & database meet the requirements you should not have problem. Still if you face problem there are two options available. One you can get help from WordPress Install4Free team who will install WordPress in your server for free. Two if you are comfortable you can host your blog in WordPress recommended hosting companies, who provide just few clicks installation process. Actually there is a third and fourth choice too. Third if you are not very concern about flexibility, customization and branding you may consider getting a free blog on WordPress.com or a plan blog hosting with them. The fourth and last option is, after all those three if you can’t get a hold on WordPress, I would advice you just hire someone to do for you. I have never seen a blog platform or software gives so many options to resolve installation issue. You are welcome to notify me and change this, if you find one.

Features
Oh! This could be a never ending blog if I have to explain you the limitless scopes lying in WordPress. But for the sake of argument let me point out some key features of WordPress. First of all WordPress CMS after installation contain two distinctive section. The admin/dashboard interface section which is only accessible to Author(s), Editor(s), & Administrator of the blog, the readers/commentators never get to see/get into this portion. The other section is your blog area where your blog contents are published along with other stuffs; this is the section whole world see. So let’s take a look what WordPress has to offer apart from the obvious one like user profiling, displaying, password protections etc.:

• Alteration and modification: WordPress installed locally onto the server, so you get complete authority to edit/alter almost everything. WordPress admin dashboard gives you ability to publish/edit/delete blog post(s), comments, categories, and links. Not only that you can modify the looks & functionalities (plug-in) right from the admin’s dashed board, along with a lot more other.
• Manageable Core: WordPress is quite flexible in core management. You can easily store the contents and core files some other directories than the installed directories even in sub domain. In plain words you can have your blog installed in a place and let the files stored in other directories or sub-domain.
• User management: You can set user levels to your user’s right from the dashboard. This gives you ability to control user-access to different features, so you can restrict the ability of individual users to create or modify content in your blog, by changing their user-level. Currently WordPress support 5 levels of users-Administrator (all access), editor (only post and link management), author (only post management), contributor (can post but will wait for authorization from admin or editor), & subscriber (can only read and maintain a profile).
• Blog communication: WordPress support Pingback and Trackback two very useful ways of connecting to other blogs, and to enable them to do the same. Customizable and clean permalink feature allow all the links are to be structured, sensible, and understandable to human and machines, and that includes search engines.
• Syndication: WordPress support Atom, RSS 1.0 (RDF) and RSS 2.0 all the famous feed syndication format. Just about any page on your blog has an associated feed that your readers can subscribe to - there’s a feed for the latest posts, for categories, comments or even after using some plugin you can allow podcasting, video casting syndication. WordPress also fully supports RSS 2.0 with enclosures, so adding mp3 files (such as podcasts) to your RSS feeds is a snap.
• Design customization: This is the part most user like. With WordPress your design customization capabilities are simply limitless. Because WordPress design is template driven, which you can edit right in your dashboard or editor tools, no need to download them for editing. Just edit the template in dashboard, see if the changes satisfy you, and otherwise change it or rollback. My personal favorite part is the Template Tags, which make easier to design the content and information displayed on your blog just like frying and egg. You don’t need to be a PHP or CSS whiz to design your blog in WordPress.

  Ok don’t like to create something than there is thousands and growing number of free & ready to go theme available for download in WordPress codex section. And don’t forget the plugin which gives additional functionalities to you blog. WordPress has the largest number of freelance dedicated developer community seamlessly creating plugins.

• Cron job: You can write a post today and have it appear on the blog at a future date, automatically. You don’t even have to know what the hell Cron Job is.

There thousands of other as usual blog functionalities available in WordPress, and as I told if something missing and you need-Plugins are available. If you can do something unique and your own without knowing a single line of code, WordPress is the only answer…..so far.

I end this session here, next session we will discuss on limitations and tour to admin interface.

[tags] WordPress Tutorial,instruction, walkthrough, capabilities,features, installation instruction [/tags]