Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
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There are some fairly routine tasks in WordPress that you can only do using HTML. For instance, if
you want to add a YouTube video to your blog, YouTube provides you with HTML code. You have to
find the right spot in the HTML for your blog entry and paste in the HTML code that YouTube pro-
vides.
One of the most useful widgets, and the most customizable one, is the Text widget. The Text
widget allows you to use HTML for formatting text, creating links, and so on.
In this chapter, we introduce the use of HTML as it can be used in the WordPress.com environment.
This is useful whether you just want to do a few simple things with your blog postings and the
Text widget, or if you want to go much further. To go further, you'll need additional tools, which are
described throughout this topic.
Power Tools for Better Blogging
You can use several major types of tools to improve your blog. The way you use them varies across
WordPress.com and WordPress software-based blogs, with more power made available as you take
on more responsibility for your blog.
Our intent in this topic is to always provide a salmon ladder so that you can learn a moderate
amount, improve your blog, and repeat—all the way from beginner to power user.
You can use HTML in any WordPress blog, including WordPress.com blogs, as described in this
chapter. What you're actually using in WordPress, and what we show in this topic, is XHTML, a
newer and somewhat stricter version of HTML.
The people behind WordPress, users, and the entire web-oriented community are caught up in a
shift between standards at present. XHTML was meant to be the replacement for standard HTML,
but it now appears that HTML will be replaced by a new version, HTML 5, instead. XHTML is,
therefore, looking to be something of a placeholder.
Everything we show works as either HTML or XHTML, unless noted otherwise. So if you want to
go writing a lot of (X)HTML code of your own for use in WordPress blogs, start by looking at the dif-
ferences between them as described in the WordPress Codex:
http://codex.wordpress.org/HTML_to_XHTML
CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a further addition to HTML that allows you to take a more
thoughtful and managed approach to editing web pages. WordPress themes are written in CSS. CSS
had a rocky beginning because of competing standards and varying implementations, but its future
looks secure.
As a WordPress.com user, you can change the CSS in your theme and preview the result at any
time. You will need to buy a $15 per year CSS upgrade to actually change the CSS in your
WordPress.com theme, all described in Chapter 10, “Adding Upgrades, Audio, and Video.”
As a WordPress software user, you can use many more themes, modify them freely, and create your
own, all using CSS. This is described beginning in Chapter 11, “Installing and Upgrading
WordPress Software.”
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