The same thing also applies when you upgrade your WordPress to the latest version. Since WordPress provides the automatic update reminder, then you are able to know when the new version was released from the WordPress dasboard. You can then simply to do upgrade by clicking a link and let WordPress complete the rest less than 10 seconds. Can you again imagine that? How easy and quick it is!

One thing to remember, that WordPress will never disappoint you. You do not have to worry whether the installation or upgrade process was successful or not because wordpress already ensure that everything runs smoothly before the new version was released. It means that you just relax and sit quietly and wait until the upgrade process is complete.

The more often you perform the installation and upgrading process, the less time you need to complete it.

In conclusion: WordPress’ famous 5 minute install can’t be beaten for simplicity and ease of use. Upgrading your weblog to the latest version of WordPress is easy, too, and it should take less time than the installation!

There are so many useful information that you should to know about the beauty and the flexibility of WordPress’ User Profile. Some of them are the following.

1. User Profile Screen
2. Adding Extra Fields to the WordPress User Profile
3. Add TinyMCE to WordPress User Profile
4. Add User Photo to WordPress User Profile
5. How to Get User Profile Information in WordPress
6. WordPress Plugin API References
7. WordPress Hooks Database

In Conclusion: Each user on your weblog can define a profile, with details such as their email address, instant messaging aliases etc, if they want to. Users can also control the way in which their details are displayed on the weblog.

WordPress has a term that describes the role of the user; it’s called with User Roles. User Roles is designed to give the blog owner the ability to control and assign what users can and cannot do in the blog. Each Role is allowed to perform a set of tasks called Capabilities.

1. Subscriber
   Since this level is the lowest user level in WordPress, then it is the selected default level when you add a new user from “WordPress Admin” -> “Users” menu. Users which have Subscriber level can only access their Profile from WordPress Admin panel. They also can only read the content of the site, thus they cannot add nor edit draft or post. This level usually is intended for users which allowed to submit the comment. For any of these a person must register and actually get their password to be able to comment.

   The capability that belongs to this user role is:
   - read

2. Contributor
   This level can add a post to the blog in draft format only. They cannot publish their own post. It can only be published by someone else. This is a good way to have people add content that you need to approve to post.

   The capabilities that belong to this user role are:
   - delete_posts
   - edit_posts
   - read

3. Author
   This level allows users to upload media files and be able to edit anything they add to the blog. Here you can’t control ahead of time what is posted or edited. Unlike Contributor, users which has Author role can write and publish their post without review.

   The capabilities that belong to this user role are:
   - delete_posts
   - delete_published_posts
   - edit_posts
   - edit_published_posts
   - publish_posts
   - read
   - upload_files

4. Editor
   Users which have this user level can add, edit, delete their own posts, also they can edit anything content wise including links, pages, posts and approve or edit comments. They can not change anything within the structure like the theme or plugins.

   The capabilities that belong to this user role are:
   - delete_others_pages
   - delete_others_posts
   - delete_pages
   - delete_posts
   - delete_private_pages
   - delete_private_posts
   - delete_published_pages
   - delete_published_posts
   - edit_others_pages
   - edit_others_posts
   - edit_pages
   - edit_posts
   - edit_private_pages
   - edit_private_posts
   - edit_published_pages
   - edit_published_posts
   - manage_categories
   - manage_links
   - moderate_comments
   - publish_pages
   - publish_posts
   - read
   - read_private_pages
   - read_private_posts
   - unfiltered_html (not with Multisite. See Unfiltered MU)
   - upload_files

5. Administrator
   This level can do anything and anywhere in your blog. Upload plugins, do upgrades, change settings this is the top level access.

   The capabilities that belong to this user role are:
   - activate_plugins
   - add_users
   - create_users
   - delete_others_pages
   - delete_others_posts
   - delete_pages
   - delete_plugins
   - delete_posts
   - delete_private_pages
   - delete_private_posts
   - delete_published_pages
   - delete_published_posts
   - delete_themes
   - delete_users
   - edit_dashboard
   - edit_files
   - edit_others_pages
   - edit_others_posts
   - edit_pages
   - edit_plugins
   - edit_posts
   - edit_private_pages
   - edit_private_posts
   - edit_published_pages
   - edit_published_posts
   - edit_theme_options
   - edit_themes
   - edit_users
   - export
   - import
   - install_plugins
   - install_themes
   - list_users
   - manage_categories
   - manage_links
   - manage_options
   - moderate_comments
   - promote_users
   - publish_pages
   - publish_posts
   - read_private_pages
   - read_private_posts
   - read
   - remove_users
   - switch_themes
   - unfiltered_html (not with Multisite. See Unfiltered MU)
   - unfiltered_upload
   - update_core
   - update_plugins
   - update_themes
   - upload_files

User Levels

Based on those User Roles above, the following is the user levels that assigned to them:

1. Subscriber
   The value for this user level is “0″ (zero). You can find its value from “usermeta” table in “meta_value” field where the value in “meta_key” field is “wp_user_level”.
2. Contributor
   The value for this user level is “1″ (one). You can find its value from “usermeta” table in “meta_value” field where the value in “meta_key” field is “wp_user_level”.
3. Author
   The value for this user level is “2″ (two). You can find its value from “usermeta” table in “meta_value” field where the value in “meta_key” field is “wp_user_level”.
4. Editor
   The value for this user level is “7″ (seven). You can find its value from “usermeta” table in “meta_value” field where the value in “meta_key” field is “wp_user_level”.
5. Administrator
   The value for this user level is “10″ (ten). You can find its value from “usermeta” table in “meta_value” field where the value in “meta_key” field is “wp_user_level”. During the WordPress installation process, the install script automatically creates the admin user and assigns User Level 10. Normally, only one user should be permitted the User Level 10 privilege since that Level grants absolute power to control all others.

Please note that WordPress introduced a new user role that is called with Super Admin since version 3.0. This user role has access to the blog network administration features controlling the entire network. Users which have level Administrator will automatically as Super Admin.

Actually, there are about eleven user levels in WordPress (0 to 10). For further information, please read http://codex.wordpress.org/User_Levels.

In Conclusion: WordPress uses user-levels to control user-access to different features, so you can restrict the ability of individual users to create or modify content in your weblog, by changing their user-level.

The same thing would be happened when you modify an article. The date and time when you modify will be stored also in two separate columns with the columns that stores the date and time data when you first saved the articles for the very first time. Both modification date and time columns are also respectively in UTC format (post_modified_gmt) and the other one is in format that appropriate with the time zone setting in the General Settings of your WordPress (post_modified). For example, if you are using “UTC+7″ time zone setting in the General Settings of your WordPress, and then you modify and save again that article in that example above on June 4, 2011 at 10:15:24 AM, then the value that would be stored in the column which has format of UTC (post_modified_gmt) would be “2011-06-04 03:15:24″, whereas the value that would be stored in column which has format suitable to that time zone “UTC+7″ (post_modified) would be “2011-06-04 10:15:24″.

What is UTC?

1. UTC stands for Universal Time Coordinated.
2. UTC was devised by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to mitigate confusion arising from the use of several different time-keeping standards.
3. The reason it became UTC instead of CUT was that the French abbreviation would have been TUC, so UTC was decided upon as a compromise between the English and French abbreviations. As a result of the re-arrangment, UTC is often usually referred to as Universal Coordinate Time.

What is GMT?

1. GMT stands for Greenwich Mean Time, is a term originally referring to mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. It is arguably the same as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and when this is viewed as a time zone the name Greenwich Mean Time is especially used by bodies connected with the United Kingdom, such as the BBC World Service, the Royal Navy, the Met Office and others.
2. GMT is the time at the Prime Meridian, line of longitude, which runs through Greenwich (near London) from the north to the south pole. All other lines of longitude are, of course, either east or west of Greenwich and therefore ahead or behind in real time. Places in Spain, however, despite being on the prime meridian choose not to take GMT but to be an hour ahead with other western European countries.

Conclusion: WordPress allows you to define your time as an offset from Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), so that all the time-related elements stored in the database are stored as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) values, which is a universal standard. Among other things, this helps you display the correct time on your weblog, even if your host server is located in a different time zone.

The reason why people install WordPress in the root directory (“public_html/”) are:

1. WordPress is the main and the only one web application in that web server.
2. The easiest and quickest way to install WordPress in a web server.

Whereas the reason people install WordPress in the subdirectory (for example: “public_html/_my_wp/”) are:

1. It keeps the web root folder neat and tidy. If the needs of your website are anything like this one you’ll want the freedom and flexibility to introduce other web applications into the mix without making a big mess of your file structure. Putting WordPress in its own folder tucks almost all of the files associated with it away in a simple and clear location. For example: WordPress is installed in “public_html/_secret_wp/” subdirectory whereas another web application is installed in “public_html/_another_web_application/” subdirectory. So, this will not mix your WordPress files with the others.
2. It makes it easy to add an additional layer of security to your admin directory. The security bonus is accomplished by renaming your WordPress subfolder to something that is hard to guess, making it more difficult to hack into.

Conclusion: You can choose to have the tree of wordpress related files, which form the back-end of your publicly displayed weblog, be in the same directory as the weblog or in a different directory. For example, if you want your weblog at http://example.com (public_html – the public “root” of your webserver or hosting account) and you want to store the wordpress related files and directory tree in http://example.com/wordpress (public_html/wordpress), you can!

So, what is your choice?

There are lots of applications that you can use in order to create your own web server on your localhost. Since WordPress uses PHP and MySQL and many users are still using Windows (including myself), then you can use one of the best Windows-based web server in the world; it’s called with: WampServer. You can download and use it. It is an open source project, free to use (GPL licence). Did I mention it’s a completely 100% free?

WampServer stands for Windows Apache MySQL and PHP Server. This is one of my favorite applications, because in addition to free, by installing this application, you will automatically get Apache, PHP, and MySQL installed from only this one package. There’s no need to install each service separately from the different application. The installation process was very quick and easy to follow. In addition to those three services, you also will get phpMyAdmin installed.

phpMyAdmin is a free software tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the World Wide Web. phpMyAdmin supports a wide range of operations with MySQL. The most frequently used operations are supported by the user interface (managing databases, tables, fields, relations, indexes, users, permissions, etc), while you still have the ability to directly execute any SQL statement. This will make you easier to connect to your MySQL database without using any third-party application.

Conclusion: WordPress is designed to be installed on your own web server, or shared hosting account, which gives you complete control over the weblog. Unlike third-party hosted services, you can be sure of being able to access and modify everything related to your weblog, in case you need to. So, always remember this: you can install WordPress on your desktop or home computer, or even on an Intranet.

Platform: PHP (4.3 or newer) and MySQL (4.1.2 or newer) are required (currently when this article is written). This can be subject to change depending on the current version. For example, there will be requirements changes for WordPress 3.2, whereas it uses PHP 5.2.4 or greater (old requirement – since WordPress 2.5 was PHP 4.3 or greater) and MySQL 5.0.15 or greater (old requirement – since WordPress 2.9 was MySQL 4.1.2 or greater).

There are more lots of reasons why I love WordPress besides the two above:

1. It is a free software, everyone!
2. The core files is relatively small. Just for your information, the zip file of WordPress 2.9.2 is only about 2.4 MB !
3. Very ease to set up. Only five minutes, then you will have a great website!
4. Thousand of free plugins available. Man, I cannot imagine how I can explore it.
5. Thousand of free themes available that you can download and use anytime.
6. Very professional updating management, either to the core files, plugins, and themes.
7. Complete documentation available. Everything described very clear.
8. It has the very big community in this planet. Even you are a newbie, they will welcome you.
9. If you want to make some additional functions, then you can create a plugin by using the available function that WordPress provides.
10. If you want to customize the appearence of your web, you can create your own theme by using the available related functions that WordPress provides.
11. I can write an article and schedule it in order to publish on the certain date and time.

I will also write and share my experiences while exploring and using some of my favorites plugins and themes. This makes me become fall in love too deep with WordPress.