demystifying wordpress

Photo by Dex1138

Designer of Things

@myklroventinemyklroventine.com

Mykl Roventine

Smitty’s Workshop

@smittysmittysmittypages.com

Aaron Smith

Assumptions

• You want to learn tips, tricks and techniques on how WordPress can become a viable opportunity for to provide professional web design and maintenance services to your clients

• You want to learn more about premium and free themes, plugins and other resources to help jump-start your next project

• You want to customize WordPress themes with ease

• You want to learn ways to prevent headaches and heart-attacks when deploying a WordPress site

• You have great taste in session choice

Overview

History• First released on May 27, 2003, by Matt

Mullenweg

• Grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

- wordpress.org

Stats• WordPress is used by over 14.7% of

Alexa Internet's "top 1 million" websites

• Powers 22% of all new websites (As of 8/11)

• Wordpress is the most popular CMS on the internet

• Version 3.0 has been downloaded over 32.5 million times (As of 2/11)

- Wikipedia

Why WordPress?• Open Source

• Full Standards Compliance

• Free

• Flexible

• Awesome

.com vs .org.com +• Free

• Easy to setup

• Everything is taken care of: setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc.

.com -• Can’t run custom

themes

• Can’t hack PHP code

• Can’t upload plugins

.com vs .org.org (a.k.a hosted install)• Can upload themes

• Can upload plugins

• Complete control to change code

• Need to pay for web host

Themes

WP Free Themes Directory• Not very helpful

• Hard to determine quality

Get Recommendations

Anatomy of a Great Theme

• Customizable - can add your own logo, color scheme, change layout, etc.

• Flexible - can handle a variety of different post types

• Adaptable - can grow with your needs

• Ongoing support and upgrades

Blank Themes• Thematic

http://themeshaper.com/thematic/

• WP Frameworkhttp://wpframework.com

• Whiteboard – A Lightweight WordPress Frameworkhttp://whiteboardframework.com/

Plugins

However...Recent investigation of the current state of the WordPress plugin repository found:

• More than half of the plugins in the repository are not compatible with WordPress 3.x.

• Only 32% of those 15,000+ plugins have been updated in 2011!

- wpmu.org

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Plugins not been updated in past two years will be hidden both in the repository and in the WP admin plugin search.

- Announced by Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp San Francisco in August 2011

Do your homework• Check compatibility, when last updated

• Average rating, others’ comments/issues

Customization

Case Study:Adding Sidebars

• Why? Added functionality, can use widgets

• How?1. functions.php

<?php if ( function_exists ('register_sidebar')) { register_sidebar ('custom'); } ?>

2. Copy sidebar.php (sidebar2.php)

3. Call where needed <?php include ('sidebar-cat.php'); ?>

Other Options

• Visual Composer for WordPress (paid)

• Magic Fields Plugin (free)

Case Study:Mystique Theme

Case Study:Luxury Theme

Case Study:Realtor Search Tool

Case Study:Events Calendar Pro

Typography

Web Fonts/@fontfaceAllows you to use virtually any font as a true text element. No longer limited by traditional browser-safe fonts (Arial, Verdana, Times, etc.)

Case Study:

@fontface@font-face { font-family: 'Colaborate'; src: url('http://kernest.com/embed/colaborate-regular'), url('http://kernest.com/embed/colaborate- regular#colabreg') format('svg');}

#content h1 { color: #000; font-family: 'Colaborate', Geneva, 'Lucida Sans', 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size:32px;}

Case Study:

Alternative Uses

Landing Page

Pages Only (No Blog)

Case Study:Visitor Kiosk

Case Study:Wireframing

Peace of Mind

Get Help

Thank You!