demystifying wordpress
DESCRIPTION
Pick up tips, tricks, and techniques that illuminate how WordPress can become a viable opportunity for you to provide professional web design and maintenance services to your clients. Explore free and premium themes, plugins, and other resources that are available to help jump-start your next project. You’ll also learn step-by-step instructions to customize themes with ease.Presented at AIGA Minnesota's Design Camp 2011.TRANSCRIPT
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.)
@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!