WORDPRESS

@nicolerosedion

YOUR QUESTIONS

Q: My group has a slideshow on the website and we found one using a plugin but the plugin has many different external sheets. Is there a simpler way to create a slideshow or should we just keep it the way it is?

A: Just keep it the way it is, this is a downside of WordPress, almost every plugin you install often adds its own Javascript and CSS files and these add up fast. It is important remember that if you edit or change a plugin you can not updated it or you will loose all your work.

• Q: If I were to create a cheat sheet for WordPress for things that I absolutely must know and remember, what would be on it? For example, if I were to have a cheat sheet for coding, I would have the different tags and what they meant on it.

A: Wordpress is a very large and complicated codebase, there are latterly hundreds of functions and methods that you have access to while building your site. That said the best cheat sheet is actually the codex [http://codex.wordpress.org/] almost everything has been laid out for you in there.

A: CHEAT SHEET

• Q: Are there ways to create PHPs ? Or is all the coding found just on the internet?

• A: PHP files are text files that the server recognizes and parses, they can be created in any text editor. They do require that the the very first line before you add code use a ( <?php ) this tells the server to parse this section of code and replace it with the desired result. At the end of the code block you will need to close the block with a ( ?> ) tag.

•  A: An example and exercise is to open a text editor and create a new file and copy this code into it:

<?php ! echo ‘Hello World’;! ?>

then save the document as hw.php upload it to a server running php and then open it up in a browser by going to http://thewebsitename.com/hw.php.

• Q: My footer is stuck at the top of my pages, how do I fix it?

• A: There are lots of ways but few really work. Most Devs often figure out with trial and error. You can achieve this with jQuery, Css hacks, Frameworks like Bootstrap & Foundation (have built it methods). There is no easy way, and often what works for one site does not work on another.

• Q: How do I remove the "posted by ### at #:##" on all pages?

• A: This is created by a template tag http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags, to remove it you will need to find it in the template and delete it or comment it out. For this particular one you would goto -> index.php and in the loop look for posted by <?php the_author(); ?> on at <?php the_time() ?>

• Q: How does CSS work with PHP? Some styling that we (my group and I) put in worked on the HTML, but does not on PHP. For example, if we want to style something specifically, we would use and id, but what is the equivalent of id in PHP?

•  A: CSS is specific to html (they are not the same but complements of each other) and only affects php after its parsed into an html output, So there are no php equivalents. That said, WordPress uses function calls (these are prebuilt blocks of php that perform specific functions) these functions do not aways work with css called from the document but these functions usually have the ability to supply an argument that can include css id or class.

<?php the_title(‘<h1 class=“page-title”>’, </h2>’ , true) ?>!

• Q: If I was to add media to my website, how could I podcast it using Wordpress?

• A: How to podcast with Wordpress

http://codex.wordpress.org/Podcasting

• Q: What are some tips for learning PHP and how do you link a PHP document correctly in Wordpress?

• A: Google! Find an intro to CS and Intro to programming theory class. Lynda.com (best resource in the world tons of video classes that will take you through php, html, css, wordpress). Just get in and play between google and maybe a cheap php for dummies book.

•  A: You don’t really link php documents in WordPress most everything that you will do inside a theme or plugin will be recognized by the WordPress engine. In the case of theme any functionality you would want to add should be done in the already existing functions.php, or if you are creating a new page template i.e. page-fullwidth.php you will need to add a comment to the head of the document that declares it:

<?php! /*! * Template Name: page-homepage! */! ?>

for a plugin you will do about the same but it will be a much more complex declaration.

• Q: Are there any useful PHP reference websites?

•  A:

codex.wordpress.org php.net net-tuts.com net.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/php/ lynda.com treehouse.com net.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/php/ teamtreehouse.com/ wpsessions.com/ google.com!

• Q: What’s the line of code that connects each page together? I've noticed that sometimes when we copy and paste our code into the WordPress code and we accidentally delete the wrong code, then the pages don't connect properly.

•  A: There are a variety of different ways WordPress pages link together in the template system

•  based on the pages document name: –  1) a loop in the index.php page will only pull posts

related to the post section –  2) a loop in a page.php or a template that has a

template name: declaration will only pull content related to that page.

–  3) documents are named specifically for specific functions and are a major part of the linking process. I.e. archive.php is for search and category requests on a site, while page.php is for pages created in the dashboard.

RESOURCE

http://bit.ly/KO8qY5

THANK YOU! nicole@theabbiagency.com