Demystifying WordPress

Mykl
Roventine

Designer of Things

@myklroventine
myklroventine.com

Aaron
Smith

Smitty’s Workshop

@smittysmitty
smittypages.com

• 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

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 + .com -
• Free • Can’t run custom
themes
• Easy to setup
• Everything is taken • Can’t hack PHP code
care of: setup, • Can’t upload plugins
upgrades, spam,
backups, security, etc.

.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

WP Free Themes Directory
• Not very helpful
• Hard to determine quality

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 Framework
http://wpframework.com

• Whiteboard – A Lightweight WordPress
Framework
http://whiteboardframework.com/

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

• 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:
Realtor Search Tool

Case Study:
Events Calendar Pro

Web Fonts/@fontface
Allows 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;
}

Demystifying WordPress

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