Best Practice for WordPress Theme Designer: Always check to see if a function exists before adding it in a theme.

The best part about WordPress is plugins. Theme designers also have a tendency of using WordPress plugins for adding cool features. When working on a custom WordPress theme project for a client, one thing you want to make sure is follow the best practice. Yesterday, we got an inquiry from one of our users whose site was broken. He had a custom design done by someone. The theme worked great until he changed hosts. His single posts would not load after post content. The comments area, sidebar, footer, nothing will load. It will simply output the error. We went in and fixed the issue for them. The issue was that his theme designer did not follow the best practice. He had a very popular plugin “User Photo” which allows you to add user’s photo at the bottom of the post, except he was just adding the function directly. Now this would work unless ofcourse the plugin gets disabled for some reason. When this client switched hosts, apparently the GD Library was not installed in the new server. This caused the plugin to deactivate. You also could not re-activate the plugin because it relies on the GD Library. This caused the site to be broken for all users. This obviously gets that theme designer a bad reputation because when the client asked what was the issue, we explained to them. If you are a theme designer adding plugin outputs, you should always follow the best practice. Here are some examples of how we do things with our clients:  read more …

This class focuses on using the free open-source software called WordPress. WordPress makes it easy to create and deploy your own professional website. The user interface is designed let you present your business or ideas in an attractive format to the public without having to know complex programs. Learn set up, common uses, how to add plugins and design themes and search engine optimization as well as integration with common free social networking tools like Youtube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. No prior knowledge of HTML, web publishing or ownership of an existing website required but you should be familiar with web browsers such as Internet Explorer and programs to format text such as Word.

Mondays, April 9 – May 14

9am – noon

$81 (early bird $77)

 Register Online

When exporting and importing content, links aren’t included.  Here are the instructions for importing links using OPML (Online Processor Markup Language)

http://en.support.wordpress.com/blogroll/import-export-links/

Note:  When trying to use the OPML URL http://www.mysite.com/wp-link-opml.php directly from the import blogger program, I got the error

XML error: XML_ERR_NAME_REQUIRED at line 248

Inserted 0 links into category 3. All done! Go manage those links.

Simple work-around to import from file.

1. In browser
2. goto http://www.mysite.com/wp-link-opml.php
3. save file as “wp-links-opml.php.xml”
4. import blogger
5. Browse to “wp-links-opml.php.xml”

1.  View in high quality
   Youtube gives you the option to switch to high quality videos for some of the videos.  To check if a video is available in high quality:
   append ‘&fmt=18′(stereo, 480 x 270 resolution)
   or
   ‘&fmt=22′(stereo, 1280 x 720 resolution) for even higher quality
2. Embed Higher Quality Videos
   The above trick works for playback.  To embed high quality videos:
   append “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″
   and
   “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″
   to the embed url
3. Cut the chase and link to the interesting part
   Linking to a video where the real action starts at 3 minutes 22 seconds, wondered if you could make it start at 03:22? You are in luck.
   All you have to do is add #t=03m22s (#t=XXmYYs for XX mins and YY seconds) to the end of the URL.
4. Hide the search box
   
   The search box appears when you hover over an embedded video. To hide the search box add ‘&showsearch=0′ to the embed url.
5. Embed only a part of Video
   
   append ‘&start=30′ to skip first 30s of the video
   where any number can be substituted for 30\
6. Autoplay an embedded video
   add ‘&autoplay=1′ to the url part of the embed code
7. Loop an embedded video
   Append ‘&loop=1′ to make the video start again automatically after reaches the end.
8. Disable Related Videos
   Remove other people’s content:
   add ‘&rel=0′ to the end of the url part of the embed code
9. Bypass Youtube Regional Filtering
   Some videos are only available in certain parts of the world. Your IP Address is used to determine your location and then allow or deny access to the video. Change the url from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<somecode> to http://www.youtube.com/v/<somecode>
10. Download Video
    Although not inherently a youtube trick but useful all the same for downloading videos. Just change youtube to kickyoutube in the url of the video and it will take you to kickyoutube.com with all the options for downloading the video you were watching.

1. Right-click on page
2. View Page Source
3. Ctrl-F (to find in page)
4. Search for the word “wp-content”
5. If it is a wordpress site you will see wp-content throughout the source

How to find out the Theme:

1. Searching the source (as above)
2. search for
   <link rel=”stylesheet” href=”http://phylliserck.net/wp-content/themes/twenty-ten/style.css“
3. changing phylliserck.net domain to the domain name of the site you’re looking at
4. the style name is between /themes/ and /style.css

   e.g.
   twenty-ten

W12-030.2:  WordPress – Web Development for the Right Side of Your Brain

This class focuses on using the free open-source software called WordPress.  WordPress makes it easy to create and deploy your own professional webstie.  The user interface is designed to let you present your business or ideas in an attractive format to the public without having to know complex programs.  Learn setup, common uses, how to add plugins and design themes and search engine optimization as well as integration with common free social networking tools like Youtube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook.  No prior knowledge of HTML, web publishing or ownership of an existing website required.  But, you should be familiar with web browsers such as Internet Explorer and programs to format text such as Word.

Fridays, Jan 20-March 2 (no class Feb 24)
9am – noon
$81

taught throughThe Lifelong Learning Center 310 South Curtis Street Missoula, MT 59801 (406) 549-8765

Adding alternative domain name for your website using a domain alias.

1. Plesk Control Panel
2. Websites & Domains tab
3. Show Advanced Operations (gray link in middle of the page)
4. Domain Aliases link
5. [manage] link next to desired domain
6. Add Domain Alias
7. type new domain name
8. leave default checkboxes
9. OK
10. Logon to domain registrar and set nameservers.

1. Ednor aka Bob Wire – had copies of his new Christmas CDs Off-white Christmas for everyone. His cool CD website done in WordPress of course, is at offwhitechristmas.com
2. Krista has been doing some cool reusable Theme customizations and demoed her cool photography site.
3. Rebecca recommended Cafe Press for jit merchandising
4. Bridget is implementing SEO techniques she learned in Rebecca’s class on the Solor Flashlights site.
5. Jamie is keeping busy working on his wife’s Bette Boomer site and his New Zealand vacation home site.
6. Nora is teaching an advanced wordpress class Beyond the WordPress Dashboard starting Jan 18
7. Phyllis compared and contrasted contact form plugins Contact Form 7 and Custom Contact Forms.
8. Stephanie has been working with plugins mailpress and Blog-in-Blog.