Resources

I’m trying to do a lot with the upcoming WordPress theme. As a result, I’ve been going through quite a few tips, tweaks, and tutorials to up my skills as a WordPress theme designer. Below are some of the features that I’ve read about and will be adding to Greed for its official release.

• Custom Fields – Learn how to take advantage of the WordPress Custom Fields to display extra content.
• Theme Options – Ready to take your theme to the next level? Add theme options to your theme. Allow theme users to edit the CSS without touching the style.css file.
• Ajax Commenting – How do you grab more downloads for your theme? Give it some life via Ajax Commenting.
• Sidebar Login Form – Want to let your users login from the sidebar instead of sending them to the login page?
• How To Manually Separate Trackbacks and Comments – Not all that important, but it makes following comment conversations a bit easier. Instead of installing a plugin, here’s how to do it manually.

Useful, But Rarely Used WordPress TechniquesRead More

I pointed out that multiple plugin support is a factor of a popular WordPress theme, in a previous post. Here’s a list of popular plugins your theme should support.

• Widgets – Allows you to easily rearrange sidebar blocks and turn them on or off.
• Contact Form – Self-explanatory.
• Spam Karma 2 – Filter comments for spam and keeps count of how many spam comments. In most cases, this plugin will break your theme via the wp_footer() function. You need to test this plugin and style it specifically for your theme.
• Optimal Title – Place the blog title after the individual page title. Instead of Your Blog Title > About, this plugin changes it to About | Your Blog Title.
• Related Posts – Generates a list of links, possibly related, to a certain post. It’s basically an unordered list without the UL tags.
• Adsense Manager – Allows bloggers to easily integrate and manage Adsense ads.
• Ultimate Tag Warrior – A post-keyword tagging system that allows you to organize posts by keywords with or without the normal categories.
• flickrRSS – Displays photos from flickr.com to your blog.
• MyAvatars – Displays readers’ My Blog Log avatars in the comments template.
• WP-PageNavi – Allows you to browse from page to page by numbers instead of Next and Previous.

Popular Plugins Your Theme Should SupportRead More

Here’s a list of WordPress and CSS resources that helped me get to where I am today in WordPress themes development. The following links are listed in no particular order.

• Faux Columns (by Dan Cederholm)
  Your main column and sidebar column backgrounds aren’t even? Faux Columns is the answer.
• Max Design CSS Tutorials
  Styling WordPress is mostly styling lists. Max Design tutorials are the best place to start.
• Sliding Door (by Douglas Bowman)
  For an advance horizontal menu, learn the sliding door technique. Wpdesigner’s current top menu bar is the result of Sliding Door.
• Dynamic Menu Highlighting
  After learning the Sliding Door technique, take it a step further. Learn how to highlight your menu tabs.
• Tizag PHP Tutorials
  Creating a WordPress theme doesn’t involve just XHTML and CSS. You need a bit of PHP knowledge. I like Tizag.com’s detailed tutorial on the If / Else statement the most.
• WordPress Lessons
  Read my tutorials? Ready to move on? At the end of the day, there’s no better guides than the lessons from WordPress.org showing you the ins and outs of a WordPress theme.
• Lorelle.WordPress.com
  To learn even more about WordPress, design, and development, visit Lorelle on wordpress.com.
• Designing Themes for Public Release
  Want to create and release your own free WordPress theme? Read Designing Themes for Public Release first.

The last and ultimate resource is curiosity. I keep learning in order to improve my methods and techniques so I can create better WordPress themes at a faster rate.

WordPress Theme/CSS TechniquesRead More

Note: The following checklist was based on WordPress 2.0. Since WordPress 2.1, WordPress has replaced and introduced new template tags.

Files, functions, and to-dos you need to check-off before using / publishing your own unique WordPress theme:

Files and Templates

• 404.php
• archive.php
• category.php
• comments.php
• footer.php
• functions.php (for widget-ready sidebar)
• header.php
• index.php
• page.php
• search.php
• searchform.php
• sidebar.php
• single.php
• screenshot.png / .jpg / .gif
• style.css
• readme.txt (optional)

Header.php

• Blog’s Title
• Blog’s Description

Footer.php

• wp_footer()
• Footer text and links (usually, copyright message)

Sidebar.php

• Search form – Does the regular search form match the widget search form?
• Pages / wp_list_pages() – Have you styled the second level links? Third level links?
• Categories / wp_list_cats() – Sort by name or ID? In what order? Is hierarchical turned off or on?
• Archives
• Calendar – Does the regular calendar match the widget calendar?
• Links / get_links_list()
• Meta: wp_register(), wp_loginout(), wp_meta()

Index.php, Archive.php, Category.php, Search.php, Page.php, Single.php

• the_ID()
• Post title: the_permalink, the_title()
• the_content
• Postmetadata: edit_post_link(), comments_popup_link(), the_author(), the_category(), the_time(),
• trackback_rdf() [hidden]
• posts_nav_link() – Next/Previous page links
• Else – What to display when there is no content.

Archive.php, Search.php

• the_excerpt() replaces the_content()

Page.php

• link_pages()
• Remove Postmetadata
• Keep edit_post_link()
• Remove posts_nav_link()
• comments_template()

Single.php

• link_pages()
• Remove comments_popup_link()
• comments_template()

Comments.php

• Comments list
• Comment forms and textarea
• ‘No comments’ message
• ‘Comments awaiting moderation’ message
• ‘Must login’ message
• ‘Password protected’ message
• Comments off message

Pages to Validate

• Home page
• Archive pages
• Category pages (if you customize category pages)
• Search result pages
• Pages (i.e: About)
• Single post view page
• Single post with no comments
• Single post with comments
• Single post with must login message
• Single post with no login required message
• Password protected single post with comments

Note: This is not an end-all checklist. It covers just the basics. More items will be added.

WordPress Theme ChecklistRead More