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WordPress – Beyond Blogging

August 7, 2010 by Chris Smith

Using WordPress as a CMS Frameworks Rapid Development Reusable Code Thesis for simple stuff, Genesis for more complex sites. In Thesis, custom loops are bad. Custom taxonomies and BuddyPress would great with Genesis. Core theme and child themes – Core can update function without messing with child theme’s form. Custom Post Types Job Listings, Products, [...]

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Using Proper WordPress Conventions

August 7, 2010 by Chris Smith

Coding Standards Always use single quotes, never double quotes Vertical space is poetry; curly braces on same line. Use whitespace for readability. Avoid Raw SQL Use $wpdb object Use $wpdb->prepare() if SQL is needed. Use existing table if possible instead of custom tables. prepare() method handles santization and quotes. No reason not to use it. [...]

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WordPress – Theme Development

August 7, 2010 by Chris Smith

Exploring Theme Development Planning Your Build Know what you want before pen hits paper. Create site map/outline so you know what page templates you need. Single project or reusable theme? Submitting theme to WP theme repository will have certain rules you need to follow. Certain pages in theme, copyright issues, etc. What do you want [...]

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WordPress – Optimizing Performance

August 7, 2010 by Chris Smith

Why Performance Matters: User Experience Search Rankings Server Resources/Costs Digg/Slashdot Effect Front End Performance Fewer Requests Progressive Rendering Concurrent Downloads Expires Headers Reduce cookie size or use cookieless subdomains. Performance Grading Use YSlow  and Google PageSpeed to grade performance, figure out expires headers to use, find opportunities to make fewer HTTP requests and DNS lookups. [...]

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WordPress 3.0 – What’s New

August 7, 2010 by Chris Smith

New Stuff: the_shortlink() – Short URLs Gives http://wp.me shortlink. get_template_part() – including template files New Way: get_template_part(file.php) comment_form() – includes comment form Replaces entire comments. Labels changed using $args array in function call. Documented in Codex. wp_nav_menu() – include nav menu wp_nav_menu(“menu=Main”) wp_nav_menu(“fallback_cb=wp_list_categories”) – fallback menu before user definition Needed in function.php: add_theme_support(“nav_menus”); New theme [...]

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