Un.complicated

The Standard

Lifestreaming White

Clear

The Daily Grind

Blue Bubble

Minimal Press

Foliogrid

Clean Home

Vostok

Wordpress was first released in 2003 as a content management system intended for bloggers, and today is regarded as the most popular blogging software available. Wordpress is constantly being upgraded with great new features that make it possible to use it as a full website CMS instead of just a blogging platform. Many blogs and even large business sites are using Wordpress as their CMS: CNN, Wall Street Journal, Nikon, Pepsi, etc. No question about it, Wordpress 3.0 has extended the possibilities for creating a full website with a user-friendly CMS for clients.

The full release was set for May 2010, but as of the end of May it hasn’t come out yet and it’s looking like it will be early June before it’s fully released. For this post, Wordpress 3.0 Beta 2 was used, and you can download that by going here.

New Menu Management Feature

In my opinion, this is one of the most exciting new features with Wordpress 3.0, and it’s included in the default installation. Before this, it was possible to create a dynamic menu with some plugins and/or Wordpress ninja skills. But it was never very easy to accomplish and now they’ve made it super simple.

You can add pages, categories, and even custom website links. With the custom website links option, you could link straight to a post, another website, whatever you want. It’s very user-friendly and setup similar to the current sidebar widget area where you can easily drag and drop to customize it just the way you like.

Custom Post Types

Currently, you can only create pages and posts with Wordpress. In 3.0, you can create your own custom post types, and set up the appropriate fields to go along with each. When a user chooses a new post type, something like a Podcast, they will just add a podcast, simple as that. You don’t need to walk your clients through a complicated process and explain why they need to add a new post for a podcast and then click on a certain category and fill in a certain custom field. It’s one step now, and clients will love the simplicity. It does require the use of a plugin, but before it required much more work to setup.

Multi-User

Wordpress MU has been around as a separate entity for a while but will now be integrated in Wordpress 3.0. MU allows you to maintain multiple sites from a single admin panel. It’s great for anyone that runs more than one site or blog and would like the simplicity of logging in once and maintaining them all from one place. This is especially helpful if these sites share content, templates, or plugins. One installation means less work and less time to create the same thing.

This isn’t completely setup in the default installation, but it’s fairly easy to get it up and going. First add this line to wp-config.php.

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

Now “Network” will appear under Tools in the main menu. Once there, fill in the Network Title, Admin Email Address and press Install. Wordpress gives you the option to set these sites up under sub domains or sub directories. If you’ve installed this version of Wordpress in a sub directory or you’re using localhost, Wordpress requires that you use sub directories.

Other Noteworthy Features

You can now choose your own username and password in the installation process, no more auto generated passwords using the admin username.

The new default theme, Twenty Ten, is much nicer. It’s clean and lightweight with minimal style attributes. I don’t use the default themes myself, but it’s still a nice feature to see.

Additional Resources

• Wordpress 3.0 Codex
• Looking Forward to Wordpress 3
• Wordpress 3.0 is Getting Ready to Launch
• What’s Coming in Wordpress 3.0 Features
• Wordpress 3.0 Guide

Wordpress has moved leaps and bounds with this new version and I’m excited to see where it’s going in the future. These new features certainly help us deliver a more user-friendly CMS to clients with less hassle and headache in the setup process.

Have you had a chance to check it out yet? What is your favorite feature and what are you most excited to see in the future?

About the Author

Shannon Noack is a designer in Arizona and the Creative Director of Snoack Studios. Designing is her passion in life and she loves to create websites, logos, print work, you name it. She also blogs regularly here and you can connect with her on Twitter as well.

1. Store

The Store template is a great ecommerce WordPress theme, with a really good-looking and functional interface; it’s easy-to install and maintain with accessible backend administration. The theme’s creators are available for pre-sales questions and customer support.

2. Ecommerce Theme

This is a very popular theme enabling users to set up and manage effective ecommerce stores. The theme is search engine optimised and customisable so can be adapted to suit any home-based business niche.

3. AppCloud

AppCloud is a beautifully clean and professional looking theme, with a two-column layout, integrated slideshow and the choice of horizontal or vertical orientation for images and apps. The theme’s ecommerce features include featured, top-selling and categorised product lists.

4. eShop

This theme offers extreme ease of use for both sellers and customers, simple to configure with an intuitive and crisply designed interface. The template has powerful features and can be tweaked to suit any product.

5. WP Store

Sellers can establish an online store from scratch with this theme, showcasing products and with easy payments, shipping and stock management.

6. Auction Theme

This premium WordPress theme offers users the chance to create an online auction or reverse auction website. Whether its cars or bikes, books or antiques, once the easy-to-use theme is setup traders can auction any kind of property online.

7. Market Theme

Market Theme transforms any WordPress into a fully operational online store. In its default setup the theme has the look and feel of a regular blog, but there are many options to customise the design including the choice of a grid-view shop front to showcase products.

8. Kidz Store

This bright and friendly theme is a great way to present products aimed at children and, more importantly, their parents. The colourful and functional shop front is supported with backend administration and all the necessary ecommerce features.

9. StorePress

This premium theme allows sellers to transform WordPress blogs into accessible online stores with a sleek and professional aesthetic. The design has widget-ready pages, PayPal integration and a solid range of ecommerce tools.

10. eGoods

eGoods is aimed at traders who sell downloadable products and receive payment via PayPal. The theme options include a choice of light or dark colour scheme, both very visually appealing, and customisable layout for images and text. The design includes featured products, bestsellers, recent releases, reduced items and gift vouchers.

11. Vanilla Cart

Vanilla Cart is an attractively minimal and crisply designed shopping theme with thoroughly customisable template. The simple yet beautiful design, with a light colour scheme and the emphasis on product shots, allows the stock to speak for itself.

12. Color Cart

This theme is based on Vanilla Cart, with the added twist of a colour wheel in the options. A choice of eight hues allows users to bring a splash of colour to ecommerce stores, carefully selecting just the right combination to suit their niche market.

13. Cherry Cart

This theme is absolutely minimalist, pared down to a single column with no side bar or blog category. Built around the concept of ‘embracing simplicity and constraint’, Cherry Cart is a remarkably inviting platform in which to showcase products.

14. Classified Ads Theme

This brilliant theme allows users to turn their blogs into classified ads websites. Users manage the site and in return charge to display ads on the site. The design is PayPal integrated, features an admin panel and is fully customisable to suit any classified ads market.

15. folioShop

The folioShop is aimed at sellers who want an attractive and intuitive interface in which to showcase products to be shipped out or downloaded by customers. The theme features an installation wizard, visual help guide and all layered PSD files.

16. ClassiPress

ClassiPress is a professional theme for turning WordPress blogs into classified ads sites. The latest version of the theme features unlimited custom fields and forms, ad packages, blog option, directory-style homepage, email alerts, featured ads carousel, transaction logging and Twitter feed.

17. wpShop

This premium theme presents a great looking ecommerce store in a choice of light or dark colour schemes. The package includes all layered PSD files, installation wizard, help guide and is available in English and German languages.

18. Simple Cart

Simple Cart is a simple and great looking theme for sellers to present products in a gridded shop front, with a friendly wood effect background. The colour scheme can be switched and users may install their own images into the fully customisable design.

19. Tobashop

Tobashop is integrated with another WordPress ecommerce theme, eShop, to make use of the powerful plugins in order to create an online store with a highly professional feel.

20. enVirashop

This theme requires no plugins and offers users all the tools needed to establish an ecommerce niche. The theme is fully customizable so sellers can tailor the perfect online storefront to cater to their target market.

Tom Walker writes for a UK based ecommerce store offering a range of ink next day. He is the lead editor of their blog about design, art and advertising.

If your getting ready to launch a WordPress site and you’re thinking about going minimal, here are our picks for the 10 best free minimal WordPress themes.

Modern Clix

Manifest

Work-a-holic

The Seven Five

Fifty Fifth Street

Neutra

Structure

Satoshi

Ulap

f8 lite

There are many WordPress plugins out there, but in this article we’re focusing on the most essential. Below is a list of 10 plugins that every WordPress website could use.

All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack optimizes your WordPress blog for search engines. Some key features include:

• Advanced Canonical URLs
• Fine tune Page Navigational Links
• Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
• ONLY plugin to provide SEO Integration for WP e-Commerce sites
• Nonce Security
• Support for CMS-style WordPress installations
• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After an html file is generated, your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps generates a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content.

Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

WP-DB-Backup

WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database.

WP-PageNavi

WP-PageNavi adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress site.

WordPress Automatic upgrade

WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the WordPress installation to the latest one provided by WordPress.org using the 5 steps provided in the WordPress upgrade instructions. It automatically does the backups and provides links for downloading.

cforms II

cforms is a powerful and feature rich form plugin for WordPress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page.

Broken Link Checker

This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found. Some key features include:

• Monitors links in your posts, pages, the blogroll, and custom fields (optional).
• Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
• Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.
• Also detects redirected links.
• Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).
• Link checking intervals can be configured.

FeedBurner FeedSmith

This plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well.

Customize the Logo of Your WordPress Login Page

After constantly having to visit your WordPress login page, having to see the same logo and design over and over can be a bit boring. This is where this hack comes in handy. All you have to do is place the following in your functions.php file, and replace the image.

function my_custom_login_logo() {
    echo '<style type="text/css">
        h1 a { background-image:url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/custom-login-logo.gif) !important; }
    </style>';
}

add_action('login_head', 'my_custom_login_logo');

Source

Detecting Mobile Devices Accessing Your Site

Mobile web surfing is continuing to evolve on a larger scale. This is why detecting those users who are visiting your WordPress blog through a mobile device and redirecting them to a mobile version of your site is important. In order to achieve this, you first have to get the code from detectmobilebrowsers.mobi and upload it to your theme directory.

Then, all you simply have to do is open your header.php file and place the following at the top of the file. Remember to edit line 5 to where you’d like to redirect mobile users.

include('mobile_device_detect.php');
$mobile = mobile_device_detect();

if ($mobile==true) {
  header( 'Location: http://your-website.com/?theme=Your_Mobile_Theme' ) ;
}

Source

Automatically Resize Images

If you’re accustomed to displaying large quantities of images on your blog, then you know how tedious it can be to have to always resize your images manually. Now you can use this hack to automatically resize any image you’d like to whatever width and height you choose for a more organized look. To do this, copy the following script and create a folder for it anywhere on your site (i.e. scripts) and name it “timthumb.php“. Now, you can use the following syntax to add an automatically resized image to your blog post:

<img src="/scripts/timthumb.php?src=/images/whatever.jpg&amp;h=150&amp;w=150&amp;zc=1" alt="" />

Direct Source

Displaying Your Tags in a Dropdown Menu

Tag clouds are often hard to read, especially for a more busy site. Eliminate this problem by using a dropdown menu to display your tags. You must place the following code in your functions.php file.

<?php
function dropdown_tag_cloud( $args = '' ) {
	$defaults = array(
		'smallest' => 8, 'largest' => 22, 'unit' => 'pt', 'number' => 45,
		'format' => 'flat', 'orderby' => 'name', 'order' => 'ASC',
		'exclude' => '', 'include' => ''
	);
	$args = wp_parse_args( $args, $defaults );

	$tags = get_tags( array_merge($args, array('orderby' => 'count', 'order' => 'DESC')) ); // Always query top tags

	if ( empty($tags) )
		return;

	$return = dropdown_generate_tag_cloud( $tags, $args ); // Here's where those top tags get sorted according to $args
	if ( is_wp_error( $return ) )
		return false;
	else
		echo apply_filters( 'dropdown_tag_cloud', $return, $args );
}

function dropdown_generate_tag_cloud( $tags, $args = '' ) {
	global $wp_rewrite;
	$defaults = array(
		'smallest' => 8, 'largest' => 22, 'unit' => 'pt', 'number' => 45,
		'format' => 'flat', 'orderby' => 'name', 'order' => 'ASC'
	);
	$args = wp_parse_args( $args, $defaults );
	extract($args);

	if ( !$tags )
		return;
	$counts = $tag_links = array();
	foreach ( (array) $tags as $tag ) {
		$counts[$tag->name] = $tag->count;
		$tag_links[$tag->name] = get_tag_link( $tag->term_id );
		if ( is_wp_error( $tag_links[$tag->name] ) )
			return $tag_links[$tag->name];
		$tag_ids[$tag->name] = $tag->term_id;
	}

	$min_count = min($counts);
	$spread = max($counts) - $min_count;
	if ( $spread <= 0 )
		$spread = 1;
	$font_spread = $largest - $smallest;
	if ( $font_spread <= 0 )
		$font_spread = 1;
	$font_step = $font_spread / $spread;

	// SQL cannot save you; this is a second (potentially different) sort on a subset of data.
	if ( 'name' == $orderby )
		uksort($counts, 'strnatcasecmp');
	else
		asort($counts);

	if ( 'DESC' == $order )
		$counts = array_reverse( $counts, true );

	$a = array();

	$rel = ( is_object($wp_rewrite) && $wp_rewrite->using_permalinks() ) ? ' rel="tag"' : '';

	foreach ( $counts as $tag => $count ) {
		$tag_id = $tag_ids[$tag];
		$tag_link = clean_url($tag_links[$tag]);
		$tag = str_replace(' ', '&nbsp;', wp_specialchars( $tag ));
		$a[] = "\t<option value='$tag_link'>$tag ($count)</option>";
	}

	switch ( $format ) :
	case 'array' :
		$return =& $a;
		break;
	case 'list' :
		$return = "<ul class='wp-tag-cloud'>\n\t<li>";
		$return .= join("</li>\n\t<li>", $a);
		$return .= "</li>\n</ul>\n";
		break;
	default :
		$return = join("\n", $a);
		break;
	endswitch;

	return apply_filters( 'dropdown_generate_tag_cloud', $return, $tags, $args );
}
?>

Now, to finalize your dropdown menu you have to open the theme file where you want the list to be displayed (i.e. sidebar.php) and insert the following code:

<select name="tag-dropdown" onchange="document.location.href=this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;">
	<option value="#">Liste d'auteurs</option>
	<?php dropdown_tag_cloud('number=0&order=asc'); ?>
</select>

Source

Custom “Read More” Links for Your Posts

This is a really useful hack if you want to better define or customize the look of your “Read More” links for posts. The first thing you have to do is to edit your posts and create custom fields. Give them custom_more as a key, and whatever text you want to be displayed as the value. Then you have to edit your index.php file (and also your category.php, search.php, etc) and find a line similar to this:

the_content("Read more");

Now just replace it with this code:

<?php $custommore = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'custom_more', true); ?>
<?php if (!$custommore) { $custommore = 'Read More &raquo;'; } ?>
<?php the_content($custommore); ?>

Source

Scheduling Posts for RSS

If you regularly publish articles and you care about the quality of your posts then this is a good hack for you. The main purpose of this hack is that it lets you schedule your posts to be viewed in your RSS at a later time, this will allow you enough time to get those last minute fixes and additions in before your post is forever published in your feed. Place the following code in your .htaccess file. In order to change the length of the delay, change the value of the $waitvariable on line 9.

function publish_later_on_feed($where) {
	global $wpdb;

	if ( is_feed() ) {
		// timestamp in WP-format
		$now = gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s');

		// value for wait; + device
		$wait = '5'; // integer

		// http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_timestampdiff
		$device = 'MINUTE'; //MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR

		// add SQL-sytax to default $where
		$where .= " AND TIMESTAMPDIFF($device, $wpdb->posts.post_date_gmt, '$now') > $wait ";
	}
	return $where;
}

add_filter('posts_where', 'publish_later_on_feed');

Source

Display the Most Commented Posts of 2009

As the New Year is about to role in, it would be fun and resourceful to let your readers know which of your posts were most popular in the past year. This hack will allow your visitors to view the top 10 most commented/popular posts of 2009. This is a great way to give your posts a second shot at being noticed. In order to do this, you’ll need to place the following code on your sidebar.php file, or wherever else you’d like on your theme:

<ul>
<?php
$result = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT comment_count,ID,post_title, post_date FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_date BETWEEN '2009-01-01' AND '2009-12-31' ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0 , 10");

foreach ($result as $topten) {
    $postid = $topten->ID;
    $title = $topten->post_title;
    $commentcount = $topten->comment_count;
    if ($commentcount != 0) {
    ?>
         <li></li>
    <?php }
}
?>
</ul>

Source

Allow Only Your IP Address to Access the wp-admin Directory

If you don’t have multiple writers or contributors to your blog, then realistically speaking only you should be allowed to visit the wp-admin directory. Especially since a great deal of security risks entail the wp-admin directory. All you have to do is enter your static IP adress on line 8. You can add more IPs if needed, by creating a new line. Place the following in your .htaccess file.

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "Example Access Control"
AuthType Basic
<LIMIT GET>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from xx.xx.xx.xx
</LIMIT>

Source

Styling Your WordPress Comments

When your blog has lots of comments, then it’s a great way to get visitors to interact more by styling the way your comments are displayed. If this is what you’re looking to to, then open your comments.php file and replace your comments loop with the following code:

<ol id="commentlist">
<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
	<?php // The extra stuff to get commenter's role
	$user_id = $comment->user_id;
	$role = ( isset( $roles[$user_id] ) ? $roles[$user_id] : '' );
	?>
	<li class="<?php echo $role; ?>">
	<p>By <?php comment_author_link() ?> - <?php comment_date() ?></p>
	<?php comment_text() ?>
	</li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>

Now to structure your comment you’ll need to open your style.css file and place the following code:

#commentlist li { border:2px solid white; } /* not logged or subscriber */
#commentlist li.administrator { border:2px solid red } /* blog admin */
#commentlist li.editor { border:2px solid blue } /* editor */

Source

Remove Widget Areas on Your Homepage

If your WordPress powered site is more than just a blog, then you probably want to get rid of the widget areas in your default sidebar and create your own. This hack doesn’t require any editing, just code insertion. Now, all you need to do is add the following to your functions.php file:

<?php
add_filter( 'sidebars_widgets', 'disable_all_widgets' );

function disable_all_widgets( $sidebars_widgets ) {
	if ( is_home() )
		$sidebars_widgets = array( false );
	return $sidebars_widgets;
}
?>

Source

Insert Author Bio for Each Post

A multi-writer blog usually means everyone who writes or contributes a post will have section that speaks about them. If your blog doesn’t have this feature, then start giving your authors proper credit by inserting the following code into your functions.php file. An author bio will be automatically be displayed at the end of every post.

function get_author_bio ($content=''){
    global $post;

    $post_author_name=get_the_author_meta("display_name");
    $post_author_description=get_the_author_meta("description");
    $html="<div class='clearfix' id='about_author'>\n";
    $html.="<img width='80' height='80' class='avatar' src='http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=".md5(get_the_author_email()). "&default=".urlencode($GLOBALS['defaultgravatar'])."&size=80&r=PG' alt='PG'/>\n";
    $html.="<div class='author_text'>\n";
    $html.="<h4>Author: ".$post_author_name."</h4>\n";
    $html.= $post_author_description."\n";
    $html.="</div>\n";
    $html.="<div class='clear'></div>\n";
    $content .= $html;
    }

    return $content;
}

add_filter('the_content', 'get_author_bio');

Source

Remove Certain Categories From Being Displayed

Place this code inside The Loop and whichever category you choose, it will not be displayed. This can be an interesting hack for those who only wish to display a certain category to chosen or registered users.

<?php
if ( have_posts() ) : query_posts($query_string .'&cat=-1,-2'); while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
?>

Source

Redirect Your WordPress Feed to FeedBurner

If you’ve found out how useful FeedBurner really is after you’ve set-up your WordPress site, and you have a few RSS subscribers on your default WordPress feed, then you’ll need to redirect your feed to FeedBurner. Every time a user follows a link to your default feed (i.e. http://www.yourblog.com/feed) they will be redirected to the location of your FeedBurner feed ( i.e. http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourblog). This way, even if a user manages to somehow subscribe to your old RSS feed, they will always be redirected to your new feed. Place the following code in your .htaccess file.

# temp redirect wordpress content feeds to feedburner
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner    [NC]
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedValidator [NC]
 RewriteRule ^feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebDesignLedger [R=302,NC,L]
</IfModule>

Source

Carousel Gallery (jQuery) for Wordpress

This plugin builds on the builtin Wordpress gallery, and replaces any gallery inserted using the tag with a neat jQuery powered carousel. By carousel it means you can browse through all the pictures in the gallery and they’ll slide from the right to the left and seamlessly start over at the end.

jQuery Lightbox For Native Galleries

jQuery Lightbox For Native Galleries makes the native WordPress galleries use a lightbox script called ColorBox to display the fullsize images.

jQuery Image Lazy Load WP

This plugin adds Lazy Load to WordPress. Lazy load delays loading of images in (long) pages. Images below the fold (far down in the page) wont be loaded before user scrolls down.

jQuery Comment Preview

This plugin gives commentors a live preview without taking up any extra screen real estate. It includes a simple HTML editor and you can customize comment preview block as you wish.

Google Analyticator

Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code to begin logging. Google Analyticator also includes several widgets for displaying Analytics data in the admin and on your blog.

jQuery Post Preview WordPress Plugin

If you don’t like WordPress built-in Visual Editor (because it puts a lot of unnecessary tags or by any other reasons), but you want to have live post preview like in Visual Editor, this plugin may be useful for you.

jQuery-Pagebar

jQuery-Pagebar displays a jQuery slider instead of the normal previous/next links.

J Post Slider

This plugin will rotate latest posts from blog, presented with selected image, post headline, and optional post excerpt.

WP-Slimbox2

This plugin implements the excellent Javascript Slimbox2 written by Christophe Beyls which utilizes jQuery.

WordPress Post Information Plugin

This plugin aims to consolidate your post information into a collapsible panel (using jQuery) that can save space on your page.

Wordpress jQuery Lightbox

This is Wordpress’s version of the jQuery Lightbox Plugin written by balupton.

Magazeen

Bueno

Gallery

Manifest

deStyle

Imprezz

Folio Elements

Compositio

Selecta

Irresistible

Glassical

Mainstream

FREEmium

Black Power

Vintage

TTFTitles

TTFTitles lets you use images to replace the titles of your posts, thus circumventing the problem of guessing what fonts your end-users might have installed.

wp-Typography

wp-​​Typography is a one-​​stop-​​shop for improved web typog­ra­phy in Word­Press. Some of it’s key features include: hyphen­ation, spacing control, and intel­li­gent char­ac­ter replace­ment.

Drop Caps Plugin

With the Drop Caps plugin, all drop caps are added on the fly meaning you can disable them if you change theme and you don’t need to think about them when you write your posts.

Simple Pull Quote

The Simple Pull Quote Wordpress Plugin provides an easy way for you to insert pull quotes.

Google Syntax Highlighter

This plugin easily integrates the Google Syntax Highlighter by Alex Gorbatchev into WordPress.

WP-Syntax

WP-Syntax provides clean syntax highlighting that supports a wide range of popular languages. It supports highlighting with or without line numbers and maintains formatting while copying snippets of code from the browser.

WP-Syntax Colorizer

WP-Syntax Colorizer is a plugin that runs along side WP-Syntax and gathers all of the functions required to set custom colors for your code snippets.

Text Control

Text Control lets you to choose from a variety of formatting syntaxes and encoding options.

PS Disable Auto Formatting

PS Disable Auto Formatting stops automatic formatting of WordPress (wpautop), and modifies the html source generated by the visual editor.

Dynamic Font Replacement

Dynamic Font Replacement allows you to use your own ttf- or otf-fonts with WordPress.

I am going to cover a little bit from across the board as to what we can do to become WordPress developers. Some items take only a minute or two to complete while others might take a bit more initial effort. I promise though that through it all, we’ll get our development skills to a much higher level. The list does not go in order of importance, but I would say that all 10 of the tips could each be #1.

1. Build your own theme options panel for easier customization

If you’re watching the trends of premium WordPress themes, you’ll notice the growing trend of theme options panels. Everybody wants them and everyone (in my opinion) honestly needs them. They’re popping up in paid themes, custom themes and free themes, and for a good reason – they’re highly useful.

A theme options panel can give yourself (or your clients) the added benefit of being able to change a host of things on the WordPress theme without ever touching any codes. With items such as advertisement blocks, carousel boxes, newsletter & rss boxes and much more being required for a majority of theme developments today, a theme options panel is something that every theme developer should know how to create. You can read up on how to create your own WordPress theme options panels here.

2. Understanding short codes can go a long way

Short codes are another item that can make your theme that much more special in the hands of the end user because of it’s ease of use. Short codes are a simple alternative to adding tricky codes to a post/page over and over again. Giving your themes user the ease of use can ensure that you’ll be the person they go to for future work.

Creating a short code is easy. Simply open up your theme’s functions.php file and add the following code to it.

function wdl() {
     return 'Web Design Ledger rules!';
}
add_shortcode('wdlrules', 'wdl');

With the above saved in your theme’s functions.php file, you can now add your shortcode to any post/page on your WordPress powered website. Simply add [wdlrules] to your post and it will return the text “Web Design Ledger rules!”

To learn more about the custom things you can do with WordPress shortcodes, you can check out the following article from smashing magazine.

3. Mastering WordPress conditional statements

Conditional statements in your WordPress theme can really take your website from the feeling of normal blog to the feeling of holy crap how did they just do that! And the beauty of it is that with a little bit of know-how and a little bit of code hacking, you can achieve this effect. The base of conditional elements is rooted in basic php codes, so if you’re aware of php at all, you’re one step ahead of the curve. If not, don’t worry because it’s simple to pick up.

For instance, if you’re wanting to display a welcome box on your websites home page and nowhere else, the following code will take care of that.

if (is_home()) {
     echo 'YOUR WELCOME BOX CODES HERE';
} else { }

You can notice the basics of the code above as well as see how I added in the “else{}” piece, which can help you along the way if you’re wanting to even customize the theme further. Checking out this article by Web Design Wall will help you dive deep into the world of conditional elements and what they can do for you.

4. Streamline your development for faster results

If you could cut your theme development time in half, would you do it? If you’re sane, I am going to assume that you said yes. Well, it’s pretty simple to streamline your development and allow you to tackle more jobs in less time. The first thing you should make sure you’re well aware of are dummy posts. You can download dummy posts that someone else created (I released a dummy post file on WP Guerrilla recently) or you can take a few minutes to create one that fits your needs a bit better.

The idea of creating your own dummy posts is that you’re able to instantly load the file into WordPress and have all of the posts/pages/categories that you need within 20 seconds or so. First, you’re going to create everything in your WordPress test install (categories, posts, pages, ect) and then head over to your WordPress admin page and click the “EXPORT” link under your TOOLS sidebar. Export your posts. Now, any time you want to load those posts onto a new test WordPress install, you can do so by going to IMPORT under the same TOOLS sidebar section.

Another idea would be to create your own theme framework. Theme frameworks like Thematic, Thesis, WP Framework, Guerrilla Theme and many others help developers have a solid base to start from when building custom WordPress themes. I can personally attest to the fact that a theme framework has saved me hundreds of hours in the past few months alone. You can also build your own custom theme framework if you notice that you’re using the same items (header, nav, footer, sidebar, post wraps, ect) to save your time and also allow you to customize it easier.

5. Create theme specific widgets for easier use

Along the lines of the first tip I gave above, creating a theme specific WordPress widget can help allow your themes user more easily customize the look and feel of the theme. By giving different options like ad block widgets, related post widgets or various other widget blocks, your themes user can customize and rearrange the sidebars and other areas of your theme with ease.

For more information on how you can write your own WordPress widget, Justin Tadlock wrote up an awesome article on the subject.

6. The little things can really go a long way

When you’re building a theme for any reason, the little extras you put into it to polish it off will set it apart from some of the sloppy work out there that is clogging the web waves. Standing out by going the extra mile is a piece of cake when you follow the couple of items below and add them into your releases.

• Highlighting authors comments
• showing related posts without a plugin
• building an author bio box for each post
• showing sub categories on the main categories page

Can you think of other little items to add into your themes that will help set your work apart from everyone else’s?

7. Use php codes instead of plugins as much as possible

Doing this quick little trick not only saves the end user time from having to download/install plugins, it also gives you some extra added know-how for future work – which is what we’re after here right; becoming better WordPress developers?

Above I linked to an article that tells you how to show related posts in WordPress without using a plugin, but what about other items? What about if we wanted to show the tweet meme button without a plugin? Copy/paste the code below into your theme where you want the button to show and style the div accordingly, giving it float, margin, border, etc.

<script type="text/javascript">
     tweetmeme_source = 'webdesignledger';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"> </script>

Starting to use your imagination, I am sure you can decipher a few other plugins and stick codes straight into your theme’s files -anything from the share this post boxes to the WordPress page navi codes and more.

8. Learn how to make WordPress as lean and mean as possible

The speed of your blog can be quickly bogged down by excess script files and codes that plugins and third part scripts create (like the tweet meme buttons, digg this buttons, facebook fan page boxes, ect). By simply applying a plugin or two to your theme and changing a few lines of code in a couple of files, you can turn your WordPress theme into a lean, mean, fast loading machine.

The first plugin I think that every blog should utilize is the wp super cache plugin. The plugin turns your dynamic pages into static html pages that it serves to your visitors which decreases load times significantly. Another plugin would be the Optimize DB plugin by Joost De Valk which does just what the name says – optimizes your database. For more hacks and tips on how to speed your blog up, WP Beginner has an awesome article on it.

9. WordPress hacks can be your #1 friend

WordPress is great for the blogging community. But with the right amount of hacks and adjustments, WordPress can be great for the web community as well. Turning your WordPress website into a CMS can be done with a few simple plugins. Below is a simple hack that will help reduce spam by disabling the ability to leave comments on your blog for anyone who comes to your blog with a NO REFERRER result (spam bots, ect).

function check_referrer() {
    if (!isset($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) || $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] == "") {
        wp_die( __('Please enable referrers in your browser, or, if you\'re a spammer, bugger off!') );
    }
}
add_action('check_comment_flood', 'check_referrer');

Smashing Magazine has a list of other great WordPress hacks you can read:

• 10 Exceptional WordPress Hacks
• 10 Killer WordPress Hacks
• 10 Custom Fields for WordPress

10. Keep up with the latest WordPress developments

One of the most important things you can do as a WordPress developer is keep up with the industry you are a part of. If you’re unaware that WordPress 2.9 is going to be released very soon, or unaware that there were some vulnerabilities in WordPress 2.8.4 and that is why they released 2.8.5, I would suggest checking in on some of the WordPress development blogs. Below are a list of a few of my favorite, which can not only keep you up to date on security and WordPress releases but also give you valuable tips, tricks and hacks for WordPress.

• WordPress Beginner
• WordPress Recipes
• WordPress Tavern
• The Official WordPress Blog

So what about you? Do you have any tips or tricks that the other readers here on Web Design Ledger can learn from? If so, drop them in the comments. I’m always up to learn some new tricks, and I hope you learned some in this article as well.

About the Author

Mike Smith is a blogger who writes about social media and marketing and he’s a blog designer at Guerrilla.