Intro to WordPress Development: Tweaking your Theme

Tweaking Your Theme

Guide new users to become more familiar with their theme
Tips to tweaking design
Share resources with easy to understand tutorials for helping users customize their themes
Why code snippets can be a better choice than plugins
A touch on child theming

You need to be familiar with WordPress (basic concepts of taxonomy, the loop, and at least the required functions to get a theme working.

You need to be familiar with PHP, HTML, CSS, and making graphics.

Basic
404.php
archives.php
comments.php
footer.php
functions.php
header.php
index.php
page.php
search.php
sidebar.php
single.php
Others

author.php
category.php
home.php

More template files to consider at above link.

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">

<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> by <?php the_author_posts_link() ?></small>
<div class="entry"> <?php the_content(); ?> </div>
<p class="postmetadata">Posted in <?php the_category(', '); ?></p></div>

<?php endwhile; else: ?>

<p>Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.</p> <?php endif; ?>

http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

A child theme basically overwrites some of the active parent theme to add style or certain functionalities not originally developed or designed in the original theme.

Plugins are great and normally versatile when you are changing from theme to another theme. Code snippets are theme specific.

While plugins are awesome, code snippets can cut down data resources and memory with your web host.

While adding snippets to another theme each time you change your theme is tedious, you are saving yourself grief from your host. Those of you with quickly growing sites will eventually have this issue and seek memcache, CDN and/or bigger hosting service plans. Do yourself a favor and give yourself a plugin diet.

Code Snippet to limit excerpt length
add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');
function my_excerpt_length($len) { return 100; }
Code Snippet for Post Thumbnail
add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
set_post_thumbnail_size( 150, 150, true ); // Normal post thumbnails
add_image_size( 'single-post-thumbnail', 400, 9999 ); // Permalink thumbnail size
These simple things go in the functions.php template file.

WPhacks.com
JustinTadlock.com
Themeshaper.com
WPBeginner.com
WPAddict.net
Digwp.com
Perishablepress.com
WPRecipes.com

[email_address]
Twitter: @blondishnet OR @wpaddict
Facebook: fb.com/NileFlores or fb.com/WPAddict

Intro to WordPress Development: Tweaking your Theme

by Nile Flores

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

2 Embeds 785

Statistics