American University WordPress Theming Lecture

Principles of WordPress Theme Design

Template Files

StyleSheet • style.css • The only required ﬁle • Includes Headers that will be used by WordPress /* Theme Name: Custom Theme Theme URI: http://emmense.com/ Description: A Child Theme of Twenty Ten Author: Aaron Brazell Author URI: http://technosailor.com Version: 1.0 Parent: twentyten */

Most Common Templates • index.php • functions.php • single.php • archive.php • comments.php • search.php • header.php • footer.php • sidebar.php • page.php

Other templates • category.php • category-x.php • tag.php • tag-x.php • taxonomy.php • taxonomy-x.php • attachment.php • author-x.php • author.php • 404.php • page-x.php

Template Hierarchy

Theme Frameworks

Why use a Theme Framework? • Themes present content according to the desires and tastes of the designer • Frameworks provide an extensible way of empowering designers within a set of guidelines.

Why use a Theme Framework? • Frameworks realize the principle of separation of content and presentation • Early Predecessor: CSS Zen Garden • Change a theme using only CSS. No markup modiﬁcations

Hybrid • Hybrid (http://themehybrid.com) • Templates for everything • Admin Pages for content control

Thematic • Thematic (http://themeshaper.com/thematic/) • Focuses on Widget Areas and Grid layout • Modify EVERYTHING via CSS

Carrington • Carrington (http://carringtontheme.com/) • Most Robust: Focuses on Typography, semantic markup and Ajax • Includes a Mobile Theme

Best Practices

Use Hooks In Themes • Let plugin devs build for your template • Add ﬁlters and actions throughout themes • Examples: • do_action(‘before_content’); • apply_ﬁlters(‘logo’, ‘logo.jpg’);

Internationalize! • Internationalization (i18n) is important • Use load_theme_textdomain() in functions.php • Utilize __(), _e(), _c() and _x() to provide translatable strings • Don’t forget the .po ﬁle • More info: http://codex.wordpress.org/I18n_for_WordPress_Developers

Essential Plugins

Essential Plugins for Any WordPress Blog • Headspace 2 SEO (http://wordpress.org/ extend/plugins/headspace2/) • Akismet (http://wordpress.org/extend/ plugins/akismet/) • MobilePress (http://wordpress.org/extend/ plugins/mobilepress/)

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American University WordPress Theming Lecture

by Aaron Brazell

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American University WordPress Theming Lecture Presentation Transcript