WORDPRESS CMS
BASED WEBSITE
DEVELOPMENT
FROM START TO FINISH
Jonnya Freelance Crea-ve
www.jonnya.net

MY JOURNEY TO WORDPRESS
๏ Freelance graphic designer
• Over 10 years studio experience
• Mixed media background
๏ Began researching CMS
• Development pla<orm for the future
• Post‐Nuke, Joomla, Drupal
๏ 2005 Launched photoshopninja.com blog
• First exposure to WordPress at v1.4
• WordPress 1.5 ‐ pages introduced

WHY WORDPRESS IS IDEAL FOR
WEBSITES... NOT JUST BLOGS!
๏ Ease of customisa-on
• Template system
• Plugin architecture
๏ Content management facili-es
• Taxonomy (improved in v2.8)
• User management
• Admin area
๏ Development cycle/security
• Regular update cycle
• Easy to update
• Security record

Search WordPress.org Go
ome About Extend Docs Blog Forums Hosting Download
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free and priceless at the same time.
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PITFALLS OF
WEB DEVELOPMENT
PROJECTS

AVOID PITFALLS
๏ Project budget
๏ Client expecta-ons
๏ Firm proposal
๏ Content genera-on
๏ Scope creep

THE WEB DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS STEP 1
Planning and Proposals

1.1 INITIAL ENQUIRY & RESEARCH
๏ Research
• Clients market
• HosUng arrangements
๏ Consulta-on
• Audience
• Purpose
• Tastes
• FuncUonality

1.2 PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT
๏ Proposal development
• NavigaUon/structure
• FuncUonality outline
• Accessibility level
๏ Proposal refinement with client
• Audience
• Purpose
• FuncUonality
๏ Responsibili-es

CLIENT SIGN‐OFF
OF PROPOSAL

THE WEB DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS STEP 2
Crea-ve Design and development

2.1 CREATIVE DESIGN
๏ Ra-onalise naviga-on
• Top level
• Secondary level
• Focus areas
• Posts/pages/tags
๏ Crea-ve design
• Photoshop/Illustrator
• Homepage and content page
๏ Func-onality
• Plugins
• Development

CLIENT SIGN‐OFF
OF CREATIVE

2.2 XHTML/CSS CODING
๏ Build XHTML/CSS
• Blueprint CSS
• CSS Edit/Style Master
๏ Tes-ng, tes-ng and more tes-ng!
• Mac web development
• Online resources
• IE Tester
• Firefox add‐ons
๏ Func-onality
• Plugins
• Development

CLIENT SIGN‐OFF
OF TESTBED SITE

2.3 CONVERTING THE CREATIVE
INTO A WORDPRESS THEME
๏ The Testbed environment
๏ WordPress Structure
• Special categories
• Custom taxonomy
๏ Build WordPress theme
• Template tags
• Plugin integraUon
• include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/myfile.php');
• query_posts()
• WP_Query()

CODE EXAMPLE FOR MINI LOOP
<?php
$mycontent = new WP_Query();
$mycontent->query('tag=moo&showposts=4&orderby=date&$order=DEC');
while($mycontent->have_posts()) : $mycontent->the_post();
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="View <?php
the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; ?>

www.jonnya.net

GETTING YOUR TEMPLATES
UNDER CONTROL
๏ h^p://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy
• Understand the ‘cascade’ ‐ eg category display
1. category‐x.php
2. category.php
3. archive.php
4. index.php
๏ Page templates
๏ Condi-onal loca-on tests
๏ Special categories

Ramada Birmingham Oldbury

2.4 FINAL WORDPRESS BUILD PHASE
๏ Plugins
• Write custom plugins
• Don’t re‐invent the wheel!
• Integrate into theme
• CSS modificaUons
๏ Tes-ng
๏ Training
๏ Final content integra-on

ESSENTIAL PLUGINS
๏ Maintenance Mode
๏ Role Manager
๏ WP‐CMS Post Control
๏ WP‐DBManager plugin
๏ Google XML Sitemaps
๏ Cforms
๏ Akismet

CLIENT SIGN‐OFF OF
WORDPRESS PRIVATE SITE

THE WEB DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS STEP 3
Go‐live

3.1 GO‐LIVE
๏ Enable website
• Privacy
• Maintenance mode
• RSS feeds/Feedburner
• Google AnalyUcs
• XML Sitemap
๏ Back‐up!
• wp‐content folder
• Database
๏ Begin marke-ng

3.2 FIRST MONTH REVIEW
๏ XML sitemaps
๏ Check backups
๏ Search engine indexing
๏ Google Analy-cs
๏ Check client using WordPress func-onality
๏ Final snag catching

3.3 FIRST QUARTER REVIEW
๏ Search engine indexing
๏ Check content/formacng
๏ Develop on‐going content plan/schedule
๏ Tell the world!

3.4 ONGOING
๏ Marke-ng
๏ Google Analy-cs
๏ Improvements
๏ Update WordPress

WORDPRESS CMS
BASED WEBSITE
DEVELOPMENT
FROM START TO FINISH
Jonnya Freelance Crea-ve
www.jonnya.net