WordPress Template Files and Style Sheets – Give Them a Name

I love the modular template files in WordPress. The ability to mix and match the building blocks to create custom web pages is great. The problem comes when working on the style sheet for the different looks. I often have to track down which style belongs to which template file. Solution? Give them a name? […]

WordPress Tips and Tricks for Template Files

Tips Apply to WordPress 1.5+ We looked customizing the WordPress Administration Panels and many other WordPress Tips. This one looks at some tips and tricks for WordPress template files and style sheets. The template files in WordPress are found within your WordPress Themes. They are the building blocks which come together to create the structure […]

WordPress School: What’s the Difference Between the Display Posts and Archive Shortcodes

In Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course, we’ve been exploring shortcodes. In this tutorial, let’s take a look at two shortcodes that appear to be the same on the surface. WordPress has long had the ability to generate a list of posts in a Page or post with a bit of code in the archives() […]

WordPress School: The Links in WordPress

In Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course today we will explore the most important thing on the web: links. Specifically how WordPress automatically generates links on your site and how you can add these same links within the content and elsewhere on your WordPress site. So far in this course we’ve covered the topic of […]

WordPress School: Excerpts

If you are following along with Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course you’ve been writing posts as part of the article series assignments and other assignments. Go to the front page of your site in the Twenty-Eleven WordPress Theme and take a look. Do you see long posts, one after another, and have to scroll, […]

The Most Common Tiny Mistakes Made When Setting Up a WordPress Site

I’ve just finished five years of teaching non-stop college and community education workshops and programs on WordPress for beginners, novices, experts, web designers, web developers, web programmers, and those who think they know everything but still realize they have a lot to learn. I love that last group as they are willing to learn and […]

WordPress School: HTML and CSS References and Resources

In “9 Truths That Computer Programmers Know That Most People Don’t” by Macleod Sawyer, he quotes Ben Cherry and adds the following after: “Under the hood, most critical software you use every day (like Mac OS X, or Facebook) contains a terrifying number of hacks and shortcuts that happen to barely fit together into a […]

WordPress School: HTML and CSS – Identifying IDs and Classes

As we round up the mini-series on HTML and CSS basics as part of the ongoing Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course, and to prepare you for working with WordPress Themes, it is important to understand how to find the right design element to change on a website, specifically within a WordPress Theme. We’ve been […]

WordPress School: HTML and CSS Tutorial

Over the past week we’ve been learning about the web browser, your gateway to WordPress and the web. This was a precursor to the next mini-series of tutorials in Lorelle’s WordPress School free online course. We are going to learn HTML and CSS. Learning WordPress from the inside out means learning the basic fundamentals of […]

WordPress School: Header Art Images

In the first article in this mini-series on learning how to create images for WordPress header art, call-to-action images, and add text to images for your site’s design elements, I covered the basic tools and materials you will need for these tutorials. In this tutorial, you will learn simple basics for header art, specifically how […]

WordPress School: Pageviews

A student trying to explain how WordPress Themes worked to another student used the following metaphor: Think of WordPress Themes like a poker hand. They are all cards but the value of the playing hand changes with each deal. She was right. There are 52 cards in a deck, four suits (clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades), […]

WordPress School: Paragraphs and Line Breaks

The previous assignment in Lorelle’s WordPress School covered the visual and text editors in WordPress. In this assignment, I’d like to focus on making paragraphs within both editors. A paragraph in HTML is a container holding contextual content, the written word. The HTML of a paragraph opens and closes with the paragraph tag. If we […]

WordPress School: Posts and Pages

Let’s be Lorelle’s WordPress School with the two core content elements of WordPress: posts and Pages. By default, WordPress displays content in posts and Pages. Each behaves differently and distinctively in WordPress, and can confuse people easily. Let’s make this simple. Pages hold timeless content. Posts hold timely content. Please be patient with the videos. […]

Research on the WordPress, Web Development, and Web Design Job Market

In 2012 and 2013, I did extensive research for the grant program to develop and rewrite the Web Developer degree program at Clark College. This research included an analysis of current and future job opportunities for students graduating with that degree with a solid understanding of WordPress. Now that the program has completed its first […]

WordPress For Writers: WordPress Author Sites

In this part of my series on WordPress For Writers, I’ll cover the basic things to consider when using WordPress on site promoting the work of writers and authors. For more on the subject, see other articles in the WordPress for Writers and Authors series. This article assumes you have some basic familiarity with WordPress […]