November 27, 2009
If your blog isn't quite ready to face the world, what do you do? You might be working on content, you might be reworking your theme, but the fact is that for most of us, WordPress is an online application, and visible to other eyes, even when we're not ready for them to look. Here's a simple way to make sure that you're the only one who can see your blog until you're ready to share it with the... Read more
August 11, 2009
Conditional tags are used in WordPress to change content according to what sort of page is being displayed. is_home() will test if the page is your blog's home page; is_single() tests if it's a single post page. Why do this when the WordPress template hierarchy tests for these things anyway? Most obviously, conditional tags help to cut down the number of theme files you need: if there are... Read more
August 4, 2009
A couple of people recently have asked for "WordPress without a theme". Let's sort the jargon out first: a theme is a set of files that WordPress uses to know how to display the words you've given it. Without a theme, your blog posts, comments, links and images won't show up at all: you can't *have* WordPress without a theme. That said, just because it's a "theme" doesn't mean it has to be... Read more
June 27, 2009
If you're running a multi-author blog, you've probably thought about including biographical and contact details for each author either on the posts that they write, or on a separate profile page. Though WP admin's users section gives you plenty of options for inputting information, from a potted life-story to your AIM handle, most themes don't take advantage of this. So today, we're going to look... Read more
June 17, 2009
We looked before at how to change the default number of posts displayed for your WordPress blog. The problem with the default is that - well - it's the default, and it applies to the home page, search results pages and archive pages equally (in most themes, anyway). What if you want a different number of posts on your archive pages to your home page? To deviate from the default, all you need... Read more
June 7, 2009
There are some snippets of code that stand you in very good stead, and this one, to find and display the first image in a post, is one such. I wrote it for Dan's blog nearly a year ago, and have used it so many times since, most recently just yesterday for Taexalia's new blog theme. If you have a magazine-style theme, wanting to find the first image in a post and display it on your home page... Read more
May 21, 2009
Sooner or later, how much you love the WordPress theme you've chosen, you're going to want to change something about it. Maybe you'll want your post titles to be a little larger, or to change fonts or link colours, or to make your sidebar wider. If you already know HTML, CSS and PHP, then head on over to the Theme Editor and start playing. But for everyone else, this post will be a brief... Read more
December 27, 2008
I've been looking a lot at WordPress themes recently, and it never ceases to amaze me that so many people are giving away such incredibly good design work. We're lucky to be part of this community. But then there are always the ones where you think, what were they on? What were they thinking of? Inevitably, that's a personal thing: someone reading this will be thinking that this blog is a whole... Read more
December 7, 2008
Once upon a time, if you wanted to add a picture to a blog post, you had to upload the image file via FTP and then write a whole bunch of HTML and CSS to make it appear in your post just the way you wanted it to. But no more. WordPress lets you easily embed pictures in posts, and change how they appear: if you want clickable thumbnails or to make the text flow nicely around the image, all that... Read more
November 24, 2008
If your theme isn't showing up in your WP admin section *at all*, then this post is what you're looking for. Just a quickie for anyone who makes their own WP themes I've spent an hour picking my way through forum posts, trying to find out why my theme doesn't preview through the Dashboard > Design page. It works fine, as you can see, but preview is just a blank white page. Turns out... Read more