Learning WordPress

2. ludo said:

Ditch the WP frontend and use http://lightpress.org/ :)

Posted on May 9, 2005 12:26 PM | #

4. Allen said:

WP is a really nice tool. My site was running 1.2 for a long time but at the begining of the year, I was hit really hard with spam and basically had to shut it down. During that time I tested MT TXP and WP and once they released 1.5 and better spam control, I made the final choice to relaunch with 1.5. There seems to be a bigger, more easily obtainable user base of development out there than MT.

Tons of great themes out there now… especially with the new theme engine in 1.5… Alex King’s Theme competition really brought out some great designs. And How to Blog has a huge list of themes, most from the competition but alot of newer ones made after the contest.

But the forums on Wordpress.org is the best resource for whats going on in WP-land… and the dashboard, the front page of the admin panel, is great for keeping up with everything WP.

Posted on May 9, 2005 12:38 PM | #

6. Dougal Campbell said:

If you haven’t found it already, you should definitely add Weblog Tools Collection to your reading. They put out links to new WordPress plugins, themes, hacks, and tips all the time. And there are occassionaly tidbits about non-WP stuff, as well.

Are there any particular kinds of tips you’re looking for?

Posted on May 9, 2005 12:44 PM | #

8. Steve Smith said:

Keith: If that’s what you want to do, just edit your single.php file in the template directory, and replace wp_title with single_post_title in the title tag. That should take care of it.

Posted on May 9, 2005 12:50 PM | #

10. Michael Heilemann said:

Well if this isn’t an invitation to ‘toot’ my own horn, I don’t know what is.

Time Since
Live Search
Latest Comments
Live Archives

And of course, if you have any questions, let me know.

Posted on May 9, 2005 12:57 PM | #

12. Murray said:

I think Steve nearly nailed it.

try:

if ( is_single() ) { single_post_title(); } else { bloginfo(‘name’); }

-between php tags and your title tags (i can’t put the exact code in or it won’t display).

I’m pretty new to this and they may be a better way of doing it but i’ve just tried it on my site and it seems to work.

Posted on May 9, 2005 01:28 PM | #

14. Murray said:

just had a browse round your titles and think this is closer (though not exact) to what your looking for (i’ve used square brackets so the tags show up):

[title] [?php if ( is_home() ) { bloginfo(‘name’); } else { if ( is_single() ) { single_post_title(); } else { ?] Archives » [?php wp_title(’ ‘); } }?][/title]

hope this helps

Posted on May 9, 2005 01:51 PM | #

16. Yannick L. said:

Interesting article Keith. I think I will find it useful as well as I am learning WP also. Anywho here are two links I found useful for understanding and creating/editing WP templates:

• http://www.urbangiraffe.com/2005/04/12/themeguide1/
• http://www.urbangiraffe.com/2005/04/22/themeguide2/

Also you might want to keep your eyes on WP Shuttle.

Hope those help.

Posted on May 9, 2005 03:31 PM | #

18. Tina Vance said:

I love using Wordpress, but it can be kind of tricky. Some links that I’ve found helpful are:

• Anatomy of a Wordpress Theme
• Templates and the “is” functions
• Wordpress is not PHP

Posted on May 9, 2005 06:24 PM | #

20. Keith said:

Steve and Murry – thanks for the help. The last one I couldn’t get to work, I’m still learning PHP, but it’s close and the others should do fine until I can sort it out.

Posted on May 9, 2005 06:45 PM | #

22. Jonathan Fenocchi said:

Wordpress is awesome. There is no better blogging software. Some people argue that Textpattern is better, but they are mistaken; Textpattern is a good CMS, but not good blogging software (and yes, there is a difference). I’ve never had the priviledge of using Movable Type, but I’ve also always been skeptical of it because it runs off of Perl CGI (or so I hear) instead of PHP, and I’m a PHP programmer. Wordpress is extremely easy to use, modify, manage, and hack. After just a few days of using Wordpress, I wrote a plugin — that’s how easy it is to work with Wordpress. A very picky person, I had some frustration when customizing and, although that isn’t typical (hence Wordpress’s success), I can see you’re interested in diving into it, taking it apart and putting it back together. There’s some things here and there that I would prefer different, but generally Wordpress is the best solution coming from every direction.

Posted on May 9, 2005 10:25 PM | #

24. Murray said:

Thanks Tina.

If I put in the angle brackets it doesn’t work for me (hence the square ones).

I presume this is so I don’t try and break the site with malicious code (not that I have the skill let alone the intention).

Cheers.

Posted on May 10, 2005 01:35 AM | #

26. Hans Nilsson said:

Getting some great stuff here also. Thanks for the post!

I’ve also gone with wordpress on my blog, and has redesigned it all myself, without much knowledge of PHP. It’s not all there yet, but I’m getting there.

On a side-note, here’s a fun article about the differences between MT, WP and TxP.

Posted on May 10, 2005 06:58 AM | #

28. Manny Fleurmond said:

Huh. I’ve been thinking about using Wordpress for a while and your entry pretty much pushed me over the edge. I’m trying to learn PHP anyway, so this will be practice for me.

Posted on May 10, 2005 07:39 AM | #

30. Mike Rainey said:

Since I wrote my own blogging software, I don’t use Wordpress. Don’t get me wrong, I looked at all the CMSes out there: Wordpress, TextPattern, MT, Blogging Machine, I just decided to write my own to learn PHP and Perl.

Of all of the CMSes out there, Wordpress is the easiest for novices who don’t know PHP or Prel, since PHP is easier to get a hang of than Perl.

If you decide to stick with Wordpress, you might want to check out WP-Plugins.

Posted on May 10, 2005 08:40 AM | #

32. Adrian said:

Keith, what version of WP are you running?

If you’re on 1.5 or 1.5.1, then in the /wp-content/themes directory, in the theme you want to use, for the main page, WP uses index.php. If you’re viewing a single post, you can have a single.php that display what you want for a single post, so in your instance, I would make the main index.php have the site title, in the single.php, put in what you want for the title. If you don’t have a single.php, then you can grab the single.php from the default one and use that as an example. I generally grab the default theme, make a copy of it, and then in the css file for that theme, rename it so that you can differentiate between the default and that one in the admin theme manager. From there, start changing stuff to meet your needs.

For the spam comments. In WP, they’re still there, but with 1.5 and 1.5.1, much of it can be pushed down out of the way with the spam handling in WP, so you don’t have to deal with it. WP 1.5 has some very functional and useful spam handlers.

Themes can be the single most frustrating thing about WP, but once you get the hang of it, are very nice, and allow for complete development of new themes with fast switching between them.

Posted on May 10, 2005 09:51 AM | #

34. Chris said:

The number 1 thing I can suggest is that you become familiar with the template tags. There is an amazing amount of customization in there.

Codex: Template Tags

After that, just ask around. I’ve always said the best thing about WordPress is the community. 9 out 10 if you’d like a plug-in to do something just asking is all it takes to have it in about a week. On one occasion it took half an hour but Jonas is just cool that way.

Posted on May 10, 2005 04:36 PM | #

36. Jeff Minard said:

Tip #1: Duplicate the default theme folder, rename it, and work from there when creating themes. This will avoid hassle when you update, and keep the files around for reference.

Tip #2: I find myself wanting to replace to add another “Loop” to the certain pages all the time. For instance, say that on the every “page” i want a list of three recent posts. The “Loop” starts like this:

if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();

If you want to overwrite what wordpress loops through, you can add this above it:

$wp_query->parse_query(“cat=3&posts_per_page=1”);
$posts = $wp_query->get_posts();

Which, in that case, would get the most recent single (1) article from category 3. Then you can use the loop like normal, the_title() etc. Comes in real handy. Specially on the home page when customizing it to display, say, one portfolio piece, a few links, 2 excerpted entries, and 5 recent entries with just titles. One loop for each section, no hassle. (Which is sort how my home page is set up.)

Posted on May 12, 2005 01:50 AM | #

38. Andrea Beggi said:

If you are concerned about spam, my suggestion is to get this two plugins:
WordPres Hashcash
Trencaspammers
from day one of installation I did not see a sigle spam comment, even in moderation. There is no way for an automatic system to bypass these plugins, comments have to be entered manually from a human.
You can find them on the usual plugin repositories.
Just my two cents.
Andrea (Italy)

Posted on May 13, 2005 06:42 AM | #

40. Assparade said:

I’m just getting to know WP myself, and finding it very powerful. Keep in mind this is coming from somebody who has always written their CMS by hand, as pages were added.

I may be making hard work out of an easy task, but you’ve got those boolean variables to indicate what page of the site you are on, like is_home() (or whatever it is called). So you can write out a different title depending on where you are. You could also add custom attributes to give a certain page more unique characteristics, but that might create a lot more work than it’s worth.

I’d love to learn more about WP, so this is probably going to be a great post to follow. I’m currently having fun creating my own theme for a site I’m working on…it’s suprisingly easy (I’d be utterly lost without the WP Codex).

Posted on September 18, 2005 11:09 AM | #

42. barthram said:

Very Very nice information here… Thanks

Posted on June 11, 2006 04:08 PM | #

44. ewert said:

Nice site. Thank to work…

Posted on June 11, 2006 10:49 PM | #

46. garafeld said:

Very needed information found here, thank you for your work

Posted on June 15, 2006 07:00 AM | #