Theme Lab » WordPress Community

WordPress DC Presentation – CSS Tricks and Wizardry

Leland — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 05:00:51 +0000

If you’re still not following me on Facebook or Twitter, you probably haven’t heard that I’m speaking at another WordPress DC meetup.

It will be on Tuesday, August 9th at 7 PM located at Fathom Creative‘s office in DC. More details on location, parking, etc. can be found on the meetup page (linked previously).

What I’ll Be Talking About

Similar to my last presentation at WordPress DC, I will be discussing CSS. Unlike last time, however, the CSS tips I’ll be going over aren’t necessarily WordPress-specific, and can apply to nearly any type of site. The official description:

You’ll learn some useful and practical CSS tips and tricks. These could include tips on speeding up development time, general optimizations, and other cool things. Also, these aren’t necessarily limited to WordPress, but could apply to nearly any HTML/CSS based site. Beginner to intermediate CSS knowledge would be nice but not absolutely required.

Slides

These are in the same format as my previous slides (but less crammed so it’s easier to see on the TV).

Theme Lab T-Shirts

This will be the premiere of the limited edition Theme Lab t-shirts! Okay, they’re not really limited editions, I can print more if needed. I’ll be bringing various shirts in S/M/L sizes. A picture of them is below.

I’ll figure out some way to give them away at the meetup.

Andy Stratton’s Presentation

Also speaking at the same WordPress DC meetup is Andy Stratton, who I got to know pretty well at WordCamp Raleigh earlier this year. I saw his presentation there called Diet Pills, SEO and Theme Frameworks, which he’ll also be presenting here. Trust me, it’s one you won’t want to miss.

Conclusion

Looking at the meetup page, it looks like spots are filling up pretty quickly. If you want in, you should RVSP ASAP.

WordPress DC Presentation – Leveraging CSS to Change Your Theme

I’m Going to WordCamp Raleigh (Again)

Leland — Thu, 19 May 2011 20:34:05 +0000

It’s that time of the year again. As some of you might remember, I attended WordCamp Raleigh last year as well and had a great time (and even got video interviewed!).

This year looks like it’ll be a great follow-up with a great lineup of speakers. If you’re going to be there, let me know. I’d love to meet you and/or see you again. I should be arriving Friday and will stay until Sunday.

If you haven’t registered yet, and would like to, there are still tickets available as of publishing this post at $45 each. Below is a link to register.

P.S. If you don’t know what I look like, see the video interview linked to above. My appearance hasn’t changed that much since a year ago.

Interview with Lisa Sabin-Wilson on Allure Themes

Leland — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:51:17 +0000

Just yesterday, Lisa Sabin-Wilson of WordPress for Dummies fame, announced a new venture called Allure Themes.

She was nice enough to grant me an interview here on Theme Lab to offer more insight on her decision to launch a commercial theme business, and more.

Read on to see the rest of the interview with Lisa. My questions will be in bold with the responses below.

The Interview

Already being an established book author with WordPress for Dummies, as well as a succesful custom theme designer at E.Webscapes, why take the plunge into the commercial theme market? Why now, especially with the market being as saturated as it is?

I’m always interested in new challenges and trying things I’ve never done before. I’ve always done custom design work, but never experienced what it takes to release product for mass consumption – I saw this as an opportunity to try something new. Certainly not *new* by the standards of the overall commercial theme market – just new for me.

In terms of the market being saturated? Many argue that the custom design market is saturated with amazing competition, yet I do pretty good for myself in that arena, and nearly every custom design provider I know is turning away more work than they take because there is SO much work out there.

I don’t think it is for me, or anyone else to say that any market is saturated until it proves itself so through natural selection. That said, I’m a firm believer that there is always room for dessert.

I answered an interview question for Ryan Imel over at WPCandy recently on the future of WP Themes in 2011 and part of my answer included the emergence of themes targeted towards particular markets and niche areas – I see Allure doing exactly that with themes designed for women.

You described Allure Themes as a commercial theme provider providing themes “just for women.” How will the themes cater to women exactly?

Hard to explain, really – it’s a design style that may appeal to some women. As a custom theme provider, I do fill custom requests for people using existing frameworks or themes. A large portion of those clients of mine come to me with commercial themes and say “Make it girly” or “Pretty this up for me” – that kind of thing.

We’re talking colors, design elements, flourishes and special touches that create a particular look and feel that some women want.

We are talking “sun room” not “man cave”. Does that make sense? Note: since our announcement, some people assume this means Pink. While there will be pink – and periwinkle and black and purple and green and….you get it.

We have niche theme sites for bands, politicians, but none (as far as I know) for women, which makes it a relatively untapped market. How are you expecting this niche market to respond overall?

With themed designs that are geared toward areas that are important to women. Some examples? Mommy blogging, pregnancy blogging, health and beauty, women entrepreneurs, women in sports – I could go on, but you get the idea. The style I have in mind may not appeal to all female bloggers and site owners out there – but I do have a clear picture of what many are looking for just through the mountain of custom design requests from women that I take through E.Webscapes. This is not to say that existing commercial themes don’t fill this need; Allure just provides another option with a targeted focus.

It seems like iThemes will play an important role in terms of supporting the themes from Allure Themes. Why choose iThemes for this role? Can you give us any more insight on the role iThemes will play in the development and support of Allure Themes?

iThemes has a proven and successful history of providing and supporting commercial products in the WordPress community. They know what they are doing and are very good at what they do. Over the years, I have developed a solid relationship with the team at iThemes and have 100% faith in their abilities. Having iThemes on board is my dream team and Allure users know, from day one, that there is a solid, experienced team in place to support the themes, answer their questions and build community.

How does the organizational chart look? Because I am one person and they are a full team of people – iThemes brings stability to Allure from day one. iThemes is providing the backbone for support, sales, marketing and affiliate program management. Basically, they focus on all the back end stuff which leaves me free to focus on the creative design and development.

Do you plan on using a framework for your themes, similar to what StudioPress does with Genesis and its child themes? Or will they be standalone themes? Why?

Yes, and no.

I am definitely going the way of parent/child themes at Allure because it absolutely makes the most sense for both myself, and our users. A parent/child theme set up is the best of both worlds for everyone – making it easy for me, the developer, to operate within a solid foundation and provide upgrades to our users that won’t break their own customizations and hard work. It’s a win-win.

That said, WordPress is my framework and Allure will not seek to re-invent that wheel. I intend to keep it simple, work within a clean parent theme that provides a solid, basic foundation for our users that will be there when they need us, and politely steps out of their way when they don’t.

You are also the author of BuddyPress for Dummies, which begs the question, are there any plans for offering BuddyPress themes as well as WordPress? What about other platforms?

Interesting you are not the only person to ask that question – funny how one little book can pigeon-hole a person, isn’t it?

Of course I want Allure to provide the features and functionality that our users seek. Over the past year at E.Webscapes, we’ve seen a literal explosion of BuddyPress site requests and have been doing quite a lot of BuddyPress work for our clients there, so I do see this as an ever growing, emerging need; especially as BuddyPress becomes more and more brilliant with each new release. Providing a BuddyPress Addon for Allure is definitely something I intend to pursue after I get the party started with the initial launch.

You’re part of the secretive MassivePress project, will the launch Allure Themes have anything to do with launch of MassivePress?

MassivePress launches this week and we are all very excited about it. By “we”, I mean our founders: myself, Jason Schuller, Cory Miller, Michael Torbert, Carl Hancock and Grant Griffiths — just a fabulous group of people, with amazing talent to boot! I can’t say enough about these guys – I love ‘em. I guess that’s why I am very happy to be a part of the core MassivePress group.

I can’t go into much more detail about MassivePress until its launch, at which point I will be more than happy to yap about it. But, in terms of Allure… I can say, without divulging too much; Allure is a stand out example of what our mission and purpose for MassivePress is all about. Our pre-launch web site has been online since November (to be replaced by our official site later this week with our launch). I’m not giving away any secrets when I quote our words found there: “A coalition of like-minded WordPress entrepreneurs who think we can do more together than apart.” Stay tuned.

Anything else you’d like to say about Allure Themes or anything else?

My email has been popping since the announcement of Allure on Wednesday morning – so let me answer some of the questions that have cropped up most often:

Launching Allure does not mean that E.Webscapes is going away. E.Webscapes continues to be a strong business and one that intend to continue building. On the contrary, I see Allure and E.Webscapes working together in perfect harmony.

Yes, Allure will port to popular theme frameworks and make child themes for iThemes Builder, Headway and Genesis available on AllureThemes.com. It makes sense to provide a full array of choice to our user base. (eventually, after our initial launch)

Yes, Allure will be fully 100% GPL across the board, no questions asked. iThemes, and myself, fully respect the GPL and intend to operate within.

Ok, one more – follow us on Twitter: @AllureThemes

Thanks so much for your time and interest, Leland – hopefully we bump into one another at another WordCamp sometime this year!

Conclusion

The interview above is unedited, aside from myself adding a few links. I’d like to thank Lisa for taking the time to do this interview, especially so soon after her announcement. This will definitely be an interesting commercial theme venture to keep an eye on in the future.

Oh, and if Twitter isn’t your thing, you can also subscribe to Allure Themes’ newsletter to keep up with the latest updates.

What do you think of Allure Themes?

WordPress Anniversary Theme

Leland — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:42:23 +0000

To honor the anniversary of WordPress today, Ben Welch-Bolen of Site5 hosting has created a little thank you site with a free WordPress Anniversary Theme. On the site, you can download the theme, and leave a small thank you message.

Theme Features

The theme itself is pretty good looking (click the screenshot above for a live preview) and has a number of useful features.

Different layout options
Menu management
Widget ready (sidebar and footer)
Check out the theme documentation for more info.

Conclusion

Pretty cool to see a dedicated WordPress appreciation site like this, plus the free theme makes it all the sweeter.

Dear Theme Devs, Stop Pasting Random Snippets of Code in functions.php

Leland — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:25:10 +0000

Imagine this scenario, you find a really cool snippet of code on one of the many WordPress tutorial sites out there and paste it in your theme’s functions.php file.

The code snippet works as advertised, and you then release your theme for sale on a well-known theme marketplace. Let’s pick a random one out of a hat and go with… ThemeForest.

Suddenly your theme becomes really popular, may be because of the massive list of apparently useful “features” you have listed on your theme’s sales page. With your theme’s success, also comes a number of support queries, mostly to do with plugins breaking while using your theme.

How did this happen, you wonder? Maybe it’s because you blindly pasted random globs of WordPress code into your functions.php file without actually thinking about or anticipating any potential compatibility issues.

A Real Life Example

So, I was trying to find a snippet of code that would pull all the attached images from a post and then display them on that post automatically. I eventually found a piece of code on Stack Overflow, pasted it in my functions file, and it appeared to solve the problem.

The first line of code was the following:

add_filter('the_content', 'strip_shortcodes');

Oh well, it worked, I didn’t think anything of it. I later tried to embed a contact form with a shortcode. Surprise, it didn’t work and I spent about an hour trying to figure out why. If I actually read through the code I was pasting, I would’ve known.

This was for a client site, not a released theme, so luckily I didn’t have to deal with a deluge of support queries due to my stupid mistake.

What Commercial Plugin Developers Think

Here’s a quote from Carl Hancock (developer of Gravity Forms) on this very topic:

Supporting the popular Gravity Forms plugin means we see more than our fair share of poorly coded themes. One of the primary support related issues we run into are themes that aren’t developed using best practices, which results in Gravity Forms styling issues and in some cases conflicts that result in Gravity Forms not functioning properly.

The biggest culprit in these situations are themes that include code snippets copy-n-pasted from tutorial sites. Theme developers seem to think that just because the code snippet was on a tutorial site, it must be good. Unfortunately that isn’t always the case and these poor decisions result in headaches and support issues for users.

Want to limit the potential for running into issues with plugins caused by a poorly developed theme? Stick to reputable theme developers such as Press75, iThemes, Headway Themes, Organic Themes, WooThemes, and StudioPress to name a few. Be weary of theme marketplaces where the experience and skill set of the author may be lacking. In most cases you get what you pay for.

Coding Best Practices

A lot of these issues can likely be avoided by following WordPress coding standards. For example, you should be prefixing your function names to avoid any potential conflicts.

In the case of styling issues with Gravity Forms, you may want to avoid certain blanket styles on form and input elements, and instead use WordPress default ID selectors for the bulk of your form stylings.

These includes #searchform, #s, #searchsubmit in the search box. Also #commentform #author, #url, #email, #comment, #submit for the comment form.

Conclusion

If you’re a theme developer, and not too well-versed at PHP, be careful when copying and pasting these code snippets into your theme. Even if you’re not that great at PHP, you can at least read through the code and try to make some sense of it before using it.

Like if you find that your shortcodes aren’t functioning properly, a line of code that mentions “strip_shortcodes” might have something to do with that.

Sometimes I get the feeling that WordPress theme developers just paste random snippets in their functions.php file, just so they can list another “feature” on their theme’s sales pages.

While I’m not a big fan of this sort of idea, it gets into a whole other argument on the role of themes and plugins on WordPress sites, which I’ll save for a future post.

WordPress DC Presentation – Leveraging CSS to Change Your Theme

Leland — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:00:19 +0000

If you’re not following me on Facebook or Twitter, you may not have heard yet, but I am presenting at an upcoming WordPress DC meetup!

It will be on Tuesday, January 11th at 7 PM located at Fathom Creative‘s office in DC. More details on location, parking, etc. can be found on the meetup page (linked previously).

What I’ll be talking about

I’ll be talking about how to edit your themes through just CSS. More specifically, how to edit them through the classes output by WordPress functions such as body_class, comment_class, and post_class. Each will come with a practical example.

Slides

Click the image below to launch the slide presentation.

Sample Child Theme

Can be downloaded here.

Conclusion

These slides are pretty much finished but I may edit them between now and the presentation. I also might update this post in the future with additional information and presentation materials.

If you happen to be in the DC area, I’d love it if you could make it! All you have to do is sign up with the WordPress DC meetup group and RVSP to the event.

WPCandy iPhone App Review – Must-Have for WordPress Lovers

Leland — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:29:39 +0000

Ever since WPCandy was brought back to life around four months ago it has been, easily, one of the best places to find constantly updated WordPress news.

For a while I used it almost solely to keep track of all the happenings in the community, not having time to dig through all the noise on Twitter on a daily basis.

Being an iPhone owner, I was especially excited to hear that they released an app for it. I recently had the chance to try it out and my findings are below.

Buying the App

The app currently costs $0.99 in the App Store. Just search for “wpcandy” and it’ll pop up.

The Home Screen

By default, the WPCandy app shows the latest posts on the home screen.

It utilizes scrolling to navigate through all of the latest posts, which are separated by day.

At the top right, there is a refresh button which checks if there are any new posts available (which is also visible on every other tabbed page except “More”).

On the bottom are tabs to navigate between other categories from the WPCandy website. By default, they are:

Popular
Interviews
Reviews
More

If you aren’t happy with these, not to worry, they can be customized later (which I’ll get to later in the review).

Normal Single Post

The single post is about what you would expect. The top menu changes around a bit with:

A button to return to the previous category screen
A button to open in Safari or share via email
Buttons for previous/next post navigation

…in that order.

The bottom menu is also removed in favor of more space for content.

There are no comments displayed, although if you really want to see the comments on a specific post, you can always use the “Open in Safari” feature to read them.

Interview Posts

As of now, all of the posts included on the “Interviews” tab are videos.

When selecting an interview, you will be taken to an alternate version of a single post view which is basically a link to the corresponding YouTube video.

After tapping the video thumbnail, you’ll automatically be taken to the YouTube app which then plays the video.

After you’re done with the video, you can leave the YouTube app and end up right back where you started in the WPCandy app.

Configuring the Tabs

As I mentioned above, you can also configure the featured tabs that are displayed at the bottom of category pages. Besides the default ones, you also have the following available on the “More” tab:

News
Tutorials
Editorials
Features

To configure them, select the “Edit” button on the top right of the “More” page.

Simply drag the corresponding icon to the tab area below you want replaced. In the picture I’m dragging the “Tutorials” icon.

Some Limitations

The biggest limitation seems to be not being able to dig past 25 posts in any given category. There is also not a search feature as far as I can tell, so if you’re looking up an older post or want to search for specific keywords and such, that option is not available at the moment.

According to the most recent post about the WPCandy app, Ryan says that, “We have a few enhancements coming to the iPhone app very soon.” So maybe these search features are already in the pipeline.

Conclusion

Currently priced at $0.99, this app is definitely a great deal to stay up-to-date with all the news in the WordPress community. Yes, I know you can get all the same information just by visiting their website in Safari, but the app does make it a lot easier and more convenient to browse.

Also if you don’t have an iPhone, you can also build a WPCandy news feed directly into your WordPress dashboard with this plugin.

ThemeGarden WordPress Theme Marketplace Open to the Public

Leland — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:08:30 +0000

Jason Schuller, who I previously interviewed about ThemeGarden, has just opened it to the public.

So far, ThemeGarden only has a few themes for sale and are currently accepting author applications so hopefully we’ll see some new themes for sale soon. If you’re a theme author, take note of their requirements on the previous link.

Sellers get 100% of theme sale revenue after paying a monthly fee ($25 for up to 5 themes, $50 for unlimited).
First three months are completely free for sellers.
Themes must be 100% GPL licensed (including artwork and CSS).

I know you’re probably thinking about the monthly fee in order to list themes, but keep in mind this would probably be easily covered in one or two sales. If you have a popular theme, a fixed cost per month would be considerably less than percentage-based fees in other comparable marketplaces.

If you have a crappy theme, chances are it wouldn’t be accepted in the first place so hopefully sellers wouldn’t worry too much about losing money by listing themes for sale.

For more background information, I’d suggest browsing through the ThemeGarden site or reading through my interview with Jason Schuller.

It’s worth noting that the site has not “officially” launched, although it appears to be completely functional at this point. I wish Jason and all the future marketplace participants the best of luck with ThemeGarden!

Update (September 28, 2010): It has been officially launched at this point.

DevPress Launches + Free News Theme

Leland — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:34:26 +0000

DevPress has launched today which should prove to be a valuable resource for professional WordPress themes and plugins.

It is the brainchild of four well-known WordPress developers who you may have heard of before.

Justin Tadlock – Developer of a handful of many free WordPress plugins and themes. Probably best known for his work on Theme Hybrid.
Patrick Daly – Known for developing several free Hybrid child themes and also being a supporter of child theme listings in WordPress.org.
Ptah Dunbar – Known for his significant contributions to the WordPress core as well as his WP Framework theme.
Tung Do, probably better known as Small Potato is best known as being the original creator and former owner of WPDesigner.

They have also launched with a few new free WordPress themes and plugins.

Free News Theme

DevPress has launched with a pretty sweet free news theme release, simply called: News. Click the screenshot below for a live demo.

There is also free documentation for the News theme as well as free support forums.

Plugins

DevPress also launched with a number of plugins, all of which are free at the moment.

Clean My Archives – An easy way of creating archive pages of your blog posts.
Slideshow – A slideshow plugin utilizing the jQuery Cycle plugin.
Members – Justin Tadlock moved his popular membership plugin over to DevPress as well.

Conclusion

DevPress is definitely a dream team of great WordPress developers and the products they have released so far are very promising.

Everything so far on the site being free (including themes, plugins, support, and documentation) is cool and all, but it would be nice to see some paid products released in the future to make the site seem more sustainable and future-proof.

Even the founders of the site seem to be unsure of the direction DevPress is going so I’m sure we’ll all be eagerly watching to see what unfolds for the future of the site.

Child Themes, Coming to a WordPress.org Theme Directory Near You

Leland — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:00:56 +0000

Late last year, I asked whether child themes should be listed on WordPress.org. Today at WordCamp Savannah, Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress) announced that he would be releasing a couple of his old blog designs as free WordPress themes in the WordPress.org theme directory.

One of the sentences in Matt’s announcement post caught my eye.

The second theme, Mazeld, is actually the last from-scratch original design I did here on Ma.tt (then photomatt.net) and is built as a 2010 child theme.

I downloaded the Mazeld theme from WordPress.org and confirmed it was indeed a Twenty Ten child theme (as the stylesheet has the line “Template: twentyten” present) and tweeted Matt for further clarification.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, there has been a child theme sighting on WordPress.org theme directory although judging from Matt’s response, it doesn’t seem to be currently possible to submit them until the installer and UI are fixed.

Hopefully child theme inclusion in the WordPress.org directory will be a reality for theme developers very soon, this is definitely a big step in the right direction.