WordPress Words: Menus

Navigation Menu is a theme feature introduced with Version 3.0. WordPress includes an easy to use mechanism for introducing customised navigation menus into a Theme.
WordPress Codex

The WordPress Menu helps you to design your own menu such as: Adding Pages to your menu; specifying Custom Links when you would like to link directly to another site. You can even add Category Pages that creates a filtered blog feed displaying only the posts from a category that you designate.

WordPress Words: Template Tags

Template Tags: A template tag is PHP code that dynamically creates and displays design choices on a WordPress Site. Template tags are found within Templates and Plugins.
WPBeginner

Example Usage: We’ve updated the post title template tag in the single post template file to be in an h1 heading not h2.

About the Word

WordPress Themes set the design for a WordPress site. Themes include template files for different aspects of a WordPress Theme, i.e., the text colors and fonts for a heading. Inside of each template file are WordPress code blocks represented by template tags, PHP code that specify the parameters of those design decisions.

Using Post Sandbox Examples for Testing WordPress Themes

You’ve just started your new WordPress site, and you are browsing the selection of Themes WordPress has to offer. You fall in love with a Theme and start filling it with content. Then you discover a huge flaw. You hate how your pictures align, and how your headings look. With a Sandbox post you can alleviate that issue.

According to the WordPress.org article “Test Driving WordPress:”

A Sandbox is a term related to the sandbox you might have played in and built sand castles in as a child. It is a playground for working on concepts and exploring your imagination.
Test Driving WordPress – WordPress Codex

Essentially, a sandbox post lets you take a test drive of your theme before you put it live on your site. It is a post that shows you an example of every HTML and CSS code and how it will be displayed.

How to Backup and Restore WordPress Theme Options

Read on if you are an advanced WordPress user. 

You set up your WordPress Theme just the way you want with Theme options, all set, now you need to backup or restore. What do you do?

There is a plug-n-play snippet to create if your theme isn’t set up for backup and restore. The snippet called Backup/Restore Theme Options that can be seen in action if you look at the ShapeSpace Theme.

Web Accessibility: Preparing for Older Web Users

We are all aging. That’s an undeniable fact. In the 2013 United Nations World Population Aging report their studies showed that every country in the world is experiencing a shift to a larger population of older citizens. Generally this happens when mortality rates decrease and fertility rates decline.

In other words less people die and less people are born. That changes the ratio of young people to older people and creates what is known as an aging population.

In this article we are going to define senior populations as being 65 years and older though this number is being debated around the world.

WordPress Words: Theme

A Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical front-end interface with an underlying unifying design for a site. A WordPress Theme modifies the way the site is displayed and designed, without modifying the underlying core programming of WordPress. While some associate a WordPress Theme with “skinning” your site with a design, a WordPress Theme contains programming code that influences the design, changing it with each generated page view based upon the programming with PHP, WordPress template tags, WordPress conditional tags, and CSS.
WordPress Theme in WordPress Codex Glossary

A Look at the 2015 WordPress Theme

Here is a look at the new 2015 two column design, the design is simple and focuses on the blog, paying particular attention to typography. According to Jeff Chandler at WPTavern:

“The typography features Google’s Noto Serif and Sans, a font family designed to be visually harmonious across many of the worlds languages.”

The Word on WordPress for the Week of October 20, 2014

The Clark College WordPress class students review WordPress news around the world to bring you the latest news and WordPress resources during the academic year.

WordPress Development

Twenty Fifteen Theme in Development: Discussions have begun about the new Twenty Fifteen Theme for WordPress. This is the first chat summary from October 21, 2014.

WordPress Words: Blockquotes

A blockquote is an HTML tag for designating a section of quoted text.
WordPress 24-Hour Trainer by George Plumley

Blockquotes are used for text both on the web and printed material. You use them to surround the text of material you are bringing into your article that is written by someone else that you are quoting.

As the reader reads through a web article, they must identify clearly the difference between the original content and copied content.

There are two ways to quote from other sources. You may add the information in quotes, just like in traditional media such as how Lorelle VanFossen explains that it’s important to “learn how to link and quote from published material to stay safe and on the right side of International Copyright Laws.” That example includes a link to the source and the quoted content within quote marks, identifying it as content not in the author’s words.

In a blockquote, the citation link may come before, after, or within the blockquote. Here are examples.

WordPress Content Type Standards Community Project

WP Tavern reported recently that WordPress Developers are organizing a community initiative to standardize common post types, taxonomies and meta data. Led by Justin Tadlock, popular WordPress developer and author of Professional WordPress Plugin Development, the goals of the community project are to name these common parts of WordPress to create a more stable and portable nomenclature for WordPress.

If you are interested in participating, check out the Content Type Standards community project.

Interview with Japh Thompson on WPWeekly

The WPWeekly Podcast (147) on WP Tavern featured an interview with Japh Thomson and his work at Envato. He worked in support before becoming the WordPress Evangelist for ThemeForest. The discussion covered the challenges of overcoming criticism in social media for a company with the best intentions for the WordPress Community. Other topics included new features in WordPress, WordPress News, and the WordPress Contributor Experience Survey.

WordPress Theme Frameworks

To begin, you will need to understand what is meant by WordPress Theme Framework. Technically (according to the WordPress Codex) any stand-alone Theme can act as a Framework. This is in the sense that any stand-alone Theme that allows you to make alterations to it, can be used as a framework.

What is a WordPress Framework?

There is a bit of confusion when it comes to the term WordPress Theme Framework. While the concept is that a Theme Framework is a bare bones, well-designed WordPress Theme for a developer or designer to build many client sites upon, some people think that a WordPress Theme Framework is an ultra-basic theme that has next to no formatting. When someone refers to WordPress Framework they may also be referring to the archive of code used to create Parent Themes.

Interview with WordPress Web Designer Brian Balla

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Brian Balla. Brian is a WordPress Web Designer located in Portland, Oregon.

In 2009, Brian Balla left a 9 to 5 corporate design position to embark on a career as a freelance web designer and WordPress specialist. Since then, Brian has been able to retain a client roster of over 55 small to medium sized businesses in five states and two continents. With a background in small business, Brian is passionate about helping business owners and scrappy start-ups make their websites work harder for them. From one-page informational websites to complex enterprise level applications, Brian offers his clients expertise in a variety of areas including web design, WordPress development, standards compliance, analytics interpretation, and search engine marketing and optimization.

How did you get introduced to WordPress?

During high school and college, most of my free time was spent either writing or building websites.

After college, my web design hobby went to the “back burner” and laid dormant for several years as I immersed myself in suits and ties and 8 o’clock meetings. Fast forward to the fall of 2006. As I was searching for a restaurant for dinner later that evening, I came across a website with the link “Powered by WordPress = Code is Poetry”. This reminded me of my days designing and developing. I skipped the menu and I followed that link. Fast forward again to several weeks after that. I had fully immersed myself in the world of WordPress and began building and breaking things faster than I could keep track.

Most Beautiful Free WordPress Themes For 2013

Reporting the top  2013  free WordPress Themes. Over 80 themes are approved monthly, and 22 themes were deemed beautiful.

Change Your WordPress Theme, Keep Your Data

With more and more capability of being packed into individual WordPress Themes, changing a theme might actually be a down grade and you may loose some functionality. Developers are putting more emphasis on Plugins rather than trying to put everything they think you might want into a blanket theme. This trend, mentioned on WP Tavern, will improve the user experience by providing a more modular interface, and not shackling them to a specific theme.