Creating your own Page Templates

November 13, 2010 / / 56 Comments

On many WordPress powered sites, the primary focus is static pages rather than blog posts. I have built some sites that only use pages and don’t even have a blog. For these types of sites that are using WordPress “as a CMS” rather than a blogging platform, the theme file that generates the pages becomes that much more important.

Using this same page template file on each page could make a site very homogeneous and be a headache to customize. But it is easy to create your own page templates and apply them to specific pages on a site. Read More

Beta testers needed for Meteor Slides 1.3

October 14, 2010 / / 6 Comments

I have Meteor Slides 1.3 finished and ready to go, it just needs a bit of testing before I release the final version. I have tested this plugin with the TwentyTen theme and on my own site with some common plugins and it works very well. But there are some big changes in this version and I’d like to hear how it works with a variety of themes and plugins out in the wild.

Features in this version include support for multiple slideshows and metadata. The template tag, shortcode, and widget all support both of these features. I’m especially interested to see how the shortcode and widget work with different themes and plugins. There are also several other small changes, such as expanded navigation options.

Download the beta of Meteor Slides 1.3 and give it a try!

I updated the beta to fix a bug with using metadata to resize a slideshow.

I am currently writing updated documentation and recording some new screencasts for these new features. I’m hoping to release Meteor Slides 1.3 before the end of the month, of course a babysitter and some espresso could speed things up!

Read More

I’m speaking at WordCamp Minneapolis

October 7, 2010 / / No Comments
Ask Me About WordPress Tshirt

Ask Me About WordPress

I will be speaking at WordCamp Minneapolis – St. Paul on Saturday, November 13th, 2010.

This will be my first time speaking at a WordCamp, my session is on creating custom page templates. I’ll be covering some of the most common uses that I run into such as adding templates for a single column, alternate sidebar, or special content.

If you’re in the area, I highly recommend coming to WordCamp, they are great events for learning more about WordPress and meeting other users. If you’re in another time zone, there’s probably a WordCamp near you, or check out WordCampTV.

I will also be volunteering at the help desk, answering questions about WordPress and helping people with their sites. Cory at iThemes was kind enough to send some WPShirts for the help desk crew, so we should be easy to spot. Stop by and ask me about WordPress!

Add a theme’s CSS style to the visual editor

September 17, 2010 / / 9 Comments

One of my favorite features in WordPress 3.0 is the ability to add an editor style to themes which is loaded in the visual editor of WordPress.

Without an editor style, content in the visual editor has minimal styling and generally does not match how the content looks when it is published on the site. By adding an editor style to a WordPress theme, you can get the content you are managing in the backend to visually match the content on the frontend, creating a more WYSIWYG experience for the end user.

Adding this feature to a new or existing WordPress theme is very simple. For this tutorial, I’ll use iNove, a popular theme from the theme directory that I’m using for a current project and need to update. Read More

Improved Meteor Slides navigation

August 30, 2010 / / 15 Comments

I’ve been getting a ton of feedback about Meteor Slides lately, and seeing some really awesome looking sites using my plugin.

Meteor Slides recently broke 5000 downloads on WordPress.org and got its eleventh 5 star rating, thanks everyone for trying out my plugin and leaving a rating or feedback. And I want to give a special thank you to the users who have been kind enough to support this plugin with a donation.

I just released Meteor Slides 1.2.3, which includes paged slide navigation. The paged buttons goes together with the left/right navigation and neither will be added to your slideshow unless you enable navigation in the settings.

You can see how the paged navigation works on my homepage. The buttons can be easily modified or even hidden completely with CSS if you would prefer a different design.

Read More