WP Remix 3 Template Review
I have had the WPRemix3 Template system for a while now but only recently dove into it to actually use on a client project. My reluctance was that it’s not your typical template and I knew that there would be a learning curve for me to get up to speed with it and to feel comfortable enough to deploy it on client projects.
After spending an hour or two reading the PDF that came with the source files I figured I would give it a shot on one of my sandbox Wordpress installations. I was surprised at how fast I was able to wrap my head around it and was kicking myself for not using it sooner.
When it comes to themes for Wordpress I typically like to work with Brian Gardner’s StudioPress themes or WooThemes for a starter template and build around that but with WPRemix3 Template system I was able to design the template from the ground up. There are tons of available layouts that you can chose from to conquer just about layout scenario you can imagine. Even the rare event where a client has way too many pages with long names for the standard horizontal navigation and you are forced to go with a vertical menu (which I ran into today w/ one of my newest client projects).
In addition to a wide variety of page layouts, you also have the ability to chose from different header variations as well. This is nice for sites that will have a different header on their home page but on internal pages you can utilize a shorter, minimalistic header. This is something that I have rarely done in the past but I can see this having value down the road when I design a clients layout from scratch.
Another thing that is an option with WPRemix3 Template system that I haven’t been able to look at very closely is the ability to add a magazine style layout, which is extremely popular today. I would imagine that my next project that requires a magazine style layout I will give this theme add-on a closer look, but for building somewhat static sites in Wordpress this is a gem. *Link to the WPRemix Style Gallery
Lately I have been leveraging Wordpress as an overall CMS for clients due to it’s simplicity and how easy it is to bring them up to speed with managing their content. With WPRemix you can clip out the blogging aspect of Wordpress altogether if you want, which makes it nice when the client is adamant about not wanting to have a blog on their website.
In addition to a wide selection of page layouts (home pages, gallery pages, product pages, inner pages, etc.)and header variations that can be mixed and matched on select pages you can also select from a couple of sidebar options. For instance, on one of my projects I was working on today I used a totally different sidebar for the corporate blog area than I did for the static content pages that the public is greeted with. There is simply a link to the blog on the static side of the site that more or less opens up a whole new world of content when the visitor goes there, but yet the site content is managed completely from inside of Wordpress. This makes so much more sense to me than when you see a static site linking out to blogger or free wordpress, this has always left me puzzled why larger corporations would do this.
Getting Around in WPRemix3: Under the Hood
The WPRemix3 Template system zip file is larger than your average Wordpress theme so it takes a little bit longer to upload it, but go ahead and load the entire directory even if you think you aren’t going to need some of the template files. I found today that I could just copy elements from one sidebar to another sidebar by copying and pasting and it cut down my actual coding time quite a bit.
The CSS files are all documented really well and I really like the way they have their navigation styled, you can literally change the entire color scheme with just a few edits to the stylesheet. A lot of these templating solutions that I have seen just overwhelm you with CSS documents that take you an entire afternoon to get your head around. This wasn’t the case with the WPRemix3 Template system, I am dangerous when it comes to tweaking CSS, mostly because I came into the business in a time when we hadn’t ever heard of CSS, it was tables and font tags. Being able to navigate around and tweak the stylesheets without a lot of digging around is a huge thing for me, that’s part of the reason why i like Brian Gardner’s themes so well, they are very intuitively styled.
What’s the Downside to WPRemix3?
Probably my biggest thing w/ the Remix theme solution is the fact that you can’t just unzip it and run it out of the box without having ever worked with it before. It’s imparative that you spend 30 minutes to read their documentation and have a general idea how it operates before you activate the theme and just go to work. I say this because my first experience ended in frustration and I didn’t look at it again for several months.
Another thing that I would probably have done differently with the theme is that I would have changed the way that the sidebar templates interact with the widgets inside of Wordpress. I still haven’t gotten my head around their reasoning on this just yet but it’s not as simple to run widgets with the WPRemix solution out of the box as it is with some of the other themes on the market such as Brian Gardner’s StudioPress or WooThemes.
Getting Help and Troubleshooting Problems
I haven’t really hit a snag yet that I haven’t been able to figure out on my own but I will say this, the WPRemix3 team has a great reputation for responding to those who have issues, just google WPRemix3 and you will see some blog posts out there praising their efforts. In addition to the WPRemix support people there is also a pretty good community of developers out there that are more than happy to help out if anyone should need them. This is pretty much the case with everything related to Wordpress I have found.
How About the End User?
One thing that’s a little bit different with the WPRemix3 theme that I haven’t had to encounter yet but I can see it as a slight stumbling block is how the template files and the Wordpress editor interact with each other. For example, if I want to have 2 column layout on the homepage of the site, I simply pick out the 2 column layout template and click the ‘send to editor’ button and voila, there is the code inside the visual editor for the client to work around. Now, the code that you see in the visual editor does have some tags associated with it that will need to stay in place for the pages to display right. For example, if I go to select the ‘Home Page 06’ layout for a particular page, I click the ‘send to editor’ button and this is what it sends out to the editor:
<div id="content-wrap">
<p class="remix">[REMIX]</p>
<div id="banner3">
<div class="b3content">
<h2>Your Site's Main Punchline comes here! dolor site amet disate <span class="black"> Praesent aliquam, </span> justo convallis luctus rutrum.</h2>
<p class="remix">The secondary text explaining your site/business purpose like what and how it does etc. Below are the few options that you could use to highlight main features of your site/business.</p>
<a class="button alignright" href="#">getstarted now</a></div>
</div>
<div id="threecoulums">
<div class="threecolumns-in alignleft">
<h2>About Us</h2>
<p class="remix">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent aliquam, justo convallis luctus rutrum, erat nulla fermentum diam, at nonummy quam ante ac quam. Maecenas urna purus, fermentum id, molestie in, commodo porttitor, felis. Nam blandit quam ut lacus. Quisque ornare risus quis.Maecenas urna purus, fermentum id, molestie in, commodo porttitor, felis. Nam blandit quam ut lacus. Quisque ornare risus quis.</p>
<p class="remix">Donec et ipsum et sapien vehicula nonummy. Suspendisse potenti. Fusce varius urna id quam. Sed neque mi, varius eget, tincidunt nec, suscipit id, libero. In eget purus. Vestibulum ut nisl.</p>
</div>
<div class="threecolumns-in alignleft threespcaer">
<h2>Photos</h2>
<div class="flickr">[php] $wpr_flickr_id = get_option('wpr_flickr_id'); [/php] <script src="http://www.flickr.com/badge_code_v2.gne?count=10&display=latest&size=s&source=user&user=[php] echo $wpr_flickr_id; [/php]" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
<div class="testimonials">
<h2>Testimonials</h2>
[php] include (TEMPLATEPATH . "/includes/testimonials.php"); [/php]</div>
</div>
<div id="sidebar">
<h2 class="threetitle">Services</h2>
<p class="remix">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent aliquam, justo convallis luctus rutrum, erat nulla fermentum diam, at nonummy quam ante.</p>
<h2 class="threetitle">Latest News</h2>
<ul>
<li class="remix">Do not remove</li>
[php] $wpr_exclude_news = get_option('wpr_exclude_news'); $recent = new WP_Query("cat=$wpr_exclude_news&showposts=5"); while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();[/php]
<li><a href="[php] the_permalink(); [/php]">[php] the_title(); [/php]</a></li>
[php] endwhile; [/php]</ul>
</div>
</div>
<p class="remix">[/REMIX]</p>
</div>
Now, it’s only going to take a second for me to explain to my clients how to interact with this type of code, and honestly they could figure it out themselves probably, but it has a different look to it and can possibly be intimidating to a user who isn’t familiar with tags, etc. However once they figure out to swap out the Lorem Ipsum text with their own content I think it’s going to be smooth sailing from then on out…
In closing there is one other feature of the theme that kind of makes it unique. A lot of settings regarding the theme can be edited inside of the Wordpress admin area by clicking on the ‘WPRemix Options’ tab that will be located on the left sidebar of the dashboard once you install the templates. I really like it when theme designers do something like this because it makes it easier for the end user to find as well as cutting down on some of the things we, as developers, would have to consult with the client to talk about before doing any actual coding. I have seen other theme developers such as Brian Gardner and WooTheme’s both doing this as well and it is a nice convenience.
Click here to visit WordPress Remix website!
#RefreshCA Wordpress Code Camp Brainstorm
It’s impossible to attend a meeting of the Central Arkansas Refresh Group and not have someone bring up the topic of Wordpress. I just thought that I was the head cheerleader for wordpress in this area until I started hanging around with some of the #RefreshCA guys, they love it just about as much as I do. A few months back we had Daniel Spillers from UALR’s web team do a presentation on wordpress and it was probably one of our most popular meetings since the group formed. You can see my blog post about Daniel’s presentation here.
Given my fascination with Wordpress and my desire to learn even more about it, I posed a question to the group today on Twitter to see if there was any interest in having some sort of Saturday Code Camp of sorts dedicated only to Wordpress. I am not even quite sure in my head what such an event would look like, but I think it would be an awesome experience if we could pull something like this off.
I know that personally I have already picked up a lot of things from the group by just hanging out with them for an hour or two each month, and I can only imagine how cool it would be to have a code camp type setting where there wasn’t a speaker or presentation type of thing going on, instead it would be more interactive.
Here’s kind of what I was thinking, please add to the list…
- Plugin Discussions: we could each discuss what plugins we actively use on projects and learn ways to tweak or better utilize their functionality.
- Plugin Development: We could also discuss plugin development and what all is involved with authoring your own plugin, more here on plugin development. I have had a small role in a few plugin projects in the past and I know that there are probably a few others and we can probably dive pretty deep into this topic.
- Core Hacking: we could discuss ways to further extend wordpress beyond what’s available through the use of plugins, etc. Here’s an example of a recent hack that I had to implement for a client.
- Theme Development: we could also discuss theme development, and what goes into designing a theme for wordpress. We could also touch on some of the design generation tools that are on the market as well, such as Artisteer.
- Performance: another good topic of discussion could revolve around performance related issues with wordpress such as caching.
- Enterprise / Multi-User Applications: possibly a member of our group has some experience with wordpress MU or enterprise and can give us some input on that end of the spectrum.
These are just a few areas that I am throwing out there, if you have some additional wordpress related topics you think would be interesting, please feel free to comment them out so we can have a list to work from when we are finally able to put something like this together.
The possibility that something specialized like this could spawn from our Central Arkansas Refresh group is kind of cool to think about because there are potentially several other specialized applications like Drupal, Joomla and MODx that could spawn out of it as well. Darren Huckey is currently working on setting up a Drupal user group for Central Arkansas right now and as soon as he has the details on that I will be sure to share that on here as well.
Not that there is anything wrong with our existing format for the Central Arkansas Refresh Group meetings, I love the presentation / question and answer format and really enjoy the fellowship, but I think a specialized code camp type of setting could really be awesome.
Another thought, for this meeting we would probably need to find a good location that’s free from distractions and has a strong enough signal for all of us to be online at the same time. Since this is a specialized type meeting, different from the broader scoped Refresh meetings, we will likely have a smaller turnout so a smaller venue might work well. Thought’s, anyone?? Hit me back and let me know what you think…
Product Review: Artisteer / Wordpress Theme Generator
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I have been using Artisteer’s Theme Generation software for a few weeks now and I have to say that I have been very pleased with it so far. I use the WYSIWYG theme generator as a way to layout or brainstorm themes for client projects. This is sometimes a lot faster than customizing an open-sourced theme or purchasing a premium theme to use as a starter layout.
With Artisteers software you can also generate themes for Drupal and Joomla as well as Wordpress. This is pretty nice if you want to keep a consistent look and feel across multiple installations. One of the things I like most about the code that Artisteer generates is that it’s pretty user friendly, and you can easily tweak the stylesheet settings using third party applications like Topstyle. The php files generated by Artisteer are also pretty easy to get around in as well, I typically make a few rounds of modifications to both my header and footer files once I have generated my theme, and have never had any issues.
I know of a few other developers who have downloaded and been trying the Artisteer application since I first blogged about it a while back, and I have heard nothing but rave reviews from them in regards to the software as well. If you are using Artisteer, I would love to hear your comments as well. For more information or to purchase Artisteer software, click the link above…
Tips for Working with WordPress
I was just reading Steven Snell’s article on DesignMag, a Community for Designers, and thought that he brought up some very good points about working within the Wordpress CMS for client projects. I personally rely heavily on Wordpress, and in my opinion it’s possibly the best thing since sliced bread.
If you would like to add to this list, please feel free to do so below:
In the right situation WordPress is an excellent CMS to use for client websites. As a designer/developer, it provides flexibility and it’s easy to work with. From the client’s perspective, it’s free and open-source and it gives them control over the content of their own website. However, there are some things that you’ll need to consider when working with WordPress as a CMS for clients. If you have built your own personal sites on WordPress you’re probably used to doing things in certain ways. Clients, on the other hand, may have a different experience and it’s important to consider some things during the process. In this article I’ll discuss some things from my own personal experience, feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments.
1. Take Advantage of WordPress’s Built-In CMS Capabilities
Over the past few years WordPress has consistently improved the experience and ability to use it as a full-fledged CMS, rather than just a blogging platform. The options of having a static front page and the blog posts on a specific page make it possible to use WordPress for a lot of different purposes. Additionally, options like using different page templates can help to make a site that looks less like a typical blog.
2. Talk to the Client About Upgrades Ahead of Time
Part of working with WordPress and using it as a CMS is the inevitability of the need to upgrade. Upgrades either bring new functionality or features, or they fix security holes, so they’re not a bad thing, but from a client perspective they may bring added maintenance to the site. If the client is not comfortable doing the upgrade themselves they’ll have to hire someone to do it for them (maybe you). Upgrading is not that big of an issue and shouldn’t be a deal breaker, but the client should be aware of the need to upgrade periodically before jumping in to the project.
3. Be Prepared to Train the Client on How to Use WordPress
For those of us that spend a lot of time with WordPress of other CMSs, it may seem pretty simple. However, many clients, especially those who are not very tech-savvy, will have no idea what to do without some instruction. For most sites, it won’t require hours of your time, but you will need to spend some time with most clients walking them through the process of editing and adding content. Be sure to account for this when you’re estimating how long the project will take.
4. Find Out Who is Currently Hosting Their Website
This is probably something you would want to find out up front anyway, but it’s more important when you’re dealing with WordPress. Most major hosting companies by now are offering an easy installation of WordPress (such as through Fantastico), but it’s a good idea to make sure that their web host offers this option. If not, you may want to charge a little more for a manual installation of WordPress, or ask them to move to a new hosting company. One option is to become a reseller of a particular host. Then you could get as many clients as possible to use your own hosting and you would be working in a familiar environment most of the time (plus you could make some extra money on the hosting).
5. Minimize Plugins When Possible
One of the best things about being a WordPress user is the excellent community and all of the resources available, including plugins. However, plugins are a potential source of problems when it comes time to upgrade. I’m not suggesting that you use no plugins, but if a client site isn’t upgraded frequently, excessive plugins can lead to extra work. If you stick to plugins that are actively being updated by developers you should be fine. Additionally, if there are other plugins that can accomplish the same thing, you’ll always have some alternatives if a plugin causes problems following an upgrade.
6. Minimize the Use of Custom Fields
Custom fields are a great feature of WordPress and they open up all kinds of possibilities. But in my opinion, many clients get overwhelmed if they need to use custom fields. In many cases it really comes down to what the client wants and needs. For some things you may not be able to accomplish something specific without the use of custom fields.
7. Consider Purchasing a Developer’s License of Premium Themes
Many premium themes offer developer’s licenses that sell for two or three times the cost of a single license. If you do a lot of client work on WordPress, you may want to consider purchasing some of these. It could save you a little bit of money (you could still charge a client the cost of a single license if you have paid for a developer’s license), plus it will allow you to get very familiar with some specific themes. Editing an existing theme can often be faster and more cost effective than building a theme from scratch, and many premium themes include additional functionality from the dashboard.
8. Use Child Themes if Your Customizing Existing Themes for Clients
If you want to make modifications to an existing theme for a client, theme upgrades could be difficult or impossible depending on just how much you change the theme. Child themes can allow you to edit the theme while keeping the upgrade process very simple. Admittedly, this is an area that I need to work on for myself.
A child theme is essentially a CSS-only theme that allows you to modify the look of the theme without hindering the ability to upgrade in the future. If you want to learn more about child themes, see:
9. Have a Development Blog
If you do much work at all on WordPress, this is probably something that you already have, but still worth mentioning. You’ll want to install WordPress somewhere that will allow you to work on client themes (and test) without the public being able to find it. With a development blog you can keep multiple themes and switch back and forth whenever you want to work on one.
At the start of a project you may prefer to code it in static HTML and CSS before implementing it into WordPress, but there are sometimes going to be slight changes to how things will appear once it’s in WordPress. For this reason, it’s preferable to get into WordPress earlier rather than later to avoid re-doing things.
10. Keep Your Development Blog Updated with Every New Release of WordPress
Updating WordPress is a good practice in any situation, but especially if you’re developing new themes. If you’re developing a theme for a client that will be using a new installation of WordPress, they’ll be using the latest version. The last thing you’re going to want to find out is that something in the theme doesn’t work quite right on the client’s site because your development blog is not up-to-date.
11. Use Different Page Templates
Page templates can be very useful for a few different reasons. First, they allow you to have pages look and function in different ways, rather than everything using the same blog sidebar for example. Also, and equally important, page templates can allow you to “lock down” certain elements of the design that might otherwise be unintentionally altered by the client. Using the WordPress editor makes it easy for clients to accidentally delete something that might have a significant function in the design. By keeping these items as part of the page template you can ensure that nothing important is deleted or changed.
12. Consider Using PSD to WordPress Services
PSD to HTML services are obviously very popular right now, and they can save you some time in development. There are also some, like WP Coder, that specialize in converting PSDs to WordPress themes. In the right situation, this type of service could make your process easier and free up some of your own time.
13. Set the Client Up with a Database Backup Plugin
Most of your clients won’t think about backing up their database, so it can be helpful if you install a database backup plugin and show them how to use it periodically, it could save tons of headaches later.
13 Tips for Working with WordPress on Client Sites
Open Source WP Themes
Brian Gardner has been my favorite WordPress Theme developer for a while now. His themes in conjunction with Jason Schuller plugins are by far the new standard in my opinion.
I typically use Brian’s themes as a starter shell for my projects and usually hack the CSS and images to make the finished product look however I want. I have to admit that working with Brian’s themes has helped me become a lot more familiar with CSS also, which was something I was needing to do to break some of my old school habits.
A few months ago I purchased Brian’s complete theme package for Developers, this was an awesome investment and I think we have already seen a pretty good return on our investment from that purchase but what Brian did next kind of threw me a curveball, but I think I understand it now. Basically Brian has retired the themes that I purchased from him, they are no longer available to the general public, but I have them, which is good. By retiring the Revolution One themes, he has launched Revolution Two, in conjunction with some other Wordpress Developers and they have made their themes open source. That’s right, open source as in free.
These themes on the Revolution Two site are all free for download but if you want support for these themes you can purchase packages from the team to support you in your projects. Which if you think about it is an awesome idea. I haven’t been very active in the Revolution theme community very long but I plan on spending a lot more time in there in the very near future. The few times I have posted questions regarding support issues on the Featured content plugin I have gotten an almost immediate response back. If you haven’t already you can go to: www.revolutiontheme.com and be redirected to the new website w/ the new themes.
Revolution Two WordPress Themes
Brian Gardner Media / Wordpress
I am pretty excited today about a new addition to my development arsenal. I was showing my partners Brian Gardners Premium Revolution / Wordpress products and how they function this morning and we decided to purchase his entire collection from him as well as access to any further works that he releases in the future.
I have used Brian’s themes in the past and they are top-notch! In my opinion labeling Brian’s Revolution Themes as “themes” is somewhat of an injustice because when I think about themes I think about the typical run of the mill free downloads that are available all over the web and you just take them as a “starter” and hack them to meet a projects requirements. But the Revolution Themes have a lot more to them, they actually come with a lot of cool features built into them like tabber.php and a few other “eye candy” applications that clients seem to enjoy, plus it’s a huge time-saver for us from a development perspective.
I was doing a little research on Brian’s personal website today and found out that he is a Christian and lives in Chicago. He has only been in the industry for a short time but has already established himself and his online business as one of the top theme developers and wordpress gurus in the industry. I am soo anxious to access his collection! Here’s a little information about Brian Gardner Media…
Wordpress Sandbox Theme
For the past week or so I have been working on developing my own custom wordpress theme so I could get my mind around how the template system works in Wordpress. My partner Greg and I also setup an installation of wordpress on one of our sandbox servers for testing purposes, I have installed the theme there for previewing: Pleth / Wordpress Sandbox (this theme will likely go away as I design other themes later on). This is a real basic theme, clean, and not a whole lot of bells and whistles so I can use it to test a lot of the Plugins that are out there. Here’s a screenshot:
(Keep in mind that my intention for this theme was to keep it really basic and to get up to speed with creating wordpress themes as I went along.)
You can click on the screenshot to download the theme to use on your wordpress blog or you can access it from this link: http://www.cottonrohrscheib.com/downloads/wordpress-sandbox.zip
I learned a whole lot putting together this theme, most of my time was actually spent in the CSS portion of the site and getting all of the colors matched up for links, p content, etc.. I found a couple of good resources online that helped me get up to speed, here are some links:
- http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
- http://www.cre8d-design.com/blog/2007/01/01/useful-resources-for-creating-a-wordpress-theme/
- http://urbangiraffe.com/2005/04/12/themeguide1/
During this little self-imposed project I also had an opportunity to get up to speed with TopStyle, Layout Master, and Microsoft Expression. (which is something I was needing to do anyway)
I know that this is a really, really, really, basic theme but I sort of intended it to be this way on my first project. I have at least two or three more themes that are just about ready to launch and test over the next couple of weeks as time allows in between projects.
