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WordPress Menu Support for Older Themes

September 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As a lot of you that are die-hard WordPress users are probably already aware, WordPress has launched their new menu builders under the appearance tab. The menu builder will allow you to create a menu from any categories, pages and links, order them by drag and drop, create submenus, etc.

This is something that I am pretty sure was contributed to core from the good people at WooThemes, because they had this for a while in some of their theme settings. In the event you have an older WordPress Theme and would like to have this functionality but inside the dashboard you keep getting a notice that your theme is not compatable, here’s what you can do…

Locate your theme directory/ functions.php and add this line of code:

// This theme uses wp_nav_menu() in one location.
register_nav_menus( array(
	'primary' => 'Primary Navigation'
) );

Secondly, locate your theme directory/header.php file and add/edit this line of code:

<?php wp_nav_menu( 'sort_column=menu_order&container_class=menu-header' ); ?>

Once these two files have been modified you should be able to log back into your wordpress installation dashboard and select the menu option under appearance and get started.

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Presentation Preview for #WCFay

July 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

I will be doing a presentation titled ‘Making WordPress Profitable for Agencies / Design Firms‘ during Wordcamp Fayetteville this year, which is taking place on July 30, 2011 in Fayetteville, at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development. If you haven’t registered already, there is still time, the price for general admission is $35 and you can click here to register online.

The people in charge at #WCFay asked me to do a short blog post or teaser so that those attending the conference will have a heads up as to what my talk will be about. In short, it’s all about making money. I could just leave it at that and feel pretty confident that I have proposed a topic that will be of interest to everyone there, but I will take it a step further. This discussion is going to more or less look at our industry from a business owners perspective and why I feel like WordPress is the most powerful tool we have in our arsenal today. I will also share some tips that can help your agency or firm become more profitable during a down economy…

I am looking forward to this discussion. Here’s a few teaser slides from my presentation…

This should be a fun presentation, hope to see you there!!

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Current Projects: Rosewood Cremations

July 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

We completed a project for Rosewood Classic Coach a few months ago and they were so happy w/ the way the project turned out they asked us to take a look at their Rosewood Cremation website and convert it to WordPress for them. In addition they also wanted to add a small amount of e-commerce to the site as well as converting some of their forms to interactive PDF’s.   I haven’t completed the project yet but can share a screenshot. The entire project was build upon the Genesis framework in WordPress.

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Current Projects: Arkansas Adoption

July 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This is a project that my wife and I are partnering with a local attorney, Shane Henry, to bring online that serves as a tool to recruit pregnant mothers that might be looking to either have an abortion or put their children up for adoption. Please be in prayer w/ Donna and I that we are able to locate a child through this effort…

This website will contain a lot of answers to frequently asked questions regarding adoption, adoption in Arkansas, and hopefully serve as a useful resource for it’s users. The website hasn’t launched yet but will hopefully have it ready to go live by the end of this month, in the meantime, here’s a screenshot of what the website will look like…

 

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Current Projects: Gas & Mineral Rights

July 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I am currently working w/ a client to develop a web resource that will allow property owners to sell their Gas and Mineral Rights to a group that is looking to invest. From a design standpoint, this is a very simple project and for the most part I have that part knocked out and we are just hammering out the details such as the contact forms and content. Since the website is not live I can’t share a link yet, but here’s a screenshot of what one of the pages on the site will look like.We hope to go live w/ the project in the next few weeks.The entire project is built on WordPress.

 

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EP:014 – The Cotton Club Podcast

July 26, 2010 By 3 Comments

thecottonclubpodcastsign_thumb1_thumb1_thumb[1] This evening I recorded another episode of The Cotton Club Podcast with Keith Crawford, Steven Trotter, and Mitch Canter.  It was awesome to have Mitch on the show w/ us this evening because he is an authority on all things wordpress in my opinion.  Keith and I first met Mitch at Wordcamp Fayetteville earlier this year and have followed his streams on Twitter and Facebook since then.

The topic for this evenings show was the GPL debate going on between Thesis and WordPress or Chris Pearson and Matt Mullenwig, however you want to look at it.  We covered how the whole controversy got started and what in the world it’s all about.  There have been tons of spirited debates recently on this topic so I thought it was appropriate we address it here on the show.  Also, we had Mitch give us a run down of his favorite WordPress Plugins and then we played a speed round of which plugin to use w/ Mitch.  Some of the plugins Mitch covered included: Gravity Forms, Kieran’s Calendar, PowerPress, Sexy Bookmarks, and WP-Touch.

Also, as usual we discussed our favorite iPhone apps of the week.  Some of the apps discussed in this episode included: DISQUS, Get Glue, iTweetReply, Boxcar, and LED Flashlight Ultimate.

TheCottonClub-EP014 [ 37:00 ] Play Now | Play in Popup
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Project: WordPress Theme

June 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

One of the coolest things about WordPress in my opinion is that when a client calls and wants a redesign or a fresh look for their website, it’s just a matter of sitting down and coding a new theme.  I launched Indian Hills Country Club first in 2001 and we have redesigned the website 3 times since then, this is the first dramatic departure from their initial design that we have attempted. I used Studiopress education theme as my foundation for this design but you can tell from the finished product I spent a couple of hours this evening coding CSS and knee-deep in Photoshop.  We haven’t launched the project yet, it’s still pending review but here’s a sneak peak.

screenshot-indianhills

Note the new logo for the club, the simple feather w/ 1973 below it.  That’s something else I put together for them a few weeks ago to commemorate the year they were established.  As another sidenote, I have heard some great things about the course at IHCC recently and I am looking forward to playing there very soon…

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Your Thoughts on WordPress?

May 18, 2010 By 6 Comments

wordpresslogo-discussion I pretty much develop all of my clients websites these days using wordpress as the backend content management system unless there are some really far out project requirements that I don’t see wordpress as a good fit for. Honestly I don’t hear many project requirements these days that won’t work inside of wordpress, especially given the number of plugins that are available.

In fact, did you know that you can now deploy a plugin that will more or less turn your wordpress installation into an auction website like eBay?  I was just testing a plugin for a friend a few days ago that does exactly that, and it’s pretty robust too!

This past week I have been working on a project involving wordpress 3.0 and the studiopress genesis theme framework and I have been amazed at just how much more control the end user, or client, is going to have once this version is released.  Granted, there is a slight learning curve for developers when it comes to learning everything that is new w/ 3.0, not to mention how genesis from studiopress operates, but once we all get it, lookout!

For instance, I was wrestling today with a header issue on a client project and ran across Nathan Rice’s Genesis Simple Hooks Plugin, compliments of Brent Passmore, this plugin alone extends wordpress further than it’s ever been pushed by allowing the end user, or client, to input content – both shortcodes and php code, into one of the many hooks located on a websites theme. All of this from inside the user-friendly dashboard of WordPress. Incredible.  There is also the PODS CMS plugin for handling different content types and extending the wordpress custom fields option. Is there really anything you can’t push wordpress to do these days?

I know that I have a lot of developers that read my blog so I thought I would invite everyone in for a discussion on this topic, here are a few starting points:

  1. Do you currently use wordpress exclusively for projects?
  2. What are your thoughts on wordpress vs the other open source solutions?
  3. What content management solutions do you offer your clients?
  4. How much of a factor is wordpress’ name recognition becoming?
  5. What are some of your favorite wordpress plugins / themes?
  6. What are some of your likes / dislikes about wordpress?
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Genesis Framework 101

May 12, 2010 By 6 Comments

home_project_wordpressorg[1] I have been working on a project involving the beta release of WordPress 3.0 and the Studiopress Genesis Theme Framework this week and I have to say the more I use this combination I can see how things are fixing to change in the CMS world.  For the better too I might add.

The WordPress 3 release is still in beta but some of the new things it’s going to bring to the table are phenomenal and well thought out.  I don’t recommend running 3.0 beta on any production sites yet but I do recommend putting it on a sandbox and getting familiar with it from a developers perspective.

On the theme / design side of things, Brian Gardner and the Studiopress team always turn out awesome products.  Their Genesis framework is no exception.  Everyone that knows me well knows that I am a huge fan of their themes and use them for starters on a lot of projects so I have been getting a lot of questions in passing about Genesis so I figured a blog post was in order. There will be additional posts to follow but this one will touch on some of the basics.

There are a couple of things you should know about how Genesis works with child themes and of course the parent theme, Genesis. however before you dive into it.  Here are some basics that I pulled from the Studiopress website to get you started…

What is a Child Theme?
A child theme is an extension of a theme framework which is comprised of typical theme elements – with Genesis, it includes a screenshot, theme files, a stylesheet, a functions file and an images folder. These elements are grouped together in what’s known as a child theme folder and can be activated like any other WordPress theme. To help explain the relationship of a child theme and the parent Genesis theme framework, I’ll go into detail with each one.

A Screenshot
All WordPress themes have a screenshoot image included – typically this is called “screenshot.png”, is 600 x 450 in dimension and is a visual display of the theme, which can be seen on the Appearance > Themes page inside your WordPress dashboard. Since child themes have their own folders and are activated like any other theme, they require a screenshot like a standard theme.

Theme Files
The Genesis theme framework, which in essence is the parent theme, is where all of the theme files are kept. This would include the typical theme files such as 404.php, comments.php, footer.php, header.php, index.php, page.php, single.php and so on. Child themes can also include these files – and the hierarchy works in a way that if any of those files exist in the child theme folder, they will override the parent theme. In other words, if you customize a footer.php file and place it into your child theme folder, that will be used in lieu of the one in the Genesis parent theme. Currently the only theme files that may be found in some of the Genesis child themes are a custom home.php file, which will control the way a site’s homepage will appear. If one is not a part of a child theme, then the theme will use the index.php file, in the Genesis-parent theme, for the homepage.

A Stylesheet
Many theme frameworks are built in a way that imports the parent theme stylesheet, then allows for customizations to be made by way of the child theme stylesheet. While there is nothing wrong with the way that works, we’ve chosen to simplify things and just give the child theme it’s own stylesheet. In other words, if a child theme is being used, the style.css file in the child theme folder has complete control over the way the child theme looks. You don’t have to compare and sift through multiple stylesheets to look for and change style elements.

A Functions File
Most WordPress themes have a functions.php file – which is typically a file where you can control certain behaviors of how WordPress is run or how the theme outputs various things. For instance, a functions file can register sidebar widgets and how they are styled, as well as a number of other “function” related things. With Genesis, the functions.php is simple – it calls the entire theme framework to run and that is the only code found there. The great thing about the way Genesis is built, is that the child theme’s functions file is where a number of things occur – additional sidebar widgets can be registered, and from a development side, custom functions are defined as well as filtered and hooked. (more on that in upcoming posts.)

An Images Folder
This one is pretty self-explanatory – as with any WordPress theme, there is an images folder which is used to hold any images that a theme requires. Use this to hold background images, icons, navbar gradients, and what not.

If you are currently running MU or WordPress Buddypress, I recommend checking out Studiopress for your themes because they have some great themes and also some links to the child theme for buddypress that are very nice.  Stay tuned as I post some more notes about what’s happening w/ WordPress 3.0 as well as our Genesis project we are helping deploy for a client.

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Projects: Crawford for Congress

April 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Another one of my recent projects has been a political website for Republican First Congressional District Candidate Rick Crawford.  We were retained by the Crawford Campaign to redesign their existing website and to incorporate some new functionality to their base WordPress installation.  Given the amount of plugins that are available today for WordPress it’s a very good choice for political candidates who might need to quickly deploy new content or applications during the campaign.

In addition to the overall website design and layout, my partners and I are also helping to manage the campaign’s social media presence.  Be sure to click the link below to visit the new Crawford For Congress website.

crawfordforcongress-screenshot

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