WordPress Resources

A Collection of Guides and Links to assist WordPress development

Reference

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Quick Reference Guides

WordPress Template and Theme quick info downloadable PDF

WordPress tags cheat sheet  downloadable PDF

WordPress Template Tag Reference

wptest.io wordpress test data

 

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Exercise Files

BooThemeV03 Wordpress theme.

salvattore.zip example files

booThemeV04 WordPress theme.

 

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Understanding The Wordpress Template Hierarchy

Template Hierarchy Infographic – WordPress Developer Resources

WordPress Developer Tips : Template Hierarchy Explained : Lynda.com

 

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The WordPress Loop

 

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Child Themes

WordPress child themes allows you change the functionality of a theme without having to edit the original/parent theme template files. Best applied if you want to modify a prebuilt theme that may be updated in the future.

How Child Themes work

Basically once the child theme is activated, WordPress will look for the template files in the child theme folder first. If the file doesn’t exist in the child theme, it will fallback to the parent theme folder. In other words, if there is a “header.php” in the child theme, WordPress will use that “header.php”, else it will use the “header.php” file in the parent theme.

 

Building Child Themes : Lynda.com tutorial

How To Create A Child Theme, And Why You Should Be Using One | Elegant Themes Blog

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One Page WordPress Design

The WordPress query-post function allows you to post multiple pages –  such as home , about, service and content  – onto a single page.

Linking menus on a one-page site

Creating a one-page wordpress theme

Building a one-page style site : Lynda.com

 

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 WP-Rest API

Lynda.com WordPress REST API First look

Postman

JSON view

https://github.com/oskarrough/ember-wordpress

The WordPress JSON Rest API (WP API): What It Is, How it Works, & What It Means For The Future of WordPress | Elegant Themes Blog

Using the new REST API in WordPress 4.4

REST API Console — WordPress Plugins

Building the Front-end for the JSON REST API-Powered Single Page Web App

GitHub – oskarrough/ember-wordpress: The bridge between Ember.js and WordPress

WP API – Using the WordPress REST API

Introducing REST APIs – ThemeShaper

 

GitHub – Automattic/Picard: A prototype theme that uses React and WP-API

Jack Lenox on Building Themes with the WP REST API – WordPress Tavern

 

Using the WP-API to Fetch Posts | CSS-Tricks

An Overview of the WordPress JSON API in WordPress 4.4

 

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MAMP

Refer to MAMP post for detailed information.

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What is a CMS?

A Content Management System allows you to edit a collection of web pages through the browser. Instead of cracking open a HTML page and typing code, you can use a simple online editor to do so. WordPress blogs are of course the most common example of this.

Jeremiah Shoaf  Discusses the benefits of taking an alternative approach to content management via a flat file database system – essentially a system that stores content in files and folders, instead of using MYSQL

A flat-file CMS is a content management system that stores content in files and folders rather than in a database like a traditional CMS. A database-driven CMS needs to query a database to retrieve content but with a flat-file CMS the content is readily-accessible in a simple file and folder structure. This might sound like you can only create basic sites with limited functionality with a flat-file CMS but that isn’t the case.

Read more about this approach at typeandgrids.com.

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Adding Widget Areas to a Custom Theme

WordPress allows you to create areas in your templates  where one or more widgets can be displayed. These ‘widget sets’ are known in wordpress as ‘dynamic sidebars’. Enabling widget functionality allows you to use the wordpress  Appearance / widgets interface to drag and drop widgets into your page templates.

Enabling widgets is a two step process. Firstly, you add code to your functions.php file, declaring you wish to enable the use of one or more widget sets  in your theme.Secondly, you add code to one or more of your templates in the location you want to display the widget sets. Usually, this code is added to the ‘sidebar.php’ file.

the following steps were taken from this how-to article at  fergytech

Add a function to “register” the sidebar feature in the  functions.php file

<?php if (function_exists(‘register_sidebar’))register_sidebar();?>

Specify a dynamic sidebar in sidebar.php

<ul id=”mywidgets”>

<?phpif(function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’))dynamic_sidebar();?>

</ul>

 Log into /wp-admin and click on Appearance | Widgets you’ll see options for attaching widgets to your sidebar.

Info on enabling widgets and theme functions  courtesy of fergytech. Check out his site for other great tips.

For more information on sidebars and widgets, check out this article at devotepress.

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Error in functions.php

White space outside the PHP start and end tags (<?php ?>). It seems  the white space was interpreted as an echo statement printing a blank line, which interrupted  the format of the HTTP header.

A more detailed explanation and possible causes can be found on F241vc15′ Weblog