WPDesigner

A widget-ready sidebar or widgetized sidebar is almost a standard for themes catering the WordPress 2.0 and 2.1 series. But first, what is widgetizing? Widgetizing simply means getting the Sidebar ready for the Widget plugin; this plugin allows you to easily re-arrange features within the Sidebar. (more…)

Although the title is Search Form and Calendar, I’ll throw in the Meta block for today too. Let’s wrap up the regular Sidebar today and figure out how to widgetize your Sidebar by tomorrow okay? All right, let’s start…

Step 1 : Add search form

Before I give you the codes to type, open a new notepad, leave it blank, save it as searchform.php (in the same folder containing index.php, of course). Copy the codes in my searchform.txt file to your searchform.php file. That’s it; from this point on, leave the searchform.php file alone. (more…)

Today’s lesson is fairly easy. You’ll learn how to call for an archive link listing and the blogroll links. Tomorrow’s lesson is the calendar and search form.

Before we start, I want to explain why I’ve been breaking down my lessons into smaller lessons. Everything that you’re learning took self-taught people MONTHS to digest! It’s important that you understand everything I’m showing you the first time around so you won’t have to go back and re-check. (more…)

Now that you’re familiar with the structure of the Sidebar, we’ll continue working on the Sidebar with Page-link listing. After the regular Sidebar is complete. I’ll show you how to widgetize your Sidebar.

Add the following codes on top of the Categories block: (more…)

Have you been looking forward to the Sidebar? At first glance, the Sidebar looks difficult, but it isn’t tricky at all. Once you get used to its structure, you’ll be able to code and style it very quickly.

Before jumping on the Sidebar, here’s what your index.php file should look like. (more…)

At the bottom of most WordPress blogs, there’s a Next Page or Previous Page link. You call for those links by using the posts_nav_link() function of the WordPress template system. In this lesson, there’s only one step!

Do I really have to tell you to open Xampp Control again, theme folder, browser, and index.php file again? (more…)

This lesson covers three extra options that you can add to each post. Else, post ID, and link title value. Although they’re optional, you can find all three of them within every one of my free themes because you never know what people will use your themes for.

First, don’t forget to start Xampp Control. (more…)

Today, we tackle the postmetadata: date, categories, author, number of comments, and any miscellaneous information attached to each post.

We’re at lesson 5C now so I assume you’re getting a grip of this. You’ll notice that my instructions will be grouped in bigger chunks (less steps). Before we begin, open the Xampp Control, theme folder, browser, and index.php file. (more…)

In this lesson, we’ll tackle what really matters. How do you get the content of your blog to show? Then, you’ll add some more invisible boxes or DIVs to separate the content from the post titles that we called for, yesterday.

(Note: Yesterday’s lesson is very, very important. If you didn’t fully understand what I showed yesterday, you need to re-read and ask me questions until it’s clear to you.) (more…)

The Loop calls for your blog’s entries. It’s the most important set of PHP codes. By now, you should already know what to do before this lesson, of my tutorial series, begin. Go ahead and do that first, then let’s review what we’ve learned so far.

So far, you’ve learned:

• the rules, structure, and hierarchy of a WordPress theme
• what each of your page is made up of
• how to install your theme
• how to call for your blog’s title and make it a link
• how to call for the description and separate the header from everything else

(more…)

Alright, this the fourth lesson of the WordPress tutorial series. I shouldn’t have to say it, but I’ll say it one last time; make sure you read the previous lessons. Otherwise, you will not understand one thing in this lesson. We have a quick lesson today to wrap up the header template and introduce the box model. (more…)

If you haven’t already, follow my WordPress theme tutorial series from the beginning. If you don’t, good luck. Yesterday, I showed you how to turn on Xampp Control, install your theme, and introduced you to PHP. Today, we’ll continue with PHP and learn how to call for your site’s or blog’s title.

Remember, type every code. DO NOT copy and paste the codes that I give you. The whole point is to get you to remember what you learn. (more…)