themes: what they are - how to use 'em - daytonwp november 2012 meetup

WordPress Themes

underlying, unifying design for a blog

My Background

• Father

• Husband

• Developer

• Ninja

• Creating themes & plugins for past five years

• Built hundreds of blogs

• Plugins: thousands of downloads worldwide

What is a theme?!

A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that

work together to produce a graphical

interface with an underlying, unifying design

for a blog.

Huh? In English...

• Gives your blog its appearance

• What visitors see

• Graphics & Colors

• Typography

• Responsiveness & Awesomeness

"Simplicity is the ultimate

sophistication."

...and sometimes not so awesome.

Not All Themes Are Created Equal

Free Themes Premium Themes

Freemium Themes

Free Themes

• Cost: Free

• Lack flexibility & customization

• Less features

• Plain appearance

• Great for content delivery

• Straight to the point

• Unsupported or slow development

• Often outdated

Premium Themes

• Cost: Paid....but sometimes free!

• More options & flexibility

• Beautiful appearance

• Custom layouts

• Supported & maintained

• Large communities

• Customize to fit your needs & deep desires

Freemium Themes

• Cost: Free...with option to pay

• Same as Premium Theme

Option to pay?! what?!

Pay to remove footer links, ads, or acquire

enhanced features.

GPL Licensing & Open Source

• Open source means free, right?! Yes & No!

• Free as in freedom. Not free like those

cheese samples you swipe at the grocery

store.

• GPL is the freedom to receive & change the

source code.

• All WordPress software should be covered

under GPL or similar licensing. (themes &

plugins)

Customizing Your Theme

• Never ever..ever edit the core files of

WordPress...ever.

• Lose your changes during an update

• Bad practice

• Never had reason to do it..ever.

How to easily customize a theme

• Go Premium!

• Premium themes have user friendly options

• Look for a demo to check out its options

• Does it fit your needs?

For the Hardcore Customizing

• Be a ninja

• All WP themes should be GPL (look for this)

• Customizing Theme core files is bad practice

• Utilize the functions.php file

More Hardcore Customizing

The functions.php file

• /wp-content/themes/themename/functions.php

• Acts much like a plugin

• Change default behaviors of your theme or WordPress

• Use WP hooks, actions, and filters

• Turn on theme support for post thumbnails, menu, etc

• Several blocks of code to expand the functionality of the

active theme.

Even More Hardcode Customizing

Child Theme

• Dependant on a parent theme (premium)

• Files in Child Theme override parent theme files

• functions.php in child can replace parent functions

• Unique headers in style.css to identify child & parent

• /wp-content/themes/childthemename/

Hardcore Customizing Continues

Want to add a subscription box to your theme's homepage?

• Create a duplicate of the parent theme's index.php file

• Place duplicate file in child theme directory

• Customize duplicate index.php file in child theme

• Active the child theme

• The duplicate index.php will override the parent's

index.php

Why go through the trouble?

GPL gives us the freedom to copy and improve

already written code. Awesome! But it's not

always a good idea.

• Child themes protect changes from the update monster.

• When the parent theme is updated, the child theme isn't.

• Our changes may not be compatible with the recent

updates but at least you didn't lose all your work.

So remember, think twice before customizing core theme files,

create a child theme, and only you can prevent forest fires.

Responsiveness & Awesomeness

"Big things come in small packages"

Mobile devices have never been so popular

• Fast web browsing

• Powerful processors

• High screen resolutions

• Broad Demographics

• On-the-go

Responsive Design

The Problem

• Mobile browsers zoom out to the width of the site

• Difficult to read, touch links. and navigate

I know what awesomeness is, but what's

responsiveness?

• It's how your site reacts to the screen it's being display

upon. Minimizes issues by adjusting to the screen

• Responsive design is very important with delivering the

right content.

Why Responsive is Important

• Mobile friendly

• Mobile advertising

• Mobile traffic

• Professionalism

• User friendliness

• Increased conversations

• Current location (off topic but still cool)

Imagine you own a restaurant.

• You run ads in a popular iPhone app.

• Your food looks delicious.

• Person clicks on your ad.

• They want to quickly see your menu and your prices.

• But your website isn't responsive. uh oh...

Instead they see a blurry slideshow

and tiny links. That might be beautiful

on your desktop but it's customer

repellent on a mobile phone. Which

of course is not cool.

This time your theme is responsive....

Person clicks on your ad. They want to quickly see your

menu and your prices. Your theme has beautifully

responded to the smaller screen on their

phone. Instead of the slideshow & tiny

links, they see big Beautiful buttons they

can easily touch.

Let me show you the way...

• This time your theme is responsive....

• Person clicks on your ad.

• They want to quickly see your menu and your prices.

• Your theme has beautifully responded to the smaller

screen on their phone.

• Instead of the slideshow & tiny links, they see big

beautiful buttons they can easily touch.

They browse your menu, check your hours without any

hassle from their phone. 10 minutes later they are dining

in your restaurant and complimenting your mobile

website.

Resources

WordPress Themes http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes

http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

http://codex.wordpress.org/Functions_File_Explained

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

Responsive Web Design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh653584.aspx

http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/

by Clifton Hatfield

http://cliftonhatfield.com

http://facebook.com/cliftonhatfied.page

http://empoweredblogs.com