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WordPress Theme Downloads

Posted by The Doctor on Nov 30, 2009 with No Comments | Short Link
Last modified by The Doctor on March 17, 2010
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Finding a new theme for your WordPress blog can be an exciting and fun. Just bear in mind where you find it at.

After you have found your dream theme you might consider a specific search on it. Try to make sure you are getting what you expect, especially in the case of paid themes.

It is important to make sure the theme is being downloaded from the original author, or a repository approved by the author, for the best results. This will help ensure you get the most current version of the theme; and, it will help reduce the possibility of extra code being inserted by unscrupulous individuals or organizations.

I’ll use an example of a theme I know well, Desk Mess Mirrored. A Google search will find many pages and numerous entries referring back to people who are using this theme; mentions on WordPress-centric forums; places to download the theme; and, many other venues. The first link (in my case) is where the theme is readily available for download at the WordPress Extend Themes repository:

… plus additional places it can be found or referred to:

The idea here is to research your chosen theme and not necessarily download from the first place, but hopefully download from the best place you find.

dot-dot-dot

Posted by The Doctor on Nov 27, 2009 with No Comments | Short Link
Last modified by The Doctor on January 25, 2010
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The ellipsis.
I often use it, and it seems not so often correctly … or do I? Here is a quote from a wikipedia article:

Ellipsis (plural ellipses; from the Greek: ἔλλειψις, élleipsis, “omission”) is a mark or series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word or a phrase from the original text. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought, or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence (aposiopesis) (apostrophe and elipsis mixed). The ellipsis calls for a slight pause in speech.

The most common form of an ellipsis is a row of three periods or full stops (…) or pre-composed triple-dot glyph (…). The usage of the em dash (—) can overlap the usage of ellipsis.

The triple-dot punctuation mark is also called a suspension point, points of ellipsis, periods of ellipsis, or colloquially, dot-dot-dot.

Wikipedia

The article is interesting for several reasons but the most important one today was: how do I show the infamous … (dot-dot-dot) when the font family does not? Simple, really, just use the appropriate reference code for it: 

…
…

or 

…

Thanks to the “SyntaxHighlighter Evolved” plugin by ViperBond007 to show these codes easily. Give it a try.

Going Home

Posted by The Doctor on Nov 25, 2009 with 1 Comment | Short Link
Last modified by The Doctor on March 17, 2010
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Creating text links back to the home page, or front page, of a blog are done in many ways. Many themes use the blog Title as a link back to the home page. It is also very common for the menu or navigation bar to link to the home page. This article will cover some examples of links for going home.

Let’s start with an obvious example: a link from the blog title back to the home page.

<a href="http://wpfirstaid.com/">WP First Aid</a>

The above example is very, very basic … let’s dress it up a bit:

<h1 class="blog-title"><a href="http://wpfirstaid.com/" alt="Going Home: WP First Aid">WP First Aid</a></h1>

Now we have a title using the h1 element and a CSS class of blog-title with some alt text letting the reader know where the link will be going. This is better but how does this help you? Let’s make use of WordPress’ built in functions to make this example more generic and easily transferable.

<h1 class="blog-title"><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>" alt="Going Home: <?php bloginfo('name'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>

This example makes use of the WordPress function bloginfo(). Here is a link to the WordPress codex for this function; and, here is a link to the get_bloginfo() function which provides additional details.

Our next example is adding a home page link to a navigation bar. Many navigation bars are generated with one of three WordPress functions: wp_list_pages(), wp_page_menu(), or wp_list_categories(). The wp_page_menu function uses a value that creates a home page link, for example:

<?php wp_page_menu('show_home=1'); ?>

The wp_page_menu function includes all the available parameters of the wp_list_pages function and also includes wrapping the output in an unordered list.

To add a home page link into a theme using the wp_list_pages function you may look at the following example for guidance:

<ul>
  <li><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>" alt="Going Home: <?php bloginfo('name'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></li>
  <?php wp_list_pages(); ?>
</ul>

Adding a home page link to a navigation menu created with the wp_list_categories function is very similar. Let’s take a quick look at it below.

<ul>
  <li><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>" alt="Going Home: <?php bloginfo('name'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></li>
  <?php wp_list_categories(); ?>
</ul>

The only difference in the above two examples are the function call. The links we added to the home page are almost identical to the the link example we used for the blog title.

Feel free to use any of the above examples in your own works. Of course, there could be additional CSS elements needed to work with your theme’s style but I will leave that as an exercise for you … or feel free to contact us with more complex code requirements.

Hello World!

Posted by The Doctor on Nov 23, 2009 with No Comments | Short Link
Last modified by The Doctor on March 17, 2010
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The Doctor is in … welcome to WP First Aid! Our WordPress clinic is just opening and we are here to help. Feel free to leave us a comment, let us know how we’re doing.