WordPress 2.8 Theme Design

Table of Contents

• Preface

• Chapter 1: Getting Started as a WordPress Theme Designer
  • WordPress perks
  • Does a WordPress site have to be a blog?
  • Pick a theme or design your own?
    • Drawbacks to using an already built theme
    • Using theme frameworks
  • This book's approach
  • Core technology you should understand
    • WordPress
    • CSS
    • XHTML
    • PHP
    • Other helpful technologies
  • Tools of the trade
    • HTML editor
    • Graphic editor
    • Firefox
    • Developing for Firefox first
  • Summary

• Chapter 2: Theme Design and Approach
  • Things to consider
    • Types of blogs
    • Plugins and widgets
  • Getting ready to design
    • A common problem
  • The solution: Rapid design comping
    • The radical, new process—is not so new or radical?
    • Overview of rapid design comping
  • Getting started
    • Sketching It
      • Considering usability
    • Starting with the structure
      • Creating your design
      • The DOCTYPE
      • The main body
      • Attaching the basic stylesheet
      • Basic semantic XHTML structure
  • Adding text—typography
    • Starting with the text
    • Choosing your fonts
      • Cascading fonts
      • Font stacks
      • sIFR
    • Font sizing
      • Why pixels?
      • Keeping it in proportion
      • Paragraphs
      • Default links
  • The layout
    • Column Layout: Floating div tags versus CSS tables
    • Posts
      • Making sure WordPress sticky posts get styled
    • Forms
      • Threaded and paginated comments
    • Navigation
      • Styling the main navigation
      • WordPress-specific styles for navigation
    • Color schemes
      • Two-minute color schemes
      • Color schemes with GIMP or Photoshop
      • Adding color to your CSS
      • Styling the special TOC headers
    • Creating the graphical elements
  • Relax and have fun designing
  • Slicing and exporting images
    • Don't forget your favicon!
      • Making your favicon high-res
  • Summary

• Chapter 3: Coding It Up
  • Got WordPress?
  • Understanding the WordPress theme
  • Creating your WordPress workflow
  • Building our WordPress theme
    • Starting with a blank slate: Tabula rasa
    • Create a new theme directory
    • Including WordPress content
      • Understanding template tags
      • Getting a handle on hooks
      • Learning the Loop
      • Creating a basic loop
    • Modifying the timestamp and author template tags
    • Modifying the basic comments display
    • Including threaded comments
      • Styling threaded comments
  • Breaking it up: Header, footer, and sidebar template files
    • Creating the footer.php template file
    • Creating the sidebar.php template file
    • The header
  • More template files: Home, internal, and static pages
    • The home page
    • Internal pages
    • Static pages
    • Quick review
    • Fun with other page layouts
    • Don't forget about your 404 page
  • Even more template files
  • Adding in the favicon
    • Activating the favicon

• Summary

• Chapter 4: Debugging and Validation
  • Testing other browsers and platforms
  • Introduction to debugging
  • Troubleshooting basics
    • Why validate?
    • PHP template tags
    • CSS quick fixes
    • Advanced troubleshooting
      • Quirks mode
  • Fixing CSS across browsers
    • Box model issues
    • Everything is relative
  • To hack or not to hack
  • Out of the box model thinking
  • The road to validation
  • Advanced validation
    • Firefox's JavaScript/Error Console
    • The Web Developer Toolbar
    • Firebug
    • Checking your work in Internet Explorer
      • Run multiple versions of IE
      • IE Developer Toolbar
      • Don't forget about the QorSMode bookmarklet
    • Optimizing for text and mobile browsers
      • The new mobile Safari browser
  • Summary

• Chapter 5: Putting Your Theme into Action
  • A picture's worth
  • Theme packaging basics
  • Describing your theme
  • Licensing
  • Creating a ReadMe.txt file
  • Zipping it up
  • No way to zip?
  • Performing one last test
  • Getting some feedback and tracking it
  • Summary

• Chapter 6: WordPress Template Tag, Function, and CSS Reference
  • Class styles generated by WordPress
    • The search bar ID
    • Classes output by the media manager
    • Classes output by the sidebar widgets
    • Classes output by the wp_list_pages template tag
    • Classes output by the wp_list_categories template tag
    • post_class class styles
    • body_class class styles
      • Why add custom class styles to template tags?
  • Using the template selector feature
    • Creating a custom page template
  • Template hierarchy
  • Template tags
    • Author template tag updates in 2.8
    • Template tags for tags
    • Adding tag display to your theme
    • General template tags—the least you need to know
  • Conditional tags
  • Including tags into your themes
    • Creating custom header, footer, sidebar includes
    • Completely custom—streamlining your theme
    • Creating a custom include in your theme
  • The Loop functions
  • Plugin hooks
  • WordPress core functions
    • WordPress shortcodes
      • Creating a basic shortcode
  • Summary

• Chapter 7: AJAX / Dynamic Content and Interactive Forms
  • Preparing for dynamic content and interactive forms
    • Assessing if AJAX is appropriate for your site
    • Do it yourself or use plugins
    • Plugin pros and cons
  • The AJAX factor
    • jQuery now comes bundled with WordPress
      • Including jQuery in WordPress
      • Avoiding problems registering jQuery
      • Linking to jQuery from Google Code's CDN
      • Using WordPress' bundled includes versus including your own or using a CDN
      • jQuery plugins
    • Problem with setting up a Lightbox effect in WordPress
      • jQuery lightBox
      • Adding jQuery lightBox to your template
      • Implementing lightBox
      • jQuery's ThickBox and ColorBox plugins
  • Plugins and widgets
    • Plugins
    • Widgets
    • Getting your theme ready for plugins and widgets
    • Preparing your theme for plugins
    • Installing a plugin
      • Installing the AJAX comment preview plugin
    • Preparing your theme for widgets
      • Making your theme compatible with widgets
      • Google Reader widget
  • AJAX––It's not just for your site's users
    • New work space features
    • pageMash
      • Installing the pageMash plugin
  • Summary

• Chapter 8: Dynamic Menus and Interactive Elements
  • Dynamic menus
    • Drop-down menus
    • DIY SuckerFish menus in WordPress
      • Applying CSS to WordPress
      • Applying the DOM script to WordPress
      • Allowing only selected pages to display
      • Hiding pages the easy way with pageMash
  • Adding Flash to your theme
    • Flash in your theme
    • Handling users without Flash, older versions of Flash, and IE6 users
      • Is the ActiveX restriction still around?
      • Adding a SWF to the template using swfObject
      • jQuery Flash plugin
      • Passing Flash a WordPress variable
      • Adding sIFR text with the jQuery Flash plugin
    • Flash in a WordPress post or page
      • Adding You Tube video to a WordPress post
  • Summary

• Chapter 9: Design Tips for Working with WordPress
  • The cool factor essentials
    • Backgrounds
    • Lists
      • See it in action
    • Rounded corners
      • The classic—all four corners
      • The two-image cheat
      • CSS3—the new way to round corners
    • Creative posting
    • Breaking boundaries
    • Keeping tabs on current design trends
    • Creative fonts
      • Graphic text
      • Using PHP to make graphic headers easy
      • Custom fonts with CSS3
  • Good design isn't always visual—looking at SEO
    • Search engine friendly URLs
    • Keywords and descriptions
      • DYI meta tags
      • Meta tag plugins
  • Summary

• Index

Tessa Blakeley Silver

I’d say that the book covers a lot of ground, and that it does so at a pace that would be suitable for an inexperienced developer.

There's a lot to like about this book.

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