The Premier WordPress Developer Course

This is the premier developer focused course that teaches attendees how to use WordPress as the backbone and platform of all development projects. This is an advanced, intensive and comprehensive live training event geared to give developers the necessary tools to develop solid websites.

This course will take place over the course of 3 days.  Wednesday, August 25th (6-8pm), Friday, August 27th (6-8pm), and Saturday, August 28th (8am-Noon) (All Central Time). So what is this course and who is it for?

This course is perfect for anyone who wants to create a better WordPress website for themselves or for their clients.  In order to understand how to “think outside the box” and create some creative uses for WordPress, you first need to understand the box.  This WordPress Developer Course will help you understand the box so you can make WordPress work for you and not have to do all the heavily lifting of development yourself.

Prerequisites: Some of you may be concerned that this course will be over your head or you are wondering if this is the right class to take.  It is helpful if you have worked with WordPress before and have used or seen how the iThemes Builder theme is used. It is also helpful if you don’t freak out when you look at CSS.  Most people, regardless of their level are going to find enormous benefits of attending this WordPress Developers Course.

Cost: This course costs $297 for non-WebDesign.com members.  Purchase and reserve your space today.  But all WebDesign.com members can attend this full 3-day course for no extra charge.  To learn more about WebDesign.com membership and benefits, check out our training page.

Check out this Preview of the upcoming WordPress Developer Course

So what topics are going to be covered in during the 3-day event:

• Advanced Installation
• Installing WordPress from SSH (or command line) to eliminate slow FTP wait
• Multisite installation
• Fully understand the wp-config.php file and all options
• Dealing with Security
• Understanding security through obscurity
• Patch or fix common security issues (holes)
• Communicating security to your client
• Finding the right plugin
• Discover which plugins should be part of your Developer Toolbox
• Learn unconventional uses for popular plugins
• Write your own plugin
• We will write our own Admin dashboard plugin, using a simple plugin framework that participants can replicate
• Understand when you should modify a current plugin or write your own
• Themes
• We will be using the Builder theme
• Building a child theme from scratch
• Learn when to use style.css & when to use Style Manager
• Learn unconventional uses for Builder
• Understand the WordPress Loop
• Dealing with Custom Post Types
• How to create a custom post type with code and also with a plugin
• Choose when you use a custom post type and when you just use categories and tags
• Assigning a layout in Builder based on custom post types
• The Functions.php file
• Use the functions.php file to make your life and the life of your client easier
• Create your own set of shortcodes
• Learn when to use functions.php and when to use plugins
• Manipulate your site with Hooks: Actions and Filters

You can learn more about this live training webinar and additional webinars WebDesign.com offers at our events page.  If you want to have a live calendar feed of all WebDesign.com webinars, download the WebDesign.com ICAL file.

Yes, the word is WordPress…

My friend @lelandf has put together a great site called WPCamelCase.com that is useful in instructing people in the correct spelling/formatting of the word WordPress.  He makes a “strong-case” for the correct-case:

• NOT: WordPress
• NOT: wordPress
• NOT: wordpress
• NOT: Word Press
• NOT: word press
• NOT: automaticPress
• NOT: MattPress
• NOT: WoRdPrEsS
• YES: WordPress

So, what’s the big issue?

Some people think this is no big deal and that people who don’t like this new “forced-filter” are just trying to stir up trouble.  But there are several real issues and problems this “forced-filter” piece of code are causing.  Examples like:

• This forced-filter code can break links on some sites.  This is especially true is you install WordPress in a subdirectory called /Wordpress.  This would cause major problems when trying to display images or linking to specific files in that directory.
• The response from some of the core development team is very dismissive of the community.  (And an open-source project, which WordPress IS one, relies heavily on the community for development.)
• The code, which by the way is actually called capital_P_dangit(), was put into the core of WordPress without even a Trac ticket and therefore there was zero discussion that the community was engaged in before it was released.
• Plus, there’s the whole issue of WordPress now having editorial control over my content.  Which is a bit backwards… I should be the one with editorial control over my own content.
• Justin Tadlock has a great post about the lower vs. upper case “p” issue.

If you’ve taken the time to read through @justintadlock’s well thought out case (great post), you should begin to understand why this is a big issue.  If you are a theme developer, work with client projects, or some other project dealing with WordPress, I would encourage you to use a small bit of code in your theme’s functions.php file.  These three lines of code will remove the capital_P_dangit() code from the filters and protect your content and therefore nullify the issue.

remove_filter(‘the_content’,'capital_P_dangit’);
remove_filter(‘the_title’,'capital_P_dangit’);
remove_filter(‘comment_text’,'capital_P_dangit’);

Side Note: Something interesting to note is that almost three years ago, Chip Bennet Ozh had written a plugin that essentially does the same thing as the current forced-filter capital_P_dangit().  Currently it barely has over 300 downloads.  This should say something about users desire to have WordPress auto-correct their spelling and usage of the word “WordPress”.   This comparison is important because Matt Mullenweg has stated that if you don’t like a filter or feature, vote with your feet or with a plugin.  Voting with a plugin is a good idea and based on the 3 year history of only 300 sites using the auto-correcting plugin versus the millions of sites who don’t use it…. that should be enough to prove we don’t need this type of forced_filter added to core.

It’s time to remove capital_P_dangit() from core DANGIT!

Yes, the news is true… I have joined WebDesign.com full time.

As you might know, this organization is one company and one team with three brands:  WebDesign.com, iThemes, and PluginBuddy. I originally met Cory Miller, the CEO of the organization, as one of his early customers (I think it was even before the Elegant theme was released), I had urged him to start some sort of an All Access Theme package at iThemes and continued to follow the growth and progress of their company.  And I got to know him and his team more at their iThemes Dallas Bootcamp in January. And from that point I started doing some part time work providing some teaching and training for WebDesign.com over the past few months.

In the next couple of weeks, you’ll be seeing more webinars and premium courses scheduled as Cory and I seek to add more and more value to our existing 65+ hours of training in our WebDesign.com membership.

Stay tuned for some awesome new training events coming soon.  In the meantime, check out our current schedule of events at http://webdesign.com/events.

Wow, there are a ton of changes to WordPress with this new release.  Brand new theme, a completely new menu/navigation system, custom post types, and a whole host of other features and benefits have all been added to an already strong content management system.

And while I thing there’s a long way to go (especially on creating different content types with varied content fields), and that it still requires a bit of coding knowledge to know how to “pull” specific content out of the database and display it in the way you want… the developers of WordPress have done an awesome job pulling this 3.0 version of WordPress together.

It is an exciting time for WordPress users.  WordPress is definitely moving down the road to becoming the category-killer content management system on the market.  Plus, don’t forget… WordPress is still FREE.

And yes, it probably wasn’t fair of me to put WordPress 3.1 in the title, but if the 3.0 release is any measurement, 3.1 will be awesome.

Previous article in Series: Multi-PLY your WP Reach

Besides Custom Post Types and the new Menu system, the biggest awaited feature is the incorporating or merging of the WordPress MU and the WordPress code base. If you are unfamiliar with WordPress MU, it was a fork (variation) of WordPress that allowed for the creation and management of tons of different blogs with only a single installation of WordPress.  So now, with the merging of the two code bases, users can create lots of different sites with only one installation of WordPress 3.0.

I’ve heard the example used of web developers now being able to construct and host their own client sites and have them running on one installation of WordPress.  There are many uses for this new feature.  For people who are used to using WordPress MU, you probably won’t be in too much awe, but for people who have only ever used a single installation of WordPress, the door is now open for you.

BUT… this functionality is not enabled out of the box.  But it’s not too tough to enable this multi-site functionality.  All you need to do to get started is add one line of code to the wp-config.php file:

define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, ‘true’);

Once you add that line of code to your wp-config.php file you will see a new ‘Network’ tab under the ‘Tools’ menu.

This new multi-network/site function lets you choose between sub-domains or sub-directories for your networked websites.  Remember that you need to be sure which option you want to choose, because you can’t change them later. I’ve also been told that this functionality will not work properly on a localhost install.  If you want to try this out, you will need to be on an actual live server.

Previous article in Series: Taxonomies (No, we’re not talking about Enemies of Taxes)

Next article in Series: Wrap up (Hey look… it’s WordPress 3.1)

The concept and the ability to use custom taxonomies is not a new area for WordPress.  In fact, custom taxonomies were available to users way back with WordPress 2.8.  But the new thing with WordPress 3.0 is that custom taxonomies have received an overhaul and now have lots more options and abilities.

Probably one of the biggest option added to custom taxonomies in WordPress 3.0 is that that have become easier to use.  The second biggest ability that was added to custom taxonomies was that now a user can have hierarchical relationships within their taxonomies.

Now before we go any further, some of you may be wondering what a taxonomy is?  In essence, a taxonomy is a way to group items.  A more formal definition might be “a division into ordered groups or categories”.

So now, with an easier way to create custom taxonomies, developers can really expand the functionality and power of the Custom Post Types.

Stay tuned for upcoming tutorials on creating custom taxonomies.

Previous article in Series: Custom Post Types – The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Next article in Series: Multi-PLY your WP Reach

Besides the new navigation/menu system, the new Custom Post Types is high on the list of anticipated features in WordPress 3.0. Up till this release, users have had to utilize custom code, or the flexibility of the PODS plugin to harness multiple content types.  The ability of using more than just Pages and Posts has been a real hurdle that has stood in the way of further adoption of WordPress by users.

And while I currently don’t feel the state of the Custom Post Types is where it needs to be (see upcoming post on why PODS is still needed for WordPress users), it has come a long way to fulfilling the needs of a true CMS (content management system).

In order to make use of the Custom Post Types, users will either need to use a plugin like Custom Post Types UI or get their hands dirty with some code in their theme’s functions.php file.

A basic example of creating a quick Custom Post Type called Video Games: (this code goes in the functions.php file of the activated theme folder)

function post_type_videogame() {
register_post_type(‘videogame’, array(‘label’ => __(‘Video Game’), ‘public’ => true,  ’show_ui’ => true));
register_taxonomy_for_object_type(‘post_tag’,'videogame’);
}
add_action(‘init’,'post_type_videogame’);

This will create the following section in the Admin Dashboard…

In an upcoming post, I will walk users through creating Custom Post Types by both using the functions.php file AND using a plugin for a simpler approach.

Previous article in Series: Authors finally have a Home

Next article in Series: Taxonomies (No, we’re not talking about Enemies of Taxes)

Because each author in WordPress has an individual ID (just like pages and categories have IDs), theme developers and users can create a custom feel and look for each author.

Now, when WordPress goes to display the author.php it will first look for author-[USER_NAME].php. As an example, if there were two authors on your WordPress site that had usernames of ‘jackson’ & ‘william’.  Then you could add two files to the theme’s folder: author-jackson.php & author-william.php.  This will allow each “author page” to be styled independently and thus create unique views for each author on your site.

You can still use a generic author.php file to style the default author page, but by adding the ability to customize the file based on author/user will allow for a much more robust experience.

Previous article in Series: Menus are on the Menu

Next article in Series: Custom Post Types – The Good, The Bad, & the Ugly

The new menu systems are easily the most anticipated as well as much needed features of WordPress 3.0.  Gone are the days of trying to hack the navigation bar.  The need for plugins like Pages Links To or other navigation styling plugins are gone.  You no longer need to know how to code in order to create the exact navigation system you desire.  All you have to do is have the ability to drag and drop menu items.  You can now incorporate outgoing links, categories and pages into the nav bar.  You can also create multiple navigation bars to be used in different areas of your site.

Area #1 – This area allows users to create outgoing links (or even internal links to specific posts, files, or areas of your site).  You can specify the URL, the navigation label and even the title attribute.

Area #2 – This area allows users to choose which pages they want to include in the navigation/menu system.  There is also an easy to use search area in case your site has tons of pages and you need to find the exact one.

Area #3 – This area allows users to add categories to the navigation/menu system.  And like the pages area, users can search through their categories to find the right one.

Area #4 – This is where the magic and the power happens. In this area, you can create multiple navigation/menu systems.  You can drag-n-drop the nav elements to reorder the menu quickly.  You can also create simple drop-downs by dragging and dropping an element “indented” from its parent nav element.

The amount of flexibility that is built into the new navigation system will answer many of the needs and cries of people who have, rightly so, pointed to the failings of the nav system in prior versions of WordPress.  3.0 corrects many of those issues.

Previous article in Series: WP Hearts Twitter

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