Finally finished my wordpress theme
December 18th, 2008 - Wordpress
Its finally done. After a month of trying to figure out how the hell to even theme it, my wordpress theme is done. There might be a little touching up here and there, but for the most part, its finished.
I wanted to share some resources on how I got where I am today. There are a few that I don't remember, but these are the ones that stood out to me.
Themes to work from (blank themes)
Sometimes it is just easier to start with one of these blank themes. I started three times trying to manipulate and change the default theme. Its just easier I thought to start from scratch. What do you think?
Sifware - Blank Wordpress Theme - "Wordpress Naked has been put together by us as a simple Wordpress theme to assist developers that need to quickly implement a blog using Wordpress but don't really have the time to spend looking under the hood in any detail or reading documentation when it comes to applying a custom theme (e.g. their clients' design)."
Free ‘Starkers’ Wordpress theme - "Whenever I create a new Wordpress-based site, I find myself going through the same routine: installing the latest version, making a copy of the ‘default’ theme, and then tearing out all the styling and unnecessary HTML before starting on my own theme. It’s a process many of you probably go through; at least those of you who make your own bespoke themes."
Refueled - Two and three column layouts
Plugins
Sometimes it takes some time to find the ones that are just right for you. These are the ones that I found very nice.
Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress - "This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search."
WP-lifeStream - "Lifestream displays your social feeds and photos much like you would see it on many of the social networking sites."
Twitter Tools - This plugin creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. Pull your tweets into your blog and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.
WhyDoWork Adsense Plugin - "WhyDoWork Adsense is a WordPress plugin that allows you to insert Adsense ads on your blog without modifying the template. More then that, you can set it up to show different Adsense ads for articles older then X days (x is the number of days you decide)."
Related Posts Plugin - Generates a list of related posts at the end of each post based on tags.
Lightbox 2.0 for WordPress - "This version of lightbox – Lightbox version 2.0 uses Prototype JavaScript Framework and Scriptaculous Effects Library."
WP Post Thumbnail - "WP Post Thumbnail plugin adds an image upload, crop and save panel in ‘Write Post’ screen. It allows you to easily upload a .jpg image file. Once the image file is uploaded, you can crop it before saving it as your thumbnail. That’s it."
I really wanted to use the Last.fm plugin but they dont support Wordpress2.7 yet I don't think.
My Navigation
My navigation is based on Superfish - Suckerfish on 'roids, a jquery navigational menu. Im pretty sure there is no plugin for this. It was not the easiest thing to get working. and it still does quite work like it is supposed to. I can't seem to get the "current" nav item to show what page I'm on. If anyone reading this has figured it out, or knows how to configure it. Let me know.
I was thinking about trying my hand at a plugin with it. maybe
Comments
The Montoya Herald has a full featured comments file you can use instead of the default one that looked very nice. You can check it out, But i didn't end up using it.
After some digging I ended up just following the tutorial at Tamba2 and adding a little of my own stuff in here and there. I am actually going to play around with that a little more.
I’m not using the superfish menu on any remote site yet but on my local build I have it working, I think you need to add this in your head with other js
var $j=jQuery.noConflict();
$j('document').ready(function(){
$j('ul.sf-menu')
.find('li.current-cat,li.current-cat-parent,li.current-cat-ancestor')
.addClass('current')
.end()
.superfish({
pathClass : 'current'
});
});
Good luck, let me know if it worked… Rick
Thanks rick. I tried something like that before but this seems a little better i’ll give it a try.
This site uses “superfish”, http://savvyhealthfitness.com/ it’s a great menu, I have it working with both pages and categories on my local site. the great thing about is once you do have it working it’s easy enough to incorporate into other sites.
I tried the above code.. Works like a charm.. with one problem. I still have to hover over the cat-parent for the second nav to show. It will stay there after wards, but not onload..
Hmm, very cognitive post.
Is this theme good unough for the Digg?
Woww, Thank you brother . Very good theme .
Great work
xq7mB9 Great work
Great work