Theme-Check: Test Your WordPress Theme Against Best Practices

Developing a WordPress theme from scratch is not that difficult if you know your way around technologies such as PHP, SQL, HTML, and Javascript. Not all themes are developed with the same quality though. Developers do need to pay attention to the guidelines provided by WordPress to make sure their code is clean and their theme is optimized to provide a better experience to those who get to see it.

Theme Check is a powerful plugin for WordPress developers that analyzes a given theme’s code and offers areas it can be improved upon. It makes sure your theme adheres to the recommendations set forth by WP (or at least it warns you when it is not).

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5 WordPress Books for Experienced Bloggers

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform around. It is open source and has a strong community behind it which helps. Starting a blog with WordPress does not really take much. But sometimes you want to go beyond a basic blog and work towards building a business with the help of your site. These 5 WordPress books can help you achieve that:

How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer: teaches you how to build a blog, a portfolio site and a general portal for WordPress. It has a pragmatic approach to it and has something for everyone. (more…)

5 Awesome Web Server Books for WordPress

Many WordPress webmasters install WP on their servers and go about running their website without taking time to make themselves familiar with the server they are running their software on. That may not be a big problem when you have only 2 people visiting your website. But if you get any kind of attention on the Internet, you will have to take time to optimize your web server to get the most out of WordPress. You may even have to switch to a different server to keep your load under control (check our Nginx article for more information).

Installing WordPress and mastering it is only one part of the process. Knowing your web server can help you big time as well. These 5 web server books for WordPress (and other websites) can help:

Nginx HTTP Server: Nginx is a web server that we are currently using for many of our WordPress websites. It is one of the best solutions for sites that get a lot of load (we are oversimplifying it but Nginx is especially good for VPS hosted sites). This book teaches you how optimize your web server and get the most out of it.

Lighttpd: another light-weight web server that can reduce your site’s load and saves you money and resources in the long run. In a perfect world, going from Apache to this server would be super easy. That’s not the case, which is why you need to review this book if you are interested in it.

Apache Cookbook: I am not a big fan of Apache, but that does not mean it’s not a decent web server. A ton of websites are run using this web server, and there is a good reason for that. If you love you htaccess and all the goodies that you get with Apache, you want to take a look at this book to pick up some good tips. (more…)

5 Places To Download Killer PHP Scripts

WordPress is built upon PHP and takes full advantage of it to bring webmasters a whole lot of flexibility and performance. There are many advantages to PHP as a programming language. I personally like the fact that you can re-use PHP code and do all kinds of neat things by combining existing scripts. As a webmaster, what you do not want to do is re-invent the wheel. If someone has written a script that you can take advantage of for your own projects, there is no reason for you to spend time developing a similar script. Besides, you can purchase PHP scripts for as low as $5 (not that you should put emphasis on price).

If you are looking to pick up PHP scripts for your WordPress projects, these 5 PHP script banks should help you find what you need:

CodeCanyon: one of the best places to look for scripts. It has JSP, ASP, and PHP scripts that you can use for your projects. User ratings can show you which scripts are worth paying for.

WP Plugins: a marketplace for WordPress plugins. There are some unique plugins available in this store. Prices are pretty affordable too (depending on what you need). (more…)

5 Ways To Download Royalty-Free Assets For Your Website

Starting a website is more than just installing WordPress and hoping for the best. You are going to need content, images, graphics, videos, and all types of assets to make your website worth using for your visitors. The content part you can address yourself. But not everybody can come up with high quality images and videos. If you can’t pull it off yourself, you can always buy. There are plenty of places you can pick up royalty-free assets. Here are 5 that stand out:

Graphic River: has plenty of graphics to get you started. Photoshop goodies, vectors, and icons are all up for grabs.

stock.xchng: a great place to pick up high quality images (free or royalty free). If you are going to use the free images from here, don’t forget to give credit when required.

Video Hive: has stock footage, motion graphics, DVD menus, and all kinds of goodies you can use for your video project or video blog. (more…)

WordPress 2.8 Themes Cookbook – A Review

WordPress is truly a wonderful platform to use to build websites. It’s powerful and can handle almost any type of website. While playing with WordPress themes is fun, developing a few themes of your own can be even more gratifying. Getting started with WordPress theme development is a process. Learning how to develop a theme from scratch or use existing code to come up with a killer design takes time. That’s what WordPress 2.8 Themes Cookbook aims to teach you (which packt publishing was kind enough to provide us a copy with). It uses a practical approach to show you how to get things done when developing your own themes. Even if you are not planning to develop a theme of your own, this book shows you how to modify your existing themes. Without further ado, let’s dig in and see what this book is all about (for more information on this book and other exciting Packt Publishing books, visit packtpub.com).

Learning Theme Development

As long as you are interested in coding, writing a theme for WordPress from scratch is not that difficult. You’ll need some creativity and a solid foundation of WordPress platform to develop a high quality theme though. Those of you familiar with coding know the importance of getting the basics right before moving to more advanced topics. Those coders that don’t understand the basics really well are more likely to make fundamental mistakes when developing their own themes. WordPress 2.8 Themes Cookbook is written for those of you who want to go beyond theory and learn how to get things done. It covers a variety of techniques developers need to know and understand to gain control over their website’s design and create the best themes possible.

In order to develop a killer theme for WordPress, developers need to have a solid understanding of all aspects of theme development. There is more to a theme that the technologies you use to develop it or shiny features that you decide to add to it. Here are just a few items theme developers need to pay attention to:

• Theme navigation
• Templates
• Sidebars (single or multiple)
  
• Media integration (galleries, videos, …)
  
• Theme usability
• Comments section
• Theme back-end
• Site layout
• Search Engine Optimization

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Book Spotlight: WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook

WordPress is a wonderful open source CMS that can handle almost any type of website one can come up with. It may be a powerful platform but not all WordPress users invest time and effort to get the most out of it. This platform can be used to develop highly dynamic websites. One of the most popular ways to do that is by adding Flash content to your website. That’s what WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook aims to help you master. WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook, which Packt Publishing was kind enough to provide us a copy with, discusses what every WordPress webmaster needs to know to get the most out of Flash on WordPress. Without further ado, let’s dig in and see what’s covered in this book (for more information on this book and other exciting Packt Publishing books, visit packtpub.com).

Let’s face it. WordPress is a tool,  given it’s a very powerful tool. One can use WordPress to develop an incredibly dull website.There are technologies that WordPress webmasters can take advantage of to add dynamic content to their websites. Flash is one of those technologies. Flash may look difficult on the surface, and it does take a lot of effort to master. But there are plenty of plugins, scripts, and other solutions available for WordPress. WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook covers some of those solutions and teaches you how to leverage Flash to make your website more dynamic and take it to the next level.

As the name suggests, WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook is written for WordPress site owners who are looking for practical tips on how to integrate Adobe Flash into their websites. You don’t have to be a Flash or WordPress expert to get started with this book. The authors do not throw you into deep waters right from the start. Building step by step is key for anyone who may not be too experienced in this area, and that’s exactly what you get here. Before you do anything on your website, you need to have a plan. You also need to know the basics about the platform you intend to implement Flash on. This book runs you through the basics of WordPress in the first couple of chapters (mostly second). You’ll learn how to modify files, add scripts, and work with plugins on WordPress. These concepts will come handy in later chapters (especially if you are a WordPress beginner). The book also covers:

• SEO Plugins for WordPress
• Google XML Sitemaps Plugin
• Breadcrumbs
• Website backup

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