In this quick tutorial I’m using the Advanced Custom Fields (best plugin ever) repeater field to turn out an array of photos and text that link to PDF files (brochures)… and I’m using the genesis grid settings to lay them out nicely (class=”one-third”). The thing is, for the genesis grid to work you have to add a class of ‘first’ on every row… so I need to set up a counter to count the list items and add a class to the first and every third … Check it out.
How to Link Widget Titles Without a Plugin
So, in this game from time to time you get thrown a curveball. Some beautiful design feature that doesn’t have a natural easy flowing way of working in WordPress. Here’s the scenario. This design has lovely images that are also links, in the sidebar. The titles for said widget are overlaid on the images, and… [Read More]
When WordPress Goes to the Beach
One of the extraordinary things I’ve observed about the WordPress community in Australia is that more than just a group of people connected around this awesome software, they’re actually a great big collection of friends.
I would love to travel a bit more to other WP communities around the world just to see if what we have really is unique. I hope it isn’t, I’d love to think there are other groups of WP users out there who get as much fun out of just hanging out over beers and pizza as they do listening to WordPress talks and organising meetups and WordCamps.
Under the Hood of Self Hosting a WordPress Website
Here we are, the conversation continues… we talked the other day about deciding between wordpress.com and wordpress.org… and you are still following along.. you must have turned out to be one of those people like me for whom the lure of having control of your own website’s destiny was too good an opportunity to pass up – welcome to the wonderful world of self hosting a WordPress website.
Now what?
Well, you need some things… you need to buy that domain name you’ve been mulling over… and you need to buy that hosting space in which your website is going to live… so, how does that happen?
Deciding Between WordPress.com and WordPress.org
I do a fair bit of training WordPress users, be it in classroom situations, one on one with clients, or in meetups. I find running these sessions rewarding and challenging and I really do love seeing people leave at the end of the day or the session with that “I think I finally get it” look on their face. In all that training one of the conversations that comes up consistently centres around the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org. Specifically, the difference between a free, hosted WordPress service and downloading a free copy of WordPress and hosting it yourself.
While at its core the software is the same and the look and feel of everything you do in the dashboard to manage your site will be the same, there are some critical differences you should be aware of if you’re in the process of deciding which of these options is appropriate for you.
Moving away from multisite as a hosting platform.
It seemed like a good idea at the time… setting up a multisite install on a dedicated VPS on a reputable host and sitting back to relax and watch those hosting dollars flow in…
And it was great, for a while… but getting bigger, adding more sites and users to the multisite install started to get really nerve wracking, and after a lot of thought and a deep breath, last month I started moving away from multisite, extricating all my sites from that network and putting them all into individual accounts on new reseller cloud hosting (yes, this is an affiliate link. I love these guys).
I am mightily relieved… and here’s why.
WordPress Template Hierarchy
If you’ve spent any time at all working with WordPress themes you’ll have no doubt found yourself navigating the dark corridors of the WordPress Template Hierarchy.
It took some time for me to get my head around which file to create when I’m making custom templates and the WordPress Codex has been invaluable in terms of figuring out what to put where. The Codex’s diagram and my handy dandy little template code snippet that prints out which template I’m looking (below) at have been my ‘go to’ resources.
I came across a couple of alternatives today that I love!! Thought you’d like to check them out too…
Backup Buddy has Removed Default Multisite Support
I have a number of small sites that I host for clients and friends, and for the last couple of years I’ve been hosting them on a WordPress multisite, just to keep things like updating simpler. And for a long time it worked really well.
However, as clients got bigger, and their requirements got greater, well, running things on multisite started to get a little, well, sketchy and I’ve come to the conclusion that while you CAN run things like this, maybe there are times when you shouldn’t.
WordPress Theme and Plugin Licensing
There has been a whole lot of talk in the WordPress Community in recent months about WordPress theme and plugin licensing and I bet your pretty pink boots if you’re making themes or sites for clients, it’s something you’ve barely given a thought about. Because most of the issues in the news have centered around distribution and don’t affect client work.
However, if you’re making things to distribute, you should think about it… because if you want to make some money out of your theme or your plugin and/or if you want a lot of people to know about your theme or plugin you have some decisions to make about just how you allow that software to be distributed or reused.
WordPress itself and the core of the whole story, is licensed under GPL (GNU Public License1). In short, this means that if you’re using WordPress you have the following four freedoms
the freedom to use the software for any purpose,
the freedom to change the software to suit your needs,
the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, and
the freedom to share the changes you make.2
This is the essence of free software (free as in speech (libre) not to be confused with free as in beer, (gratis)3).
Freebie Social Media Icon Menu
There are a few blogs I follow pretty closely, and one of them predictably is Brian Gardner’s (predictably because he’s behind Genesis and I’m a bit of a fan). A while back Brian put together a tutorial about making a social media icon menu – I took it on board, I like rolling my own… [Read More]