October 7

CMS Capabilities

• posts and pages
• scheduled publishing
• basic workflow
• easy media embedding
• excellent seo
• ubiquitous feeds

Killer Feature is the User Interface. (made by happycog)

Post vs. Page

Posts have…

• included in feeds
• categories
• tags
• excerpts
• comments and trackbacks
• custom fields

Pages have…

• not included in feeds
• page parent (not categories)
• template
• menu order
• comments and trackbacks
• custom fields

Pages can…with plugins

• included in feeds
• categories
• tags

The dirty little secret because pages are posts and posts are pages.

Things that are posts

• blogs
• news archives
• press releases
• podcasts
• newsletters
• magazines
• journals
• …

Things that are posts

• anything you want in a feed
• anything organized by date

Things that are pages

• anything that does not change often
• anything that is not organized by date

Other things

• media uploads
• users
• links

Demo

• installation
• file import
• basic options
• reading settings
• permalinks

Less blog, more CMS

• magazine-style home pages
• great url structure
• no category or archives
• contextual navigation
• breadcrumbs
• subpage listings

Magazine Layout

• multiple content areas
• category sections
• list of subpages
• widgets

Required theme files

• index.php
• style.css

Other recommendations

• functions.php – this is where you define widgets
• screenshot.png

More files

category.php = global category theme

category-6.php = category theme for catid=6

How a theme file works

• get_header
• The Loop
• get_sidebar
• get_footer

sandbox, hybrid, thematic themes to start looking at

Inside The Loop

• title
• content/excerpt
• date
• categories
• tags
• author
• custom fields

Complicating matters

• custom loops
• multiple loops

Modify the query (query_posts)

• limit
• offset
• parent
• categories & tags (include/exclude)
• sort order
• type
• author
• status

Sidebars

one included by default – get_sidebar()

can use more than one with php file include syntax

Widgets

theme/plugin hybrid

can be defined in functions.php or installed as part of a plugin

Built-in Widgets

• archives
• categories
• calendar
• links
• RSS
• pages
• meta (log in/out, feed)
• recent posts
• tag cloud
• text

Plugins

6735 plugins and growing

Plugins can…

• add widgets
• create template tags
• modify loops
• create shortcodes
• alter user roles
• provide custom fields
• alter write screens
• add JS libraries

Putting it all together

We want…

• pages
• a blog
• subscribe to comments
• a podcast
• a contact form w/spam guard
• a private area
• users to be redirected on login

Sidbar login plugin

Peter’s login redirect

Problems with private

visibility: menus

granularity: groups

privileges: roles

Plugin to fix this – Role manager (for now)

[PressThis podcast talks about world press]

Hiding the admin area

• sidebar login
• front-end editor
• P2
• posthaste

Moving servers

• changing domains
• edit database fields
• use config file constants
• changing directories
• maintaining permalinks

Caching Plugins

• WP Cache
• Super Cache
• W3 Total Cache

What’s New in 2.9

• image editor
• trash (posts, pages, comments)
• new excerpt filters
• easy changes to contact profile fields
• included handbook (printable)
• category-slug.php

What’s different in MU

• each user gets a blog
• each blog gets a set of db tables
• users can’t upload themes or plugins
• site-wide plugins installed for all
• site admin screen (and role)

Calendar plugin: AMR ICAL Event