Stephanie Leary
Website Administrator, Texas A&M University
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