Using the Category-Icons plugin and Thematic to create custom category pages

By Adam W. Warner | Published: August 14, 2009

I am working on a website redesign project for a company that has a need to display several thousand products on their site. One of the main goals with this redesign was easier navigation for the end user. This post will focus on only one aspect of this new navigation. The display of categories.

The desire was to display these product posts and their categories like an online catalog without the need for e-commerce capability. This meant that the categories needed a more visual display instead of a standard list, and this needed to be included on category archive pages. To achieve this, I turned to the Thematic theme framework, category page templates, and most important for my visual layout, the Category-Icons plugin by Sub. Read More »

Posted in Extend Wordpress, Featured, Plugins, WordPress Tutorials | 6 Comments

WordPress Shop Products – Almost Perfect, but Not Quite

By Adam W. Warner | Published: June 26, 2009

Simply Something Sophisicated - a Wordpress posterAs with most products I use or causes I’m involved with, I’m always proud to be affiliated and promote their use whenever I can. This is no different with WordPress. Although I’ve been using WordPress for many years now, I’ve never bought anything from the WordPress shop until recently.

I’m a proud user and wanted to display that pride publicly, so I went to the shop and bought a couple of items. Overall the experience was very good, but I have a couple of suggestions, and one complaint I’d like to share in the hope that the store would be a bit of a smoother user experience. Who knows? Maybe Matt or someone else from the WP team will read this post:) Read More »

Posted in Extend Wordpress, Featured | 6 Comments

How to Post to your WordPress Site Directly from Yahoo! Mail

By Adam W. Warner | Published: June 23, 2009

An interesting thing happened while I was checking my Yahoo! Mail this morning. A little notification popped up telling me that I had an extra feature named “Applications” and asked if I would like to see the “Gallery”. So I had a look and it appears that Yahoo! has integrated some applications in the their Mail program. To my delight, as I was scanning the (short) list of apps, and the oh so familiar WordPress logo seemed to call right to me. Could it be? WordPress inside my Yahoo! Mail!?yahoo-mail-wordpress

I forged ahead with configuring the WordPress application and thought you might like to see the process. In fact, I am writing this entire post from within of my Yahoo! Mail client. I just tried to insert an image, which it will allow you to do, but you can only insert an image URL, not browse your machine and upload let’s say, a screenshot of Yahoo! and WordPress in action. Strike one. I am now writing from within my WordPress installation.

Read More »

Posted in Blogging Tools, Extend Wordpress, Featured | Tagged , | 21 Comments

WordPress Theme Development in 12 Steps

By Adam W. Warner | Published: June 22, 2009

Ian Stewart has just announced that he will be making a series of posts that will outline, in detail, the 12 steps to creating your own WordPress theme. You can see his announcement Read More »

Posted in Free Themes, WordPress Tutorials | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Extending WordPress by Using the Power of Video – Part Six

By Adam W. Warner | Published: June 17, 2009

This is the sixth post in my series about using video with WordPress. Today we’ll focus on some plugins and a couple of themes that help to display video on your WordPress-powered site. I’ve discussed plugins previously in this series, but in the WordPress world, things are always evolving and plugin development is a prime example. One of my favorite things about WordPress is the massive community around it. As you probably know already, there are thousands of themes and plugins available, and new ones being released almost daily. Read More »

Posted in Extend Wordpress, Featured, Plugins, Premium Themes, Video, Videoblogging | Tagged | 5 Comments

Simple:Press Forum Updates are Coming

By Adam W. Warner | Published: June 3, 2009
The Forum Plugin for WordPress

The Forum Plugin for WordPress

I’ve written about my favorite WordPress forum plugin previously on the posts Do You Need a Simple WordPress Forum? and Simple WordPress Forum Plugin – Revisited.

I’ve just received an update on the progress of the upcoming latest release and there are some really cool features that will be included.

From the Simple:Press site: Read More »

Posted in Extend Wordpress, Plugins | Tagged , | 2 Comments

How to Change Your WordPress Theme Without Losing Your Widgets (or your composure)

By Adam W. Warner | Published: May 29, 2009

If you’re a regular reader of WPM, you may have noticed that I’ve changed the look and feel of the site recently. While changing themes, I ran into a Widgets issue that I had forgotten about. Sometimes when changing themes, the new theme you’ve chosen won’t display your Widgets properly. This is kind of a big deal, especially for those WordPress users who are unaware and complete a theme change, only to discover their Widgets are gone.

Day 27 :: Some days

Now this isn’t such a big deal for standard WordPress Widgets like Pages, Categories, and Archives, but like many of you, I have created several Text Widgets that contain hand-written code, custom scripts, and forms. I also use the Query Posts Widget which contains hand-entered parameters. So, how do we avoid disaster? Read More »

Posted in Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools, WordPress Tutorials | Tagged , | 13 Comments

I’ve Always Wanted to be a Rockstar

By Adam W. Warner | Published: May 18, 2009

I’ve just learned that I’ve made it to the WordPress Rockstar list over at WeRockWP.com. wordpress-rockstar-showcase-adam-w-warner-consultantI’m very flattered to be on this list and am humbled to be included with such company as Justin Tadlock, Donncha O Caoimh, Andrea and Ron Rennick, and many many others. After all, I’ve only dabbled in theme and plugin development. I consider myself more of a WordPress consultant, teacher, fanboy, and architect rather than a WP Rockstar, but hey, there I am nonetheless.

If you like what I do, please head on over and give me a rating:)

Posted in News, WordPress Site List | 2 Comments

Extending WordPress by Using the Power of Video – Part Five

By Adam W. Warner | Published: May 8, 2009

Read Parts One, Two, Three, and Four.

Desiree Motamedi

Web Video

This is the fifth post in my series about using video with WordPress. In this post, we’ll talk about how displaying video content can differ from the normal blog or website layout, and what themes are available to help your site stand out from the rest.

Over the last several years I’ve built many of my own sites using WordPress and have worked as a WordPress consultant with dozens of clients. In that time, one of the reoccurring challenges was to “break the blog format” with a theme design that would display video in a unique, and more importantly, a more navigable way. Whether it’s videoblogging, video tutorials, or citizen journalism, the last thing you want is one long line of posts with a page that scrolls forever. You want to get your videos in front of the viewer and not force them to search around to find something they might want to watch.

One of the first solutions to come from the WordPress community of developers was the Magazine theme style. These themes were OK for displaying video, and still are, but don’t focus quite enough on the video niche in my opinion. I’m not going to go into detail, I’m sure you’ve heard enough about these themes by now.

So I set off to offer another solution, Read More »

Posted in Extend Wordpress, Featured, Themes, Video, Videoblogging | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Dynamic Header Images in WordPress – The Ultimate Solution

By Adam W. Warner | Published: April 30, 2009

I’ve just been experimenting with dynamic headers on my development site, and the solution I’ve found is very cool. Imagine being able to set a different header image for each page on your WordPress-powered site. Now imagine being able to do that, and being able to set a different header for each post. Yes, I know, super cool right?

The solution I found is the Dynamic Headers plugin created by the team at Nicasio Design. I downloaded and installed the plugin, and I have to say, not only is this one of the most useful plugins I’ve come across in awhile, but also one of the most impressive for it’s ease of use, and the possibilities of feature extensions in the future.

Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? After installing this plugin, you will see a new management panel in your WordPress Dashboard, most likely all the way on the lower left. Read More »

Posted in Featured, Plugins, WordPress Tutorials | Tagged , | 9 Comments

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