Getting Started with WordPress.org
Once a while, I receive enquiries from users asking about some of the the basic WordPress related questions. I think it is good to write a post to put together questions for WordPress newbies here. What is WordPress? WordPress is the most popular web blog publishing software installed on the web server of the user. The open source software was released in 2003. It is written in PHP and makes use of MySQL database. It is primarily noted for its broad features. WordPress is a user-friendly software that can be used by both the beginner and the advanced programmer. It comes with an interface that is loaded with features. Users can also choose from a wide range of templates for their WordPress themes. On top of these advanced features, users can also enhance the site using dialogs like password protection, user feedback and user registration. What is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org? WordPress comes in two forms: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.com is the open source web blog publishing program. This means that the software is free to use and can be modified by users to suit their specific requirements and needs. However, these open source software present some limitation. On the other hand, WordPress.org provides users with the software in order to create your blog, but will not provide you with hosting service. The user will have to hire the services of another provider to get a domain name to host your blog site online. The advantage of WordPress.org over that of WordPress.com is that it provides customization and flexibility to its users. WordPress.org is basically a free web publishing software where bloggers can install plugins and themes, modify the database, run adverts, and change the PHP code. Anyone can download the software but the users must have it installed on a server before it can be used. Bloggers will have to pay for the web server and it will be their responsibility to host their own WordPress.org blogging software. This is where the difference lies. In WordPress,com, the blogger doesn’t have to do any software download, get the service of a hosting provider and manage your own web server. How to install WordPress.org? The popularity of WordPress is to a large extent can be attributed to the simple and easy to follow installation process. One only needs a web server, the WordPress software and a MySQL database in order to get start using WordPress. Here is the simple and quick 6-step to Install WordPress Step #1 Download and extract WordPress. You can do this by visiting http://wordpress.org/download/. Step #2 Set up the WordPress database including a MySQL user who will have the privileges in modifying and accessing it. Step #3 Change the filename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php. Step #4 Open the renamed file wp-config.php in your preferred text editor and provide the information required in the database field which are described in Editing wp-config.php to create and use your password key. Step #5 Locate your file for WordPress in your preferred place on your web server. When doing this task, consider the following: * If you prefer to integrate the blogging software into the domain root then you have to upload or move all the contents of the extracted directory of your WordPress into your web server root directory. * If you intend to put your WordPress installation in its own web site subdirectory, then you have to rename the wordpress directory to the subdirectory name that you prefer and upload or move it to the web browser. For instance, if you prefer to have your WordPress installation...
Read More65 Photoshop Fireworks Tutorials
1. Adding Radial Gradient in Text This Fireworks tutorial outlines the step-by-step guide in the creation of a peeling effect. This technique is ideal for placing at the corner of a Website to highlight offers and news. 2. Creating Light Effects Inspired by the O Series of James White This Fireworks tutorial outlines the detailed step at how to create awesome James White’s style with the use of Fireworks. The simple procedure involves the play of colors, blend modes and a few circles. 3. Extracting Logos This Fireworks tutorial shows the simple steps in extracting the logo or logotype from a raster image. This technique is done with the use of Live Filters of Fireworks. 4. Creating Lighting Effects for Circular Shapes This tutorial shows the detailed steps in creating lighting effects used for circular shapes in Fireworks. This technique allows you to create multiple layers of shadows and highlights as you may require. 5. Creating Simple Orbs This Fireworks tutorial shows the simple technique in creating Simple Orbs to add dramatic touches in your design. The Simple Orb consists of a single layer object which you can replicate and change in sizes using Fireworks. 6. Creating A Vector This Fireworks video tutorial shows the step-by-step procedure in creating a vector. 7. Making an Animation and Animated Graphics This Fireworks tutorial shows the simple technique of creating animation and animated images to make an eye catching Website. It is a simple technique of using Fireworks to bring your webpage to life. 8. Creating Interface for iPhone This tutorial details the steps in creating an iPhone interface using Fireworks. 9. Fireworks Basics This tutorial covers the introductory aspects of Fireworks and is designed for the beginners who are interested to improve their skills in Fireworks. 10. Making an IE7 Logo Effect This tutorial outlines the steps in creating an IE7 logo effect using Fireworks. 11. Removing Objects in the Foreground in Fireworks and Photoshop This tutorial outlines the easy to follow steps in removing an object is the foreground of a picture and create an effect in the background as though no object was there in the first place. 12. Attaching Text onto a Shape or Path This Fireworks tutorial shows the detailed step if you want to create a text effect that will follow a path or shape beyond the usual vertical and horizontal direction. 13. Creating a Beautiful Night Scene This tutorial presents the simple steps in creating a realistic and appealing night sky effect using Fireworks. 14. Producing Fading Light Vectors This tutorial provides the simple steps in creating some appealing effects using fading light vectors and how these vectors are converted into bitmaps. This tutorial outlines the steps on how to use this lighting effect using Fireworks. 15. Creating Pixelate Look This tutorial outlines the easy-to-follow steps in creating a pixelize effect in your design. This effect involves the installation and use of 3rd party plug-ins in Fireworks. 16. Creating Floral Types in 5 Minutes This tutorial provides the simple steps in using some floral vectors in order to create a floral type in your designs. The effect shall also involve the creation of additional textures and even an old paper effect. 17. Making a Thick Text Effect This tutorial outlines the easy-to-follow steps in creating thick text outline effect in your design using Fireworks. 18. Creating Masking Effect This tutorial presents the simple steps involved in creating faded image effect with the use of layer masks. 19. Creating waterDrop This tutorial outlines the easy-to-follow steps in creating waterDrop using Fireworks. The technique also involves the...
Read MoreTheme Partnership with SmashingApps.com
This week marks another milestone for Templatelite. My work has been recognized by one of my most favorite sites, SmashingApps.com! It is a real honor to be selected as the first theme partner to release and distribute my latest theme, Grunge Style on the site. This is another super site that I constantly follow up with. For a savvy designer and developer, I can find tons of useful information on that site that helps a lot in my theme development. The stats below show you how big the site is: * Feed Subscribers: 1 million+ * Monthly Visitors: 1 million+ * No. of Posts: 500+ Thanks SmashingApps for featuring my theme. I am sure the partnership will be a fruitful one for both of us! I am constantly seeking good partners and open to ideas and discussion to arrive at something that is beneficial to both parties. If you own a good site and would like to partner with me in some form, please contact me and we’ll...
Read MoreGrunge Style
Latest Version: 3.00 Added on: 2015/05/26 I have always wanted to try something new in my theme development. This time, I bring to you a grunge design. In my previous post, I listed an article about grunge effect tutorials. I kind of like the idea of having stains, dirty textures, rips and torn images to enhance the look of a blog. I am proud to partner with the owner of Smashingapps.com and grant him the rights to distribute the theme exclusively on the site. For the support of this theme, please leave your issues in the comment section of this post. Click on the “Free Download” link above to get the theme now! By using this theme for FREE, you agree to accept the external links. Gain access to the fully layered Photoshop file for quick and easy tweakage. PSD files included for both the main and the sub themes. Ad-Free PackageRemoving the credit links will make the theme to not function properly. Unencrypted main and sub theme files can be purchased at $20. Theme CustomizationDo you want to customize this theme to include images that suit your blog's topic? I can help you with the graphical customization. For more details, please visit the theme customization service page. The following is an example of a custom design of the Grunge Style theme. Main Features – User-friendly Options page – Drop-Down Menu – Automatic Thumbnails – Different design for sticky post feature – Compatible with IE7, IE8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera – W3C XHTML and CSS compliant – SEO ready – Gravatar enable Translation Help Needed If you wish to translate this theme into your own language, you can do so with the use of the Poedit program. To find out how this works, please refer to this comprehensive guide. When you have completed the localization, kindly send me the translated files so I can share your work (with your credit) with other users. Automatic Thumbnails Please refer to this page for the details of how the automatic thumbnails work. Drop-down Menu The Grunge Style theme has a multi-level drop-down menu that is using the latest function in WP 3.0. There are two ways to create the drop-down menu. 1) When you create hierarchical pages, the drop-down menu will show up automatically in the header navigation. 2) You can manually define the header links using the custom menu. To do it, first, click on the “Menus” link found under the “Appearance” tab in WP admin. Then follow the instruction on the page to add your custom menu. This feature only works with WP 3+. Plugin There is a featured content section below the header link. This feature is built in using the Featured Content Gallery (FCG) plugin. Please download the latest version and follow the instruction found in “Readme.txt” to do the setup. If you do not want to show this feature, just don’t install the plugin. Blog Title and Description The demo is showing a special font as below: By default, after you install the theme, the blog title and description are showing the Arial font. You can change the font style by following this instruction: Part 1: Modifying Font Style – Download this PSD zip file (also included the font that I use) – Extract and open the PSD file in the Photoshop/ImageReady/Gimp/PaintShop program – Change the title and description using your desired font (you are free to modify the header image if you want) – Save the image using this name: bg_header.jpg – Upload the image to your server in the “/styles/default/” folder Part 2: Activating the...
Read More2 WordPress Theme Directories with Review System
In my previous post, I listed 100+ theme directories and forums that I submit my new themes to. Out of all the sites, I particularly like Themes Preview because this is the only site that provide comprehensive review of WordPress themes. In this post, I’d like to give a review of this site because it is so special that set them apart from any other WordPress theme directories. I also give a brief review of another theme review site, Wpthemereview.com. By far, ThemesPreview.com and Wpthemereview.com are the only two sites that provide review and rating of WordPress themes. There is another yet-to-launch site, Wpthemecritic.com that will be reviewing WordPress themes. Let’s spend a little time talking about Wpthemereview.com before I review ThemesPreview.com in details. When you visit Wpthemereview.com, you’ll see a “SEO score” being assigned to each theme. Click on any theme and you’ll see SEO score note below the screenshot of the theme. There are two categories: 1) We like this theme because it… 2) This theme could be improved, though… As you can see, this site reviews mainly the SEO part of a theme. Nothing much has been told about the coding structure and compatibility issues. Another problem with this site is the scoring method. There is no specific information as to how the SEO score came about. I even found two WordPress themes having the same SEO score note but having different SEO score. On the contrary, I am amazed at how ThemesPreview reviews a theme. The author has outlined the review criteria and grouped them in two sections: must-have criteria and optional criteria. A theme must pass the must-have criteria to get a listing on the site. Then comes the optional criteria. There are more than 10 tests in this section and each passed item will be given points ranging from 1 to 3. The total score (in percentage) is what makes a theme better/worse than the other. 6 points have been assigned to the W3C validation test. It is the highest assigned points among all other tests because this is the toughest test to pass. The other 2-point tests are “Theme Support” and “Firefox compatibility”. Theme support is important. The author makes it a point that a good coder should be more responsible for his theme. Also, a good theme should work on the Firefox as most internet users are browsing websites using Firefox. Other less important tests are assigned 1 point each. To calculate the total theme score in percentage, simply take the total points of the passed criteria and divide it with the total points of the tested criteria. Themes which score between 60-74% will get a Bronze status. Score between 75-89% will get a Silver status. Score above 90% will get a Gold status. Most of my themes are getting Gold in the directory. You can also calculate easily from the stats to get an overview of the quality of the free WordPress themes in the market. From the stats, it’s surprised that more than 60% of the themes in the directory are not even getting Bronze status. In ThemesPreview, you get an idea as to how many of the designers are really doing a good job…. not many of them! New themes are added to ThemesPreview every day for months. It is currently the main source for comparing the quality of different themes. As for Wpthemereview.com, the author hasn’t updated the site for more than a year so it is no longer a good site to follow. Therefore, I have excluded this site in my theme submission plan. I am...
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