How-To: Taking WordPress One Step Further

Turning a Simple wordpress Blog into an advanced online experience.

WordPress Logo

Creating a website is no easy task. WordPress is an easy solution for creating a Blog, but sometimes something a little more, in terms of functionality, is needed. After trying many other platforms, I have found WordPress to be the easiest to use. Because of it’s wide array of themes, great plugin system, and easy to use administration system, WordPress takes the cake. Using a Custom Write Panel, Custom Options, and manipulating the theme files, the possibilities are almost endless. In This post we have a few ways you can transform your plain WordPress powered Blog into an easy-to-manage Internet Identity.

The Layout

There are a few things that even the novice WordPress user can do. You can work straight out of your admin panel for a quick solution, or if you are feeling adventurous, editing some theme files can help produce a fresh new structure for your site.

Static Homepage

Anyone who has explored the WordPress admin panel has probably seen the options required for this, but may have not known what they do. WordPress has a built in feature which allows for the Blog owner to select a published page to show up as their default homepage, and select a separate page to list the blog posts. This is great if you want your visitors to see a static page first (ex. About Me page), before they go on and view the blog posts.

You first need to select the page which will show first. Just select any page from the drop-down list that has content on it. Next, you will need to select a blank (but published) page to show the blog posts on. Just create a page like you would normally, adding a title (ex. Blog), but no content. Select that page from second option’s drop-down

home.php

WordPress has another built in feature (it seems they love to make our lives easier) that allows for a completely custom homepage. If your homepage has a different layout from your blog, you can create a separate file, and have that loaded as your homepage. As seen in the template hierarchy, WordPress first checks to see if a home.php file exists. If so, it will load that instead of index.php.

So by creating a file named home.php, filling it with whatever you would like, and uploading it into your theme’s root folder, you are able to create a separate homepage. By utilizing the Loop, this is a great way to show only certain posts when the guest first views the site.

Note: All HTML Markup is based on the WordPress Default Theme.


<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">

<h2>Welcome!</h2>

<p>This can be a custom part of the <code>home.php</code>, just a little custom welcome text. You can check out some of our latest <b>News Posts</b> below.</p>

This should all look pretty familiar if you have any experience working with WordPress themes. First, I’ve included the header.php file with the get_header(); function. Then just some basic HTML Markup that includes a welcome message at the top of the page.


<h2>News Posts</h2>

<ol>

<?php query_posts( 'cat=60' ); if (have_posts()) : ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>

<?php endwhile; ?>

<?php else : ?>

<li>There are no new posts in this category.</li>

<?php endif; ?>

</ol>

Here is where we are going to list our latest Blog posts. It is just a basic loop, except for one minor difference:

<?php query_posts( 'cat=60' ); ?>

query_posts can be used to modify a WordPress loop. I’ve modified this loop to only show one category, in my case, a news category.

The last part of our home.php:


</div>

<?php include_once( TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar-homepage.php' ); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

The last difference is the way I include a sidebar. By using an include_once(), I can include a different sidebar in our home.php. You can use a Include Tag to include a separate file. In the same directory as your theme files, create a file you would like to include in your sidebar.

Live Examples

WooThemes

Custom Page Templates

Like using a home.php, using a Custom Page Template is useful for creating unique pages that do not fall under the same layout as your main blog. However, custom Page Templates allow for any page to be custom, not just the homepage. The best part about them, is they are super easy to make.

If I wanted my “About Me” page to include a different sidebar then the rest of my blog, and perhaps the Search Form above it, there is a very easy way to go about this. In your theme’s directory, just create a file called about.php


<?php
/*
Template Name: About
*/
?>

That is the most important part. WordPress will read the top of the file and realize that this file is supposed to be used as a Page Template. Below that, you can add whatever code you like. There are two ways of doing it. You can add static content to your post, or add the Loop again, so the content is retrieved from WordPress. Here is an example of the latter:


<?php
/*
Template Name: About
*/
?>

Live Example:

Cushy by WooThemes

Conditional Tags

Let’s face it. Viewing the same style pages eventually get’s a little mundane. If you’re looking for a way to spice up your site, or just show different information on certain pages, there are a few ways to do it. Conditional Tags as well as custom pages allow for the ultimate control. Below are just a few scenarios:

If you are not currently viewing a Page, show the sidebar. If you are on a Page, do not show the sidebar.


<?php if( !is_page() ) : ?>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php endif; ?>

If you are on the homepage, get a special footer file. If not, show the normal one. This could be used to show more information about your company or site when the visitor first views the site.


<?php if( is_home() ) : ?>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . "/footer-info.php"); ?>
<?php else : ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>
<?php endif; ?>

For a full list of Conditional Tags, check out the Codex.

The Loop

The Loop. The Loop. The infamous loop. The Loop can be a wonderful thing, or a scary one. It all depends on how you approach it. I’m going to show you a more advanced way of using a Loop, because you can find some great info on the Loop on the WordPress site.

Creating a Gallery Site

Creating a gallery can be great for a portfolio site, a “best web gallery” site, or anything that requires showing some images of stuff. :P

The code and/or information below assumes you have successfully setup Custom Write Panels

The basic structure for a gallery type site is simple. Create the post adding the necessary information, and list the posts in the gallery page. To start off, make sure you have added the following Custom Write Panels.

  • Image
  • Website

These are the only ones needed to create a simple gallery, but of course it can be easily modified to fit any of your needs. The next part would be to create the actual Gallery page. This can be done using a Custom Page template.


<?php
/*
Template Name: Gallery
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Now it’s time to add the loop (in between get_header(); and get_footer();) which will show our posts.


<div id="content" class="widecolumn">

<?php query_posts( 'category_name=Gallery' ); if (have_posts()) : ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>

<?php endif; ?>

</div>

You will of course need to change category_name=Gallery to the name of your category.

For now, I’m just going to do the basic markup. No styling or anything, just so you can get how the the code will be set up. First, we’ll do our gallery item’s title like normal:


<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>

Now the cool part. Using a great script called TimThumb we can dynamically create thumbnails of any size. Download the source, and upload it into your theme’s folder under thumb.php

Download TimThumb

Now we’ll start a link so the thumbnail is clickable.


<a href="<?php echo get_post_meta( $post->ID, "website_value", true ); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>">

I’m setting the URL to be equal to the value entered in our custom field.

Next the image: This gets the value of the image field, and applies the TimThumb code, setting the thumbnail to 100×100px.


<img src="<?php bloginfo( 'template_directory' ); ?>/thumb.php?src=<?php echo get_post_meta( $post->ID, "image_value", true ); ?>&amp;w=100&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;h=100&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;zc=1" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" />

And end the link:


</a>

The last part would be to show the description of the website. We can do that by showing an excerpt of the post body.


<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

That’s it for our gallery.php. Now it’s time to activate the Gallery page. In your WordPress admin panel, go to Write > Page. Create a new page with a title of “Gallery.” Leave the body blank, and apply our Page Template

Now, create a post with the correct information, and visit your gallery page. It should list all of your information! Of course, the gallery.php is a very simple, minimalistic page; but it functions.

Note: If your thumbnails are not showing up, please make sure you created a folder named “cache” in your theme’s directory, and it is writable.

Custom Loops

Sometimes you may find yourself needing to use more then one loop. However, an important note on the WordPress codex tell us that instead of using query_posts like we did in our gallery system (it was okay there, because it was the main, and only loop, in our page), we need to use something called WP_Query();. This can be used to fetch any posts, and best of all, it uses the same parameters are query_posts.

First, we need to define a variable as a new query. Then we take that variable, and apply some parameters to it:


<?php $latest = new WP_Query(); $latest->query( 'showposts=10&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;cat=-63' ); ?>

Next, we simply loop through the results just like we would with a normal loop.


<?php while ($latest->have_posts()) : $latest->the_post(); ?>
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Like I said, you can use any of the Parameters, making this a great tool to grab posts from certain categories and displaying them around your site.

Social Networking

With the amount of social networking sites, topsites, and tons of ways to spread the word about your articles and blog posts, there has to be an easier way to submit them. By adding links to the bottom of your posts, you can get users to submit your articles for you!

Site RSS


<a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" title="<?php _e('Syndicate this site using RSS'); ?>"><?php _e('<abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">Subscribe</abbr>'); ?></a>

Stumble Upon


<a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&amp;title=<?php the_title(); ?>" title="Submit to StumbleUpon">StumbleUpon</a>

Digg


<a href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&amp;url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&amp;title=<?php the_title(); ?>&amp;bodytext=<?php the_excerpt() ?>" title="Digg this story">Digg this</a>

Del.ic.ious


<a href="http://del.ic.ious/post?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&amp;title=<?php the_title(); ?>" class="delicious" title="Add to Del.icio.us">Del.icio.us</a>

Design Float


<a href="http://www.designfloat.com/submit.php?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&amp;title=<?php the_title(); ?>">Float This</a>

Mixx


<a href="http://www.mixx.com/submit?page_url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>">Mixx</a>

Obviously there are tons more. All you have to do is figure out what variables the submit page takes to fill in the fields, and then create the URL dynamically. Here is a list of some variables you can use.

  • the_title(); - The Post Title
  • the_permalink(); - The Post’s URL
  • the_excerpt(); - A small portion of the article

Conclusion

There are a million ways you can customize and expand your WordPress powered site. I’ve touched on a few, but of course, there are many more. If you are interested in learning a different aspect of WordPress, please leave a comment and let me know. I’ll leave you know with some great WordPress powered sites, that you may or may not have known ran WordPress.

Resources
WordPress Powered Sites

CNN Blogs

Best Web Gallery

Fuel Your Creativity

Number 10.co.uk

Outlaw Design Blog

Written by Spencer on December 5, 2008

Tags: , , ,

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204 Comments

  • Danny Outlaw said:

    Great post Spencer! Lots of useful stuff here.

    My latest post: iPhone Wallpapers: 40+ iPhone Wallpapers for Designers

  • Adelle said:

    Spencer, great post - and I think a lot of people will really find this useful. I love the fact that CNN is powered by wordpress, such a great example. Thanks for including FYC as well. Bookmarked and shared!

    My latest post: Showcase Your Best Design Content

  • Matt said:

    Nice post, loved the timthumb script, will surely come useful.
    Ps: there’s a typo in Design Float code example, probably WordPress going crazy with your ampersands.
    Keep up the good work!

    My latest post: WordPress SEO: Control Search Engines

  • Spencer said:

    Thanks everyone!

    @Matt,

    Yeah, that was some wacky WordPress formatting. I think I changed most of them back though.

    For anyone else, “&amp ;” (Extra space was added so it is not executed - remove all spaces) is a valid way to write the “&” in XHTML. WordPress may have added some extra characters, but that is all you need. They are often used in dynamic urls to include variables for PHP.

  • Tom J Nowell said:

    Very useful post, keep them coming!

  • evoL said:

    Hey, great post! There are so many cool techniques described here, big thanks!

  • Adii said:

    Great post Spencer. And nice to see both WooThemes and the new theme - Cushy - featured here.

    My latest post: Multiple Outlets

  • curtismchale said:

    The resources are awesome. I have been looking for some of these tricks and finding nothing for weeks. Will use many of these as a rebuild my portfolio and blog over the Holiday season.

  • Mark said:

    Great post Spencer. Some great insight here. Glad you chose WooThemes for some of the examples. Looking forward to getting cushy live!! :)

  • Spencer said:

    Thanks guys! Just kinda hit me that Cushy hasn’t even been released yet. Hope I didn’t give to much away. I can take it down if you’d like.

    EDIT: Oh I guess it’s about the same view from your teaser. :)

  • Kathy - Virtual Impax said:

    What a great post! It was definitely “tweet” worthy (which is how I found it!)

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  • Jeriko said:

    Great article! One little remark, you don’t have to include a customized sidebar via include_once(), since WordPress 2.6, get_sidebar() accepts a filename as parameter, e.g. get_sidebar(’home’), which whould include sidebar-home.php. If the file doesn’t exist, sidebar.php will be included.

  • David Airey said:

    An excellent tutorial post, Spencer. Thanks for creating it. Bookmarked for future reference (once that ever-escaping blog design time comes around).

    Great job.

  • Max said:

    Awesome, i think i need a few days to digest this info haha, great post spencer.

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    Saw this article on an other site also.
    But nice post.

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  • Tracey Grady said:

    I would have killed for a guide like this twelve months ago! Thanks for bringing all of this information together in the one location, and in a way which is easy to follow. It’s a very valuable resource and I can see myself returning to it again and again. Nice one.

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    Nice, picked up a few new bits of knowledge in here. Next, if you haven’t already, you will have to cover some of the great plugins that are available.

  • Tony Oravet said:

    Great post on taking Wordpress further. We try to do this as well. We love the ability to basically use Wordpress as a CMS, and then we dig into the php and css and try to use the theme we are using as a stepping stone to building upon what that theme has already accomplished.

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  • Jhay said:

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  • Aleso said:

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  • Dainis Graveris said:

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  • Chad said:

    Using home.php to display something other than the blog, how would I change the navigation to read anything other than blog (like home for example)? Also, how can I add the blog back in as a link in the navigation and have that take me to the page output by the_loop?

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  • Chris Robinson said:

    another great post Spencer!

  • Dan said:

    Thanks for the article. I love Word Press, but I agree more can be done.

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  • Kyle Racki said:

    Thanks SO much for this! I’m just getting started with WP merging from Expression Engine and this is what I’ve been looking for! It seems every WP tutorial out there explains how to make a blog, but using WP as a simple CMS for my client’s websites is really what I’ve been after.

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    We’re more of a ModX shop for CMS stuff, but this is very cool stuff to learn about WordPress for clients whose businesses are more blog-based. I’ve even been playing with some shopping cart functionality for WordPress, lately- it’s an amazing piece of software.

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  • Cam said:

    Super informative. Some things I knew and others I had seen but did not know how to do. THANKS!

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  • Gavin said:

    Great read!

  • Rob said:

    non of the php commands worked for me on the home.php file…is this old stuff?

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  • Mark said:

    I’m a total blogging n00b but this tutorial has been fantastic and I love you style of sharing knowledge.

    Thanks so very much Spencer

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    What a great article. I’ve been searching for something of this caliber for a few days now.

    Thanks Spencer!

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  • izzat aziz said:

    i love the custom page function, i use it a lot in some of my design.. for now I try to explore more about home.php because it kinda trend right now.

    timthumb have problem with hostgator though, it not displaying any image, i try to ask the hostgator, they fixed it.. but the problem will occur again everytime i open new blog. that why for now i stop using it.

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  • K. Harper said:

    This is a great tutorial post! I am always a little bit concerned about changing anything in my wordpress, in case I can’t change it back (I started only a month ago). A lot of terms still sound like alien language to me, although I am doing lots of reading. Your tutorial is a good place to start playing around with wordpress. I will definitely try a few things I learned on the post to improve my blog, and bookmark this post for future reference=) Great job Spencer.

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