wordpress

WordPress & The Gantry Framework

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gantry

Recently, I’ve been playing with a few frameworks to help build websites simply and effectively.

A framework is a system usually point and click interface where you can choose options and the website will be developed accordingly.  A few that I’ve used are xtreme-one, carrington, starkers, and gantry.  A couple of those are not really frameworks, but customizable themes.  They are similar, but the power of a framework in my opinion is it’s point and click options. Here’s what I mean…

gantryoptions

Click to embiggen

Click picture to make bigger…

Gantry is a widget based framework.  This means that a “gantry based” theme puts widget areas in many places around the site and the way you customize the site quickly is to insert widgets, html, etc. into those widgets areas.  This makes the theme really customizable and easy to use.

Here’s a quick look at my introduction to gantry.  I appologize because this video is raw.

Aloha,
Arlen

WordPress Quick Tip- Page Templates

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Sometimes you want a page or set of pages to look different from the rest of your site.

You can do this easily with Page Templates.

Create a New Page Template

You can either duplicate the page.php or another existing layout in your theme and modify it, or start from scratch by creating a new .php file. (Many themes have multiple page templates already)

Either way, you will need to put this code in the beginning of the new file.

<?php
/*
Template Name: Put-The-Template-Name-Here
*/
?>

 

Now your new template will show up in this section as your create or edit your pages.

page-attributes

Common uses for page templates are: a page with full width content and no sidebar or giving a sub-section of the site a different theme.

Because I do a lot of church and ministry designs, I might use a page template to style the youth ministry pages completely differently than the main website.

Templates open up so many more possibilities in your design.  Try it out.

Why Use WordPress? Page Additions & Menus

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Have you ever built a website for a client and a few weeks later they come back to you and ask for more pages to be added to the menu?

Great, hopefully they are paying you by the hour.  Now you have to redesign the whole navigation of the website.

If you built the website with WordPress, you will instantly be able to add a page or two (or more) just by well… adding pages.

(Maybe you want to change your billing rates to per update…)

And if you want more control over the pages, drop down lists of pages, and more, there’s my favorite WordPress 3.0 feature…

menusMenus!

WordPress 3.0 Menus gives you complete control over the Navigation Menus in your themes.

  1. Using the interface, you will first create a menu by giving it a name.
  2. Then if your theme natively supports menus, you can choose to use your custom menu.
  3. Add links to other websites
  4. Add pages
  5. Add categories of posts
  6. Click and drag to change the order and level of each item
  7. And save.  Viola!!! You have just created a custom menu for your site.

Menus Step- Click to embiggen.
(Click the picture to embiggen)

If your theme doesn’t support menus, don’t worry. Place the following code in the functions.php file in your template.

function add_menus() { register_nav_menus( array( ‘main_nav’ => ‘The main menu’, )); } add_action( ‘init’, ‘add_menus’ );

Then add this code where you want the menu to appear.

wp_nav_menu(array(‘menu’ => ‘MENUNAME’, ‘container’ => ‘ul’, ‘menu_id’ => ‘YOUR_MENUS_ID’));

This is my favorite addition to WordPress 3.0.x

:)
arlen

WordPress Plugin Favorites- Event Espresso

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I’ve been using Event Espresso for about 9 months now, hosting multiple events concurrently and I have to say, it’s been a great event management plugin.

Event Espresso comes in a free version which is great to try out. (The free version of Event Espresso is called Advanced Events Registration by Seth Shoultes.)

The free version is very limited in functionality and is only recommended for one-time events. The free version comes with the PayPal gateway and IPN pre-installed. If you need more features or plan on holding more than one event, you should upgrade to the basic version of Event Espresso. Read more: Lite (Free) | Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration and Manager Plugin

You can manage events fully with the free version of the plugin, but the paid version adds better support and many features which you may want to customize.

  • Customize your registration pages, questions and design
  • Manage your events, dates, times, prices, etc.
  • Manage your attendees and maintain control of your attendee data
  • Design your events with the WYSIWYG editor
  • Accept registration fees via PayPal or Authorize.net payment gateways
  • Manage the pricing strategy for your events with early bird pricing, promotional pricing, percentage and dollar amount discounts, and discount codes
  • Invoice registrants who have not paid or not paid in full
  • Automated registration and payment confirmation emails
  • Manage and update attendee profiles to keep customer records up-to-date
  • and more!

Read more: Basic License | Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration and Manager Plugin

In my using the plugin, the best part has been the support.  I’m not the best “coder” in the world and sometimes I get stuck.  The plugin Author Seth has answered my questions quickly, usually within a matter of hours.  That kind of service and support is hard to beat these days.

If you’re in the market for an event management solution, this is one you should highly consider.

:)
Arlen
Honolulu, Hawaii

*Disclaimer, links to this plugin are affiliate links which support this site.  Mahalo!

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