January 14th, 2008 WordPress: Just Some Things I Learned Along the Way

So I spent almost a day of my life working on this design you see here and it isn’t all that amazing or anything. It’s simple and to the point, sure.

The design wasn’t what took so long, it was the coding. The blasted coding.

It’s not like I’ve never seen what X/HTML or CSS code looks like, it’s that I went so long without coding absolutely anything. I’ve been on the worst “dry spell” for almost a year. Design and coding-wise.

What took so freakishly long was that first of all, I had no idea what I was doing. I got lost on WordPress.org looking for help, even (yeah… no laughing, please). So I thought I should help any of you people sitting on the fence about creating your own WordPress theme. Tip numero uno:

Don’t attempt it unless you’re brave.
(I’m not being cute, this is a serious statement)

I thought I was prepared for the jump. Hooboy. Nope. Now the real tip: Don’t start from scratch. I downloaded my Kubrick theme (that’s the Default theme, by the way) to my desktop and glanced it over for a while. After a lot of reading through the code, these were the files I kept:

• /images (delete the images within plz)
• 404.php
• archives.php
• comments.php
• footer.php
• header.php
• index.php
• page.php
• search.php
• searchform.php
• sidebar.php
• single.php
• style.css

I deleted everything else because I honestly didn’t think I needed the rest.

Tip Two:
If you’re an amazing genius (or just not lazy), install WordPress on your own computer and test your theme there instead of uploading it to your website. It’ll be easier and less embarrassing that way. People won’t see your messy site while you work on it.

Which brings me to tip two-and-a-half (now that’s me being cute, there. see the difference?). Edit the files and code how you want your pages to appear first before diving into the CSS. AKA get the structure before the prettiness down first. It’ll prevent confusion and jumping back and forth when stuff doesn’t work.

Speaking of confusion, this page about WordPress Template Tags would have been really useful if I found it before I was killing myself over the coding.

Tip Three:
You don’t have to use all the bloody CSS in the Kubrick stylesheet. I deleted a great deal of it because I just wasn’t going to use it. Deleted the mentions of it in my templates, too.

Tip Four:
Don’t use Opera web browser to create Pages and Posts. I’ve noticed that when I (or my friends who happen to use Opera) do so, either their layout stretches because of the on-going text on one line or the on-going text just crawls over their sidebar and whatnot.

Simply put: WordPress and Opera don’t particularly play nice. This was a nightmare to find out when my Gallery page was broken. I thought NextGen Gallery broke. I went crazy for hours looking for a solution on WordPress.org and NGallery thinking it was the script when it was actually just the page it was on.

On another note, WordPress e-Commerce plugin doesn’t work for everyone (meaning me). I couldn’t edit or delete categories (is that how it’s supposed to work? because if it is, that’s pretty damn inconvenient) and it gave me another error I can’t quite remember right now. So I’m hoping there’s a better shopping cart solution.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 5:19 pm and is filed under WordPress. This entry has been tagged as opera, template tags, templates, themes, WordPress. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Peaches to “WordPress: Just Some Things I Learned Along the Way”

1. Mitchell Says:
   January 14th, 2008 at 6:04 pm

   Yes, coding Wordpress for the first time takes some guts. But now that you’ve got it, it’s easy as pie ;D

   I used the e-Commerce plugin for my Grandpa’s site, and it worked just fine … I don’t know what the problem is with that. Maybe the upload was corrupted?

2. Hannah Says:
   January 17th, 2008 at 3:25 pm

   Even though you had trouble coding with WP, I have to say, I LOVE this lovely theme you have now. It’s so pretty! I love the simpleness of it and the colors, it’s elegant. :) And you made this out of Kubrick? I’m impressed…I haven’t actually fiddled around with Kubrick that much, I normally just download other themes from themes.wordpress.net and customize them. I’ve been using wordpress for what, at least two years now, and I STILL have trouble making themes for it. I still have a lot of “HUH?” and “WHAT THE?!” moments when messing around with WP coding, lol. You aren’t alone!