All designers approach problems, visual presentation and design, and usability differently. As designers, we understand that brand and image are important for a site. A theme or site is an opportunity to extend your reach to an audience who is unfamiliar with you or your client. A unique theme design is a way to put a business, a message and brand, front and center as well as effectively communicate the value of the product or service. Most likely, there are other sites using the same (or similar) theme that you’re using, and you need to distinguish yourself from your competitors as much as possible.
In this session, you will learn a few key ideas on how to differentiate yourself and your work when customizing WordPress themes. We’ll discuss some rookie mistakes and how to avoid them, as well as how to approach theme customizations to make yours distinct and applicable to today’s design trends.
4. A shop dedicated 100% to WordPress design
and development customizations
A WordPress Customization Shop
@werkpress
Saturday, April 27, 13
5. A WordPress Customization Shop
Customizing WordPress
1. Differentiate Yourself
2. Breaking into Customization: Designer to Dev
3. Common Mistakes
4. Resources
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17. A WordPress Customization Shop
Based on your vision for the site, the content
of the site and the discussions you have had
with your client — select your theme.
Saturday, April 27, 13
18. A WordPress Customization Shop
Based on your vision for the site, the content
of the site and the discussions you have had
with your client — select your theme.
Saturday, April 27, 13
19. A WordPress Customization Shop
Based on your vision for the site, the content
of the site and the discussions you have had
with your client — select your theme.
Saturday, April 27, 13
38. A WordPress Customization Shop
• Set your guides and grid in Photoshop
• Design all of your graphics and organize your layers
into a folder structure
• Create a consistent approach for all of your work
• Make sure you’re not designing something that you
(or someone else) can not develop
Saturday, April 27, 13
43. A WordPress Customization Shop
Assumptions:
•You are a designer
•You’ve done some minimal HTML and CSS and
have used WordPress
•You want to...
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48. A WordPress Customization Shop
• header.php - Contains everything you want to appear at the top of your site.
• index.php - The core file that loads your theme, also acts as the homepage
(unless you set your blog to display a static page).
• sidebar.php - Contains everything you want to appear in a sidebar.
• footer.php - Contains everything you want to appear at the bottom of your site.
• archive.php - The template file used when viewing categories, dates, posts by
author, etc.
• single.php - The template file that's used when viewing an individual post.
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49. A WordPress Customization Shop
• comments.php - Called at the bottom of the single.php file to enable the
comments section.
• page.php - Similar to single.php, but used for WordPress pages.
• search.php - The template file used to display search results.
• 404.php - The template file that displays when a 404 error occurs.
• functions.php - A file that can be used to configure the WordPress core,
without editing core files.
• style.css - All the styling for your theme goes here.
Saturday, April 27, 13
50. A WordPress Customization Shop
You wanna change something but have no idea where the
code is coming from. With experience it will come quickly.
Process of elimination:
- Obvious place? header, footer, sidebar
- WordPress Template Hierarchy
- Web inspector
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53. A WordPress Customization Shop
Try not to edit the original Theme.
“Where should my code go” flow chart:
1.Can the Theme Already do it?
2.Can a plugin do it?
•Forms, sliders, adding functionality
3.Can I use a child theme?
•Template change, CSS, theme actions/filters.
4. Can’t do either? Modify theme.
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55. A WordPress Customization Shop
Large hurdle for designers starting with theme
customization, <CODE>.
Connect-the-dots from code to result.
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60. A WordPress Customization Shop
Testing Wordpress Themes:
•WordPress Unit Test XML Import
•Monster Widget Plugin
•Translations support? Pig Latin plugin, RTL Tester
Plugin
•Theme Check Plugin
- WP_DEBUG(“true”);
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61. A WordPress Customization Shop
Recommended Browser testing as of March 2013
Based on WC3 statistics (w3schools.com/browsers)
Browser
- Chrome 51.7%
- Firefox 28.5%
- IE 13%
- Safari 4.1%
- Opera 1.8%
OS
- Windows 7+ ~61% (XP 17.6%)
- Mac 9.5%
- Linux 4.7%
- Mobile 2.3%
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68. A WordPress Customization Shop
Take into account how your responsive theme
changes when viewed on other devices
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69. A WordPress Customization Shop
Let the limitations of the responsive theme
inform how you design your site from the start
(this gets easier the more you practice)
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70. A WordPress Customization Shop
Missing CSS styles:
- Installed plugins
- Widgets
- User Generated Content
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71. A WordPress Customization Shop
Forgetting this is the Web.
Think “in-browser”:
- Hover, active, and visited states.
- Drop-downs ( level1,level2,level3,etc)
- Number of actions to accomplish tasks.
- Will this work on Mobile?
- What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
- Am I breaking WordPress conventions?
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72. A WordPress Customization Shop
Designing without data. We often get questions from
clients like “Will adding more buy-now buttons
increase sales?”
Saturday, April 27, 13
73. A WordPress Customization Shop
You’re goal as a designer is to increase brand
awareness, ascetics, usability, and solve the design
problem.
Saturday, April 27, 13
