Developer Tutorials' Webmaster Blog » tips http://www.developertutorials.com/blog Keeping webmasters up-to-date on technology. Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:59:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 en Five Wordpress Tips for Power Users http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/general/five-wordpress-tips-for-power-users-166/ http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/general/five-wordpress-tips-for-power-users-166/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 16:51:31 +0000 JonGos http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/general/five-wordpress-tips-for-power-users-166/ If you’re a wordpress power user, you’ll inevitably have some questions about how you can improve your blog or add new features. Here are five tips that will make life easier for people wanting to maximize their use of Wordpress.

1. Quickly Find Page/Post ID

One question people often ask is how to find a Page or Post ID when you’re using custom permalinks. Custom permalinks rewrite your URLs to be easier to read and memorable. Finding the ID of a post is not as tricky as it looks. Simply log into to your admin panel and click “Manage” then select either posts or pages. Find the item that you need the ID of and click your post to edit it. In the navigation bar of your browser, you will see a IRL for editing this post. At the very end of this URL you’ll find your post or page ID number!

wordpress tips and tricks

2. Custom Front Page

Another common problem is people having trouble figuring out how to create a custom front page that doesn’t look exactly like the rest of their blog. This has never been too obvious but it is simple enough to do.

  1. 1. Open a blank document in a text editor. Then paste the following codes in it: 
    	<?php
	/*
	Template Name: YourCustomPageTemplateName

	*/
	?>

	<html>
  2. 2. Save the new page template as a .php file. Something like static.php but make sure you do not call it page.php because that file already exists as part of your theme. Then upload it to your hosting account in the root folder of your current WordPress theme (http://yourblog/blog/wp-content/themes/default. Where default is the active theme.).
  3. 3. Now you can design this page however you wish either in your text editor or in the ‘Design’ tab of Wordpress. I usually copy and paste everything I want to keep from the preexisting page.php that I want to keep, leaving out things like the sidebar and footer.
  4. 4. When you create a new page under ‘Write’ you will notice a new area below the content area called “Page Template”.

    wordpress tips and tricks

    Here you will select ‘YourCustomPageTemplateName’. When you publish it, only this page will look like your design for ’static.php’ or whatever you called your custom page theme.

  5. 5. To set this as the front page click ‘Options’ then the ‘Reading’ subpanel. Choose the Static Page option, specify your new custom page as the front page. To see this in action click here.

3. Password Protect Wordpress

A growing trend is to use Wordpress as a CMS to sell premium content. This means the owner may want certain sections of their blog to be free, while the rest is a paid premium. For example http://www.wpdesigner.com/ is a wordpress theme site that offers a free content but only people who subscribe get the premium content. How is this done? You’ll need to password protect wordpress. Here are some options for doing that:

Password Protect by User level - allows you to create member classes that can have different content privileges than other classes. (ex. premium subscribers)
.htaccess Password Generator - a free way to protect your content, this option password protects EVERYTHING
Bravenet - an inexpensive solution that offers protection for sites that it hosts

4. Protect from the ‘Digg Efect’ with HTML

Has Digg brought your site to a grinding halt? Are you sick of waking up to find out your site has been down for hours and you’ve had no idea? WP Super Cache will save your page from the hundreds of visitors per second that Digg can bring by caching pages and serving less server heavy html pages.

5. Stop Hackers

Occasionally you may attract some unwanted attention to your blog from either people jealous of your success or people just looking to cause damage. How can you discourage people from hacking your site? Try the following:

  1. Protect the Admin Folder - This folder is the door to the rest of your blog so putting up a fortified fence will help prevent attacks.
  2. Deny Access to Other Folders - Many web hosts by default allow people to browse a folder if there is no default index.html file. Adding a blank index.html file to these folders will add an extra level of protection.
  3. Remove the Wordpress Version - Hackers look for vulnerabilities that they sometimes know exist in specific versions of your CMS, if they can’t figure out what version you’re using it will make it that much harder for them to know which vulnerabilities to exploit. Try this plugin which does exactly that.
]]> http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/general/five-wordpress-tips-for-power-users-166/feed/ Designing and Coding a Wordpress Theme From Scratch (Part 1) http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/design/designing-and-coding-a-wordpress-theme-from-scratch-part-1-143/ http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/design/designing-and-coding-a-wordpress-theme-from-scratch-part-1-143/#comments Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:04:35 +0000 JonGos http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/design/designing-and-coding-a-wordpress-theme-from-scratch-part-1-143/ In this multi-part series I’ll detail how to create and design a Wordpress theme from nothing more than your imagination using Photoshop, CSS, XHTML and PHP. Before you continue you should look over other tutorials “Working with Wordpress Offline Like A Pro and “Color Proofing Photoshop” as some of the topics discussed there will come up in this tutorial like working offline to develop themes, and proofing your colors so that they translate accurately for the web. At the end of the entire series I’ll allow you to download the fully developed theme with the PSD, and theme-files including stylesheets, and javascript.

Tools for the Task

For clarification, here are all the tools I used in the making of this theme:

You don’t have to use the same tools, those are just the ones I use in my workflow.

Preparation

It’s important to remember these three things as well:

  1. Take your time. If this is your first attempt at a wordpress theme, you’ll make a lot of mistakes. Just learn from them, the first time is never the best.
  2. Use W3schools.com religiously! Why do people validate code, to maximize the exposure of their work. Learning to validate as you go will improve the quality of the work you produce and eventually make you faster.
  3. Ask a lot of questions. If you get stuck please feel free to come back to this column and post questions as comments. Alternatively you can e-mail me at jongos [at] gmail to seek out additional advice but since I like to make information public, if you email me privately your questions may be posted here to help others.

    4. The End Result:

    Like what you see? Without further adieu let’s get started.

    ]]> http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/design/designing-and-coding-a-wordpress-theme-from-scratch-part-1-143/feed/ 20 Time Saving Keyboard Shortcuts for Photoshop http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/design/photoshop-design/20-time-saving-keyboard-shortcuts-for-photoshop-132/ http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/design/photoshop-design/20-time-saving-keyboard-shortcuts-for-photoshop-132/#comments Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:47:42 +0000 JonGos http://www.developertutorials.com/blog/design/photoshop-design/20-time-saving-keyboard-shortcuts-for-photoshop-132/ Remember when you used to play Street Fighter at the arcade and you would time that Hadouken just right to counter an attack from that jackass who wouldn’t stop throwing you around? Well, just like a video game Photoshop is chock-full of secret key combinations that will have your clients and peers asking “How did you do that!”

    LAYER SHORTCUTS

    1. F7 - Open and Close the layers palette
    2. Shift+Ctrl+Alt+N (Win) / Shift+Command+Option+N (Mac) - Creates a new layer quickly
    3. Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) - Duplicates a layer or copies selection to a new layer
    4. Hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and use the left and right bracket keys ( [ and ] ) to scroll through layers in the Layers palette.
    5. Ctrl+A (Win) / Command+A (Mac) to select the entire layer (not just the contents).
    6. Merge multiple layers by selecting the layers (in versions of Photoshop before CS2 you’ll have to link them) and pressing Ctrl+E (Win) / Command+E (Mac).
    7. A very useful trick for comping quickly is to merge all layers into a new layer while keeping the originals (for editing). Create a new layer at the top of the Layers palette and press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E (Win) / Shift+Command+Option+E (Mac).
    8. To cycle through all the different layer blend modes, hold down your Shift key and use the + and - keys. This is the same on Mac and Windows machines.
    9. Ctrl+Y (Win) or Command+Y (Mac) allows you to Color Proof.
    10. Num Keys 1 thru 0 - quickly set Opacity levels

    TOOL SHORTCUTS

    1. [ or ] - Decrease and Increase Brush Size
    2. Shift+ [ or ] - Decrease and Increase Brush Softness
    3. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K (Win) or Command+Alt+Shift+K (Mac) - Display Keyboard Commands Menu

    TEXT SHORTCUTS

    1. Ctrl+Shift+K (Win) / Command+Shift+K (Mac) - convert text selection to all caps
    2. Ctrl+Shift+B (Win) / Command+Shift+B (Mac) - changes text selection to bold. (Note: for italics use “I” instead of “B”)
    3. Ctrl+Shift++ (Win) / Command+Shift++ (Mac) - changes text selection to superscript
    4. Ctrl+Shift+Alt++ (Win) / Command+Shift+Option++ (Mac) - changes selection to subscript
    5. Ctrl+Shift+Alt++ (Win) / Command+Shift+Option++ (Mac) - changes selection to strikethrough
    6. Ctrl+Shift+Alt (Win) / Command+Shift+Option (Mac) and pressing the > or < keys enlarges or decreases text by 10 points
    8. Ctrl+Shift+L (Win) / Command+Shift+L (Mac) - Left justifies a paragraph (Note: “C” centers and “R” right justifies>
    Did you Know?

    To print your keyboard shortcuts, you can go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts and click ‘Summarize’. Photoshop will then save your shortcuts to an html document that can be opened in any text editor or web browser. From there you can print a copy or save to PDF to keep as a reference.

    Summarize Photoshop Quick Keys

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