The theme framework you’ve built will be used as a parent theme in the sites you develop. This means that in each case you’ll need to create a child theme to create a unique site with its own design and with extra or different functions compared to the framework.
The obvious way to go about this is to dive in and start creating template files in your child theme to override those in the framework, but thanks to the action and filter hooks you’ve added to your framework, this might not always be the best approach.
In this article, I’ll outline some of the techniques you can use in your child themes to make best use of your framework and improvise your workflow.
The topics I’ll cover are as follows:
Creating starter child themes
Amending code via the framework’s filter hooks
Adding code via the framework’s action hooks
Creating template files in your child theme
When to use a plugin instead
Creating Starter Child Themes framework
The main purpose of developing your theme framework is to adopt the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle, and that applies to your child themes, too.
It can make you more efficient if you create one or more ‘starter’ child themes for use with your framework, which contain the core code you need to get started on new projects.
When deciding how to go about doing this, consider the way you work and the sites you build:
Do you create a lot of sites for clients in the same sector with similar needs?
Do you want to offer low cost template based sites to smaller clients?
Are there specific template files you tend to create for most of your new projects?
Is there functionality you need to include on some sites but not others? (For example, I use two starter child themes, one with comment functionality and one without.)
Is there styling you tend to use for most projects, or can you use object oriented styling or a CSS preprocessor for most projects?
Are there libraries or resources you use for most new projects, or for a significant proportion of them?
Do you have two or three main categories you can place projects under, with each category involving similar development work?
If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, then developing one or more starter child themes may save you time. You can create a set of child themes with the basic code that you repeat across all projects using them, and then you don’t need to rewrite that code (or create those files) for each new project.
Note on caveat: If you’re adding some code to every single new project, you may want to add it to your framework instead of to child themes, maybe by using a hook so you can override it if a different need arises in the future.
Even if you answered no to the questions above, it’s worth creating a very basic starter theme with an empty stylesheet and functions file, and adding the instructions WordPress needs to access your framework’s parent theme .
You might also want to create a starter functions.php file with the functions you most frequently use in your child themes. You can then choose to remove any of these and/or add to them for specific projects.
Amending Code via Filter Hooks
As well as adding styling to your child theme, you’ll most likely want to make changes to the code output by the framework. The most lightweight way of doing this is via filter hooks, so it’s worth exploring those first to identify if you can use any of them.
Creating a function which you then attach to a filter hook is much more efficient than creating a whole new template file for the new code; however, if you find yourself doing this repeatedly with the same filter hook, you might want to consider changing that filter hook to an action hook and writing a new function for each project which you activate via that action hook.
To be more efficient, you might want to create a set of relevant functions which you place in the functions file of different start themes or even create a plugin with your function which you activate when needed. I’ll cover plugins in more detail later in this series.
Adding Code via Action Hooks
Your theme framework will also have action hooks which you can use to insert content in various places in your sites.
If you’ve been working on the code files for the framework bundled with this tutorial series, you’ll have seven action hooks to work with:
before the header
inside the header
before the content
after the content
in the sidebar
in the footer
after the footer.
To do this, create a functions.php file in your child theme and .
There is plenty of other content you could add using your action hooks, such as sharing buttons above or below the content, extra content in the footer, a search box in the header and much more.
You might just want to add some content on specific page types, such as single blog posts, in which case the most obvious place to start would be by creating a newsingle.php template. But you can still use your action hooks with the addition of a conditional tag.
Creating New Template Files
On occasion you won’t be able to do what you want using the filter or action hooks in your framework, in which case you’ll need to create new template files in your child themes.
These might be the same template files as are stored in your framework, in which case the files in the child theme will override them. Or they might be new template files, for example for a new category, taxonomy or post type.
If you are creating template files in your child themes, it makes things easier if you use the template files in your framework as a starting point. The steps I follow are:
Identify the template file you need to create with reference to the WordPress template hierarchy
Create a blank file with the appropriate name in your child theme
Identify the file in your framework which is closest to the new file (again with reference to the template hierarchy)
Copy the contents of that into your new file
Make amendments to the new file as required.
Doing this saves you the work of duplicating any code which will be common between your new file and the existing files in your framework, such as the calls to include files.
When to Use a Plugin Instead
Another option you have when creating sites based on your framework is to use plugins in conjunction with your child themes. A plugin won’t replace a child theme completely, but it can be useful in the following circumstances:
The functionality you want to add isn’t theme-dependent (i.e. you want to keep it if the site ever changes theme in future). This might include registering custom post types or taxonomies, for example.
You want to use this functionality on a number of the sites you create, but not enough for it to go into a starter child theme or the framework itself.
I’ll cover developing plugins for your framework in the next part of this series.
Summary
Your theme framework is just the starting point of a library of code and files you’ll create to support the sites you develop. Each site you create will need to run on a child theme, which will have your framework theme as its parent.
As we’ve seen, your child themes will add their own styling and functionality, and they can do this by hooking into the action and filter hooks in your framework, or via the creation of new template files. It’s always a good idea to adopt the solution which needs the least code, as that makes your site faster and your life easier!
from :http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-child-themes-for-your-wordpress-theme-framework–cms-21933
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this is tags and keywords : wordpress themes momizat Tutorial wordpress templates
For many new users of the WordPress platform, defining the difference between these two can be a little bit difficult at first. Thankfully, understanding how they are different is not as hard as it may seem so let’s break it down.
Back in November, I touched on the differences between posts and pages in WordPress. To continue that line of thought, this article will continue that series of learning WordPress basics by touching on the differences between Categories and Tags.
Categories Vs. Tags
For many new users of the WordPress platform, defining the difference between these two can be a little bit difficult at first. Thankfully, understanding how they are different is not as hard as it may seem so let’s break it down.
Categories are meant to be used for a broad topic area and help define what your blog is about whereas Tags are used to zero in on something specific within that category.
Here are some examples of how this works:
- WordPress Themes = Category (a broad topic of discussion)
- Best Magazine Themes For WordPress, Top Themes For SEO, Common Mistakes in WordPress Themes = Tags (something more specific but that relates to the Category at hand)
- Blogging = Category
- Make Money Blogging, Blogging for Money, Work from Home Blogging = Tags
Pretty simple to understand when you think about it, but understanding what they are and using them the right way is a little bit different.
How To Use Categories and Tags Correctly
It’s pretty easy to come up with a vast variety of Categories and Tags for your site and blog posts, but just because you can think of 50 for each doesn’t mean you should use them all. Why not? Well, there are a few reasons.
Categories and Tags have two main purposes: (1) helping with SEO, and (2) helping your users easily find the content on your site.
SEO is important for every site, and Tags and Categories play a part in that. As mentioned earlier, Categories are used to define what your site is about, and most blogs tend to narrow in a single niche (WordPress Tips, Marketing, and SEO are some examples of this.) If you have 50 Categories, it would be harder to define your niche to Google and other search engines; therefore, less is more in this case.
Tags are another great way to boost SEO as they are usually keywords that someone might enter into a Search Engine in order to help them find your post. However, targeting a massive about of keywords by using a ton of tags isn’t going to do you much good. On the other hand, it probably won’t hurt, but it can lead to potential hazards.
Using Tags that sort of relate to your post instead of ones that directly relate to it can bring in the wrong crowd and increase your bounce rate — a major bummer. And if your goal is landing on the first page of a search engine like Google, then not doing keyword research to help you find low competition keywords could make that goal harder to reach.
The other side of the Category/Tag coin is your viewers. If you have around 5-8 main Categories on your site, then finding content that relates to their topic of interest is going to be much easier and thus boost your users’ experience on your site.
Wrapping It Up
In short, using Categories and Tags is important, but don’t go overboard with them. Selecting a few main Categories is usually best, so start with a few broad topics and go from there.
Tags are another area that shouldn’t be ignored, but they also have their place. Only use tags and keywords that directly relate to your content at hand, and try to target a few meaningful tags/keywords that can help concentrate your SEO efforts. Remember that Google is a lady with refined taste and she has no more forbearance for those who try to squeeze in where they don’t fit.
from : http://www.wpeka.com/wordpress-basics-categories-versus-tags.html
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You have to change you timezone, the tagline, your user profile information, and much more.
Perhaps one that setting that needs to change but that has stumped quite a few is the Permalink setting. You are given quite a few options there, but which one is the best to use?
What Is A Permalink?
To those new to the realms of the online world, the word Permalink likely doesn’t make any sense, but it’s not that complicated.
A Permalink is like the exact address to a specific page on your website. For example:
http://yourwebsite.com/ would bring someone to the Homepage of your site whereas,http://yourwebsite.com/blog/ would bring them to your the blog page on your site. Those are pretty straightforward permalink structures, but when it comes to posts on your site, the permalink structure may look a little bit different.
Permalink Options in WordPress
WordPress gives users a few options when choosing a permalink structure:
- Default
- Day and Name | Uses the year, month, and the day along with your post title in the link.
- Month and Name | Uses year and month along with the post title in the link.
- Numeric | Uses a number as part of the link.
- Post Name | Simply uses the title of your post in the link.
- Custom Structure | Allows you to set up your own link structure to reflect something closer to what you’d like.
As you can guess, many WordPress installs have the Default setting automatically put in place, but it’s not one you want to leave as is.
Which Permalink Structure is Best?
In this case, there is no single answer, though some may have strong feelings about one structure over another. What I can tell you is that you shouldn’t use the Default option. So which one should you use?
Post Name
This is the one that many people like to choose as their permalink structure. This option is nice for both Search Engines and your viewers as the link is very easy to understand because it uses the post title. Since Search Engines can read this plain as day many people like to say that it has SEO benefits.
If you decide to go with this one, you’d be just fine.
Day and Name; Month and Name
These two options are pretty similar, however, the Day and Name option will make your permalink a bit longer than the Month and Name option. This isn’t exactly a bad thing so you can choose one over the other and be all set.
There are some hidden benefits to using these structures. Besides creating these “Pretty Links” that flirt rather well with Google, they also help keep a site from breaking if your site publishes multiple posts every day (Day and Name is best for news type sites with daily/hourly updates). If you publish quite a few posts every week, the Month and Name option would likely be your best option.
Wrapping It Up
As far as SEO is concerned, one structure doesn’t seem to do any good over another. Although Post Name is a nice and simple option, I’d opt for either the Day and Name or Month and Name option just to keep things going smoothly. If you’re feeling adventurous, you could even try out the Custom Structure option like some popular blogs use.
If you want more in-depth coverage of Permalinks, be sure to check out this post byKevin Muldoon.
from :http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-child-themes-for-your-wordpress-theme-framework–cms-21933
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