June 1st, 2010 / No Comments » / by TSG
It was suggested in the last meeting to use a different tutorial.
Custom Facebook Fan Pages with FBML
Scheduling has been a bit difficult lately – we are not meeting this week. I cannot make next week, so if anyone wants to lead next week, let me know, if not, we can reconvene in 2 weeks.
May 4th, 2010 / No Comments » / by TSG
The Custom Facebook Page Twitter Study Group will be meeting Tuesdays at 7PM (EST) instead of Wednesday based on feedback received. It has also been suggested that the group familiarize themselves “How to make custom Facebook Fan Page tabs with FBML, Part 1”
If you have any question or concerns, please leave a comment or @ us on Twitter.
The groups first meeting will be 5/18 – sorry for the delay but I have theater tickets next week!
May 3rd, 2010 / No Comments » / by TSG
The responses were incredibly varied, I did my best coming up with the majority and/or best average results. If for any reason you cannot make the group because of these results, please let me know and we can either try and change something, or start another group that better fits your schedule.
The first meeting will be a meet and greet, where we as a group decide how best to proceed with the chosen tutorial.
Group Start Date:
Wednesday, May 12
Meet Time:
7pm (once a week meetings)
Tutorial:
How to make custom Facebook Fan Page tabs with FBML
Meeting Place:
Google Wave
(if you do not yet have Google Wave, just let me know and I will send you an invite)
April 25th, 2010 / No Comments » / by TSG
If you are interested in joining the next Twitter Study Group on creating custom Facebook Pages, go to Join A Group and complete the survey. We hope to start the group next week. If there is anything you want to add, just leave a comment.
March 22nd, 2010 / No Comments » / by TSG
It looks like the next Twitter Study Group will be for creating custom Facebook pages. If you are interested, you can leave a comment here, or contact me on twitter @TwtrStudyGroup. It will be a few weeks before we are ready to start, we want to make sure we have time to get the word out, and to find the best tutorial choices for the group.
March 1st, 2010 / 5 Comments » / by TSG
Our first ever guest post is by Anthony Hortin of Maddison Designs.
You can follow Anthony on Twitter @maddisondesigns
I’ve found that the term “sidebar” within WordPress can have multiple meanings. Within your index.php file you will most likely find a call to the php function get_sidebar(). This is referring to the sidebar column, sometimes called the right-hand (or left-hand) navigation column. A sidebar also refers to the location where you add all your Widgets. The Widgets control the content that appears within the sidebar (column) and will usually display lists such as your Recent Posts, Categories, Links or dozens of other items.
Since WordPress is so configurable, it’s possible to have multiple sidebar columns defined such as when you have multiple page templates set up. For example, you may have a specific page template defined for your sites static homepage. As well as defining the body content for that page, you can also define a separate sidebar in case you would like it to appear differently from the rest of the site.
It’s also possible to register multiple sidebars that contain all the widgets. This latter sidebar is what we’ll be discussing here. A typical WordPress theme may only have one sidebar configured although it’s not uncommon to have 2 or 3 or even more. Even though it’s called a “sidebar” it doesn’t need to specifically reside in the sidebar of your website. You can add a “sidebar” to anywhere in your site you want to display your widgets. A common place to include them is the site footer.
Adding additional sidebars to your site is relatively easy. Within your functions.php file you will most likely have something similar to the code below, for your existing sidebar.
<?php
if ( function_exists(‘register_sidebar’) ) {
register_sidebar(array(
‘before_widget’ => ‘<li id=”%1$s” class=”widget %2$s”>’,
‘after_widget’ => ‘</li>’,
‘before_title’ => ‘<h2 class=”widgettitle”>’,
‘after_title’ => ‘</h2>’
));
}
?>
To add another sidebar you simply need to register another instance. If you are registering more than one, then you will also need to name them. Change your functions.php file to look like the following. Take care to add in the extra line that specifies the name of your sidebar. Once these are functions are defined, you will notice the extra sidebar appear in the WordPress Dashboard under the Appearance > Widgets option. It’s here that you can drag and drop all your widgets into your various sidebars.
<?php
if ( function_exists(‘register_sidebar’) ) {
register_sidebar(array(
‘name’ => ’sidebar 1′,
‘before_widget’ => ‘<div id=”%1$s” class=”widget %2$s”>’,
‘after_widget’ => ‘</div>’,
‘before_title’ => ‘<h2>’,
‘after_title’ => ‘</h2>’
));
register_sidebar(array(
‘name’ => ‘footer sidebar 1′,
‘before_widget’ => ‘<div id=”%1$s” class=”widget %2$s”>’,
‘after_widget’ => ‘</div>’,
‘before_title’ => ‘<h2>’,
‘after_title’ => ‘</h2>’
));
}
?>
You can find more details on the various parameters of the above call on the WordPress Codex.
Within your sidebar.php file, change the call to your existing sidebar to include its name that you defined within the functions.php file earlier.
<?php if ( !function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’) || !dynamic_sidebar(’sidebar 1′) ) : ?>
<h2>Articles by month</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives(‘title_li=&type=monthly’); ?>
</ul>
<h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories(’show_count=0&title_li=’); ?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>
To add your new sidebar, you can either copy the above code or you can simply copy the following lines. Add these lines to wherever you’d like your new widgets to appear. In this example you can see from the name that I’m placing mine in the footer of my website. As before, don’t forget to specify the correct sidebar name. In the above code, the html that appears between the php statements is what will appear when there are no widgets added to your sidebar. This ‘default’ code can obviously be modified to suit your theme. In the following code, since there is no extra html, nothing will be displayed unless a widget has been added into the sidebar within your WordPress dashboard.
<?php if ( !function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’) || !dynamic_sidebar(‘footer sidebar 1′) ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>
You will now find that your site has two widgetized sidebars. As mentioned earlier, there’s no reason why you couldn’t include further ones. It’s simply a matter of registering the new sidebar and then including the php to display it, in the relevant part of your site template.
March 1st, 2010 / No Comments » / by TSG
Stay tuned because starting later today TSG will be posting our first guest post. We think this is a great feature – as the groups progress, people come up with great tips & tricks for the other group members. Well, we think those tip & tricks should be shared here. Our first tip is on Wordpress Theme Creation – Adding Multiple Widget Sidebars To Your Theme!
February 23rd, 2010 / No Comments » / by TSG
Just to give a quick update, for tonight’s meeting we are supposed to have done ‘Connect With WordPress: The Sidebar’. See you at 7pm EST on Google Wave!
February 16th, 2010 / No Comments » / by TSG
This weeks WordPress Theme Creation Study Group is canceled, we will move everything back a week. Here is the revised schedule:
02/23 – Connect With WordPress: The Sidebar
02/02 – Connect With WordPress: The Index File
03/09 – Connect With WordPress: The Functions File
See you on the 23rd!
February 3rd, 2010 / No Comments » / by TSG
Great start with our new tutorial. Based on everyone’s input, we will be meeting next Tuesday at 7PM EST on Google Wave.
We are going to keep each session in line with the way the tutorial is broken out, so schedule will be as follows:
02/09 – Connect With WordPress: The Header/Footer
02/16 – Connect With WordPress: The Sidebar
02/23 – Connect With WordPress: The Index File
03/02 – Connect With WordPress: The Functions File
The tutorial continues to “Styling A Different Front Page” so I for one would be happy to continue on after The Functions File.
If anyone feels this should be broken out differently (it is moving too slow or too fast) just leave a comment and we’ll take a vote.
Here is the link to Creating Wordpress Themes 101: Connect To WordPress
Here are the links to the cheat sheets we discussed:
WordPress Cheat Sheet
The WordPress Help Sheet
The Advanced WordPress Help Sheet
WP Help Sheet
TSG is a service for anyone. The basic idea is like a study group – you have a group of people who all want to learn the same thing, so you support each other, and work on the project at the same time so you have others to go to with questions, show your progress and compare notes.
