Workshop Resources, Tutorials, Insight

Bare Bones Stylesheet

Bare Bones Stylesheet

HTML/CSS

It’s not a full-blown framework, but rather a collection of selectors I commonly use. Everything from structural elements to typography is covered. A couple variations for logo and nav treatments are included, along with basically everything else I might need.

Envato Marketplace Buttons

Envato Marketplace Buttons

PSD

A set of custom buttons for Envato Marketplace authors to use on their profiles and items. Styled to match the Marketplace sites. Including a “follow me” button for each of the Marketplace sites, rss, email, Facebook, and Twitter.

How to Completely Uninstall bbPress 2

bbPress has been around for a while, but when version 2 was released back in September 2011, it brought something entirely new to the table; it was no longer standalone software, but a plugin that fully integrates the forums into your WordPress installation. This is great on many levels, but it can be a nightmare if you need to remove bbPress, as I discovered.

WordPress Post Thumbnails Revisited

Shortly after the release of WordPress 2.9, I published my technique for bulletproof post thumbnails. Since then, it’s evolved yet simplified into a more robust solution, specifically for use in WordPress themes. The problem, was that each image uploaded was generating a new set of images in various sizes, on top of the three that WordPress creates by default. This resulted in 6 or 7 images, instead of just a handful. While this isn’t really a huge deal, it means you’re going to be using more space on your server, and the uploads directory will get a bit unruly.

Bulletproof Post Thumbnails in WordPress 2.9

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on an update for my video-centric WordPress theme, Wave. It’s a bit overdue, but every time I sit down with it, I end up packing something new in that will definitely please my customers and will hopefully justify the wait. Since WordPress 2.9 was recently released, I decided to look into the new Post Thumbnails functionality and see if I could make use of it in my themes. At this point, there isn’t much in the way of documentation, so I thought I would share my …

FAQ: “How do you build your WordPress themes?”

This is probably the single most frequently asked question that arrives in my inbox, or elsewhere. And for good reason, I suppose. Seeing how I’ve been building sites on top of WordPress exclusively for about 3 years now. There are many different routes you can take when building a theme, and I’ve pretty much streamlined my method over the past couple years. Granted, there are always exceptions and I’ve found that I can’t work from a base template. Instead, I build “themes” from the ground-up, but with a little help. Here’s how…

Photoshop Basics: Organizing Your Layers Palette

For the past couple years I’ve been flying solo pretty much exclusively. It’s only been recently that I’ve been collaborating with other designers and developers during my freelance journeys and time at Graphics.net. Now that my work is changing hands, I find myself spending a few extra minutes tidying things up before I pass them on. As I discovered pretty quickly, some of the traits that have become second nature to me, aren’t so obvious to others. This is the first in a series of “best practices” articles to follow that will cover some …