Monthly ArchivesFebruary 2019

The WordPress theme development scene is as vibrant as it ever has been. As WordPress and WooCommerce continue to grow in popularity, the market for themes grows too. Professional theme developers can build a business creating custom themes for clients or selling themes in the many theme marketplaces. And, even if you don’t want to become a professional theme developer, creating free themes is a great way to cut your teeth as a developer and designer.

As you might expect, the WordPress community has created tools and plugins to make development more convenient and efficient. Let’s have a look at five of the most useful.

Developers who intend to submit their themes to the official Theme Repository should learn about the theme review standards. The standards ensure that every theme in the repository is trustworthy, functional, and behaves as WordPress users expect. There are many required and recommended standards, and it’s hard to keep track of them all as you build your theme. The Theme Check plugin automates the process, running tests to automatically verify that a plugin meets the standards before it is submitted to the repository.

Debug Bar is a plugin that adds a debug menu to a WordPress site’s admin bar. The bar displays useful information about database queries and WordPress’s caches, as well as PHP warnings and notifications generated by WordPress. This data is helpful for tracking the performance of a theme during development and ensuring that it’s behaving as the developer expects.

As a developer works on a theme, they make changes their test site’s content, edit its configuration, and make customizations. The WordPress Reset plugin is a simple tool for undoing all those changes and putting the site back to its default state. Manually resetting a site is time-consuming and tedious. This simple tool lets developers flip a switch to put their site back to a known good state.

Cross-browser testing is one of the most troublesome aspects of theme development, especially for new developers who don’t have a drawer of Android devices, iPhones, and tablets to test their theme on. LambdaTest is a cloud testing automation service that opens sites on hundreds of different browsers running on cloud servers. The LambdaTest Screenshot plugin integrates LambdaTest with WordPress, enabling developers to take a screenshot of their theme running on many different browsers.

WP-CLI is a must-have for every WordPress developer. A command-line interface to most of WordPress’s functionality, WP-CLI alleviates developers of much of the drudge-work involved in setting up WordPress sites, installing themes and plugins, changing configuration settings, installing demo content, and more. As a developer, you will have to install WordPress many times, and WP-CLI makes doing so a matter of executing a quick command.

You’ll be happy to hear that Hostdedi makes WP-CLI available on all WordPress hosting accounts.

As with all development, WordPress theme development is a mixture of tedious repetition and exciting creative work. These tools will help you to build themes more quickly by automating some of the less interesting development tasks.

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WordPress

WordPress began life as a content management system focused on blogging. In the decade and a half since, it grew into a full-fledged content management system suited to any sort of site, including business sites and eCommerce stores. But WordPress still has its blog-engine DNA, and, when first installed, is configured to publish a list of blog posts on its homepage.

WordPress users who don’t want to display a list of blog posts on the home page instead use a static homepage. A static homepage, in WordPress’ terminology, is simply a home page without the blog listing. Instead, it contains any content the site owner wants – typically widgets, images, and content about the purpose of the site or the business.

In this article, we will clarify the difference between posts and pages, and show you how to configure your WordPress site with a static front page.

WordPress Posts vs. Pages

WordPress can publish content in two different “containers”: posts and pages. Each is treated differently by the content management system.

A post is most often the familiar blog post, although it might also be used to publish videos, podcasts, images, and other content. Posts have some unique qualities.

• They appear in the main article index of the site ordered by date of publication.
• They have associated categories and tags.
• Posts can be displayed as summaries.
• You can designate sticky posts that are displayed at the top of the listing.

Pages do not appear in the article listing and do not have categories or tags. However, pages can be added to menus throughout WordPress, including the main navigation menu. Examples include the blog index page, category pages, archives, and the static home page.

The blog index page is, as the name suggests, a page that is configured to display a list of blog posts. It doesn’t have to be the homepage of your site.

Creating a static home page

The controls for creating a static homepage are in the Reading section of the admin menu’s Settings item.

By default, WordPress is configured to show your latest blog posts.

When you select the Use a static page option, you are asked to supply which page WordPress should use for the home page and which should be used to display the blog listing.

If you have not already created pages for these, you should do so now under the Pages menu. You can choose any page to publish as your homepage, but be careful to choose one that you’re happy to have as the default page people see when they arrive on your site.

Finally, it is a good idea to add the page on which your blog index is displayed to the main navigation menu. You can do this in the Menus section of the customizer, or with the Menu item in the Appearance section of the Admin menu.

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WordPress