WordPress

I get a lot of folks who want to add a header graphic to my Simplicity WordPress theme, so I figured it was time to just write a tutorial on it. It’s really pretty simple to do.

Step 1: Understand the Dimensions

The header of Simplicity is the wide, blue area at the top where you see the blog name and description. The width of the header is 940px wide. That means any header image you place there needs to be no wider than that. As for the height, well that doesn’t really matter. The header height will expand to fit.

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Recently, two popular WordPress-related sites took a stand against ad-sponsored WordPress themes. Mark Ghosh, publisher of Weblog Tools Collection declared that he would no longer promote sponsored WordPress themes on his site. Shortly thereafter, WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg stated that all sponsored themes “should” be removed from the Wordpres Theme Viewer site. As for Matt’s comments, I’ve requested clarification from him, but I assume he means there’s currently a project underway to actually remove sponsored themes from the site.

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View the video tutorial:

• Play Video in New Window
• Download Video (right-click and “save link as”)

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I’m doing a little experimentation with streaming video on a WordPress site. As part of that experimentation, I created a brief video introduction to WordPress. I think it’s like 15 minutes long. I’d like to know if you have any problems viewing the video, so please share via the comments link. Thanks! Read More

In part 1 of this series, we talked a little bit about database driven publishing platforms, such as WordPress. The key point of that discussion was that your blog data is separate from your blog design (the look and layout of your site). The data - such as blog posts, blog comments, blog categories, etc. - reside in a database on your web server/web host (you establish your database during the WordPress install process).

The template files (theme) tell WordPress and the various web browsers how to organize and present your blog data to your website/blog visitor. You may hear people refer to the blog theme as a “blog skin” because it determines the look and feel - or design - of your blog. At a basic level, that’s true, but a WordPress theme can - and usually does - do more than just determine the design style of your blog. Read More

There are probably over 1000 free WordPress blog themes/templates out there. Yet, I still get people who write and ask me to help them design their own. And that’s cool. After all, it’s a great way to express one’s creativity. This post marks the first in a series to help you do just that: create your own WordPress blog theme. Before we get into WordPress blog/theme design, however, we need to talk a little bit about WordPress itself.

Database-Driven Websites (AKA Push-Button Publishing)

WordPress, like most blogging platforms, is a “database-driven” web publishing platform. In other words, all of your blog’s content is stored in a database in the form of, well, data. The database merely acts as a repository for all the information you add to your WordPress site. That includes blog posts, blog comments, blog categories, the title of your blog and a whole slew of other information. Most people, me included, would say that database driven websites are a key characteristic of Web 2.0 websites. Read More

My tutorial on adding Flash video to your Worpdress site was pretty popular. The only problem is Flash video tends to be lower quality than Quicktime video. So this tutorial is designed to make it easy for you to add Quicktime video to your WordPress site.

Besides the quality issue, there are other benefits to using Quicktime over Flash. First of all, Quicktime video is the file-format-of-choice for video blogs. In other words, people with video iPods and Quicktime-compatible, portable video players can download the video automatically, just like you would a regular podcast. And from what I understand, that’s not the case with Flash video (correct me if I’m wrong). Read More

First of all, I have to say, Tubetorial is hot. Tubetorial is the latest videoblogging project by Chris Pearson (a fellow blog designer and a damn good one at that) and Brian Clark of Copyblogger fame.

What I like most about Tubetorial, beyond the site design, is the videos themselves. They’re relatively short (most are 2-5 minutes in length), and the quality is excellent. Take for example, their latest offering, Why WordPress and How it Works, a 5 minute video extolling the virtues of WordPress. If you’re not already a WordPress fan, this may convince you to make the switch. If so, you can find a couple of tutorials to help you install WordPress here and here. You can also find out a little more about WordPress by listening to my interview with Denise and Patsi on Conversations with Experts.

In the meantime, keep an eye on Tubetorial. Brian and Chris have certainly raised the bar a bit with this one.

Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff invited me to be a guest on their Conversations With Experts series. We’ll be talking about WordPress, and you’re all invited. Here’s the intro for the show:

Conversations with Experts: How to Build Your Business On and Off-line

WordPress 2.0: The Ultimate Small Business Publishing Platform

Wednesday, September 13, 2006, 8:30 p.m. ET (no charge, registration required)

Guest Expert: Michael Pollock, Solostream Web Studio

Register Here

In the last few years, we’ve seen an explosion of what have been called “push button publishing services;” also known as blogs. Because they’re so easy to use, hosted services such as Typepad, Blogger and LiveJournal have been the dominant players in this market.

More recently, however, a stand-alone publishing platform named WordPress has been steadily growing in popularity. Recent estimates suggest there are currently more than 1 million WordPress users across the planet. And a lot of them are small business owners just like you. During this discussion, Michael will talk about some of the reasons why the WordPress user base is growing so quickly. In particular, he’ll talk about:

• Limitations and drawbacks of hosted services like Typepad and Blogger.
• What you CAN do with WordPress that you CAN’T do with hosted services.
• 5 reasons you may want to switch to WordPress.
• 5 reasons you may not want to switch to WordPress.
• Questions and concerns addressed.

One of my clients, Hi-Way Campers, has started listing some of their RVs for sale on eBay. Naturally, I had to figure out a way to integrate it into their website, which is build on a WordPress platform. First I looked around for a WP plugin, but there none to be found. And there’s probably a really good reason there’s no plugin. It’s too easy for a plugin. Read More

Rachel Cunliffe has a nice little write-up about how to password protect your WordPress site. I would add this to her list:

Check with your web host. Sometimes you can simply make a change on your control panel to password protect your site. My host 1and1, for example, provides this simple method in their FAQ section.

So you want to create the next Rocketboom (video blog). Or perhaps you have some video you want to add to your WordPress blog or website. Maybe it’s a video of last year’s Christmas party, a business conference you attended or the kids’ soccer game.

Maybe you have a business site and want to provide some video for customers and/or potential customers. For example, when I designed a site for Hi-Way Campers, an RV dealer, I included video walk-through tours of some of the RVs for folks who started their RV shopping online (see an example here). Website video would also be great for restaurants, conference facilities, hotels, resorts, real estate brokers or anyone with a product people need to see. Read More

In this lesson, I show you how to install a plugin that’ll help create an email feedback page for your site. In the process, you’ll also learn how to create new pages for your WordPress site.

The video fo this lesson is about 16 minutes long, and you can download it here.

In this lesson, we move the sidebar a little more, widen the main content area, and add the sidebar to all the other pages on your site.

The video for this lesson runs about 8 minutes, and you can download here.

In this lesson, we continue to manipulate the internal page structure. I show you how to change the sidebar content and background, as well as move it from one side of the page to the other.

The video for this lesson runs about 12 minutes, and you can download it here.