Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Cheat Sheet / Updated 01-18-2024

Tailor your blog with WordPress software, whether you're writing, editing, or publishing WordPress site content. An understanding of WordPress's dashboard controls and of the types of content available to you helps you get the most out of your website. Also, when all else fails, it's good to know where you can turn to for help with WordPress.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-12-2021

With WordPress, you can truly tailor a website to your own tastes and needs. All the publishing tools you need are readily available: Some are packaged with the WordPress software; others are third-party plugins and add-ons created by members of the WordPress user community. With a little research, knowledge, and time, you can create a WordPress website that suits your needs and gives your readers an exciting experience that keeps them coming back for more.

Article / Updated 08-06-2020

One option you have is to limit access to the Dashboard to specific Internet Protocols only. You also hear this method referred to as allowlisting (allowing) access, which compliments your blocklisting (disallowing) solutions you have put in place. Everything that touches the Internet, such as your computer, a website, or a server network, has what is known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address. An IP on your computer is like your home address; it uniquely identifies you so the Internet knows where your computer is located, physically. An example of what an IP looks like is 12.345.67.89 — it’s a series of numbers that uniquely identifies the physical location of a computer or network. You can edit the .htaccess file on your web server so that only IPs that you approve can access your Admin Dashboard, which blocks everyone else from having Dashboard access. The lines of code that define the access rules get added to the .htaccess file located in on your web server where WordPress is installed, in a folder called /wp-admin. Download that file to your computer via FTP and open it using a text editor, such as Notepad (PC) or TextMate (Mac), and add the following lines to it: order allow,deny deny from all allow from 12.345.67.89 In this example, the order defines what comes first. An IP that follows the allow rules is given access; any IP that doesn’t follow the allow rules is denied access. In this example, only the IP 12.345.67.89 can access the Admin Dashboard; all other IPs are denied. If the /wp-admin folder in your WordPress installation doesn’t contain a file called .htaccess, you can easily create one using your FTP program by opening the /wp-admin folder and then right click with your mouse and select New File. Give that new file the name: .htaccess and make sure the new rules from the previous section are added. Limiting access via IP does involve the following potential negatives: This technique works only with static Internet Protocols. A dynamic Internet Protocol constantly changes. The ability to use .htaccess is highly dependent on a web server that is running Apache. It won’t do you any good if your web server is Windows based or IIS, or if you’re using the latest NGINX web server. Your Apache web server needs to be configured to allow directives to be defined by .htaccess files. Ask your web host about configuration.

Article / Updated 03-05-2019

Turn to WordPress designers if you need help designing your website. The look and feel of your website are critical to its success, so take your time when choosing themes, color, and layout. If you're looking for a cool theme, or someone to add pizzazz to your site through design, you want that person to know your WordPress platform. These designers fit the bill. Name / URL Description WebDevStudios Cutting edge, custom WordPress design and development PixlelJar WordPress web design services iThemes Purchase and download easy-to-use, plug n' play WordPress premium themes eWebscapes Custom WordPress design and development for small businesses

Article / Updated 10-09-2017

A WordPress blog, in its basic form, has four main areas. These areas appear in the default theme that comes in every version of WordPress: Header: This area usually contains the name of the site along with the site tagline or slogan. Sometimes, the header also contains a graphic or image. Body: This area is where the main content of your website appears, such as blog posts displayed in chronological order. Sidebar: This area is where you find lists of blog-related elements, such as the blogroll, the archives, and a list of recent posts. Footer: This area, at the bottom of the page, often contains links to further information about the website, such as who designed it, which company provides hosting for the site, and copyright information. These four areas are the absolute bare bones of a basic WordPress blog template. You can extend these areas and create new sections that carry more information. The default WordPress theme is called Twenty Seventeen, and it’s a pretty doggone wonderful starting point for you, especially if you’re just getting your feet wet in web publishing. Many themes developed for WordPress are free for public use, and it’s strongly recommended that you find one that you like and download it. Use the free themes as places to get started in theme development. Really, why reinvent the wheel? With the free themes available today, most of the work has already been completed for you, and you may find it easier to use one of these themes than to start a theme from scratch. Each free theme available for download is different, depending on what the developer included (such as CSS styling, display options, format, and layout). Experimenting with a few themes is a fun and useful way to find out more about the development of WordPress themes. A great place to find free WordPress themes is the official WordPress Theme Directory. To build a WordPress theme that covers the four basic areas of a website, you need these five templates: header.php index.php sidebar.php footer.php style.css Each WordPress theme comes with a stylesheet (style.css), which drives the formatting and layout of your blog template in terms of where the elements are positioned on the page, what the font looks like, what colors your hyperlinks will be, and so on. As you may have already figured out, you don’t use CSS to put content on your site; rather, you use CSS to style the content that’s already there.

Article / Updated 10-09-2017

Here, you find the template tags for the items that are commonly placed on the sidebar of a WordPress site. Commonly placed is used here because it’s possible to get creative with these template tags and place them in other locations (the Footer template, for example). To keep this introduction to Sidebar template tags simple, stick with the most common use, leaving the creative and uncommon uses for you to try when you’re comfortable with the basics. You will also see tag parameters introduced here, which are additional options you can include in the tag to control some of its display properties. Not all template tags have parameters. You place tag parameters inside the parentheses of the tag. Many of the parameters discussed here were obtained from the WordPress software documentation in the WordPress Codex. This table helps you understand the three variations of parameters used in WordPress. Three Variations of Template Parameters Variation Description Example Tags without parameters These tags have no additional options. Tags without parameters have nothing within the parentheses. the_tag(); Tags with PHP function–style parameters These tags have a comma-separated list of values placed within the tag parentheses. the_tag( '1,2,3' ); Tags with query-string parameters These tags generally have several parameters. This tag style enables you to change the value for each parameter without being required to provide values for all available parameters for the tag. the_tag( 'parameter=true '); You need to know these three types of parameters: String: A line of text that can be anything from a single letter to a long list of words. A string is placed between single quotation marks and sets an option for the parameter or is displayed as text. Integer: A positive or negative number. Integers are placed within the parentheses and either inside or outside single quotation marks. Either way, WordPress processes them correctly. Boolean: A parameter that sets the options to true or false. This parameter can be numeric (0=false and 1=true) or textual. Boolean parameters aren’t placed within quotation marks. The WordPress Codex has every conceivable template tag and possible parameter known to the WordPress software.

Article / Updated 10-09-2017

You can create separate sidebar templates for different pages of your WordPress site by using an include statement. When you write an include statement, you’re simply telling WordPress that you want it to include a specific file on a specific page. The code that pulls the usual Sidebar template (sidebar.php) into all the other templates, such as the Main Index template (index.php), looks like this: <?php get_sidebar(); ?> What if you create a page and want to use a sidebar that has different information from what you have in the Sidebar template (sidebar.php)? Follow these steps: Create a new sidebar template in a text editor such as Notepad or Text Edit. You might want to make a copy of the existing sidebar.php file in the Twenty Sixteen theme and rename it. Save the file as sidebar2.php.In Notepad, choose File → Save. When you’re asked to name the file, type sidebar2.php and then click Save. Upload sidebar2.php to your Themes folder on your web server. The template is now in your list of theme files on the Edit Themes screen. (Log in to your WordPress Dashboard and click the Editor link on the Appearance menu.) To include the sidebar2.php template in one of your page templates, replace <?php get_sidebar(); /> with this code: <?php get_template_part('sidebar2'); ?> This code calls in a template you’ve created within your theme. By using that get_template_part function, you can include virtually any file in any of your WordPress templates. You can use this method to create footer templates for pages on your site, for example. First, create a new template that has the filename footer2.php. Then locate the following code in your template: <?php get_footer(); ?> and replace it with this code: <?php get_template_part('footer2'); ?>

Article / Updated 10-09-2017

Once you’ve added the necessary code to your template file to display your Custom Field, you should be ready to publish your WordPress site. But what if you want to publish a post in which you don’t want the mood Custom Field to appear? You can easily make WordPress check to see whether the Custom Field is added. If it finds the Custom Field, WordPress displays your mood; if it doesn’t find the Custom Field, WordPress doesn’t display the Custom Field. If you’ve already changed the code in your template file, the code in your template looks something like this: <p><strong>My Current Mood is:<strong> <em><?php $key="mood"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?></em></p> To make WordPress check to see whether the mood Custom Field exists, add this code to the line above your existing code: <?php if ( get_post_meta($post->ID, 'mood', true) ) : ?> Then add this line of code to the line below your existing code: <?php endif; ?> Put together, the lines of code in your template should look like this: <?php if ( get_post_meta($post->ID, 'mood', true) ) : ?> <p><strong>My Current Mood is:</strong> <em><?php $key="mood"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?></em></p> <?php endif; ?> The first line is an IF statement that asks “Does the mood key exist for this post?” If so, the value gets displayed. If not, WordPress skips the code, ignoring it so that nothing gets displayed for the mood Custom Field. The final line of code simply puts an end to the IF question.3

Article / Updated 10-09-2017

So that you can see how to enter the Custom Field code in your template file, the WordPress theme Twenty Sixteen in these instructions. If you’re using a different theme (thousands of WordPress themes are available), you need to adapt these instructions to your particular theme. Follow these steps to add the template tag to your theme, along with a little HTML code to make it look nice. (These steps assume that you’ve already added a Custom Field to your blog post and assigned a value to it.) Log in to your WordPress Dashboard. Click the Editor link on the Appearances menu. The Edit Themes screen loads in the Dashboard. Locate the template files for your theme (in this case, Twenty Sixteen). The available templates are listed on the right side of the Edit Themes page. Click content-single.php in the list of templates. The content-single.php template opens in the text editor on the left side of the screen, where you can edit the template file. Scroll down and locate the template tag that looks like this: </div><!-- .entry-content --> On the new line directly above the line in Step 5, type this: <p><strong>My Current Mood is:</strong><em>; <p> and <strong> open the HTML tags for paragraph and bold text, respectively, followed by the words to display in your template (My Current Mood is:). <em> opens the HTML tag for italic-style text, which gets applied to the value. Type the PHP that makes the custom field work: <?php $key="mood"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?> Type </em></p>. This code closes the HTML tags you opened in Step 6. Click the Update File button. Located at the bottom of the Edit Themes screen, this button saves the changes you made in the content.php file and reloads the page with the message that your changes have been successfully saved. View your post on your site to see your Custom Field data displayed. WordPress displays your current mood at the bottom of the posts to which you added the mood Custom Field. The entire code, put together, should look like this in your template: <p><strong>My Current Mood is:</strong> <em><?php $key="mood"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?></em></p> The code is case-sensitive, which means that the words you enter for the key in your Custom Field need to match the case of the $key in the code. If you enter mood in the Key field, for example, the code needs to be lowercase as well: $key="mood". If you attempt to change the case to $key="Mood", the code won’t work. You have to add this code for the mood Custom Field only one time. After you add the template function code to your template for the mood Custom Field, you can define your current mood in every post you publish on your site by using the Custom Fields interface. This example is just one type of Custom Field that you can add to your posts.

Article / Updated 10-09-2017

If you add a Custom Field to your own site, it may not appear the way you originally intended To get the data to display properly, you must open the template files and dig into the code a little bit. You can add Custom Fields to your templates in several ways to display the output of the fields you’ve set. The easiest way involves using the get_post_meta(); template tag function, which looks like this: <?php $key="<em>NAME</em>"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?> Here’s how that function breaks down: <?php: Starts the PHP function. Every template tag or function needs to start PHP with <?php. $key="<em>NAME</em>";: Defines the name of the key that you want to appear. You define the name when you add the Custom Field to your post. echo get_post_meta: Grabs the Custom Field data and displays it on your site. In this example this call for post meta has three parameters: ($post->ID: A parameter that dynamically defines the specific ID of the post being displayed so that WordPress knows which metadata to display. $key,: A parameter that gets the value of the Custom Field based on the name, as defined in the $key="<em>NAME</em>"; setting earlier in the code string. true);: A parameter that tells WordPress to return a single result rather than multiple results. (By default, this parameter is set to true; don’t change it unless you’re using multiple definitions in the Value setting of your Custom Field.) ?>: Ends the PHP function. The $key="mood"; part of the function tells WordPress to return the value for the Custom Field with the Name of mood.