Tag: Tutorial

Dynamic Blocks with Block.json, Vanilla JS, and No Build Process

WordPress blocks offer a dynamic experience in the post and site editors. But creating dynamic blocks – with contextual PHP-rendered functionality historically central to the WordPress platform – can be painfully difficult. The challenge goes far beyond learning a new API. Blocks leverage an entirely different toolset. And that toolset is optimized for a full-time professional developer profile, making even…

Annenberg Digital Lounge Video Tutorials

I worked at the USC Annenberg Digital Lounge from 2014 – 2016 as a resident WordPress expert. In addition to written tutorials, I created several video tutorials and workshops to help communications & journalism students create WordPress websites. These are tailored to students and paired with the in-person helpdesk available at the (physical) Digital Lounge. Here are a few selections:

Short Topic Videos

These videos cover specific tasks and troubleshooting that come up for lots of students.

Creating Navigation Menus with Categories and Tags

Fixing a Broken WordPress Site Address

Setting up a Site Workshops

These videos serve as complete workshops for students to follow along with when setting up a site.

Getting Started with WordPress and Twenty Fifteen

WordPress Themes & The Customizer

Advanced Theme Customization (with CSS)

Written Tutorials

AnnenbergDL.org

I also built the website for the digital lounge: AnnenbergDL.org. It hosts numerous resources similar to the tutorials above across a range of design software, authored by staff experts. The author and tool pages showcase the power of WordPress taxonomies. And there is even a (mostly hidden) course registration and management system that could eventually become available as a WordPress plugin. The Digital Lounge team will continue to build out this library of resources for USC students and the general public.

A Strategy for Custom Colors in the Customizer

The customizer is a framework for live-previewing any change to a WordPress site. It is particularly useful for previewing visual change and has always included a color control and the ability to easily preview custom colors. But the previewing experience has often been a bit slow. This post outlines a strategy for custom colors that leverages instant JS-based previewing in…

Twenty Fifteen, no sidebar

Twenty Fifteen is another great default theme that can be easily customized. I recently had to put up a quick site for my new themes site on halsey.co. I only wanted one or two pages, with a super simple layout. I decided to just remove the sidebar (remove the widgets first) and center the content area. On mobile, all we need…

WordPress 4.0 Customizer API Improvements

I cross-posted much of this post to Make WordPress Core before WordPress 4.0 Beta 1. I’ll be updating this version with more examples throughout the beta period. WordPress 4.0 features several new additions to the Customizer API (see also Theme Customization API). In this post, I’ll discuss the improvements in detail. Customizer Panels The Customizer now includes a new way to…