In this article I will explain how to use the new comment_form() function within WordPress 3.0 to give better usability within our comments function inside of WordPress.

To use this function you can open up your comments.php file within your theme and view the code that should look similar to the following:

comments.php file

<?php if ('open' == $post->comment_status) : ?>

<div id="respond">
<h3><?php comment_form_title( 'Leave a Reply', 'Leave a Reply to %s' ); ?></h3>
<div class="cancel-comment-reply">
	<small><?php cancel_comment_reply_link(); ?></small>
</div>

<?php if ( get_option('comment_registration') && !$user_ID ) : ?>
You must be <a href="<?<span class="><?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-login.php?redirect_to=">logged in</a> to post a comment.
<pre><?php else : ?></pre>
<form action="<?<span class="><?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform"></form>

<?php if ( $user_ID ) : ?>

Logged in as <a href="<?<span class="><?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-admin/profile.php"></a>. <a title="Log out of this account" href="<?php echo wp_logout_url(get_permalink()); ?>">Log out »</a>

<?php else : ?>

<input id="author" name="author" type="text" value="<?<span class=" /><?php echo $comment_author; ?>" size="22" tabindex="1" />
<label for="author"><small>Name <?php if ($req) echo "(required)"; ?></small></label>

<input id="email" name="email" type="text" value="<?<span class=" /><? php echo $comment_author_email; ?>" size="22" tabindex="2" />
<label for="email"><small>Mail (will not be published) <?php if ($req) echo "(required)"; ?></small></label>

<input name="<span class=" type="text" />url" id="url" value="" size="22" tabindex="3" />
<label for="<span class=">url"><small>Website</small></label>

<?php endif; ?>

<!--<small><strong>XHTML:</strong> You can use these tags: <code></code></small>

-->

<textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="100%" rows="10" tabindex="4">

<p><input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit Comment" />
<?php comment_id_fields(); ?>
</p>
<?php do_action('comment_form', $post->ID); ?>

</form>

<?php endif; // If registration required and not logged in ?>
</div>
<?php endif; // if you delete this the sky will fall on your head ?>

</div>

You can delete the above code in comments.php file and replace it with the following:

<?php comment_form(); ?>

The Wordpress 3.0 function – comment_form() has 2 parameters that can be optionally modified to your liking: Here is the example arguments that can be used:

<?php comment_form($args, $post_id); ?>

Now to explain what each of these parameters do so we know how to use them:

$args: This contains our options for our strings and fields within the form and etc.
$post_id: Post ID is used to generate the form, if null it will use the current post.

The $arg parameter uses the following values by default:

Default $arg Values

<?php $defaults = array( 'fields' => apply_filters( 'comment_form_default_fields', array(
    'author' => '<p class="comment-form-author">' .
                '<label for="author">' . __( 'Name' ) . '</label> ' .
                ( $req ? '<span class="required">*</span>' : '' ) .
                '<input id="author" name="author" type="text" value="' .
                esc_attr( $commenter['comment_author'] ) . '" size="30" tabindex="1"' . $aria_req . ' />' .
                '</p><!-- #form-section-author .form-section -->',
    'email'  => '<p class="comment-form-email">' .
                '<label for="email">' . __( 'Email' ) . '</label> ' .
                ( $req ? '<span class="required">*</span>' : '' ) .
                '<input id="email" name="email" type="text" value="' . esc_attr(  $commenter['comment_author_email'] ) . '" size="30" tabindex="2"' . $aria_req . ' />' .
                '</p><!-- #form-section-email .form-section -->',
    'url'    => '
<p class="comment-form-url">' .</p>

                '<label for="url">' . __( 'Website' ) . '</label>' .
                '<input id="url" name="url" type="text" value="' . esc_attr( $commenter['comment_author_url'] ) . '" size="30" tabindex="3" />' .
                '

<!-- #<span class="hiddenSpellError" pre="">form-section-url</span> .form-section -->' ) ),
    'comment_field' => '<p class="comment-form-comment">' .
                '<label for="comment">' . __( 'Comment' ) . '</label>' .
                '<textarea id="comment" name="comment" cols="45" rows="8" tabindex="4" aria-required="true"></textarea>' .
                '</p><!-- #form-section-comment .form-section -->',
    'must_log_in' => '
<p class="must-log-in">' .  sprintf( __( 'You must be <a href="%s">logged in</a> to post a comment.' ), wp_login_url( apply_filters( 'the_permalink', get_permalink( $post_id ) ) ) ) . '</p>

',
    'logged_in_as' => '
<p class="logged-in-as">' . sprintf( __( 'Logged in as <a href="%s">%s</a>. <a title="Log out of this account" href="%s">Log out?</a></p>

' ), admin_url( 'profile.php' ), $user_identity, wp_logout_url( apply_filters( 'the_permalink', get_permalink( $post_id ) ) ) ),
    'comment_notes_before' => '<p class="comment-notes">' . __( 'Your email is <em>never</em> published nor shared.' ) . ( $req ? __( ' Required fields are marked <span class="required">*</span>' ) : '' ) . '</p>',
    'comment_notes_after' => '<dl class="form-allowed-tags"><dt>' . __( 'You may use these <abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr> tags and attributes:' ) . '</dt> <dd><code>' . allowed_tags() . '</code></dd>',
    'id_form' => 'commentform',
    'id_submit' => 'submit',
    'title_reply' => __( 'Leave a Reply' ),
    'title_reply_to' => __( 'Leave a Reply to %s' ),
    'cancel_reply_link' => __( 'Cancel reply' ),
    'label_submit' => __( 'Post Comment' ),
); ?>

The parameters of $arg are self-defined by names. Also remember that you can leave $arg as null if you wish and it will use the default.

You can also customize $arg using the comment_form_default_fields filter.
Example: If you wanted to hide the URL field on your form, you can simply insert the following code to your functions.php file:

Functions.php file

add_filter('comment_form_default_fields', 'mytheme_remove_url');

function mytheme_remove_url($arg) {
    $arg['url'] = '';
    return $arg;
}

All fields are also each passed through a filter of the form comment_form_field_$name
This gives us more options to use for each way of changing our output.
$name is the value used in the array of fields. So we can also hide it using the following:

add_filter('comment_form_default_fields', 'mytheme_remove_url');

function mytheme_remove_url($arg) {
    $arg['url'] = '';
    return $arg;
}

Using the comment_form() function is an excellent way to keep the code within your template clean. It gives you more ways to customize the comments form using sets of filters.
For users of WordPress 3.0 it is suggested you use this new code to replace the old style comment form code.

Customizing with Hooks

Using more hooks to customize our comments_form. Here are some more options and examples to show more on how this can be used.

The first hook is comment_form_default_fields. This lets us modify the three main fields: author, email, and website. It’s a filter, so we can change things as they pass through it. The fields are stored in an array which contains the html that is output. So it looks sorta like this:

array(
	'author' => '<p class="comment-form-author">...',
	'email'  => '<p class="comment-form-email">...',
	'url'    => '<p class="comment-form-url">...'
);

This simple method shows the generic way the code can display, but using other modifications you can change more fields like this:

function my_fields($fields) {
$fields['new'] = '<p>a new input field is here</p>';
return $fields;
}
add_filter('comment_form_default_fields','my_fields');

This allows us to add a new input field, or to modify the existing fields.

Fields are not the only items that can be changed. There is also a comment_form_defaults filter as well. It gets the surrounding text of the comments form.

Comment Form Default

$defaults = array(
	'fields'               => apply_filters( 'comment_form_default_fields', $fields ),
	'comment_field'        => '<p class="comment-form-comment">...',
	'must_log_in'          => '<p class="must-log-in">...',
	'logged_in_as'         => '<p class="logged-in-as">...',
	'comment_notes_before' => '<p class="comment-notes">...',
	'comment_notes_after'  => '<dl class="form-allowed-tags">...',
	'id_form'              => 'commentform',
	'id_submit'            => 'submit',
	'title_reply'          => __( 'Leave a Reply' ),
	'title_reply_to'       => __( 'Leave a Reply to %s' ),
	'cancel_reply_link'    => __( 'Cancel reply' ),
	'label_submit'         => __( 'Post Comment' ),
);

Everything that is displayed as a section of the comment form area are defined in this one place, so they can be modded to your liking.
Remember, that unlike the fields, when you add new parts here it won’t change anything. The fields get pushed through for display, so these
are just settings that get used randomly.

Filters are not the only way to change this. The comment_form function can accept an array of arguments as different parameters, and each of those
will modify the form as well. If you wanted to make a simple modification to alter the wording of “leave a reply” – Then you could change the following:

<?php comment_form(array('title_reply'=>'Leave a Reply, And Voice Yourself')); ?>

This allows us to have a more simple way of making changes without all the hassle of filters, but remember that the filters can also be useful and more powerful for other operations.

And Yes, There is More!

While the comment form is generated there are also some action hooks being called. If you choose to put something into the form itself while it is being generated you can do so by using the following:

Action hooks.

• comment_form_before
• comment_form_must_log_in_after
• comment_form_top
• comment_form_logged_in_after
• comment_notes_before
• comment_form_before_fields
• comment_form_field_{$name} (a filter on each and every field, where {$name} is the key name of the field in the array)
• comment_form_after_fields
• comment_form_field_comment (a filter on the “comment_field” default setting, which contains the textarea for the comment)
• comment_form (action hook after the textarea, mainly for backward compatibility)
• comment_form_after
• comment_form_comments_closed

Styling with CSS

Don’t forget your styling! Each part of the comment form contain classes and id’s that can be styled using CSS. You can check out the HTML output and see all of the entries to style to your liking. The output is also semantic and contains label tags.

In Closing…

I myself have been using this new function in creating themes for WordPress 3.0 and have found it to be really useful. If used correctly you can accomplish many different results that can better help your coding of a comments form for yourself or a client. Play around with the code and have fun – Feel free to ask any questions. Enjoy!

You can preview the theme here or download djavu-shop work in progress theme here.

Tutorial Requirements

This tutorial assumes you are fairly comfortable using the following languages

• Html
• CSS
• jQuery
• PHP
• Wordpress

What will we learn in this tutorial?

• Creating a WP e-Commerce Theme
• Brief introduction to Wp e-Commerce file relationship
• A dynamic accordion slider (using jQuery Kwicks) that uses the company categories as content
• Playing with CSS3 to add a nice touch

Preview of our WP e-Commerce Theme

The theme I’m working on is named Djavu-shop. The main feature of this theme is it’s accordion slide on top of the products. This accordion displays the available categories and/or brands. Sliding over the accordion will bring a brief description of the category. A click on the link will display all the products of this category or brand.

A few fancy effects such as the buttons and shadows are made with CSS3.This tutorial is the first part of a suite of tutorials. For the first part we will only focus on the product page (see picture above).

Anatomy of a WP e-Commerce theme

Before getting stuck into the build process, it’s important to know how WP e-Commerce themes work. Open the default theme (wordpress-directory)/wp-content/plugins/ wp-e-commerce/themes/default), you’ll notice that it’s all contained in a folder, and there’s around 9 core files. Note the default theme is always loaded! Your theme only overrides the default theme behavior. In our theme we will include more files which allow extra customization.

Here’s an overview of the main files you’ll be working with:
cart_widget.php // Cart widget to be displayed on the sidebar for example
category_widget.php // Displays a widget with the categories and brands given in WP e-Commerce
default.css // Stylesheet of WP e-commerce. Original file is always loaded!
functions.php //
grid_view.php //
images/ // Folder containing WP e-Commerce related images
list_view.php //
products_page.php // Page where all products are displayed, per category, brand, etc…
shopping_cart_page.php // It’s the checkout page. Where the client puts his name, address etc…
single_product.php // Description of a product
Each of these files then contains a series of PHP template tags. These tags tell WP e-Commerce where to insert the dynamic content. A good example is the <?php  echo wpsc_the_product_title (); ?> tag, which will display your product title (or name if it is more understandable).A catalog of all available template tags are here . Probably you will find a tag that will do exactly what you want or if it is WordPress related try the WordPress Codex.

Create a new theme out of the default

The best way to start creating your own theme is to make a copy of the original theme. The default theme is in (wordpress-directory)/wp-content/plugins/ wp-e-commerce/themes/default. Duplicate the “default” folder and call it “djavu-shop”. After this open the new created theme folder and rename the default.css file to djavu-shop.css. Delete everything inside your css file (!) and put the following code inside of it.

<code>/*Theme Name: Djavu-Shop Theme
Theme URI: http://www.djavupixel.com
Description: Just another WP-e-commerce theme
Version: 0.2
Author: Leonel Hilario
Author URI: http://www.djavupixel.com*/</code>

Login to your wp-admin section and browse to Store>Settings>Presentation page, click on the drop-down list and djavu-shop theme should be in the list. Select it and save changes.
Create a “js” folder inside our theme. We will put some JavaScript inside. Download jQuery kwicks and put “jquery.kwicks-1.5.1.pack.js” on the js folder created before.
In this tutorial we will only work with djavu-shop.css and products_page.php. The next tutorials will focus on other files.

Reminder

Inside the “djavu-shop” folder you should have the following files:
cart_widget.php
category_widget.php
djavu-shop.css
functions.php
grid_view.php
images/
js/
list_view.php
products_page.php
shopping_cart_page.php
single_product.php

Preparing WP e-Commerce for our theme

Add 4 categories in WP e-Commerce

Login into your WordPress account and then click on Store>Categories. For this example we will create 4 categories “MacBook Pro”, “iMac”, “iPod Touch” and “iPhone”.  Add a small description and a picture to all categories! In our example we need 4 pictures of at least 320 pixel width and 320 pixel height (for this tutorial I used 4 pictures of 576×320).  Here below is an example screenshot and here you can download the pictures.

For the lazy one like me here are the products descriptions:

• MacBook Pro: The fastest, most powerful MacBook Pro ever. Three Times.
• iMac: The ultimate all-in-one. Turbocharged.
• iPod Touch: A great portable game player.
• iPhone 4: This changes everything. Again.

Configure presentation settings

Just copy the same settings as in the picture below. Please note that this picture is tall. Click on the image to open the full size

Let’s start building our theme!

Open products_page.php and go to line 35 it you be “<ul class=’wpsc_categories’>“. Delete line 35 to 48, just before the endif. Here we will add Kwicks for jQuery which is an accordion slider.

Here is the PHP/HTML code:

<code><ul class='kwicks'>
<?php wpsc_start_category_query(array('category_group'=>get_option('wpsc_default_category'), 'show_thumbnails'=> get_option('show_category_thumbnails'))); ?>
<li>
<div class="kwicks_inner">
<div class="image"><?php wpsc_print_category_image(); ?></div>
<div class="caption-title transparent_class">
<?php wpsc_print_category_name();?>
</div>
<div class="caption transparent_class">
<a href="<?php wpsc_print_category_url();?>" class="wpsc_category_link"><?php wpsc_print_category_name();?></a>
<?php if(get_option('wpsc_category_description')) :?>
<?php wpsc_print_category_description("<div class='wpsc_subcategory'>", "</div>"); ?>
<?php endif;?>
</div>
</div>
</li>
<?php wpsc_end_category_query(); ?>
</ul></code>

We created an unordered list and inside of it we put we kwicks_inner class. Inside we put the picture as we think it is more flexible than putting it on the CSS. In class caption-title we put the title of the category. On mouse over the class caption will be displayed which contains the title and the small description that we entered before (see Preparing WP e-Commerce for our theme). Now open djavu-shop.css and paste this CSS code:

• wpsc_print_category_image() prints the category image unscaled
• wpsc_print_category_name() prints the title of the category
• wpsc_print_category_description is the description we gave before to this category
• wpsc_print_category_url() link to the category content

<code>/* Product Page - The accordion (kwicks) effect on top of page */</code>

<code> </code>

<code>.kwicks {
list-style: none;
position: relative;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 1px solid #ddd;
box-shadow: 2px 2px 5px #ddd;
-moz-box-shadow: 2px 2px 5px #ddd;
-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 5px #ddd;
}</code>

<code> </code>

<code>#content #products_page_container ul{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

.kwicks li{
display: block;
overflow: hidden;
padding: 0;
cursor: pointer;
}

.kwicks li{
float: left;
width: 160px;
height: 320px;
margin-right: 5px;
}

.kwicks li a {
color: #fff;
}

.kwicks .kwicks_inner {
width: 320px;
}

.kwicks .image {
width: 90px;
height: 240px;
float: left;
}

.kwicks .caption-title {
background-color:#333333;
color:#CCCCCC;
float:left;
font-size:16px;
margin:40px 0 0 16px;
padding:3px 0 3px 16px;
text-align:left;
width:100%;
}

.kwicks .caption {
display: none;
text-align: center;
width: 320px;
height: 80px;
color: #ccc;
font-size: 16px;
float: right;
/* Playing with CSS - Adding some transparency */
background-color: #333;
}

.kwicks li.active .caption {
display: block;
}

.kwicks li.active .caption-title {
display: none;
}

</code>

<code>.transparent_class {
filter:alpha(opacity=70);
-moz-opacity:0.7;
-khtml-opacity: 0.7;
opacity: 0.7;
}</code>

So this was a bit of code. As you may read we added a few CSS shadows. The .kicks li.active class is fired when a mouse passes over the accordion. Here we hide the .caption-title to show the .caption which contains the title and description of this category. For more information about Kwicks please read the well documented page or if you want to try other nice effects.

Now we hase the HTML and CSS code and here is the JavaScript code that will create all the magic:

<code><script src="<?php echo $djavu_theme_url ?>/js/jquery.kwicks-1.5.1.pack.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready(function($){
$('.kwicks').kwicks({
max : 320,
spacing : 0
});
});
</script></code>

Note that you can put this at the top oder bottom of the page. I would recommend at the bottom of the page so that the layout loads faster.

Conclusion

This may look a bit difficult at first sight, but it’s not and it is the first part of a series of tutorials. Make a temporary install of WP e-Commerce and fill it with dummy content this will really help understanding how WP e-Commerce works and will also help to find errors. In our next tutorial we will focus on more general parts of the design as I am working on it ;-)

Preview the theme | Download files

Further Discussion

Have some thoughts of this theme? Give them to me, I’d love to hear them. This is as much a proof of concept as it is a tutorial. It introduces basic html, css, jQuery, PHP and the WP e-Commerce plugin. I’m sure there will be people out there who will feel that a perfect e-commerce start page is something else. If so, what would you do?

1. Stargaze

Great theme with a black background. If you have a blog about games, this is the theme for you.

2. PhotoBlog

This is a theme ideal if you want to showcase a bunch of pictures.

3. Freshblog

I really like this time because it’s simply + people these days love green!

4. AutoFocus+

Great theme if you want to showcase various photos. As you can see, once you hover over the photo you’ll see a description.

5. MobileWorld

Like the name suggests, this is a theme recommended for a blog on mobile phones.

6. Animes

Ideal theme for an anime website. Those people are really sweet.

7. Perfecta

Perfect theme! Mostly for portals.

8. Simplo

Simple 2-column theme. White background.

9. Magazine Basic

As the name suggests, a great theme for magazines.

10.Akylas

11. Gadget

12. Magazeen

13. Hybrid Theme

14. Side Blog

15. The Seven Five

16. Suffusion

17. The Morning After

18. Oxygenous

19. Orsted Theme

20. Ceres Theme

21. Polaris Theme

22. Dimenzion

23. Channel

24. Fashion Press

25. Meissa

26. Capella Theme

27. Carbonified

28. Structure

29. Mansion

30. Mistique

31. Boronic

32. Graphene

(screenshots provided instead of demo, click on the Theme Homepage to learn more)

33. Gold and Peach

34. Calotropis

(the site itself is in the theme)

35. Constructor

Example Site ZOMG How

As an example throughout this article I’ll be using my gaming site ZOMG How.
Its running WordPress 3, using The Source with no modifications, as its theme. I’ve also disabled plugins while working on it.

Heres the sites stats before I do any work to the site. Though I’ll mention the theme is a well coded, and the hosting is really great. Blacknight’s hosting and support is 1st class (Author’s personal opinion. We don’t endorse it. Check out Eleven2 which we recommend for all your hosting needs ).

Stats Before

Average loading time: 3.3+ seconds
Site size: 320+ kb

Not a slow site then, some might even call it a fast site! Though lets see how much this can be improved on.

Stats after

Loading time: 1.2 seconds (quickest tested)

Site size: >220kb

Note:

I haven’t shown exactly what improvement each tweak made to my site, as it was too hard to be exactly sure as I noticed there were too many variables. Sometimes it seemed tweaks actually slowed the site down, when really it was a family member using the internet connection for downloads. Or even the amount of traffic the site was getting. This is probably a sign my sites out reaching its hosting. I’ll be covering what do with regards to databases in Part 2.

Hosting

As we are aiming to cut down the loading time of your blog, these tips will work alot better if you get quality hosting got your blog, as one of the most important factors in a sites performance is its hosting. Free hosts are quite easy to find now, and though the thought of free hosting may seem great, but your visitors wont thank you for having a slow site.

The hosting plan you decide to go for should cover the amount of traffic you expect to get, though don’t aim for something our of your budget. though eve with a relatively small budget its possible to find quality hosting for around 5 Euro a month. Though the playing field seems level when it comes to hosting you do need to be careful when deciding who to host your site with.

Important factors when choosing your host, and hosting plan:

Make sure it supports WordPress

Aim for hosting with the following features as standard.

• PHP 5 , four will do though 5 is the newer and better supported version.
• MySQL
• .htaccess allows you to have added control over how your site runs.
• cron jobs

Decent bandwidth. 100GB is more than enough, though again unlimited isn’t necessarily good. As with storage.

Make sure your hosting plan has enough databases for the work you plan to carry out online, though a hosting plan with unlimited databases can be a bad idea as its more open to abuse from other people on the same server as you. Therefore slowing down or even crashing your site. Be sure to read up reviews on the hosting company too (though watch out for “review” with affiliate links). good fast support is always  useful for when you’re having a problem with your hosting. Ask around for people’s thoughts on certain hosts, they’ll more than likely steer you in the right direction!

Something else to note is the uptime of your host: Saad has written a great article on How to monitor your sites uptime

You may also be interested in setting up a CDN ( content delivery network) which stores your static files, (images, css) on different servers around the world. So depending on where a visitor is, the files are loaded from  the server closed to them.

Remove un needed Plugins

Remove any plugins that are unnecessary, a plugin should add to your site and benefit you or your readers. If your blog doesn’t need a certain plugin remove it, and  delete it too. Its only slowing down your site.

W3 Cache

Though I’ve included this very near to the top of the post (For anyone one who is too lazy to read the whole post ), I do recommend completing the other steps first, as they ensure your site is well-built from the ground up. And then this plugin will further increase your performance

W3 Cache has become an increasingly popular plugin in recent times, seemly replacing WP super Cache on many big sites too. You more than likely already have it installed on your site too! thought be sure to spend time tweaking its options as they can make a massive difference in the loading of your site, as well as the strain on your server.

This awesome plugin by Frederick will actually do alot of the work involved in speeding up your site too. The features list is too long to post without having the post overwhelmed by it too! So I’ll only run through the basic functions of it.  You can find the full feature list here

• Caching of (minified and compressed) pages and posts in memory or on disk
• Caching of (minified and compressed) CSS and JavaScript in memory, on disk or on CDN
• Caching of RSS (comments, page and site) feeds in memory or on disk
• Caching of search results pages (i.e. URIs with query string variables) in memory or on disk
• Caching of database objects in memory

Though this plugin covers alot of what you need to do. I think it best to have your site optimised as much as possible, as well as using W3 Cache.

Optimising your sites code

For the next few parts the following addons (sometimes known as extensions) will prove invaluable if you want to shave those seconds, ans possibly milliseconds off your loading times.

• Firefox you’ll need this for the addons I’ll recommend you to use
• Firebug though you’ll probably already have this if you develop with Firefox
• Page Speed From Google which allows you to analyze how long it takes the files that make up your site to load.
• YSlow Another great tool, from Yahoo this time, it’s quite like Page Speed

It’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with these great tools as they’ll be a great help improving your site performance and benchmarking the results.

Cut down on server requests

The overall idea of this is by reducing the amount of http requests and packet transfers you’re site will load quicker. There is a massive amount of ways to do this, I’ll cover a few of them in this post.

Instead of having 5 css files at 10kb each, it’s better to have just the one file weighing in at 50kb. Though the amount of data remains the same, the amount of http requests has been reduced by 5. This may not seem like a big improvement, but as the downloading of each file (and every file for your site) include a setup and teardown phase this really reduces loading times.

When you also take into consideration browsers only down load a certain amount of files from one domain at a time (by default I believe its 2 from both FireFox and Internet Explorer) it means that instead of downloading other files your visitors are busying going through all your css and javascript files. Its something to take into consideration, as it can make a massive different to your site.

Optimising CSS & JavaScript

With the above informatinon in mind aim to lower the amount of css and javascript files your theme has, for example include your reset.css in your style.css, and for wp-page-navi add it to your style.css too.

Some plugins add css or JavaScript to your theme It’s a good idea to filter these files out and add them to your own style.css or a javascript file.

Justin Tadlock has written a  useful guide on how to disable scripts and styles belonging to many plugins.

http://justintadlock.com/archives/2009/08/06/how-to-disable-scripts-and-styles

You can also minimise you css with CSS Drive’s CSS Compressor to lower your style sheets size by that extra bit. It all adds up!

Images

This includes images both in the themes design, and any you use in your posts.

Image optimisation
Yahoo has a great image optimisation service called Smush.it which optimising the size of images without reducing their quality. WP Smush.it adds these services via the smush.it API to WordPress

Replace images with CSS

With the rise in CSS3 we can now add alot of features to a design, that required images before. Think such as shadows and gradients. I’ll quickly give you an example of how to do each.

Adding a gradient with css

background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #0099ff 0%, #0066cc 100%);
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#0099ff), to(#0066cc));

Adding box shadow with css

-webkit-box-shadow: 0px 2px 5px rgba(0,0,0,0.7);-moz-box-shadow: 0px 2px 5px rgba(0,0,0,0.7);
box-shadow: 0px 2px 5px rgba(0,0,0,0.7);

CSS Sprites

Depending on the amount of images left in your sites design you may want to consider using a css sprite which will further decrease the amount of http requests when loading your site. Though this step does require alot of work. Sprite Me does make this job alot easier though.

After reading this you’re now on your way to a faster website!

Add WordPress 3.0 Menu Navigation (and make it backwards compatible!)

I’ve read a couple different tutorials on how to implement the new menu navigation, but none of them have been detailed or shown how to write backwards compatible code. So let’s do this right. Let’s start with the code, this should be pasted inside the “functions.php” file inside of open PHP code.

if (function_exists('wp_nav_menu')) {
add_action( 'init', 'register_my_menus' );
function register_my_menus() {
register_nav_menus(
array(
'Your-Menu' => __( 'Your Menu' ),
)
);
}
}

First, we have WordPress check to see if the function “wp_nav_menu” exists. We do this essentially to check if they’re using a WordPress version that supports the custom menu function, 3.0+. If the function does exist, the rest of the code registers your new menus. This makes your code backwards compatible for people still using older versions of WordPress. Although there are more steps you have to take to make your theme completely backwards compatible, but I’ll cover those steps in a second.

Next, if you look at the line that says ‘Your-Menu’ => __( ‘Your Menu’ ), this is where you will assign the name for your menu. You can also register multiple menus for different areas in your WordPress theme. For instance, if you have a “page menu” and a “category menu”, you would want to register two separate menus. This is done by simply duplicating the “Your-Menu” line, here’s an example:

if (function_exists('wp_nav_menu')) {
add_action( 'init', 'register_my_menus' );
function register_my_menus() {
register_nav_menus(
array(
'page-menu' => __( 'Page Menu' ),
'category-menu' => __( 'Category Menu' ),
)
);
}

As you can see from this example, we’ve registered two different menus. Now, when a user logs into their wp-admin page and clicks on “appearance / menus” they’ll see this box, where they can create and add menus to each registered and named menu location.

How To Integrate Custom Navigation Menus Inside Your WordPress Theme

In the following example, the code will first check if the user is using WordPress 3.0, if so it will use the “Page-Menu” 3.0 menu that we’ve registered previously in the functions.php. If not, it will default to the standard “wp_list_pages” syntax. You can also use this for a category bar by replacing “wp_list_pages” with “wp_list_categories”. Place this bit of code inside your theme wherever you want your specific menu(s) to appear:

if(function_exists('wp_nav_menu')){
wp_nav_menu( array( 'theme_location' => 'Page-Menu', 'container_class' => 'menuclass') );}
else{
wp_list_pages('title_li=&depth=0');
}

If you look at the area of code that says ‘container_class’ => ‘menuclass’, this is where you can set the CSS class ( “menuclass” in this case ) for the menu.

Using this code will ensure that you’ll have custom menus for WP 3.0 + users, and default to older WordPress standards if they’re using a sub 3.0 version. This is essential for anyone planning to release a theme to the public.

Adding Custom Background Images And Colors To Your Theme

The background feature in WordPress 3.0 lets you easily change the hexadecimal color of the background of your theme, or upload an image as the background. It also allows you to set how the background image is displayed. For instance, you can set the image to repeat horizontally, vertically, align left, center, right, scroll or fixed. This new functionality is awesome and very easy to implement into your theme. This code is fully backwards compatible with older versions of WordPress. If you were to just use “add_custom_background();” then your theme will error with any other version than 3.0. Add this code into your functions.php

if ( function_exists('add_custom_background') ) {
add_custom_background();
}

That’s it! Now when you log in, if you’re using 3.0+, you’ll see a “background” link under the Appearance tab. I hope you can take full advantage of these new WordPress 3.0 features, making them fully functional AND backwards compatible for all of your users.

For simple users,who don’t code a lot, plugins is the best way to secure your blog. They’re free, easily usable and safe. This post assembles 35 best plugins to make your blog bulletproof. They’re each devised for different purposes, so you will get the best protection from each field.

Secure Your Login

1. Semisecure Login Reimagined

Semisecure Login Reimagined increases the security of the login process by using a combination of public and secret-key encryption to encrypt the password on the client-side when a user logs in. JavaScript is required to enable encryption. It is most useful for situations where SSL is not available, but the administrator wishes to have some additional security measures in place without sacrificing convenience.

2. Stealth Login

This plugin allows you to create custom URLs for logging in, logging out, administration and registering for your WordPress blog. Instead of advertising your login URL on your homepage, you can create a URL of your choice that can be easier to remember than wp-login.php, for example you could set your login URL to http://www.myblog.com/login for an easy way to login to your website.

3. Login LockDown

Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range. This helps to prevent brute force password discovery.

4. Chap Secure Login

Whenever you try to login into your website, you can use this plugin to transmit your password encrypted. The encryption process is done by the Chap protocol. By activating the Chap Secure Login plugin, the only information transmitted unencrypted is the username, password is hidden with a random number (nonce) generated by the session – and opportunely transformed by the MD5 algorithm. In the first login there will be an error, but don’t worry is only a technical error. Indeed in the next login’s operation, if the values are correct, there will not be errors.

Admin Area

1. Admin SSL

Admin SSL secures login page, admin area, posts, pages – whatever you want – using Private or Shared SSL. Once you have activated the plugin, you have to go to the Admin SSL config page to enable SSL.

Database

1. WP-DB-Backup

WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to back up your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database.

2. Remote Database Backup

This plugin creates SQL dumps of your WordPress database. It is based on the WordPress Database Backup plugin (http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup) – but it removes some of the security restrictions in the plugin to enable automated remote backups. You still need the admin user name and password to do a remote backup.

3. WP-DB Manager

This plugin allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. It supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

4. BackUpWordPress

BackUpWordPress is a backup & recovery suite for your WordPress website. This plugin allows you to back up database tables as well as files and comes with a rich set of options.

5. Wordpress 1 Click EZ Backup

EZ Backup has been turned into a simple one click operation. Click the button and watch your files and database backup be created. You can create a backup of all your webspace files or backup just your wp-content folder all from this one plugin. Unlike the Full EZ Backup plugin this one does not require any special information such as usernames or passwords etc. This plugin costs $5.

6. myEASYbackup

This plugin allows you to back up, restore, migrate your WordPress installation, both files and mySQL tables with a single click. When performing a backup, myEASYbackup creates a compressed data set file that can be stored outside the WordPress installation directory. A list of all data sets on the server is also logged in the admin area.

Spam

1. Antispam Bee

AntispamBee protects blogs from digital rubbish. It is made up of sophisticated techniques and analyzes comments including pings. Also, for reasons of data privacy, the use of AntispamBee is a safe solution, as it is anonymous and registration-free.

2. NoSpamNX

NoSpamNX is the successor of Yawasp (Yet Another WordPress antispam plugin) and is a plugin to protect against automated comment spam (spambots). While Yawasp changed the names of the form fields in the comment template, NoSpamNX works without these modifications, but is equally effective. By eliminating the need for modifications the form field need maximum compatibility with other WordPress plugins or browser is ensured.

3. Akismet

Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.

4. Math Comment Spam Protection

Asks the visitor making the comment to answer a simple math question. This is intended to prove that the visitor is a human being and not a spam robot. Example of such question: What is the sum of 2 and 9?

5. Defensio Anti-Spam

Defensio is an advanced spam filtering web service that learns and adapts to your behaviors and those of your readers. Advanced features such as support for OpenID, detailed statistics, charts, RSS feed of our comments (innocent and spam) and counter widget are also available.

6. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam

Adds CAPTCHA anti-spam methods to WordPress on the comment form, registration form, login, or all. In order to post comments or register, users will have to type in the code shown on the image. This prevents spam from automated bots. Adds security. Works great with Akismet. Also is fully WP, WPMU, and BuddyPress compatible.

7. reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA is an anti-spam method originating from Carnegie Mellon University which uses CAPTCHAs in a genius way. Instead of randomly generating useless characters which users grow tired of continuously typing in, risking the possibility that spammers will eventually write sophisticated spam bots which use OCR libraries to read the characters, reCAPTCHA uses a different approach.

8. Blackhole

Blackhole is a trap for bad bots. The concept is simple: include a hidden link to a robots.txt-forbidden directory somewhere on your pages. Bots that ignore or disobey your robots rules will crawl the link and fall into the trap, which then performs a WHOIS Lookup and records the event in the blackhole data file. Once added to the blacklist data file, bad bots immediately are denied access to your site.

9. Invisible Defender

This plugin protects registration, login and comment forms from spambots by adding two extra fields hidden by CSS. This approach gave me 100% anti-spam protection on one of my sites.

Other

1. Secure WordPress

Little help to secure your WordPress installation. This plugin removes error information on login page, adds index.html to plugin directory, removes the wp-version, except in admin area.

2. WP Security Scan

This plugin will scan your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and it will suggest some corrective actions.

3. AskApache Password Protect

This plugin doesn’t control WordPress or mess with your database, instead it utilizes fast, tried-and-true built-in Security features to add multiple layers of security to your blog. This plugin is specifically designed and regularly updated specifically to stop automated and unskilled attackers attempts to exploit vulnerabilities on your blog resulting in a hacked site.

4. TAC (Theme Authenticity Checker)

TAC stands for Theme Authenticity Checker. Currently, TAC searches the source files of every installed theme for signs of malicious code. If such code is found, TAC displays the path to the theme file, the line number, and a small snippet of the suspect code. As of v1.3  TAC also searches for and displays static links.

5. HTTP Authentication

The HTTP Authentication plugin allows you to use existing means of authenticating people to WordPress. This includes Apache’s basic HTTP authentication module and many others.

6. AntiVirus

Viruses, worms and malware exist for WordPress and could easily attack your WordPress installation. AntiVirus for WordPress monitors malicious injections and warns you of any possible attacks. It also has multilingual support.

7. Secure Files

This plugin allows you to upload and download files from outside of your web document root for security purposes. It can be used to can restrict file downloads to users that are logged in, or have a certain user level.

8. Replace WP-Version

Security your WordPress-Installation and eliminate or replace your wp-version and database-version on easy way with a small plugin. If you’re running an older version of WordPress, anyone can view source to see what attacks might work against your blog. This plugin replaces the WP-version with a random string < WP 2.4 and eliminate WP-version > WP 2.4.

9. WP Email Guard

WP Email Guard protects your email addresses included on any post or page from being crawled by spammers. It converts every email written within your post body into a JavaScript code, so the emails is readable and can be clicked by humans only. Spammers can’t crawl JavaScript.

10. WordPress File Monitor

Monitors your WordPress installation for added/deleted/changed files. When a change is detected an email alert can be sent to a specified address.

11. WP Dephorm

WP-Dephorm protects your users from the prying eyes of phorm. This is achieved by setting a cookie to opt out of the phorm information mining. Your blog viewers will not have their information stored and used in marketing campaigns whilst viewing your site.

12. WordPress Firewall

This WordPress plugin investigates web requests with simple WordPress-specific heuristics to identify and stop most obvious attacks. There exist a few powerful generic modules that do this; but they’re not always installed on web servers, and difficult to configure.

13. Secure Contact

SecureContact is a drop in form for users to contact you, based on the WP Contact Form plugin by Ryan Duff. It offers enhanced security by using captcha images.

14. Fast and Secure Contact Form

Fast and secure contact form for WordPress. This contact form lets your visitors send you a quick E-mail message. Blocks all common spammer tactics. Spam is no longer a problem. Includes a CAPTCHA and Akismet support. Additionally, the plugin has a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. Super customizable.

15. Ultimate Security Check

The Ultimate Security Check plugin helps you identify security problems with your WordPress installation. It scans your blog for hundreds of known threats, then give you a security “grade” based on how well you have protected yourself.

16. Content Security Policy

Content Security Policy prevents content injection attacks by allowing admins to specify which sites they trust to serve JavaScript and other types of content in their site. Any content which is not explicitly allowed by the policy will be blocked from loading.

Further Resources

• Top 10 ways to stop spam in WordPress
• WordPress Security Tips and Hacks
• 12 Essential Security Tips and Hacks for WordPress
• 13 Vital Tips and Hacks to Protect Your WordPress Admin Area
• 20+ Powerful WordPress Security Plugins and Some Tips and Tricks
• 11 Ways To Secure Your WordPress Blog
• 10 Things to do After Installing WordPress

1. inFocus ($37)

inFocus is a Powerful Professional Premium WordPress theme. It comes with an impressive fully customizable jQuery homepage slider with 3 different staging effects.

Whether you’re a WordPress pro or just a beginner, this theme has you covered. With a huge custom back-end area you have complete control over the look and style of your theme. Add images to your homepage slider, add as many sidebar widgets as you like, pull in your latest tweet from Twitter and much much more, all without having to touch a single line of code!

For your convenience inFoucs comes with 10 skins to choose from. Click on color name below for a full preview. Also below is a full list of inFocus’s features.

Some features:

• jQuery Slider
• Custom Sidebars
• Custom Widgets
• Portfolio Gallery
• Huge Tabbed Admin Area
• Layered PSDs are included for easy modification

2. Display 3 in 1 ($42)

Display is a Wordpress theme, best suited for business and portfolio sites. It comes with a fantastic 3D Image slideshow that can be controlled from your backend with a custom tool. The theme has a huge wordpress custom backend (8 additional Admin Pages) that make customization of the theme easy for those who don’t know much about coding or Wordpress. Display also has 3 fantastic skins to choose from.

Some Features:

• Valid XHTM Strict1.0 and CSS 2 .1, tableless Design
• Multiple Page templates
• jQuery Support
• Huge admin area to customize the theme from your Wordpress backend

3. Unite ($37)

Unite is a merger of crisp design and powerful communication. It takes a clean, organized approach to presenting content so it’s easier to find what you want.

This is a premium WordPress theme with 5 pre-made skins including a dark theme and textured background theme. The theme is easy to modify and ready to be up and running out of the box. The PSD files included have been customized to allow fast skinning.

Some features:

4. Luxury ($32)

Luxury is a clean, feature packed Wordpress theme designed to make your life easier. You can check out video tutorial how to set up custom home page.

Some features:

5. Prosto ($37)

Prosto is a professional developed, clean designed Wordpress Theme with powerful CMS features. That is well suited for personal portfolio, blog, or any kind of business website. Easy to customize with extended admin panel for any kind of users. You can simply control your theme look and content without any special knowledge. Setup layout and choose custom sidebar for each page. Make unlimited portfolios in 3 different layouts that is give you a great flexibility and much more.

Some features:

• Unlimited sidebars
• Unlimited portfolios
• Translation ready
• WP3 support
• Layered .PSD files included
• Customer support

6. Centita ($27)

Centita is Wordpress Theme with minimalist and elegant look that suitable for your professional corporate website, easy to customize and rich of features.

Some features:

• jQuery image slideshow
• Widget ready
• Built in AJAX contact form
• Customizable homepage and sidebar area
• 7 layered PSD files included

7. Pandora ($32)

Pandora is a WordPress Template, designed to promote anything from a corporate business to a portfolio site.

Some features:

• Valid XHTML Strict 1.0 and CSS 2 .1, table-less layout, 960 Grid System
• jQuery Support
• Code optimized for getting the top results in the Search Engines
• WordPress related Features
• All PSD files are included
• Documentation Included

8. Hyperion ($37)

Hyperion is a clean and stylish Wordpress Theme well suited for any business, portfolio, blogger, or anyone needing a beautiful website. Hyperion comes with 3 jquery slideshows, many page templates, 3 widget areas, over 80 theme options, and 6 color styles, 2 custom widgets for your Twitter feed and Flickr images.

9. BossPress ($32)

BossPress is a Wordpress theme which is suitable for web developers, designers, photographers and small corporates.

Some features:

• Full width showcase
• Absolute positioned logo & navigation
• Cool portfolio page
• Full widget ready
• Black & white, 2 theme color option

10. Barely Corporate ($32)

Barely Corporate is a clean Wordpress theme that couldn’t be more easy to use. With a beautiful exterior and a backend that gives you ultimate versatility and freedom, Barely Corporate will have your website up and running in no time.

It may look similar on the outside with just a few visual tweeks, but on the inside it’s the smoothest Wordpress theme you’ve ever used. The main goal was to give you the maximum amount of control, but at the same time not throw a million options and meta boxes in your face. Barely Corporate’s new framework will truly allow you to get that new website up and running for you or your client successfully without all the hassle.

Some features:

• 12 styles
• 4 dynamic widget areas
• Full lightbox integration in pages and posts, including

  shortcode

• Insert jQuery slideshows in your pages and posts with a simple shortcode
• Unlimited portfolio pages, with flash and video capability
• Wordpress 3 navigation menus supported

11. Realist ($27)

This is woking right out of the box. Make your own property listings that can be searched, and filtered. This is a property website ready to go!

Some features:

• Colour variations
• Smart searching
• Fading banner
• Property previews
• Automatic image attachment
• Google maps

12. Universal Business ($27)

Widgets loaded template with an extremely easy configuration of the homepage, header, footer, sidebar and many others. You can launch a nice an clean customer’s website in no time. Our goal was to create a template that you will be able to use for any client you have, no matter if you are creating a car business website, hotel website or website for carpenters. You can use it for your own company as well.

Some features:

• Valid XHTM Strict1.0 and CSS 2 .1, tableless design
• Multiple templates
• jQuery elements
• Simple administration
• PSDs included

13. Vision ($37)

Vision is a Wordpress theme designed with corporate businesses  in mind. It has a custom CMS integrated into the Wordpress administration area that allows you to build a fully functional professional website in minutes. The theme is also well suited for online portfolios and blogs.

Some features:

• PDF documentation with screenshots to help you through the installation and customization process
• Lots of Video Tutorials to help you install and customize the theme
• 5 Skins with one layered PSD file for the light skin
• Full width home page jQuery slider with fading animation supporting images up to 1920px width
• CSS and jQuery drop down Menu
• Full width page template
• 125×125 ads ready

14. BVD – Beautiful Website Design ($37)

The WP version of very popular BVD – Beautiful Website Design. Any modern web browser will make this theme work with no issues! PC or Mac system does not make the difference as well.

Some features:

• jQuery Slider
• Auto resizable thumbnails
• Built In Twitter widget
• Footer widgetized
• Sidebar widgetized

15. Real Estate ($27)

Real Estate Theme is a professional Wordpress Template, that is suitable for real estate type websites or for showcasing your work and/or products. The Real Estate Theme comes with an easy to set up “featured” image slider (with it’s own admin options), a colour switcher with 3 colour schemes and a built-in contact form.

Some features:

• Supports Wordpress 3.0 menus
• Theme admin panel
• Three separate colour schemes
• Built-in contact form
• Share/social network buttons on posts and single page
• Add recent Twitter and Flickr posts to your homepage
• Google analytics integration

16. Silver Business ($32)

SilverBusiness is a premium wordpress template designed for companies, products, or individuals. It provides great solution for small businesses, because it combines great corporate design with functionality of WordPress. It comes jam packed with a lot of features. This site will really make you stand out!

Some features:

• jQuery powered top rotator, which can be adjusted simply via wordpress admin
• Lavalamp jquery menu
• Cufom powered custom heading in Anivers font
• Featured services section which can be adjusted via wordpress admin, or turned off
• Valid XHTML 1 .0 Strict and CSS
• PSD files included

17. Web Lider ($32)

WebLider is a Simple And Elegant WebSite Template. It is great to emphasize and present your products and your business.

The theme is easy to customize- options settings are included. This means that the options (such as images in slider, pages to show etc.) can be set in admin panel, without the need to edit the code.

The theme is widget ready. It has multiple dynamic sidebars for the different pages and widgets can be easy dragged and dropped into them from the admin panel.

Some features:

• Featured Stylish Images Slider on the homepage
• Multiple Dynamic(widget aware) Sidebars included
• Tableless Design
• Works and looks similar in all major browsers
• Working jQuery/PHP contact form with validation

18. C3 ($37)

Beautiful theme with a complex and customizable WP framework on top of it. Taking aside the unique, massive back end CMS , that gives you almost unending possibilities of making changes for your needs we’ve added something that no one on Theme Forest has so far: One click auto install.

Sit back, relax, drink your coffee, and watch how our work frame does its magic and auto installs the Creative Juice WP theme to the version that you see on the live preview. This theme requires php 5.0

Some features:

• One click auto install
• Jquery image slideshow
• Dynamic sidebar widget creation
• Feedburner ready
• Cross browser compatible

19. Centivio ($27)

Centivio is clean web 2.0 style wordpress theme for business, company and corporate website. This theme comes with 10 color options for this theme for you can easily choose the color base on your business brand.

Some features:

• 10 color options
• jQuery Cycle for rotate images in the homepage
• jQuery Sliding Box in the portfolio page
• 10 page template with its own right sidebar position
• Home alternative with cu3er 3D Slider and 5 sidebar position

20. Durable 5 in 1 ($32)

Some features:

• The Homepage includes Custom Cu3er Slider with ease of editing and changing category option. You can modify it by setting things via admin cu3er options
• Homepage 3 columns with 3 pages Option which can be selected via Admin
• Highly customized About Page, Blog Page, Portfolio Page and Services Page, you are able to edit the coding if needed as i have well commented the coding
• Multilevel Dropdown Menu by Superfish
• Portfolio page with prettyphoto mixed order for video options
• Multilevel threaded comment lists
• Custom Page selection for welcome content

21. Greatio ($32)

Greatio is a Premium Wordpress Theme, best suited for Business, Portfolio, Interior and Architecture sites. It comes with some JQuery scripts which makes it better view. Also 7 color theme available (Red, Violet, Green, Blue, Orange, White and Wood).

Some features:

• Valid xHTML
• Crossbrowser compatible
• Cufon font replacement
• 7 different styles (added 4 more color variations)
• 3 different homepage sliders
• Portfolio pages with LightBox

22. TekNium ($22)

TekNium is a clean modern business wordpress theme.

Some features:

• Valid xHTML/CSS
• jQuery image slider
• Admin options page
• Option to show latest news and blog posts on home page
• Widget ready

23. Koncept 10 in 1 ($32)

This theme has all the popular and common features which used by the current trend sites and more over this site has a lots of features built and customized user friendly and easy loading less weight hand coded and full functionality. Works in all the major browsers. For more details see features list below.

Some features:

• 2 Columns CSS Layout
• Sidebar Widget ready Layout
• Highly customized About Page, Blog Page, Portfolio Page and Services Page, you are able to edit each block as I have well commented the coding.
• Multilevel Dropdown Menu by Superfish.
• Portfolio page with full ease of customizing options.
• Switch Colors From Admin Theme Option Page

24. Universum ($27)

Universum is clean and modern template designed for companies, small business and individuals. It combines fresh modern look with great functionality. It is really easy to set – up and comes with in-depth help file. Purchase it now and impress your customers today.

Some features:

25. New Sense ($32)

NewSense is a Simple And Clean Business WordPress Theme. It’s great for any business and is designed in corporative and modern style. The home page is designed to emphasize your products.

The theme is easy to customize- options settings are included. This means that the options (such as images in slider, categories to show etc.) can be set in admin panel, without the need to edit the code.

The theme is widget ready. It has a dynamic sidebar and widgets can be easy dragged and dropped into it from the admin panel. The theme also goes with 3 styles- blue, orange and green and it is very easy to change between each other from the admin panel.

Some features:

• Featured Stylish Images Slider on the homepage
• Dropdown menu support
• Tableless Design
• Advanced Admin Panel
• Working jQuery/PHP contact form with validation
• 7 PSD Files included

26. Blitz ($32)

Blitz is a premium business wordpress theme that suitable for business, company, corporate and portfolio. The design is clean and professional and comes with 5 color variations.

Some features:

27. Complexity ($37)

Complexity is a simple business and portfolio theme that is easy to customize and will get you or your client’s website up and running in no time. It’s everything it’s name isn’t, which is simple. This theme takes advantage of the power of Wordpress 3 with the use of custom post types, navigation menus, background image control, post thumbnails, and much more.

Some features:

• 12 unique styles
• 5 dynamic widget areas
• Full lightbox integration in pages and posts, including

  shortcode

• Timthumb image cropping with easy on/off setting
• Unlimited portfolio pages, with flash and video capability
• Wordpress 3 navigation menus supported
• 6 Page Templates

28. Web Explorer ($32)

WebExplorer is a simple and elegant premium business WordPress theme. It’s great for any business and personal sites.

The theme is easy to customize- options settings are included. This means that the options (such as images in slider, pages to show etc.) can be set in admin panel, without the need to edit the code.

The theme is widget ready. It has multiple dynamic sidebars for the different pages and widgets can be easy dragged and dropped into them from the admin panel.

Some features:

• 3 Featured Stylish Sliders on the homepage
• Multiple Dynamic (widget aware) Sidebars included
• Advanced Admin Panel
• Very descriptive help file with screen shots and examples
• Working AJAX contact form with validation
• 15 PSD Files included

29. Vivee ($32)

Vivee is clean web 2.0 style web template that suiable for business, company, corporate and portfolio website. There are 7 color version of this template.

Some features:

• 7 Color Variations
• jQuery Cycle
• 10 Pages Template with its own sidebar position
• Portfolio page with jQuery Lytebox
• Blog Page with custom category

30. Small Business ($32)

Small Business Theme is perfectly suited for business or portfolio site types. The theme has classic blog features as well as special portfolio section for displaying works or products.

The built-in options panel (over 20 options), provides advanced theme customization to fit your or client requests.

Update 1.4 brings support for Wordpress 3.0. The theme is backward compatible with Wordpress 2.9 but I highly encourage you to upgrade to Wordpress 3.0+ version as theme setup is much easier, only 4 steps! The new custom menus are supported and there is support for Google Analytics as well (or any other script/html that you want to add before end of the page). There is also jquery.easing plugin file permission fix that was causing trouble with slider.

Some features:

• Portfolio and Blog Functions (option for disabling blog feature)
• Easy Installation
• Easy Customization
• XHTML 1 .0 Strict Valid
• 5 Custom Widgets
• No Boring Custom Fields

31. Vanilla ($27)

Vanilla Wordpress CMS Website Template is best suited for corporate, Business and Personal websites along with Blog facility

Some features:

• Auto thumbnail resize
• Dropdown menu for categories and pages
• Well commented code for all pages.
• Well documention for speed and easing options customization for Featured Projects Slider
• Valid XHTML and CSS
• Designed with “960 GRID ” System
• Read me file included for easy customization.

32. Andromeda ($37)

Andromeda is a clean theme with functional CMS and unique features. A massive pack of backend CMS options was created for this product to give you full control while creating and editing the site and its features. The main idea behind this theme was to create a something clean and simple, useful, nice looking and easy to modify.

Some features:

• 3 Skins: Light Grey, Dark Grey and Mixed
• 6 custom option modules
• 12 widgets (8 custom) and unlimited sidebars
• Accordion slider
• Full control over sliders via CMS Options
• Working AJAX contact form
• Extensive documentation PDF file included

33. Transformer ($27)

Transformer is a (CMS) wordpress theme that includes all the needed features that would give your website a great look with many administrative options to help you customize as you wish. For example, you can choose one of two scrollable styles and manage scrollable options like effects, speed, autoscroll and much more.

Some features:

34. Colosseum ($37)

Colosseum is the ultimate fusion of wordpress, creativity and great futures. This premium theme can be used for just about anything, from corporate websites to personal portfolios. It uses a lot of advanced css3 and jQuery effects, yet it still works on browsers that don’t support it.

Some features:

35. Freshfolio ($32)

Freshfolio is a Wordpress theme with a clean interface and awesome jQuery custom slideshow perfect for use with portfolio and business websites.

Some features:

36. Corporate Folio ($27)

CorporateFolio is an elegant theme aimed at companies who need a quick and serious web presence setup. The homepage is perfectly suited to showcase your services, previous work or products while the blog is there to publish important company news and promote engagement through it.

Some features:

• Valid code
• Custom homepage
• Content Slider (either pages or posts)
• Portfolio page template
• 7 widgetised areas
• Auto Image resizing

37. Explict ($37)

Some features:

• All Fundamental Page Templates (main page, full-width page, search results, 404, contact, archives, author pages, post pages)
• 6 Additional Page Templates (blog, 3 portfolios, left sidebar page, right sidebar page)
• Animated portfolio with category filtering
• 30+ custom easy to use Shortcodes
• Accordion Content Slider
• Different Sidebar Per Post/Page
• Layered PSD files

38. Kinetic 3 in 1 ($37)

Kinetic Template has been designed to suit any kind of wordpress site. It comes with 3 color schemes at the moment, 2 Image sliders and several page templates.

The theme provides total control over your content and lets you decide how you want to show your site’s content to your visitors. However, author is always open for suggestions for more features or designs.

Some features:

39. Good Business ($37)

Good Business is a very clean Premium Business Wordpress theme. It can be use for 1 or 2 column layout. Has a beautiful sidebar navigation and breadcrumbs of every inside page for you to easy to navigate.

Good Business comes with an impressive fully customizable jQuery and 3D slider, it has a 6 color style variation. This wordpress theme is fully customizable and well documented. Whether you’re a WordPress pro or just a beginner, this theme has you covered. With a huge custom back end area you have complete control over the look and style of your theme.

Some features:

• Conform to W3C standards
• 2 Homepage sliders
• 6 Page templates
• Widgets sidebars
• Ajax Contact Form
• Huge Tabbed Admin Area
• PSD files included
• Extensive Documentation Included

40. Podium ($32)

Podium is clean and elegant business wordpress theme that can be switched as business, corporate, portfolio and blogging theme. there are 7 skins option available, also two slideshow type (3D and jQuery slideshow) and two homepage layout.

Some features:

• 7 skins option
• 2 slideshow style
• Custom Post type for slideshow
• Support Wordpress 3.0 Menu System
• Portfolio page with Pop up Lightbox
• Widgetable homepage and footer area
• Valid XHTML /CSS
• Poweful Admin Theme Options
• PSD Files included
• Well Documented

41. Novatorix 10 in 1 ($37)

Novatorix is a Wordpress Theme, best suited for Business and Portfolio sites. It comes with a fantastic 3D Image slideshow that can be controlled from your backend with a custom tool. The Theme has a huge wordpress custom backend (7 different option pages) that make customization of the Theme easy for those who don’t know much about coding or wordpress.

Some features:

42. Aurora ($32)

The Aurora WordPress version is author’s best project ever! Business site, Blog and Portfolio in one. Layout is designed for companys which love celan, crispy and professional designs. Each page was designed step by step with details. The package contains 6 full pages with 10 color schemes!

Some features:

43. Furu ($37)

Some features:

• All Fundamental Page Templates (main page, full-width page, search results, 404, contact, archives, author pages, post pages)
• 6 Additional Page Templates (blog, 3 portfolios, left sidebar page, right sidebar page)
• 30 custom easy to use Shortcodes
• Custom Twitter Updates Widget
• Contact Form Widget with all possible fields
• Threaded comments ready
• 100% Valid XHTML
• Layered PSD files

44. Dabbe ($27)

Some features:

45. Good Waves ($32)

Goodwaves is a neat business and portfolio wordpress theme built to help you present your company, service or product in the easiest and most convenient way. It has an awesome 3D Image slider as well as some jQuery goodness to spice things up. The theme comes with an easy to understand and configure wordpress backend panel for quick customization and installation

Some features:

46. Avisio ($37)

Avisio is a Wordpress theme that takes advantage with all the amazing new wordpress 3 features and is best suited for Portfolio and Business Websites. It has the ability to create unique skins right from your backend without the need to edit anything within your CSS files whith just a few mouse clicks and also offers the option to install content automatically when setting up the theme, so it will look like the theme preview.

Some features:

47. Awesome Press ($27)

Some features:

48. Quambizz ($27)

Quambizz is an ultra clean and easy to use wordpress theme which can be used for a corporate purposes or if you want to set up a portfolio or even if you want a web site to represent your application.

Do you like a clean style then this theme will be perfect for you. The theme comes with 3 color styles, a PSD for the slider and a PSD for the portfolio image preview, and many more cool features such as a theme admin panel to set up the homepage, featured category, portfolio category and more.

Some features:

49. Biz ($27)

Biz Template is clean style wordpress theme for business, company and corporate website. There are 3 color option for this theme that you can directly choose via “theme options” feature in the admin area.

This theme comes with 8 page templates with its own sidebar widget. The pages template are Home, About, Services, Blog, Portfolio, Contact, Extra1 and Extra2.

Some features:

50. Crescento ($37)

This site is best suitable for a business, Company, Blog, Portfolio, or freelancer Portfolio website as well. Theme works in all the major browsers, and has massive features to use for your next projects. For most of the part you can just follow the HTML with commented codes. The font used for the logo in case you are wondering is Myriad Pro, which comes with your Adobe Photoshop Installation. You can create new logo using the PSD file included.

Some features:

Recently, I’ve started working on my portfolio WordPress theme, and I needed to define different information for each project/template, like price, colors, style, etc. For this thing, I needed to create three more taxonomies which are looking like this:

Creating a new taxonomy

This is as simple as it is to look at the picture above. All you have to do is to copy the code below, in your functions.php. If your theme doesn’t have one, which I don’t think it hasn’t already one, just create the file yourself. Now, this is the code you have to write for each taxonomy you are creating:

<?php

register_taxonomy('test', 'post', array(
'hierarchical' => false,  'label' => 'test',
'query_var' => true, 'rewrite' => true));

?>

Just replace “test” with the name of the taxonomy you wish to create. That’s how you create custom taxonomies. The’ll just appear in the Dashboard below the Post Tags.

Using the new taxonomies

We have created them, but as well as tags and categories, you need some code if you want to output them in your article. That’s a little code snippet that goes into your WordPress loop, just like the post tags and categories:

<?php echo get_the_term_list($post->ID, 'people', 'People: ', ', ', ''); ?>

See it yourself

Below are some examples of what we were talking about in this tutorial:

• PopCritics.com is using custom taxonomies to output different details about the movies. See the Genre(s), Actor(s), etc…
• TypeChart.com is another great example of WordPress site that is making good use of taxonomies for finding font styling. You can see that in the sidebar.
• Soh Tanaka’s portfolio is also using taxonomies to output details on projects. Observe the Client, Date, URL, Tasks, etc…

I hope you have understood what taxonomies are. I’m sure you have heard about them before, but never wondered what they are, but what about using them for creating a nice t-shirt store?

Using Custom Taxonomies to create a T-shirt store

Now that you have learned how to use custom taxonomies, we will use them for creating a T-shirt store. This won’t be a fully functional one, we will just build up the part that is using custom taxonomies.

1. Preparations

First of all we need a theme. We will use the new WordPress 3.0 default theme, called Twenty Ten. In order to get this theme and have it properly working, you need to download WordPredd 3.0 RC2. To get this version, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and the last one should be WP 3.0 RC2. Do not be worried working with WP 3.0, it has the same template tags.

Next, you will need a local server, so the best way to create it, is using WAMP, or just build up your own environment following this previous tutorial on 1stWebDesigner.

Now that you have your local server up and running, just install WordPress.

2. Editing the Twenty Ten theme

Now we need to create our custom taxonomies. First of all, think about what custom taxonomies you will need. For a T-shirt store we need to provide:

• size details
• price
• brand

So, just open up the Twenty Ten functions.php file and create those custom taxonomies. I suggest to write the code at the end of the file for avoiding to break the default functions that the theme has. You can see the code that you will need and as It is, without any PHP tags:

// Custom taxonomy for Size
register_taxonomy('Size', 'post',  array(
'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => 'Size',
'query_var' =>  true, 'rewrite' => true));

// Custom taxonomy for Price
register_taxonomy('Price', 'post',  array(
'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => 'Price',
'query_var'  => true, 'rewrite' => true));

// Custom taxonomy for Brand
register_taxonomy('Brand', 'post',  array(
'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => 'Brand',
'query_var'  => true, 'rewrite' => true));

After creating the custom taxonomies, we need to modify the loop too. So this will be a little difficult, because you need to take care to not break any of the theme’s code. Don’t worry, I’ll guide you through this.

Modifying the loop. Open up the index.php file from the 2010 theme. After you have opened it, you will see a tag that is calling the loop.php file:

<?php
 /* Run the loop to output the posts.
 * If you want to  overload this in a child theme then include a file
 * called  loop-index.php and that will be used instead.
 */
 get_template_part( 'loop', 'index' );
 ?>

We will need to completely delete this, and create a  our own loop. So, instead loop tag, copy and paste this following code:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();  ?>
<div id="post-<?<span class=">
<pre><?php the_ID(); ?>" ></pre>
</div>
 <h1><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"></a>
<div>
 <!--Insert custom field and custom taxonomies code here-->
<pre><?php wp_link_pages( array( 'before' =>  '</pre>
<div>' . __( 'Pages:', 'twentyten' ), 'after' =>  '</div>
' ) ); ?>
 </div><!-- .entry-content  -->
</div>
<pre><?php endwhile; else: ?></pre>
<div id="post-<?<span class=">
<pre><?php the_ID(); ?>" ></pre>
</div>
 <h1  class="entry-title">Nothing here...</h1>
<div  class="entry-content">
Sorry, no T-shirts avaiable for  sale. Try coming back later.
 </div><!--  .entry-content -->
</div>
<?php endif; ?>

This is the loop that we will use. The ID and class are some theme specific styles. You have to notice that I have removed the meta data. Now, we will need to add the codes that will retrieve our custom taxonomies and we will need to make use of custom fields too, to retrieve t-shirt thumbnail. Add them exactly where you see the HTML comment in the above code. Now, here’s the code that we need:

<img src="ID, 'post-icon', true);  ?>" alt="Icon for Post #"  />
<ul>
<li><?php echo get_the_term_list($post->ID,  'Size', 'Size: ', ', ', ''); ?></li>
<li><?php echo  get_the_term_list($post->ID, 'Price', 'Price: ', ', ', '');  ?></li>
<li><?php echo get_the_term_list($post->ID,  'Brand', 'Brand: ', ', ', ''); ?></li>
</ul>

<?php the_content(); ?>

Notice that the custom field name is “thumb”. For using this custom field you need to create a new one with the name thumb, and the value of it is the link to your thumb. Now that we have everything set, what about trying to publish a sample post. Take a look at mine:

Conclusion

So, you have learned how to use custom taxonomies, and you have created a little T-shirt store. Well, not a fully functional one, but it’s a good start :)

If you have any questions regarding this tutorial please do not hesitate to ask via comments. I’ll try to solve all your problems. Thank you!

Despite all this BuddyPress isn’t too hard to set up and use. In its early days a BuddyPress install required WPMU to run on, although since 1.2 that’s all changed, as BuddyPress can now run on a single WordPress install.

BuddyPress adds the following functionality to WordPress.

Activity Streams: Members can follow the activity of their friends or groups on your site.

Extended Profiles: The default WordPress profiles don’t even compare to these ones. The profiles can include friends, activity, groups, the latest posts by the member, a profile bio, and contact info, and that’s only the default options!

Friends: Members can add each other as friends, this allows them to communicate and track each other easily.

Private Messaging: Allows members to message each other privately so discussion doesn’t have to be “out in the open”.

Groups: Members can create and join groups on whatever topics they like.

Blogging: BuddyPress can tap into the power of WPMU and as of WordPress 3, multi-site therefore allowing you to give all of your users a fully functioning WordPress blog, the blog is integrated into the activity stream, and members can post on the blogs using their own account for your site.

These features can be turned on or off in the Admin Panel depending on how many of them you want to use for your site.

As BuddyPress is built as a normal WordPress plugin its extremely easy to customize to your liking and needs, if you know the basics of WordPress plugin development then you should be able to develop for it with only an extra bit of work, referring to the BuddyPress Codex or Support Forum

You can download BuddyPress here on the official site, which also includes support for the plugin as well as being the main place for BuddyPress discussion and development.

As powerful as BuddyPress is here is some useful plugins that you may like to consider adding to your site. Most plugins that work for a normal WordPress site should work for your BuddyPress site, although there are many great plugins that require BuddyPress to function correctly.

With a massive 172 plugins currently on BuddyPress.org I’ve selected 10 plugins I think that are extremely useful.

10 Extremely Useful BuddyPress Plugins

BP Profile Privacy

Allows your users to decide who can view their profile

BuddyPress Links
Adds link & rich media sharing functionality to your site. Can really help boost your sites activity and discussion.
BuddyPress Gifts

Allows your members to send each other images as gifts. Site Admins can add / remove different gifts as they like.

BuddyPress Album+

Adds photo album capabilities to your site much like Facebook photo apps. Comes with plenty of options, although its recommended to test this plugin before use as there are a few known issues.

Tweetstream

Integrates twitter into your BuddyPress site, allowing members to post links of their activity on your site, to twitter.

Facestream

Integrates Facebook into your BuddyPress site, allowing members to post links of their activity on your site, to Facebook.

Enhanced BuddyPress Widgets

Adds two new widgets that you can use, “members” and “groups” allowing newest, Active and most Popular members or groups to be shown.

CubePoints Buddypress Integration

Allows members to earn points as a reward for taking part in the site, (requires CubePoints to work).

BuddyPress Followers

Works in the same way as the friends feature of BuddyPress except members don’t need to accept other members in order to be followed.  Works the same as twitter.

BuddyPress Template Pack

Adds BuddyPress support to a normal WordPress theme. Allowing you to use any WordPress theme you like without needing to customise it to work with BuddyPress.

5 Great BuddyPress themes

Although the default theme is a great looking theme, here are 5 more great themes to choose from.

Buddymatic

BuddyPress theme framework, is based on Thematic a WordPress  theme framework.

Darwin (BuddyPress BuddyPack)

Jukt Micronics

Randy Candy

BuddyPress Magazine

Demo | Purchase

What’s Up Next here on 1stWD?

This article was our first post in the BuddyPress series which gave you an introduction to BuddyPress. If you are not satisfied with the themes we listed here, feel free to browser the directory of themes over at BuddyPress official website or just wait for the 2nd article of series, in which we will show you how to create your own theme from scratch.

Have some question or confusion? Shout at us via comments section.:)

We will then take it a step further and create a custom admin panel footer, and also a custom admin header image for our WordPress site.

Let’s Get Started

Setting it Up

For this example we are going to modify our functions.php file. If your theme does not have this file you can create a blank file and name it functions.php – Make sure this file is placed in the theme directory of the current activated theme you are using.

Add the following to your functions.php file:

functions.php

php
function custom_login() {
echo 'wplogin/wplogin.css" />';
}
add_action('login_head', 'custom_login');
?>

Explanation of the Code

We are using the functions.php file to tell WordPress to override the default settings for the .css file used to make up the login screen. By doing this we are directing WordPress to use a specified .css file that we are going to create for our custom login screen. This .css file will be what we modify to design the login page.

Please make note that there are some very specific styles within the .css file that MUST be present, and changed accordingly for this to properly work. I have created the folder and placed the .css file in it to keep it separated from our regular theme files. If you want to the path can be altered as long as it points to the direct location of the CSS file within your theme.

The Setup

Next we will need to do two things. First, we will need to create a new folder in our theme directory. For this example we are going to use the folder name wplogin.

This folder will be placed within our WordPress theme file folder.

In this folder we will make a new blank file and name it wplogin.css

Taking a look at the setup

This is now what you should have. Remember that the location can be changed using the code we placed in our functions.php file – but for this example you should now have the following:

The file structure will be: wp-content\themes\YOUR_THEME_NAME\wplogin

The new folder we named wplogin will go into your theme folder, and the new .css file we created will be held within the new folder.

Now let’s view what we will be adding to our .css file:

wplogin.css

/* Page Background */
html {
	background: #eae2d5 url(bgimage-path);
	margin: auto;
	font-weight:bold;
}
/* Wordpress Logo - MAKE SURE TO MATCH THE WIDTH AND HEIGHT */
h1 a {
	background:url(logo-path) 0 0 no-repeat;
	width:290px;
	height:150px;
	margin-left: 10px;
	margin-bottom: 0px;
	padding-bottom: 0px;
}
/* Top Bar Background Color */
body.login {
	border-top-color:#dac6ad;
}
.message {
	margin-bottom: 0px;
}
/* Login Button */
#wp-submit {
	background: #bc3d1d;
	border: #f24643;
}
/* Lost Password Link */
.login #nav a, .login #nav a:hover {
	color: #443030!important;;
}
/* Top Bar Link */
.login p#backtoblog a:link, .login p#backtoblog a:visited {
	color:#443030;
	font-weight: bold;
}
.login p#backtoblog a:hover, .login p#backtoblog a:active {
	color:#443030;
	text-decoration:underline;
}

Explanation of the .css

Now that we have both the functions.php code in place telling WordPress to use our custom .css file, and our .css file in place, we can start to modify it a bit. The comments within the .css example should explain most everything but we will break it down to further understand it.

Make a note that when changing the logo image you MUST match it with the width and height in the CSS file. That is noted up above in the comments within the CSS file but it is VERY important or it will not always work correctly.

Full Breakdown

I know the .css is commented well but I still want to cover each editable item. Let’s see below to take a look at it:

The Page Background will be the entire page background color and image. The example .css file above shoes a link to the image but there is not one set. You can modify this to create a full-page background image, or change it to a color of your choice.

The WordPress Logo: This is where you will need to be sure to change the width and height to match your image. As long as the dimensions fit your logo you are using it will work correctly.

Top Bar Background Color: This is the bar located at the very top of the page. This can be changed to any color you like.

Message: This is the bottom bar that can be changed to any color you wish as well.

Login Button: This is the submit button on your login page.

Lost Password Link: This is the a:link button to retrieve your password if lost.

Top Bar Link: This is the a:link’s at the very top of the page within the Top Bar area.

Login: This is the writing on the login form of your page.

Take a look at the image below for a diagram of items within the CSS file we can change:

Taking it a step further

Now to continue making our WordPress install more custom and personal, we will change the footer link on our admin screen. This can personalize our website just a little bit more.

Again using the functions.php file we can force WordPress to change something. We will be telling WordPress what we want in our footer area of our admin screen instead of the generic text that comes standard with a regular install of WordPress.

Here is the code we will be adding, but this can be modified to your needs:

function remove_footer_admin () {
echo 'Anything you want can go right here | Copyright © 2010 My Website name';
}
add_filter('admin_footer_text', 'remove_footer_admin');

Changing the Admin Logo

This can also be really useful when trying to personalize your WordPress powered site. Even if you are creating the site for a client they will always enjoy seeing their logo on the admin screen. This is easy to do, and can be done by editing the functions.php file. Add the following code and be sure it points to your image that you will be using:

// Custom Admin Top Logo
add_action('admin_head', 'my_custom_logo');

function my_custom_logo() {
   echo '<style type="text/css">
         #header-logo { background-image: url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/custom_logo.gif) !important; }';
}

What we have now

Now we have created a custom WordPress login screen, as well as a custom footer within our admin screen, and a custom image in the header of our admin screen. This should be a good start in personalizing our WordPress powered site. There are still things that can be done to take all of this even further. Using these methods is good for personal sites, multi-user sites, and even sites created for clients that want to see their WordPress site personalized. Playing with the above provided code will allow you many options to customize your WordPress site.