New Book Release: Build your own Wicked WordPress Themes

Community
21

I’m sure you’ve probably done this already but I’m just double checking. Did you copy and paste the order number or did you enter it manually? Also did you double check the details you entered (i.e. correct spelling, CAPs on/off etc)?

22

Well what happens when you click on it?

23

It ask me to enter email and order ID. When I do so, I just get an error message like I told earlier in this thread.

24

Thanks Louis,

I assumed that if you wanted to sell a Theme you had to make it entirely your own - GPL or no GPL. Perhaps you should make a note of that in a future edition. It’s great that you can sell a Child Theme without it being considered written by a novice, which I assumed it would be. I agree it is a great demonstration and a fabulous way to learn what can be done using all of Thematic’s built in functions. I can’t imagine why anyone would write all those from scratch if they don’t have to.

Now that I’ve read the book cover to cover I’m going back and working on my own website using all the info provided.

Thanks again!
Charles

25

Hmmm. I would have thought the author would have put something in the book about them.

26

Oh, interesting. I’m only on chapter 2 right now so I haven’t gotten very far. I’ll check the table of contents.

EDIT: Definitely not seeing anything about the write panels, not even in the index section under “Panels”

27

Thank you. But it seems to me from what little I’ve found on the internet about Custom Write Panels, it’s going to be something people will generally expect to find in future themes.

I was hoping to find that sort of thing like in the above article in the book but in more depth.

28

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the review! Great to hear that you enjoyed the book. Lemme try to answer some of your questions.

First of all, there’s no reason you can’t sell a child theme. The Thesis framework has a pretty active marketplace for “skins”, and although there’s nothing comparable out there for Thematic (more of an open-source thing), there’s no reason you couldn’t provide Thematic along with your download (as it’s GPL), or explain how to get it in your installation instructions. I can also see how you might use it in your pitch (e.g. “Built on the rock-solid, SEO-friendly Thematic framework”, etc.)

Second, I actually found that looking at how Thematic works gives you a really good insight into how you’d go about building a theme from scratch. You might need to spend a bit of time in the Codex looking up the function you need, but with a strong understanding of hooks, the template hierarchy, and how to structure your code, it’s not as daunting as you might think.

29

I just bought the book and it is up to date:

Head over to wordpress.org and download the latest version (3.0 at the time of writing), then install it according to the instructions on the Codex.

30

Thanks for the info - was hoping I might kill 2 birds with 1 stone, which could justify my buying this book (:

31

Ah! It’s really obvious now you’ve pointed it out!!! Thank you!!! :slight_smile:

32

Works brilliantly!!! And it was so simple to do! Thanks again!!

33

Would also like confirmation on this.

34

@psomers: the book has some very basic info about getting started with WordPress, but it’s really mostly about designing and building themes. The WordPress Codex has tons of info on installing WordPress, so that’s where I’d go first for that kind of info.

35

@Louisa: if you’re going along with the book, you’re probably editing home.php … have a look at the template hierarchy breakdown on pages 100-101: the category archives use the category.php or archive.php template, so you can copy that over to your child theme and edit it to use your custom loop.

36

Works perfectly! Thank you so much, Louis and thanks for the super fast reply!!

37

Hi Louisa,

You should be able to do that by just removing the check to see if the counter is 1 (that way all posts will use the new loop):

if (has_post_thumbnail() && !is_paged()) {

Let me know if that works!

PS: of course, if you’re not using the counter anymore, you can remove all the stuff related to that.

38

My theme is coming along in leaps and bounds and I’m so happy with it but I was just wondering how to add images to all the post appearing on the home page. I followed the ‘Setting Up Post Thumbnails’ but it only shows the first post thumbnail. I played around a little with the php

if ($counter == 1 && has_post_thumbnail() && !is_paged()){

but not yet skilled enough to get it working! Getting there though… slowely!

Thanks in advance for any help!!!

Louisa

39

Can I assume the information etc within this book is up to date (i.e. about WordPress 3.x - NOT for WordPress 2.7 or whatever)?

40

I should have re-phrased my question to be, do you have to be a designer to make the
25K/month passive income? I’m just a developer.