Excerpts (MGDP2060)

Excerpts from MGDP2060.

WEEK TWO:

FTP

• File Transfer Protocol
• FTP client
• Getting started with FTP
• Login credentials - see Password

WordPress

• WordPress (discuss first three chapters of book)

Exercises

See Week Two Exercises (MGDP2060).

Reading for next week

Online reading

Browse this week's vocabulary items -- essentially all of the links on this page.

Familiarize yourself with terms and basic principles.

Pay special atention to these topics and their immediately related topics:

• • Client-server model
  • Client (computing)
  • Server (computing)
  • Web template system

Book reading

...

WEEK FIVE:

• Topics: Chapter Five (WordPress: The Missing Manual)
• Exercises: Week Five Exercises (MGDP2060)
• Reading:
  • For next week: Chapter 13 - Child Themes
  • For week after: Chapter 14 - Custom Themes

WordPress databases gone

WordPress databases from last week were wiped by DeepFreeze.

Instructor will have WordPress pre-installed on all workstations for next week.

In the News

Copyright bots

• Inept copyright bot sends 2600 a legal threat over ink blotches @ BoingBoing

See Bots.

Bounty for iPhone Hacks

• Spy Agency Contractor Puts Out a $1M Bounty for an iPhone Hack @ Wired.com

Fingerprints stolen

• OPM says 5.6 million fingerprints stolen in cyberattack

IPFS: replacement for HTTP

• HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the distributed, permanent web - "Neocities has collaborated with Protocol Labs to become the first major site to implement IPFS in production. Starting today, all Neocities web sites are available for viewing, archiving, and hosting by any IPFS node in the world. "
  • See ipfs.io

Wikipedia:

• InterPlanetary File System
  • "InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), also called "The Permanent Web", is a hypermedia distribution protocol, addressed by content and identities. IPFS enables the creation of completely distributed applications. It aims to make the web faster, safer, and more open."

Comic of the Week

Source: Tech Loops @ xkcd

Libraries

Note the multiple instances of "Library". This is a bad sign.

Using libraries is like grinding fresh pepper on your food: a little tastes good, but a lot tastes bad.

Solution stacks

Solution stacks can be part of problem, because a "stack" is made up two or more separate applications.

The purpose of the stack is to "bundle up" the separate applications into a single application, the stack.

Solution stacks are useful, powerful tools.

But they add complexity -- and where you have complexity, you have side-effects, synergies, unpredictability, vulnerability.

LAMP architecture

In computer science, architecture is a broad term for internal structure.

For a diagram of the LAMP, which also represents the client-server model, see LAMP_(software_bundle)#LAMP_architecture LAMP architecture.

Chapter Five: Themes and Templates

See Chapter Five (WordPress: The Missing Manual).

Theme files

Each theme must contain two specific files:

• style.css - the stylesheet for this Theme
• index.php - the primary Template file

Theme Stylesheets

Each Theme requires a stylesheet named style.css.

style.css functions like any other stylesheet, providing [[Cascading Style Sheets|CSS] rules for the site.

But in addition, style.css contains information which WordPress uses to identify the stylesheet, and the folder which contains it, as WordPress Themes.

• The Theme information, which uses a standard format, goes inside a CSS comment block.

WordPress can read the contents of the style.css, so it knows what Theme the stylesheet represents.

This happens on the web server, and has nothing to do with the web browsers. CSS comments are ignored by web browsers.

Theme Templates

Templates are individual PHP files within a WordPress Theme.

Each theme must have a template named index.php.

• Other templates are optional, but commonly used.

Templates have specific file names, each of which handles a specific pages, or set of pages, within WordPress.

Template files are where you write the HTML and PHP which WordPress will display as web pages.

include statement

include is a PHP statement which allows you to include one PHP page inside another page.

This technique is useful for assembling a single page from fragments.

See:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.include.php

http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_includes.asp.

Exercises

• Week Five Exercises (MGDP2060)

Reading for next two weeks

Reading for next week: Chapter 13 - Child Themes

Reading for week after: Chapter 14 - Custom Themes

WEEK SIX:

This exercise demonstrates WordPress child themes.

Do this by next week.

Select a parent theme

Your choice. Pick a theme interests you.

Create a child theme

Create a new folder for your child theme. Your choice of folder name.

Make some style changes

Make some style changes in your child theme which override styles from the parent theme.

Finishing up

If you are using a classroom workstation, be sure to back up the two critical MAMP folders.

In your FTP folder, create a subfolder named child-template-exercise. Use this folder to store copies of these two folders (for instructor review)

• Your child template folder
• The parent template folder

Reading

Textbook reading for next week:

• Chapter Fourteen (WordPress: The Missing Manual)