Week Nine (MGDP2060)

This article lists topics for Week Nine of Web Design and Development III (MGDP2060).

Textbook: Building an Advanced WordPress Site (505-518)

Planning Your Site

Questions to ask when planning a site:

• What type of content?
  • Blog (News, Press Release, etc.)
  • Product catalog
  • "Static" content
• How will the content be arranged?
• How will users navigate the site?
• Will the content use WordPress Pages, WordPress Posts, or both?
• Will the site use WordPress Custom Posts?
  • For example, Products, where each Custom Post is a product.

See also Web usability.

Picking a Theme

All WordPress Themes have principles in common, but each Theme is unique.

Web designers may have different approaches to Custom Copy Theme design:

• Pick a Theme you understand well, and customize for all customization projects.
• Pick a Theme that is as close as possible to the final result.
  • Less work to do, but requires more detailed knowledge about how the Theme works.
• Create a minimal, stripped-down Theme, which provides a minimum of WordPress core functionality.
  • Then customize the minimal Theme.
• Pick a Theme Framework -- simple, foundational Themes design for developers to extend.
  • Many Frameworks exist, each with its own features.

Creating a Custom Copy of a WordPress Theme

You can create a "clone" of a existing WordPress Theme by:

• Copying the entire Theme folder, and pasting it with a new folder name
• In the new style.css file, renaming the Theme

You then edit your new Theme.

This is more complex than creating a WordPress Child Theme.

Avoiding Confusion with a Test Site

In professional web design, it is common to create a test website which exists somewhere other than the URL for the actual website.

Custom Post Types

WordPress provides a system of Custom Posts Types, which can be edited and displayed like Posts.

For example, an e-commerce system might have a Costem Post Type named "Products", where each Post represents a product for sale.

Creating a Custom Post Type

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Creating a Custom Post Type That Suits Your Site

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Refreshing the Permalink Settings

After creating a new Custom Post Type, you must refresh the Permalink settings:

• Choose Settings->Permalinks in the Dashboard.
• Select one of the "pretty" permalink settings, such as Post Name.
• Click Save Changes, even if you haven't saved anything.

Creating Sample Content

After creating a Custom Post Type, and refreshing the Permalink settings, you can create content for your Custom Posts, similar to the way you creating content for standard Posts.

The name of your Custom Post Type ("Products", for example) will appear in the Dashboard sidebar.

Click the "Products" link to Add, Edit, and Delete content for your Products. These features behave like the standard Post features.

Each new Custom Post has its own Permalink.

Note that name of the Custom Post Types (e.g. "Products") appears in the URL for Product pages.

Making Your Custom Post Type Appear on Your Site

Posts associated with Custom Post Types do not automatically appear on then Home Page, nor on the WordPress Archive Pages.

There are two ways to make your Custom Post Types appear on these pages.

• Create custom WordPress Template for the Archive pages which display Custom Post Types.
• Add code to functions.php which tells WordPress to display your Custom Posts on the existing Archive pages.

Editing Custom Post Types

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Defining a Custom Post Type With a Plugin

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Exercises

See Week Nine Exercises (MGDP2060).