Welcome to Lednine. This is the personal site of John Gilbert. A father, husband, and obsessed creative tech guy. I work as the Creative Director and Head of Production at Xylem Digital. I am the occasional PM, Developer, Art Director, or whatever is needed. My passion for anything digital drives me to learn and explore new techniques, strategies, and technologies. Feel free to drop me a line. Blam!

Wordpress Tricks

I have received a couple emails about how I built portions of this site with wordpress so I’ve decided to put together a quick post with some of the things I’ve learned over the past couple sites I’ve built.
1. What theme should I use?
There are two ways to go about this question and it depends largely on your comfort level with PHP and CSS. If you feel like you can layout your own css and manipulate the PHP I would start with a blank template. It’s easier to set up the CSS, easier to change the PHP if you need. Start by checking out http://wpframework.com. They have a pretty little set up running.
2. How do you create multiple single pages?
It’s actually really simple. In your current single.php page delete everything and turn it into an “if” statement (other logical ways exist but you get the idea). All you’d need to do is the following to have two different single pages for your theme. In this code I have separated them based on the different category of content.
<?php
$post = $wp_query->post;
if ( in_category(‘23′) ) {
include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/single_folioPersonal.php’);
} elseif ( in_category(‘22′) ) {
include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/single_folio.php’);
}
?>
3. What Plugins are you using?
A bunch actually. Here is a partial list
- All in one SEO Pack
- del.icio.us for WordPress
- Disqus
- Title Capitalization
- Akismet
- Regenerate Thumbnails
- Twitter Tools
Thats a start for now. I’ll update this post as I continue to change things and have more time to talk about how I setup the templates. Hope this helps.

I have received a couple emails about how I built portions of this site with wordpress so I’ve decided to put together a quick post with some of the things I’ve learned over the past couple sites I’ve built.

1. What theme should I use?

There are two ways to go about this question and it depends largely on your comfort level with PHP and CSS. If you feel like you can layout your own css and manipulate the PHP I would start with a blank template. It’s easier to set up the CSS, easier to change the PHP if you need. Start by checking out http://wpframework.com. They have a pretty little set up running.

2. How do you create multiple single pages?

It’s actually really simple. In your current single.php page delete everything and turn it into an “if” statement (other logical ways exist but you get the idea). All you’d need to do is the following to have two different single pages for your theme. In this code I have separated them based on the different category of content.

<?php

$post = $wp_query->post;

if ( in_category(‘23′) ) {

include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/single_folioPersonal.php’);

} elseif ( in_category(‘22′) ) {

include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/single_folio.php’);

}

?>

3. What Plugins are you using?

A bunch actually. Here is a partial list

- All in one SEO Pack

- del.icio.us for WordPress

- Disqus

- Title Capitalization

- Akismet

- Regenerate Thumbnails

- Twitter Tools

Thats a start for now. I’ll update this post as I continue to change things and have more time to talk about how I setup the templates. Hope this helps.

Comments May 22, 2009

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