As a part of the “What is this whole Interactive thing?” post, I think its important to understand whats behind the scenes. As a CD in an interactive firm I find it very important to understand the limitations of all aspects of the work. Some people scoff at understanding the backend and only concern themselves with the appearance. I’d encourage any creative on the interactive side of things to really dig into the dev side of life.

So Rails or Cake? I’m thinking Rails.

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.

Thanks