WordPress Theme Framework: Why A Framework Is Used & What Types Are Available

Today's post is a guest post by Elliot McInnis  Please check out his website which is linked below.

There is very little information on the web that describes what exactly a WordPress theme framework is. Most of the results we found in Google were websites listing the best free WP theme frameworks. After that there were a handful of theme framework web sites ranking near of the top. In this post, we'll do our best to respond to questions like what exactly is a WordPress theme framework, which kind of theme frameworks can be found, why do folks use WP theme frameworks, pros and cons for using a theme framework, in case you use a theme framework, and finally what's our favorite WordPress theme framework.

What is a WordPress Theme Framework?

A WordPress theme framework is a library of source code which is used to assist in development of a theme. Previously with WordPress, there have been some crucial issues with the way how themes were built and maintained. There was not any right way to upgrading any theme without losing any custom design settings that might have been present. There is no way to avoid copying and pasting the exact same functionality and code in all themes. While those two problems probably won't be seen as an issue to an average user, these have the potential to be gigantic headaches. Let's say you realized that exactly the same code you had been using in all of the themes had a security exploit. Much more crucial, let's say this theme was something you publicly released for others to download and modify. Yes, that’s a major headache waiting to occur. The team of WordPress developers made a decision to fix the problems mentioned previously by presenting the idea of Parent Theme and Child Theme.

WordPress theme frameworks usually are meant to also become a parent wordpress theme template which is where you can find most of the core functions. Web developers are able to build a wordpress child theme to include custom design while leaving the basic elements of it to the framework. This allows for a central location where all the functions are hosted. If the core team of developers chooses to denounce a WordPress function, or there's a bug located in a particular theme framework, then it's really simple to push out an update without having to revise anything in the child theme. This process helps you keep your wordpress framework updated without editing anything the WordPress child theme has. This process allows you to keep the framework of your website solid without editing the appearance.

What type of Theme Frameworks exist?

You can find free WordPress frameworks and paid ones. There are actually complete drag and drop wordpress theme frameworks like Headway Themes that allow users to build anything visually with no familiarity with source code. There are pseudo drag drop wordpress theme frameworks like Thesis and Pagelines. These frameworks make it possible for users to drag and drop predefines sections much like how widgets work. Of course you could define custom sections while using available hooks and filters provided by the WordPress theme frameworks too. There are WordPress theme frameworks which are full of layout and function choices. Themify and many others fall within this category. Finally, you will find some WordPress theme frameworks which are designed for web developers to obtain a jump start without the mess and bloat like Genesis by StudioPress.

This article was written by Elliot McInnis and provided exclusively to the website which you are viewing it on. Elliot is a full time web developer and writes on a variety of topics related to developing and using WordPress themes.

First 750 Preview

I'm putting together a blog for published authors. The author can be self-published or published through traditional means. My only real requirement is that the work has to be complete (I don't want readers to start something and then find it isn't available) and it can't be porn. Nothing against porn, just don't want it on my site.

It is rough right now. I have two posts up. The first is just a place holder as it is not published yet (but will be soon, I hope). The second is a memoir published by Xlibris.

If you want to get a preview, check out First 750.  Hopefully I will be getting more  stories posted soon.

At this point, I am thinking I will allow a synopsis of the story, a photo to go along with the story, and a bio. In the bio, I would allow one link to the author's landing page (facebook, blog, whatever). I would also have a link to the store of the authors choice (amazon, xlibris, smashwords, etc). Of course, an author's landing page should have all of the available sources linked anyway.

Right now I am looking for feedback before I roll it out further. If you are a published author (any content really but specifically create fiction or non-fiction), or if you are an avid reader, I would love to hear anything you might suggest.

What do you think?

LewisC

Five Things Great Photography Will Do For Your Blog

Today's post is a guest post by Caroline Jones. Please check out her website which is linked below.

Five Things Great Photography Will Do For Your Blog

A blog is important for almost any business with a heavy online presence. You know that photographs are an important element of any blog, but do you know how important? Here are five things that great photography can do for your blog.

Make Your Blog Look Professional
The worst thing you can do to your blog is make it look amateurish. Of course, oftentimes people are amateurs when it comes to website and blog design. That is why it’s a good idea to hire a professional, so that your blog will look professional, too. The quality of your photography will affect the appearance of your blog significantly. Your blog won’t look professional if the photography is low quality, which is why it’s so important to make sure all the elements of your blog are of the same caliber.

Impress Your Readers
In reality, the content of your blog is more important than anything else. A good-looking blog with poor content won’t be highly regarded, and a poor-looking blog with superb content can still get a lot of credit. In order to impress your readers, you need great content, but it’s not only the written word that counts. Your photography also has to be great. With your photos, you have the chance to impress your readers through your visual insight and endeavors, and they’ll enjoy your blog even more because of it.

Attract New Readers
Great photography can make your readers stay, and it can also bring new readers to your blog. The aesthetics of something give us the first impression of whether we like it or not. With great photography, new visitors will be more apt to stay and check out the rest of your blog, by taking the time to read your great content. If your photography is poor, you might scare off new visitors immediately by giving a bad first impression. Great photography can help increase your readership.

Clearly Illustrate Your Points
When you write about something in your blog, your intention is, of course, to get your message across to your readers as clearly as possible. Your words can do a good job of that, but sometimes they’re not enough. Great photography can help illustrate your points and really drive home the message of your posts. If your post is a how-to, for example, or talking about a specific item or place, photographs can help your readers learn and imagine what you’re saying in a visual way. They improve every post.

Enhance the Image of Your Business
Finally, great photographs don’t just enhance the look of your blog. They can enhance the entire image of your business or brand. Visual branding is strong and significant, and you don’t want your brand to be associated with low-quality anything, and the photographs on your blog are part of the things you need to consider. When building your brand, remember that high-quality photographs on your blog will portray an image that your website is professional, and as a result your business will benefit, too.


Caroline Jones runs a successful restaurant business and provides tips on effective internet marketing that she says includes great photographs, and great photographs deserve a great photography WP theme.

Does Blogging Help You as a Writer?

I believe blogging can do amazing things for your writing. I started blogging in 2004. I didn't really get a blog that I stuck with until 2005 (my Oracle blog). A lot has changed since then.

First, I have become a much faster writer. I don't mean typing speed (although that has probably improved also). I mean the speed that I can create content. In 2005, a 1000 word article would take me several hours, usually spread over several days. Now I can knock out 2000 or 3000 words in a single sitting. On some days, I will write two blog posts (for different blogs) and do a couple thousand words of fiction writing.

Second, because I tried so hard in the beginning to keep consistent with my posting schedule (which I am awful at now), I would find spare moments to write. I had a new baby and a full-time job as well as all the other "things" that tend to crop up on a daily basis. You learn to write when you can or you don't write.

Finally, my skill as a writer has vastly improved. When was the last time you worried about conjunctions and participles? Yeah, me too. But, as you write, you use grammar checkers (I highly recommend Grammarly Lite for online editing), read writing books, visit writing web sites, etc. From those, you just kind of absorb the rules.

So, does blogging help your writing? I certainly think so. What do you think?

LewisC

Who should blog?

If you haven't blogged before, you might wonder who should blog. Pretty much anyone can blog. You might want a family blog to keep distant relatives up on what your family has been doing, you might want to brag about your hobby, you might want to create how-to posts to help others, or you might want to get some exposure to help you find a job.

Blogging is good for all of those. All you need to do is sit down and start writing. Look around this blog for getting started. I am going to be writing a bunch of tutorials and getting started guides in the near future.

The best part of blogging is how many people you can virtually meet from around the world. One blog I write has many people from China. It's a tech blog and I guess that particular tech is popular in China. That is so cool.

I'm serious. Any topic that you can think of has someone blogging about it. Why not you? Check out the video below.

What is RSS and What does it do?

Rather than go into detail about the composition of an RSS Feed, I will just give you some links that you can refer to.

For an encyclopedic answer, you can visit the RSS entry on WikiPedia. For the technophile, you can see details and history at XML.Com's entry on RSS. For a very brief FAQ with additional links, see What is RSS.

Now for my explanation. RSS is an acronym. Don't worry about what the acronym means. It's not important. An RSS Feed is a text file that contains data in a special format. Like a word document or an excel document, an RSS can be read, and is meaningful, to programs that understand that special format.

For Blog Readers

Bloggers create an RSS feed of their blog posts and make it available as a button or link on the site somewhere. An RSS link will usually look something like the icon to the right. Some sites may show icons for specific RSS readers, like Bloglines or GoogleReader.

An RSS Reader allows you to subscribe to all of your favorite blogs and see when the writer updates without having to actually navigate to each blog. It's like a little browser that goes out and checks for new blog entries for you.

The benefit of using RSS is that it saves you time. There are so many good blogs out there, not many people have enough time every day to go check on each and every one of them. It's especially annoying to keep checking on a blog that you really like and it not being updated as frequently as you would like. Get an RSS reader and let it tell you when the blog has been updated.

For Bloggers

An RSS Feed is built from your blog. Most blog hosting providers, like blogger.com or wordpress, will generate an RSS Feed for you. You can choose how much information goes into your feed. You can choose headlines only, headlines and summaries or full posts.

People disagree on what is best to put into your feed. My suggestion it to do what ever you prefer. It really all comes down to personal choice for any particular individual. I choose to use full feeds as I want my readers to be able to read my entire post as easily as possible.

Summary

So what is an RSS Feed for? Just what I mentioned above. People can subscribe to my feed, using an RSS reader, and see my posts almost as soon as I write them. They don't need to keep coming back to see if I have updated. It's a time saver for my readers. I also offer email subscriptions for the same reason.


blog blogging rss feed

New Blog Editor - Blog From Your Phone

I am always looking for ways to be productive while on the go. One of the reasons that I quit updating this blog as frequently as I used to was that I started traveling so much and spending so much time in traffic, I just didn't have time to keep up with all the things I need to do.

I have tried to blog using my phone's browser by connecting to the online blog entry page. That is incredibly painful. Scrolling up and down, trying to click on buttons, zooming in and out; it was a lesson in frustration. Now, I have finally found a tool that allows me to blog, with ease, from my blackberry (although I do have one issue that prevents me from using it on this blog).

The new tool is called BlogLive and it's from a company called imoblive. It runs on BlackBerry and Symbian (and may run on other j2me platforms). You can view the entire list of supported devices.

Some of the product features (from the publisher web site):

• Supports multiple blog accounts


• Efficiently create, edit and delete posts


• User library support for frequently used words and phrases


• Advanced text editor: Easily insert text URL, online image in your posts, without having to enter any HTML codes


• Supports major online mobile systems including the Blogger, WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad, and MetaWeblog API for compatibility with a most blog sites

You can see from the screen shot above that it does in fact support multiple accounts. From the menu, you select Add to add a new account. One the new account screen, you enter your connection and XMLRPC information. You can select from a list of blog types.

I was able to get it publishing for my wordpress blogs but I could not get it to work with Blogger no matter what I did. I think I may have the Xml-Rpc link wrong but I can't find any definitive information for the right link. I used the link that is in my Zoundry Raven blog editor but that didn't work either. If you use this editor and get it working with blogger, please let me know. I would love to get this working.

Once you have it configured, it is a nice, if simple, editor. Select New Article and then start writing.

If you are going to be entering URLs or images, you might want to use the Advanced Editor. You get a nice large screen as well as some additional options for input. It is still a manual process but I hope they make this even easier over time.

It also has a spell checker. One of the nicer features is the User Library. In that library, you can add often used snippets of text. Footers, common links, signatures, etc. Open the library, select your snippet and it's added to your post.

The editor costs $17.99 and that price includes a free year of upgrades. Support seems to be minimal; I can't find any beyond an email address. There is a FAQ but it doesn't even mention BlogLive.

Still, even with its issues, I find it to be a nice product. I will wait and see how often it gets upgraded before purchasing it and I want to work out the blogger issue. If I can get it to work with Blogger, I will probably buy it.

Let me know if you use and what platform you use it with. If you get it working with Blogger.com, please, please, let me know.

A funny note. When my spell checker hit XMLRPC, it came up with SMALLPOX as a replacement. I have often thought the same. ;-)

Thanks,

LewisC

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