All Wordpress installations start out the same; what makes them unique is their skin, or ‘theme’. A theme is a set of files (or ‘templates’) which control how your content is pulled from your database and displayed to your visitors. The bare minimum that a theme requires to work is an index.php file and a style.css.

Index.php is the main ‘template’ that Wordpress relies on - there are numerous files that can take importance over this file, but in the absence of extra files, Wordpress will default back to the main index.php to display your site.

Style.css contains the basic information about your theme (name, author, version, etc.) but also contains all the CSS for your theme as well.

If you’re familiar with CSS already, creating your theme’s stylesheet will be a fairly straightforward process. What will be slightly trickier is the index.php file, as this doesn’t just contain HTML - it needs to be told where and which information to pull from your database, and this happens via the use of ‘template tags’. The best place to learn about template tags is the Wordpress codex.

Unless your site has a minimal amount of content or your theme is very basic, you’ll find that you’ll soon have more requirements than index.php can cope with. If you want certain content to only be displayed on certain pages, or if you want your posts to look different to your pages, etc., then for the sake of file size and readability, it will be a good idea to start adding extra files to your themes.

Common files are as follows:

• header.php; this contains everything found at the ‘top’ of each page, such as navigation, title, etc.
• footer.php; this contains everything found at the ‘bottom’ of each page, such as the copyright statement, etc/
• sidebar.php; your sidebar can contain anything and everything from your archives to your wishlist.
• single.php; this controls how individual blog entries are displayed.
• page.php; this controls how your pages are displayed.
• comments.php; this is perhaps the most common file after header.php, footer.php, and sidebar.php. It controls how comments on your blog are displayed.

Wordpress is an extremely versatile CMS, in that once you have the basic index.php and style.css sorted, your options are then pretty much limitless. Your Wordpress theme can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it.

Further reading

• Theme development (WP codex)
• Stepping into templates (WP codex)
• Template heirarchy (WP codex)

Earlier today Andy phoned in to say that the blog visual/HTML editor on our website wasn’t working properly for him. After unsuccessfully trying many different options that didn’t work we found the solution on this page, specifically the reply from ’selfobliged’ about TinyMCE Advanced plugin.

Thank you ’selfobliged’ - whoever you may be!

When we are given a blank canvass to design HTML emails we take into consideration the following:

Preview Pane
We optimise the HTML template design for the top 2-4 inches as there is only this much space to tell the story and persuade the viewers to open our email instead of just previewing it.
75% of users use a vertical preview pane, 25% use a horizontal preview pane. To accommodate both sets of users we design the HTML email template messages so that it displays the most important call to actions and key content in the top left of the message.

Images
We do not use more than 30% ratio of images to text as most ISP and spam filter emails with will block emails with a higher ratio of images.
Up to 45% of viewers may have images turned off or blocked in their email client so we design the layout to focus the readers eyes on the key content of the message and also include image tags with full descriptions to encourage readers to download the images.

Width
We keep our HTML email width under 600 pixels to avoid users having to scroll to read the message.

Fonts
We use only universally supported fonts as non-standard fonts not supported by the reader’s computer may seriously affect the design layout.

Content
There are two distinct audiences, skimmers and readers. Readers are not a problem but skimmers will look at the top of the message, headlines and subheads and key bold phases throughout the message. We design the message, making proper use of bold face type style, so we can pull the reader down through the message and still deliver relevant content quickly.
Where possible we design the email to cover the main bullet points and use links to drive the viewer to your website. We encourage clients to include as many links as possible. Emails with many links will get a higher click rate than those with less links.
We include a text version of the email within the HTML so that it can be read by non-HTML email packages.

Scripts
We do not use scripts such as JavaScript as some applications view it as a security risk and will block messages. Instead we drive readers to a webpage where dynamic components are easily rendered.

HTML Code
We make sure our HTML code always conforms to W3C Standards. HTML code not conforming to WC3 can cause delivery and rendering issues.

The end of another busy week for us here & we’re all about to head down to the pub to celebrate the start of what’s looking to a lovely sunny weekend. For those of you interested in the web & javascript trickery enjoy the link below.

http://www.netzgesta.de/glossy/

As you can tell with the rush of excitement this has been on hold to be posted for a few days. Then again they do say the best things come to those who wait…