WordPress: Beginner to Master

New Plus Tutorial: WordPress, Beginner to Master: Parts 4-6

Apr 1st in News by Dan Harper

Throughout this six-part beginner-to-master series, we'll be using the advanced features of WordPress to create our own portfolio & blog, complete with an options page, multiple styles and support for the new WordPress 2.7 features. Join Now!

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Author: Dan Harper

This is a NETTUTS contributor who has published 11 tutorial(s) so far here. Their bio is coming soon!

Today, we're releasing the final three parts in Dan's excellent "master" series. If you sign up now, you'll gain access to the complete series!

Overview

By the end of this series, we will have created Innovation – a premium-quality WordPress template perfect for showcasing a portfolio and hosting a blog; complete with the following features:

  • Options page for handling the advanced nature of the template, without having to edit any files manually.
  • 3 built-in colour schemes – with easy switching between them.
  • Homepage and Portfolio page templates, with a widget-ready footer and sidebar.
  • Compatibility with WordPress 2.5+.
  • Threaded & paged comments support for WordPress 2.7.
  • A custom widget for displaying your latest posts, with a preview image, on your homepage.
Final Product

Join Tuts Plus

For those unfamiliar, the family of TUTS sites runs a premium membership service called "TUTSPLUS". For $9 per month, you gain access to exclusive premium tutorials, screencasts, and freebies from nettuts+, psdtuts+, and vectortuts+! For the price of a pizza, you'll learn from some of the best minds in the business. Join today!


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User Comments

( ADD YOURS )
  1. PG

    John Deszell April 1st

    Awesome! I was waiting for this!

    ( Reply )
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      Lawrence77 April 1st

      anybody send this series through mail! ;)
      thanks!

      ( Reply )
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    Michael Rice April 1st

    I’m so tempted to get a tuts+ account just for this!

    ( Reply )
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      Chris Barnett April 1st

      It would be well worth the $9. Go for it!!

      ( Reply )
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        gigi April 2nd

        Where we can see a demp?

  3. PG

    Devin Rajaram April 1st

    well I guess this is the end for it, I’ll have to get plus now to see them.

    ( Reply )
  4. PG

    Thomas April 1st

    Yes finally! Can’t wait to do this. :)

    ( Reply )
  5. PG

    Michael April 1st

    Thanks. I have been waiting for this!

    ( Reply )
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    Philo April 1st

    Great! :)

    ( Reply )
  7. PG

    ThaClown April 1st

    Working with it now…
    Really nice tut! thx

    ( Reply )
  8. PG

    Kyle April 1st

    Just signed up and am starting from the beginning. Although I am kind of distracted by all of the other really good plus tuts

    ( Reply )
  9. PG

    Liam McCabe April 1st

    Hmmm I might sign up! :) Looks worthy.

    ( Reply )
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    w1sh April 1st

    Argh. Everytime I see a tut I can’t wait to read, it’s a Plus. >.<

    I’d get a membership but I’m poor. :D

    ( Reply )
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    Vincent D'Amico April 1st

    Use one of the free tutorials out there to get rich =0.

    ( Reply )
  12. PG

    Nate April 1st

    Yaaaaaay!

    ( Reply )
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    BroOf April 1st

    You guys make me CRAZY :D I think I will buy a premiumaccount in the next time! Thanks!

    ( Reply )
  14. PG

    Kristofer April 1st

    Was definitely worth 9 bucks, awesome series.

    ( Reply )
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    Jeffrey Way April 1st

    Glad to hear you guys liked it! I have a rather extensive WordPress tutorial + screencast planned for mid-April.

    ( Reply )
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    insic April 1st

    Good job!

    ( Reply )
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    Tony April 1st

    Great, great, GREAT tutorial, but I am having a problem with the variables $ts_portfolio_cat and $ts_blog_page though. They seem to be referenced throughout the tut, but are never given a value.

    ( Reply )
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      Dan Harper April 3rd

      I’m away from my PC right now, but if I remember right, we set those variables in Part 1 with the Options page & the var.php file.

      Come to think of it, I’m not sure if we even used $ts_blog_page. That one may have been from an old version I accidentally included in the tutorial.

      ( Reply )
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    Bryan April 2nd

    This one is well worth the 9 bucks guys I guarantee it! Thanks Tuts+!!!

    ( Reply )
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    John Deszell April 2nd

    I’m stuck at the end of Day 1. I first typed out the tutorial then it wasn’t working so I copied and pasted from the tutorial. This is what I’m encountering.

    In the Colour Scheme drop down, it was blank when I typed it out, when I copy and paste I get “Choose your colour scheme”.

    The other 2 options work fine, not sure what is going on…

    Any Ideas?

    ( Reply )
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      Dan Harper April 3rd

      I’m away from my PC right now, but during Part 1 did we make the colour scheme CSS file (deepblue.css)?

      If not, the option is working fine for now as it can’t see any colour scheme files right now.

      ( Reply )
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        John Deszell April 3rd

        Yes, you do make the deepblue css file on the first day. I even tried making another folder with another test css file in it and no luck. I also tried putting them in the root of the styles folder…again no luck.

        I guess I’ll continue on and see if it starts working.

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        Mike Estrada July 1st

        I’m actually having the same problem but with the Portfolio Category option, the drop down options only has “Choose a Category” but fails to display any categories.

        i copied the functions.php file and it still gives me the same problem…hopefully this gets fixed? or any help?

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    J Henderson April 2nd

    Man, i am loving the tuts series period so much rich informative content!! And whats $9 bucks a month compared to all the vital information that your getting!! Soon as this month is over consider my subscription done and DONE!!

    ( Reply )
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    Dan Harper April 2nd

    I’m away from my PC right now, but during Part 1 did we make the colour scheme CSS file (deepblue.css)?

    If not, the option is working fine for now as it can’t see any colour scheme files right now.

    ( Reply )
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    Danh ba web 2.0 April 2nd

    Good job, keep up !

    ( Reply )
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    Joe April 3rd

    Just got done with the first 3 and am now downloading this batch. Great tutorial! I signed up for the + account just for this!

    ( Reply )
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    Joe April 3rd

    Dan – I’m getting this error in my admin when I change my color scheme:

    Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/…/html/wordpress/wp-content/themes/innovation/inc/bloglist-widget.php:44) in /home/content/…/html/wordpress/wp-content/themes/innovation/functions.php on line 81

    I got that error as well when I updated my page with the ‘New Blog Post’ widget… Everything works fine afters (as if I didn’t get the error), but just wondering what I possibly did wrong to be getting this error.

    Thanks! Great tutorial!

    ( Reply )
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    kakday April 3rd

    thanks

    ( Reply )
  26. PG

    Thomas April 4th

    The lightbox plugin link you are referencing in your code, is an older version. It’s linking to 1.0.0, but the latest is currently 1.3.2

    ( Reply )
    1. PG

      Thomas April 4th

      By the way, just finished the tutorial. Still tweaking the design, but it’s looking good so far! :)

      ( Reply )
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    Chris April 5th

    Thanks for putting out useful and worthwhile tutorials. For those whining about the cost of Plus — man this is the best bargain out there. Get over it.

    ( Reply )
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    Jay April 5th

    Amazing! I really learned a lot from it them

    ( Reply )
  29. PG

    Vivekanand April 7th

    Excellent! Even I am waiting for the same…..

    Thanks,
    Vivek
    [http://www.developersnippets.com]

    ( Reply )
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    Arnor Bogason April 7th

    Thanks for a great tutorial!

    But, I’m in Part 4 now and it seems that your instructions to use Fancybox aren’t very future-proof, as they are outdated already!

    Here’s the code i used instead, it works fine now:

    <link rel=”stylesheet” href=”/inc/fancybox/jquery.fancybox.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />

    <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/inc/fancybox/jquery.fancybox-1.2.1.js”>

    <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/inc/animate.js”>

    ( Reply )
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    fidel April 9th

    okay, i’m getting the plus account just for this

    ( Reply )
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    Muhammad Adnan May 26th

    Dan , i really liked your tutorial .
    it helped me alot in my project !

    thanks.

    ( Reply )
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    Nicolas June 7th

    I have a little problem. Subsides. They cant be shown, without the template going crazy.

    ( Reply )
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    milano July 16th

    I’m thinking about joining TutsPlus.

    But if i join TutsPlus for one month, does this mean it is really for JUST ONE month or do I need to send a cancellation to stop my TutsPlus membership after this one month?

    ( Reply )
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    Ben Stephan September 29th

    I love this tutorial. I signed up for tuts plus just to get it. It helped get ahold of what I needed to finish my portfolio the way I wanted it.

    Thanks

    ( Reply )
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