WordPress: Beginner to Master

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

on Apr 1st 2009 with 48 comments

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!

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 Premium

For those unfamiliar, the family of TUTS sites runs a premium membership service called “Premium”. For $19 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!

Dan Harper is danharper on Themeforest
 
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Dan is passionate about an open, semantic web and loves playing around with the latest bleeding-edge technologies in our industry. He works mostly in PHP, but wishes he only had the time/job to pick up Rails fully. He’s studying Web Technologies at the University of Portsmouth and is currently Lead Developer at Radweb.  

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  • http://www.johndeszell.com John Deszell

    Awesome! I was waiting for this!

    • http://laranzjoe.blogspot.com Lawrence77

      anybody send this series through mail! ;)
      thanks!

  • http://www.reycode.com Michael Rice

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

    • http://www.crbarnett.com Chris Barnett

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

      • gigi

        Where we can see a demp?

  • http://lenevia.com Devin Rajaram

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

  • Thomas

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

  • http://mashbourne.com Michael

    Thanks. I have been waiting for this!

  • http://www.philohermans.nl Philo

    Great! :)

  • http://allesoverflairbartending.nl ThaClown

    Working with it now…
    Really nice tut! thx

  • Kyle

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

  • http://creativityden.com/ Liam McCabe

    Hmmm I might sign up! :) Looks worthy.

  • w1sh

    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

  • http://www.endyoursearch.com Vincent D’Amico

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

  • Nate

    Yaaaaaay!

  • http://www.broof.de BroOf

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

  • Kristofer

    Was definitely worth 9 bucks, awesome series.

  • http://www.jeff-way.com Jeffrey Way

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

  • http://blog.insicdesigns.com insic

    Good job!

  • Tony

    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.

    • http://www.danharper.me Dan Harper
      Author

      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.

  • Bryan

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

  • http://www.johndeszell.com John Deszell

    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?

    • http://www.danharper.me Dan Harper
      Author

      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.

      • http://www.johndeszell.com John Deszell

        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.

      • Mike Estrada

        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?

  • http://www.blujconcepts.com J Henderson

    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!!

  • http://danharper.me Dan Harper

    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.

  • http://www.danhbaweb20.com/ Danh ba web 2.0

    Good job, keep up !

  • http://www.flashden.net/user/JoeMC/?ref=joemc Joe

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

  • http://www.flashden.net/user/JoeMC/?ref=joemc Joe

    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!

  • http://muria.web.id/blog kakday

    thanks

  • http://www.banzaidesign.nl Thomas

    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

    • http://www.banzaidesign.nl Thomas

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

  • http://www.crispeegrafix.com/ Chris

    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.

  • http://jayj.dk Jay

    Amazing! I really learned a lot from it them

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  • http://www.developersnippets.com Vivekanand

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

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

  • http://www.arnor.is Arnor Bogason

    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”>

  • fidel

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

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  • http://www.imblog.info Muhammad Adnan

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

    thanks.

  • http://naxrun.dk Nicolas

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

  • milano

    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?

  • http://www.benstephan.com Ben Stephan

    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

  • Ameliab2005

    Ohhh! Why oh why am I broke?!!

  • http://www.meonvalleywebdesign.co.uk Matt

    Great article! It is amazing the progress you can make in very little time using WordPress. This article has really helped. from start to installing bueno, styling, content and being listed on google in 2 weeks. nice!
    check it out.

  • Rasha

    CAN YOU PLEASE UPGRADE THIS TUTORIAL TO WORDPRESS 3.0

    pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

    Thanks

  • Robert Bailey

    Was this a Premium tutorial at one point?

  • http://www.twojeartykuly.info Pozycjonowanie

    Thanks a lot. Your article is good, even if wp 3 had come up this tut would not be redundant.