WordPress for Beginners

Hosted blogging services like Blogger and WordPress.com can be great for teachers who want to quickly create classroom blogs. Through a hosted service you can have a blog up and running in minutes. Hosted services also manage all of the back-end things like software updates that most teachers don't want to spend time fussing with. But if you blog long enough there may come a time when you want to have more customization options on your blog. That's when you might turn to self-hosting a WordPress blog. In fact, that's what I'm doing with iPad Apps for School, Android 4 Schools, and Practical Ed Tech.

When I started self-hosting WordPress blogs I learned a lot by trial and error. I also learned a ton from consulting WPBeginner. WPBeginner offer free video and written tutorials for all of the basics and then some. On WP Beginner you can find everything from how to change your default font size to the pros and cons of theme frameworks to how to create a forum within your WordPress blog.

Applications for Education
If you've been looking to take your classroom blog to the next level by including a classroom discussion forum within it or by creating better-looking portfolio pages, WPBeginner is a good resource to keep bookmarked. 

Google Indexing Non-Existent URLs. WordPress Doesn't Show 404

I was inspecting the Google search results for: "site:mywordpress.org." And found lots or pages indexed that shouldn't exist. There are two problems here: I don't know how Google located, crawled, or found these URLs. Wordpress doesn't show a 404 error, so it looks like duplicate content. I tried the Wordpress support forums, but no one responded. I also have not been able to find anyone reporting this problem. Here's an example of what I am seeing: mywordpress.org/blog-post/ mywordpress.org/blog-post/1363035032000/ I've added a canonical link reference to the head and I've been doing lots of Google WMT removal requests, but I'm still seeing some results like this. I've tested this on a few wordpress installs, it seems that if you add any string of numbers to the end of a permalink it will still display the content rather than showing a 404 error. I also noticed that the number that is being added to the permalinks is the UNIX time stamp with a few zeros on the end. As of this post the current UNIX time stamp is: 1363035971. I'm looking for some advice on what I should do. I'm particularly interested in a PHP function that would check the url to see if there was a string of numbers at the end, and if there was, 301 redirect it to the right permalink. I'd also value any input on why Google is finding these wrong urls and if the UNIX time stamp is the clue.

How to add custom fields in wordpress

WordPress has the ability to allow post authors to assign custom fields to a post. This arbitrary extra information is known as meta-data. This meta-data can include bits of information such as:

• Mood: Happy
• Currently Reading: Cinderella
• Listening To: Rock Around the Clock
• Weather: Hot and humid

With some extra coding, it is possible to achieve more complex actions, such as using themetadata to store an expiration date for a post.

Meta-data is handled with key/value pairs. The key is the name of the meta-data element. The value is the information that will appear in the meta-data list on each individual post that the information is associated with.

Keys can be used more than once per post. For example, if you were reading two different books (perhaps a technical book at work and a fiction at home), you could create a "reading" key and use it twice on the same post, once for each book.

Here is an example of what this information might look like on your post:

Currently Reading: Calvin and Hobbes

Today's Mood: Jolly and Happy

Function Reference

Add, Update, Delete add_post_meta() update_post_meta() delete_post_meta()	Get Custom Values/Keys get_post_custom() get_post_custom_values() get_post_custom_keys()
Template Tags the_meta() get_post_meta()

Usage

Based upon our example above, let's put this into action. We'll add two custom fields, one called "Currently Reading" and the other "Today's Mood". The following instructions will demonstrate how to add this information to a post using Custom Fields.

1. After you have written your post, scroll down to the area titled Custom Fields.
   Note: As of WordPress version 3.1, some screen options on the Post & Page edit Administration Panels are hidden by default. Custom Fields are hidden by default if they have not been used before.
2. To create a new Custom Field called "Currently Reading", enter the text "Currently Reading" (without the quotes) in the text entry field titled Name.
3. The newly created Key ("Currently Reading") should now be assigned a Value, which in our case is the name of the book currently being read, "Calvin and Hobbes". Type "Calvin and Hobbes" in the Value field, again without the quotes.
4. Click Add Custom Field button to save this custom information for that post.

To add your "Today's Mood", repeat the process and add "Today's Mood" to the key and a description of your mood in the value text boxes and click Add Custom Field to save this information with the post.

On your next post, you can add a new book and mood to your meta-data. In the Custom Fields section, the Key will now feature a pull down list with the previously entered Custom Fields. Choose "Currently Reading" and then enter the new book you are reading in the value. Click Add Custom Field and then repeat the process to add "Today's Mood".

You only need to create a new "KEY" once, after which you can assign a value to that key for every post, if you so desire. You can also assign more than one Value to a key, for a post. This will come in handy for people who read more than one book at a time.

Displaying Custom Fields

With a Custom Field added to the post, it's time to display your books and mood to the world. To display the Custom Fields for each post, use the the_meta() template tag. The tag must be put within The Loop in order to work. Many people add the_meta()template tag to the end of their post or in their Post Meta Data Section. Here is a basic example of using the tag:

<?php the_meta(); ?>

It might look like this in the source code:

<ul class='post-meta'>
<li><span class='post-meta-key'>Currently Reading:</span> Calvin and Hobbes</li>
<li><span class='post-meta-key'>Today's Mood:</span> Jolly and Happy</li>
</ul>

The template tag automatically puts the entire meta-data into a CSS style called post-meta. The key is in a span called post-meta-key so you can style it in your style sheet. All of this is showcased in an unordered list.

To customize the look of the post-meta list, change the characteristics in your style sheet. For instance, let's add some style to our example from the top. The style sheet elements would look like this:

.post-meta {font-variant: small-caps; color: maroon; }
.post-meta-key {color: green; font-weight: bold; font-size: 110%; }

• Currently Reading: Calvin and Hobbes
• Today's Mood: Jolly and Happy

There are also many WordPress Plugins in the Official WordPress Plugin Directory that add some nice features to the job of displaying meta tags. A search for Custom Field plugins at Google should help you find even more.

To register support for custom fields within a custom post type, simply list it in your 'supports' $args using 'custom-fields'.

'supports' => array('title','editor','thumbnail','custom-fields')

Advanced Techniques for Custom Fields

The following are more advanced techniques for getting and customizing meta-data and custom fields.

Getting Custom Fields

To fetch meta values use the get_post_meta() function:

 get_post_meta($post_id, $key, $single);

• $post_id is the ID of the post you want the meta values for. Use $post->ID to get a post's ID within the $post variable scope. Use get_the_ID() to retrieve the ID of the current item in the WordPress Loop.
• $key is a string containing the name of the meta value you want.
• $single can either be true or false. If set to true then the function will return a single result, as a string. If false, or not set, then the function returns an array of the custom fields.

Implementation Details

The PostMeta information is stored in a new table, $wpdb->postmeta. This table has four fields:

'meta_id' - A unique id for each entry.

'post_id' - The ID of the post for this metadata.

'meta_key' - The name of the 'key'.

'meta_value' - The value associated with the key.

The values from this table are pulled into a structured multi-dimensional array called $post_meta_cache, just after the $postsarray is fetched in wp-blog-header.php. This variable will only contain values for the list of posts fetched for the current page build. The structure of the array will look something like this:

[
 postid1 => [
  key1 => [ val1, val2, ... ],
  key2 => [ val1, val2, ... ],
  ...
 ],
 postid2 => [
  key1 => [ val1, val2, ... ],
  key2 => [ val1, val2, ... ],
  ...
 ],
 ...
]

So, if you wanted to fetch the "reading" values from post number 256, you use this PHP code:

// Fetch an array of values for what I'm reading:
$readinglist = $post_meta_cache[256]['reading'];

Note: Don't forget that $readinglist will be an array, not a single value.

PostMeta Functions

Internal Functions

These functions are intended for use inside The Loop, and all return arrays.

get_post_custom()

Get all key/value data for the current post.

get_post_custom_keys()

Get a list of all key names for the current post.

get_post_custom_values($key)

Get the list of values for a particular key on the current post.

get_post_meta($post_id, $key, $single = false)

In WP 1.5 and beyond, this function returns the meta information without cache problems. The function requires the post id, the key, and if $single is set to TRUE, it returns only the first result (NOT as an array) for PHP use.

This will output the resulting meta value (notice the addition of "echo"):
<?php $key="mykey"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?>

Template Functions

Any Post Meta function can be used in Wordpress template files. For example:

the_meta()

Echoes an unordered list containing the current post's meta-data with a class for the UL as post-meta and the LI as post-meta-key.

<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'key', true); ?>

will echo the value for a single key as a string wherever it is used in a template file.

all source from :http://codex.wordpress.org/

Latest Wordpress E-Commerce Themes

WordPress is a content management system that’s popular for blogging. But with an ecommerce theme, you can use WordPress to launch a storefront.

Here is a list of new ecommerce themes for WordPress. There are free and premium themes, loaded with features to customize your site. Many of the themes are responsive and optimized for mobile commerce. Next to each theme name, you’ll find the price.

Hustle, $70

Hustle is a self-described “jack-of-all-trades” WooCommerce theme. It’s a responsive store, business, and blogging theme, with a featured slider and introductory message.

Hustle.

--

Artificer, Free

Artificer is a free and responsive WooCommerce theme made for people selling arts and crafts. It includes two custom shortcodes: a sticky note to highlight messages and a sale banner.

Artificer.

--

Sentient, $70

Sentient is a smart WooCommerce theme. Products are aligned using jQuery masonry, allowing you to cleanly showcase without wasted space. Sentient has been fully optimized for mobile devices.

Sentient.

--

StyleShop, $39

StyleShop is a sleek, modern, and responsive ecommerce theme. It features a theme customizer, custom background images, and shortcodes to create beautiful and complex layouts.

StyleShop.

--

CoolCart, $65

CoolCart was designed with simplicity in mind. Once you activate the theme and WooCommerce, the bulk of the work is done — just add products. CoolCart comes with an extensive selection of shortcodes, created using Twitter Bootstrap.

CoolCart.

--

Catalog, $65

Catalog is a clean, responsive catalog-styled shop. It was designed with plugins in mind: WooCommerce, Jigoshop, bbPress, and WordPress SEO by Yoast.

Catalog.

--

Kallyas, $55

Kallyas is a modern and flexible WordPress theme. It features a customizable page builder, responsive layout, multiple portfolio layouts, a variety of sliders, and more.

Kallyas.

--

Proffet, $55

Proffet is a clean, responsive WordPress ecommerce theme built specifically for WooCommerce. It has two home page layouts, multiple shop layouts, featured deals widget, and 14 widget areas.

Proffet.

--

Easy Customise, $40

Easy Customise is easily customized from the admin panel. From simply selecting font settings, font size, font colors or hover color, to adjusting the unlimited layouts and WooCommerce styles, the admin panel controls almost all styles.

Easy Customise.

-

Bazar Shop, $60

Bazar Shop is a clean, multi-purpose ecommerce theme. It utilizes the WooCommerce plugin and features two custom checkout pages, catalog mode, theme branding, and a shortcode manager.

Bazar Shop.

--

Mystile, Free

Mystile is a clean WooCommerce theme, designed as a canvas to use as-is, or to create a unique design to match your products. The free theme is responsive, bundled with plenty of options and alternate color schemes.

Mystile.

Awesome WordPress Mobile Themes And Plugins

Ultimate – CSS3 & HTML5 Mobile WordPress – MORE INFO

This is a powerful package with two themes in ONE! Ultimate and Slate are two nice theme for portfolio with a lot of useful features.

HERO – A No-Nonsense Mobile Theme – MORE INFO

This theme is designed to be super simple, yet provide loads of functionality. Be it the uniquely customizable menu, shortcodes, the touch-enabled gallery, or comment/contact forms, every corner of HERO was crafted with much care.

Deep Focus Responsive Portfolio Theme - MORE INFO

Deep Focus is a slick portfolio theme that expands on some of their previous gallery themes such as ePhoto and eGallery. With this theme you can turn your WordPress blog into a fully functional online photo gallery while still maintaining all of the features of a normal blog. Photographers will also be pleased to hear that photos are no longer cropped on post pages, making the theme acceptable for both landscape and portrait images.
Generally I think Elegant Themes did a great job with Deep Focus, but they also have a huge set of other good looking and among best WordPress themes. Their gallery is worth checking out if you are looking for a new theme – you can get all 76 themes for $39.

Spartan: Fully-featured Theme For Mobile+Tablets – MORE INFO

This is a fully-loaded theme that will serve as the mobile and tablet home for any and all types of WordPress sites while also being a great stand-alone theme. With its color scheme suitable for all businesses, organizations, as well as personal sites, the theme allows your content to take center stage.

Provocateur° Mobile WordPress Theme – MORE INFO

Provocateur° is template build in jQuery Mobile, HTML5 and CSS3 developed for mobile devices. Optimized for Apple devices.

Troller Mobile Retina | WordPress Version – MORE INFO

This is an advanced, clean designed and easy to use mobile template.

Moby Elite – WordPress Mobile Theme – MORE INFO

Moby – Elite is a Mobile WordPress Business Template written in HTML5 with clean code and structure, which can be customized very easily according to your business needs.

Mobit Mobile WordPress Template – MORE INFO

Mobit is created with full customizable theme system. And while coding this template we try to give you better mobile experience. Mobit have perfect blog system. Also custom portfolio, gallery, video and Sound Cloud listing pages. You can insert unlimited category and menu item in Mobit.

Avada Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme – MORE INFO

The Avada theme is clean, very flexible and has a fully responsive design. It is packed with options, and has powerful customization options plus lots of awesome features, amazing layer slider, awesome flex slider plugin, unlimited colors, unlimited sidebars, custom post types, 500+google fonts, 11 custom widgets, tons of short codes, 4 post types, multiple portfolio and blog layout options, ratings system, SEO optimized, and is translation ready. The clean, modern design can be used for any type of website: business, corporate, portfolio, products, etc. It also comes with free support.

Lotus – Mobile and Tablet Responsive Template – MORE INFO

This is a great mobile template which follows newest trends (responsive layout, beautiful design, clean interface, quick support…)

CHAMELEON Responsive Business WordPress Theme – MORE INFO

Chameleons are known for their ability to change the color of their skin. The patterns and color combinations you find in chameleons are almost endless, and our new theme is no different! Chameleon was created to be a simple and professional theme with loads of customization options that do not require web development experience to utilize. Elegant themes has a affordable theme pack offering 77 premium WordPress themes for only $39.

Metro Mobile WordPress Mobile Theme – MORE INFO

Metro style layout is just limited with your imagination. It is fully responsive with Bootstrap 2.1 and built with HTML5 and CSS3. You can create your own metro tiles and design your own style. . You can use the 13 free metro tiles and 24 real Metro Colors, the Contact Form 7 Plugin and build multiple Photo Galleries and much more.

Tiger Mobile Template WordPress Version – MORE INFO

This is a Retina Ready mobile theme with HTML5 Core Structure. It is Google Web Font Ready, has a lot of pages available and lots of other awesome features.

Bigbang Responsive WordPress Template – MORE INFO

BigBang WordPress theme is a clean responsive theme with lots of layout, post and page formats.
The theme has a truck load of features like photostream widgets, social icons, google typography, flex slider, short codes and much more.

Responsive Free WordPress Theme – MORE INFO

Responsive is a mobile ready WordPress theme. It features a fluid grid system that will make sure that your website adapt any screen size – desktop, mobile devices, tablet and other viewing environment. Responsive is free but still quite feature rich. It has 9 Page Templates, 11 Widget Areas, 6 Template Layouts, 4 Menu Positions and more. Powerful but simple Theme Options for full CMS control with easy Logo Upload, Social Networking and Webmaster Tools etc.

Mobilize – jQuery Mobile WordPress Theme – MORE INFO

Mobilize is a mobile website template loaded with features. It is built on jQuery Mobile and touch optimized. The homepage has a touch optimized responsive slider with 24 transitions (swipe with your finger!), optional captions, social icons and more. The interior features a touch optimized gallery, contact form, blog with featured images and featured videos, tons of shortcodes and more. Four color schemes are included, and customizing colors is a breeze with the built in theme options manager.

Side Mobile Retina | WordPress Version – MORE INFO

Side is a great mobile theme. It has over 100 retina icons, retina elements, retina graphics, automatically hides the navigation bar in landscape mode, and it comes with PSD file and a great documentation!

ShutterLoop Free Responsive WordPress Theme - MORE INFO

ShutterLoop is a fully responsive free photography WordPress theme. The theme has a clean and minimalistic design and good features like the Built-in Social Bookmarking and Pagination-control.

AxiaMobile – WordPress HTML5 Template – MORE INFO

AxiaMobile is template build in HTML5 and CSS3 developed for mobile / portable devices. This theme was developed especialy for mobile devices such as iPhone, Android phones and other mobile devices with modern web browser.

WOW! mySite WordPress Mobile Theme – MORE INFO

WOW ! mySite is a WordPress mobile theme optimized for mobile devices. With WOW ! mySite you design your own mobile website with nine customizable preset colour schemes, powerful theme configuration options and multiple page templates. Add your own high resolution logo, custom fonts and shortcodes and fine tune with WOW ! mySite’s unlimited colour options whilst maintaining the style and branding of your desktop website. It is suitable for both corporate and personal use and for non-technical users with very limited WordPress experience and for programmers with technical know-how.

Stacker – Responsive WordPress Theme – MORE INFO

Stacker is a great looking WordPress theme for mobile with a lot of features.

Simple Mobile – MORE INFO

Simple Mobile is a WordPress mobile theme designed for mobile devices, especially iPhone. It can be used parallel with another theme and presented to mobile users only. Or you can use it traditional way – present it both to desktop computers and mobile devices users.

My Mobile Page V3 WordPress Theme – MORE INFO

My Mobile Page WordPress Theme is a minimal WordPress mobile theme. With a modern look and a lot of cool features this can be the perfect personal mobile website for you. This theme can be used for personal mobile pages, web designers mobile pages, artists mobile pages and many other. The theme use automatic resolution detection so you can use for small screen resolutions and bigger resolutions.

WordPress Mobile Plugin Collection

Besides using dedicated WordPress mobile themes or responsive WordPress themes it is also possible to get mobile features from WordPress plugins. We have just listed a few here to give you a teaser.

Jetpack – MORE INFO

Jetpack is a powerful plugin that literally supercharges your self?hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com. It has a mobile theme with one click setup.

Mobile Smart Pro – MORE INFO

Theme switching mobile detection plugin that allows you to manage your mobile-specific content and URLs.

WPtouch Pro

WPtouch Prois a WordPress plugin which adds powerful, easy-to-use features to WordPress for mobile + tablet theme support. It’s also a powerful theming framework, perfect for creating awesome mobile & tablet optimized versions of websites.

WordPress Mobile Pack

The WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit to help mobilize your WordPress site. It has a mobile switcher, themes, widgets, and mobile admin panel.

WordPress Mobile Redirect Plugin – MORE INFO

WordPress Mobile Redirect/Detect is a small plugin that can detect most of popular internet enabled mobile devices and redirect according to URL you provide. It is also easy to customize redirect URL ’s and devices. There is a counter on the right of every device name, so you know how many users are redirected. Please type in full URL . To disable redirect, just delete URL . To enable user to view desktop site from mobile device, just make a normal link from mobile site to desktop site, plugin will automatically recognize that, and make sure that user is not redirected further.

Blog Directories To Submit Your Blog To Search Engines

Here are Some of directories you need to know about:

1. Best of the Web Blog Search remains a powerful tool for sharing your blog, especially since this director’s very selective, listing only mature and valuable blogs. A link from here is majestic.

2. Bloggeries is one of the most respected blog directories. The layout is clear and concise, and readers are able to find what they are looking for in a snap.

3. EatonWeb Blog Directory is a powerful list. The fee, currently $34.99, pays for a review of your blog.

4. OnToplist.com is a free, manually-edited directory that reads the RSS feed of your blog. You can also use the site’s social features, article directory, and other great tools to build your blog.

5. Blogged.com is an interesting mix of a directory and a Google News type site that is fed by the blogs listed with Blogged. And it’s free to list your blog.

6. While the design and infrastructure have changed somewhat over the years, Blog Search Engine remains one of the most selective blog directories on the web. Membership has its privileges.

7. Blog Catalog features a vast number of categories, from “academic” to “writing”, while offering the ability to search by country, language or user. It has a no-frills design, but offers convenient access through a simple blog registration.

8. Globe of Blogs has too many features to list. Only non-commercial blogs are accepted. The site may be busy, but I like being able to narrow my search by title, author or subject.

9. The ultimate directory of British blogs isn’t focused on location, but on the culture. It is asked that bloggers be genuinely “Britished.”

10. Blog Universe has a layout that’s easy to navigate and, although the content is limited, it’s an all-around good directory worthy of submission.

11. Bigger Blogs is intertwined with a business directory and an article directory, giving you access to several powerful tools in one location.

12. Bloggernity is a crisp, clean and easily navigated site. It’s low ad-to-content ratio has helped solidify its reputation as a quality directory.

13. Bloggapedia has an interesting and eye-catching homepage. Readers are easily connected to top blogs and new posts. Innovative categories, a colorful design and its blogger tool kit make this directory a hit.

14. Spillbean is a well-designed directory with categories such as “health,” “society,” “Internet,” and “personal.”

15. Blogging Fusion boasts over 60 categories, including family-focused blogs. Blogging Fusion has an good number of listings, and it also has visitor stats.

16. Blogflux is organized and clear with a strong social element.

17. The blogs at the top of Bloglisting are fun, colorful and catch the attention of the reader. Bloglisting displays the page-ranking blogs, which is a helpful tool when determining with whom you want to exchange links.

18. Blogio stores plenty of quality blogs, and it sports solid on-site search.

19. Blog Digger is a strong search tool, especially for local blog listings.

20. Blog Pulse features a powerful community element, on-site analytics, and a clean design. The “submit” page is a bit tricky to find, so here’s the quick link.

21. Technorati’s blog directory is well-respected and spans more than 30 categories.

22. Blogarama has a strong base of blogs and a solid text-ad system for its front page.

23. Blog Hints features over 100 categories. The site is very picky about which blogs are included, and those that are listed are presented via a visual interface that shows the site’s design and page rank. This makes Blog Hints the perfect site for finding link-swapping partners.