WordPress Resources: The Ultimate Collection
Written by Stefan Vervoort on February 8, 2009
As I am a WordPress user by heart, I have a large list of WordPress related bookmarks. Many of these bookmarks have proven their value over time and I am pretty sure they will be helpful for you too. Welcome to the Ultimate Collection of WordPress Resources.
If I haven’t included a resource I definitely had to include, leave a comment and I will be happy to add it to the article.
General
Here are some general resources on WordPress.
Beginners
There are always people who would like to get into the game. Here are a couple tutorials that learned me developing WordPress themes.
- So you want to create WordPress themes, huh?
- Build a WordPress Theme from Scratch
- WordPress Theme from Scratch (3 parts)
Developing your Theme on your Local Computer
A great way to develop WordPress themes is to have a local server on your computer. A server that runs PHP and MySQL allows you to test WordPress themes without uploading to your online server. It isn’t hard to set up such server:
Codex
The WordPress Codex is the official documentation for WordPress. It has a huge number of content and you can find almost anything about WordPress There. Here are most important resources.
- Theme Development
- Conditional Tags
- Template Tags
- Stepping into Template Tags
- Designing Themes For Public Release
- The Loop
- Template Hierarchy
- Using Custom Fields
Theme Starting Points
When you are just starting out (or if you don’t want to start from scratch) you can use so-called “WordPress Frameworks”. Check of the most popular below:
- Thematic – WordPress Framework
- Hybrid WordPress Theme Framework
- Starkers WordPress Theme
- WhiteBoard – Free WP Theme Framework
WordPress Hacks
Because WordPress is so popular, many people use it. All these people have different requirements and WordPress can’t support them all. So, whoever needs more functionality experimented and hacked away. Here are a few WP hacks you can incorporate into your theme.
- Collection of WordPress Hacks
- WordPress Theme Hacks
- 63 WordPress Hacks
- Mastering Your WordPress Theme Hacks and Techniques
WordPress Tutorials
Hundreds of tutorials have been written about WordPress and theme development. Here is a small section of the best tutorials out there.
- Social Bookmarking with WordPress
- What Every Blogger need to know about Categories
- Widgetizing Themes
- How to Separate WordPress Comments and Trackbacks
- Different Ways To Display Content in WordPress
- How to Highlight Author Comments in WordPress
- How to Install DomTABs on WordPress
- Create a Custom WordPress Plugin From Scratch
- Build a Featured Posts Section for WordPress
- Unraveling the Secrets of WordPress’ Comments.php File
- How to Blog Design Style Guide
WordPress & SEO
By default, WordPress is a search engine friendly blogging platform. However, you can enhance your themes much further with the following SEO techniques.
- WordPress SEO by Joost de Valk
- Perfect WordPress Title Tags
- WordPress Permalinks Explained
- Duplicated Content
CheatSheets
Cheatsheets can be very handy when you need to reference to a WordPress tag or function. You can print them and put them up your wall for quick referencing!
- WordPress Theme Development Checklist
- WordPress Help-Sheet
- WordPress Advanced Help-Sheet
- WordPress CheatSheet V1
- WP Theme Tags
Promote your WordPress Theme
If you want to release your theme for free to the public, you can add your theme to these sites to get more attention.
WordPress Community
The people around WordPress are great: the community is much alive. Check out these forums to discuss anything WordPress related.
WordPress Blogs
Many people write about WordPress to teach other WordPress enthusiasts about their findings and tricks. Here are a few blogs on the subject.
- Lorelle on WordPress
- WP Candy
- ThemeLab
- WpRecipes
- Blog Design Blog
- Darren Hoyt
- WordPress Modder
- Blogging Pro
- WPZoom
Plugins
One great advantage of WordPress is the great plugin support. With thousands of plugins available, there’s almost a fix for anything.
More plugins? Check out these links:
- WordPress – Plugin Directory
- 10 Un-Usual WordPress Plugins that Improved my Blog
- Ultimate Collection fo WordPress Plugins
WordPress Inspiration
It’s important to get inspiration from time to time, it can give you many idea’s for your themes. Here are some WordPress related showcase sites.
This article is written by:
Name: Stefan Vervoort
URL: http://www.divitodesign.com
Description: I am a 18-year-old webdesigner and blogger from Waalwijk, the Netherlands. I also blog at WPTOY and work at DivitoMedia.
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Amazing stuff! I’m a WP theme designer myself and I must say, this one list’s gonna give a lot of the people trying to get a hold of WP a cool breeze!
No http://www.wpzoom.com? Come on guys!
[...] Vervoort who heads up the blog DivitoDesign has published his own comprehensive list of WordPress resources. He has gone the extra mile and published them in easy to browse sections containing everything [...]
WOW! This is a very compressive list. Thanks.
awesome collection. This really takes a lot of the hassle out of searching for wordpress items. People that find this can save a lot of time. thanks.
Wordpress is my favorite blog script.
I’m gonna read all those articles about creating my own themes.
Thanks, and congratulations for this great blog!
This is amazing resource of wordpress. I am going to start my own blog in wordpress, so this resource is absolute delight for me. Even experienced wordpress bloggers can find something helpful in this resource. Sorry I don’t like to call it an article about worpress, it should be called resource.
What a nice tutorial. Best I’ve seen in a long time. Bookmarked it for the future.
[...] Read more [...]
This is purely an ultimate collection. No doubt about that.
Good stuff. Cheers !
I apologize for this being off topic but I wanted to let you know that I enjoyed this site and that I will be adding your link on my page WordPress Tips, Tricks, SEO and Tools
Great list! this has saved me alot of time. Thank you
Fantastic list , thanks alot man. this is very comprehensive
Thanks for the resource list! I have been looking for some beginner tutorials on creating word press themes. Hopefully after reading these I can start making some bombin’ themes for my blog.
Thanks for the list of hacks..lots of good stuff there…
Here is the best place to outsource SEO: http://www.youtechno.info/2009/01/service-upgrade-better-seo-for-your.html
A very nice list. Thanks for making it and sharing the info. There’s gonna be a lot of reading for me for sure.
WOW. You’ve did a great job
I bookmarked your blog. Thanks.
hay butty good job. making a custom wordpress theme is a killer. have a look at my theme inspired a Australian designer. hope you like it.
Excellent, thanks!
[...] WordPress Resources: The Ultimate Collection » DivitoDesign [...]
Great list. thank you!
[...] WordPress Resources: The Ultimate Collection [...]
[...] Wordpress Resources: The Ultimate Collection. [...]
[...] WordPress Resources: The Ultimate Collection Share and [...]
[...] good collection of Wordpress resources. There are many….many….many more available through Google. [...]
Nice collection. I’d like to see our blog added sometime
. Also, I’d love to see which free and/or premium theme shops you might include in there out of the zillions that exist.
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