Custom menus are obviously a major part of WordPress at this point… something that users have been begging for since 2.x. The only problem is that you typically would want to provide some default menu items with any new theme you release. For instance… a “Home” page link, or maybe a few menu items that require custom classes such as a “Twitter” link with a matching Twitter icon or a “Subscribe” link with a matching RSS icon. Sure, you could hard code these items within your theme files, but that kind of defeats the purpose of custom menus. Using the code below as a template within your theme “functions.php”, you can create a custom menu with any number of menu items including custom classes:
An Alternative to the Shortcode Madness [Part 1]
![An alternative to the shortcode madness [Part 1]](http://theme.it/uploads/2011/07/an-alternative-to-the-shortcode-madness-part-1.jpg "An alternative to the shortcode madness [Part 1]")
I tend to spend a good amount of my time continuing to learn WordPress and improve the ways I go about coding themes. With the vast majority of my WordPress development being done for clients, it is important to me to keep a good relationship with them. I feel part of maintaining that relationship is to provide a seamless, simple, and easy solution to their website project. I refer to this as the “Don’t make me think” approach, which pairs nicely with “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”…
How to Create Simple & Universal CSS-Based Button Styles
More often than not I am finding that I try to incorporate as much of a theme design as possible using CSS rather than source images. Especially with the introduction of CSS3, designing a theme almost entirely via CSS is actually fairly easy to do, not to mention clean and efficient. For this design tutorial, I am going to focus on a simple method for creating universal button styles entirely via CSS. If you are looking for a real-life example of this method, you can view the result within my “Posted” theme.
Video: How I Started & Grew My WordPress Theme Business
I was invited to present at the Seattle WordPress meetup earlier this year and decided to talk about how I started my WordPress theme business (Press75.com) including how I grew that business over the next few years. For those of you who are considering establishing your own business selling WordPress themes, you will probably find some relevant information in this video. The presentation slides are not visible in the video, but you can download them for your reference (PDF Format) here. Continue to view the presentation.
