Though I know the theory is that everyone loves new shiny things, this insane upgrade schedule that WordPress has set is nuts. Plugins are breaking all over the place (despite the assurances on the 2.5 announcement post that that wouldn’t happen) and people need to know their site is going to WORK. Especially now that […]

When designing for WordPress as a CMS, it’s important to know how to design a custom homepage Page Template for your WordPress Theme.
Some of the things I’ve done to enhance a Custom Homepage Page template is to add special homepage widget areas to allow featured content to be added to the homepage and edited easily. […]

In templating for Wordpress I’ve really come to appreciate the versatility that Wordpress Widgets offer to a website, so much so that I’m wishing there were more than 9 text widgets! Actually, there can be. You simply have to create more. See below.
If, when templating, you create a number of widgetized areas, and name them […]

** UPDATE!!! ** This theme has been tested, and works in WordPress 2.5.
Kickass-Limelight is released free for non-commercial use as long as the attribution/link to http://kickasswebdesign.com remains intact and visible to all. Please ask about licensing if you wish to use this for Commercial purposes. This theme works in Wordpress versions 2.3.x and later.
You can […]

Twice recently I went onto client’s sites to find they opted in WordPress Admin to use a category dropdown menu instead of the regular widget menu. It amazes me every time I see this. Why? Because not only is it an ugly interface in an otherwise Kickass design, but it’s also a really really REALLY […]

Since I’m currently doing a lot of upgrades to get all my clients up to the newest version of WordPress, an ugly and frustrating problem has reared its head. The most frustrating thing about it is it’s a problem that has existed since WordPress 2.1 Upgrades, and it still hasn’t been fixed. The newest version […]

I’ve been doing Custom WordPress Theme Design for awhile now, to the point where I’ve completed somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 sites. There are also a lot of sites using Kickass Free WordPress Themes.
You’d think that having done so much WordPress web design that I’d be tired of it, and would have “seen it […]

Wordpress has had a security update to fix some issues. This is in both the 2.0.x branch and the 2.2.X branch. For once it was pretty painless, since it just involved using the trac differential to upload the changed files, which in the case of the 2.2.X branch are here. It stated on the dev […]

A couple years ago I wrote about using WordPress as a CMS, and how, for most small business and non-profit websites it serves as an ideal tool, allowing the site owner to easily update the website without having to call the webgeek. It’s still one of my most visited blogposts.
Truth is that though I do […]

A good portion of the jobs I do are WordPress Design jobs. In working with WordPress Design, there are a few things I’ve learned that are peculiar to working with wordpress.
First and foremost, certain negative margin layouts are a nightmare in WordPress, particularly Ryan Brill’s layout that is written up on A List Apart. The […]

Let me preface this by saying *** KNOCK ON WOOD!!! ***
The Comment Timeout Plugin worked SO WELL that I only had one comment spam break through overnight, where I’d routinely see 20 or more.
I wasn’t doing so well on the contact form spam, I got around 40 of those overnight and they were still coming […]

Now the bots are spamming my contact form on the barrylyga.com launch post. Hopefully this post that moves that one off the front page will stop the shenanigans. If it doesn’t, then it’s time to look for a 4th contact form version, hopefully one that doesn’t let the bots submit.
Michael Hampton said the spambot activity […]

This morning I got up, made my coffee, and sat down to the computer as usual, expecting to open email and get to work. Lo and behold, instead of the 20-40 emails I usually have in my box, there were closer to 170. Almost all comment spams.
Now I run Bad Behavior, which usually does a […]

Every now and again I sign into WordPress admin Dashboard and check to see who has linked to me. Today is a pretty typical day. These are a few that I checked out–

marieddu.forpassion.net
rivet.diboo.net
aviscontraire.quebecblogue.com
avmea.oottoo.com
one-year.org/martinos
uzgunuveyalnizim.oottoo.com
nellasushi.dakotablogs.com

I think we can all tell from that random sampling which of my free wordpress themes is getting the most use! It’s […]

I’ve been finding over time that there are a lot of Content Management Systems out there. Some are quite good, like ModX and Joomla, while others need a doctorate in jargon just to figure out how to edit an article. I’m finding that for smaller business sites the simplest one to use is Wordpress, especially […]