zoopmedia » Themes

How To Add A Custom Field

Justin Wright — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:29:29 +0000

In this video, we’ll show you how to add a custom field to a blog post. This will come in useful if you plan on using a theme that uses features such as thumbnails.

Headway WordPress Theme Tutorial

Justin Wright — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:09:43 +0000

In this video, we’ll show you the backend of the new WordPress theme called Headway (aff). It literally changed the way we think of WordPress themes.

Vigilance: A Free WordPress Theme

Justin Wright — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:16:53 +0000

In this tutorial, we’ll give you a detailed overview of one of our favorite free WordPress Themes. You can learn more about the theme and grab a copy of it over at the Vigilance page.

Create A Digital Business Card With WordPress

Justin Wright — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:12:33 +0000

How many times have you bumped into someone and realized you don’t have any business cards with you? If you’re like me, you’ve done it a few times. That’s why more and more people are starting to create digital business cards. Not only is it a great idea, but it’s incredibly useful. You can write down your domain name on a ~~napkin~~ ~~leaf~~ ~~hand~~ (insert an object) and instantly have a business card.

So how do you build a digital business card?

It’s Simple, Use WordPress

Not only will it make it easy to manage your website, but it’s super quick. You can literally install WordPress, load a theme, and be done in only a few hours (maybe even minutes).

There are already a few business card themes available for WordPress that will save you a ton of time. We’ll take a look at two of the themes available, as well as an example of a modified one I just finished.

Visiting Card Theme

This was the first theme available that made setting up a WordPress business card site relatively easy. Once you install the theme, you are given a few options that allow you to enter in your information. Here’s a quick look:

Once you hit the save button, you’re done. No coding necessary, unless you want to customize it. If you want to give this theme a try, feel free to grab a copy.

Digital Business Card Theme

The Digital Business Card theme seems to a modified version of the Visiting Card theme. It’s design has been modified to look a little more professional, as well as cleaner. Personally, I loved this design when I saw it.

The theme has very similiar options in terms of setup, which can be seen here:

Setting up the Digital Business Card theme is really easy and only takes a few minutes to gather all of your information and social network links. Once you’re finished entering in the data, a simple button click updates the site. You can get the theme here.

Customization

The great thing about WordPress themes is that they are easy to customize. If you have any experience in web design, you can easily go in and modify a theme to make it look more unique.

I ended up customizing the Digital Business Card theme to use on my own site, which ended up like this:

As you can see, I modified the colors, as well as the layout. I also figured out how to add a few extra pages including a lifestream. Overall, it works extremely well for what I use it for and matches the design of my blog.

Build Your Own

If you haven’t built an online business card yet, I highly suggest giving it a try. Once your finished, feel free to leave your link below so I can check it out!

Build A Website Using Twitter Widgets

Justin Wright — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:21:30 +0000

We tend to spend a lot of time on Twitter seeing what’s happening around the Austin area. Unfortunately, it can be pretty time consuming keeping up with relevant tweets.

So what if you could build a website that pulls in tweets based on specific search terms?

Introducing ATXTweets

Luckily you can and it’s super easy. We managed to build Austin Tweets in a matter of a few hours. Now we have a great tool to see what’s happening in and around Austin.

Here’s how we did it:

1. Install WordPress

The next step is installing WordPress on your domain name. We suggest using WordPress because it kicks ass makes building websites quick, easy, and less troublesome. For more reasons, check out our post: WordPress: Beyond A Blog.

If you need help installing WordPress, feel free to contact us. You can also take a look at Installing WordPress if you prefer to do it yourself.

2. Load A Theme

Once you have WordPress up and running, it’s time to find a theme for your website. Theoretically you could build the site using the default theme, but we recommend using a premium WordPress theme. Why? Not only will you get a better design, but you will also get more flexibility. You’ll want a theme that works well with pages, since we won’t be using any posts for this website.

3. Get Twitter Search Widget(s)

The website we are creating will utilize Twitter’s search widget. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a widget that automatically displays tweets based on specific search terms. You can enter hashtags, keywords, or a combination of the two to find the most relevant tweets.

Here’s a quick screenshot of the Twitter widget setup screen:

As you can see, it’s very basic. You simply fill out the search query, followed by a title and caption. However, we recommend leaving the title and caption fields blank since it works better to add the title on your actual website.

Also, if you use the default settings you will get a widget that looks similar to the one in the screenshot. It would work well for a sidebar of a blog, but not for an actual website. So make sure to click on the appearance tab and set your settings to something like this:

The reason we recommend these settings is so you don’t get any borders around the widget. That way you can fill the content area of your website and make it appear integrated.

You also have to set the dimensions to match the content area of your website. We ended up using 580px by 700px to match the width of our WordPress theme. The height can be anything you wish, but we wanted to keep the page rather short.

If you would like to have different pages on your website that feature different Twitter search results, you’ll have to make a few widgets.

4. Create Pages and Embed Widgets

Now that you’ve created your widget(s), we have to input them into WordPress. The easiest way to do that is by using pages. So start by creating a new page titled whatever you want. Perhaps “what’s happening” or something about tweets.

Once you have the title added, switch over to the HTML view so that you can input the widget code from Twitter. Then it’s as easy as copy and pasting the code in to the page. You should get something like this:

The last thing you have to do is click publish on the page and you’re all set. If you want to use multiple widgets like we did, simply create more pages and embed the code for the widgets.

5. Configure Your WordPress Settings

The only thing left to do is configure a few WordPress options. If you want to have a certain page as your homepage, make sure to configure WordPress to use that page from within the reading options like so:

It’s also a good idea to optimize your permalinks to use keywords instead of page ID’s. For a detailed tutorial on how to do this, check out our post on optimizing permalinks.

All Done!

Now that wasn’t so bad was it? We just walked you through the entire process of building a functional website. Best of all, you don’t have to create any content or manage any posts.

However, we haven’t tried using this on a large scale yet and still haven’t figured out how useful a website like this it. Plus it’s not the best for search engine optimization since the content isn’t on the actual pages.

We’ll see how it works out after the site is up for awhile and we do some promoting.

Add Your Avatar To Blog Comments

Justin Wright — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:24:09 +0000

If you read the comments here on our blog, you’ll notice certain users have an avatar next to their name. You’ve most likely seen these on tons of other blogs and websites as well. More and more sites are starting to integrate avatars into comments, track-backs, and blog posts.

Unfortunately, many websites require you to upload your image when you sign up. This can get old, especially if you leave comments on tons of different websites. Luckily, Gravatar is here to help us.

What Is It?

In a nutshell, Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar service. In other words, you only need to upload your image once. From that point on, your avatar will show up on any website or blog that utilizes the Gravatar service.

This site, along with a lot of other blogs we have created, uses the service to pull up avatars for those of you who leave comments. It’s an awesome feature!

A Quick Overview

For an even better explanation along with some instructions, check out this video:

As you can see, it’s an easy to use service. It’s a great way to spruce up your blog a little, especially the comments section. If you haven’t already, head on over to Gravatar and set yourself up. That way your avatar will start showing up around the web.