WordPress E-Commerce Plugins:

WP e-Commerce Pluign (free with premium upgrades available)

Shopp ($55)

Other free e-commerce plugins:

• eShop
• YAK for WordPress
• QuickShop
• ArtPal
• Simple PayPal Cart

Other premium e-commerce plugins:

• WP Affiliate Platform ($39.95)
• PHPurchase ($49)

WordPress E-Commerce Themes:

ShopperPress ($79)

Crafty Cart (free)

Viroshop ($37)

WPA Storefront ($32)

The Furniture Store ($47)

The Jewelry Shop ($47)

The Clothes Shop ($42)

AppCloud ($35)

Kelontong ($35)

Store ($65)

WP Store ($65)

e-Commerce ($65)

Kidz Store ($65)

eShop ($65)

wpShop ($37)

eGoods ($32)

Ecommerce Theme ($79.95)

Tutorials for Using WordPress for Ecommerce:

• Create an eCommerce Website with WordPress in Under 5 Minutes (video)
• Getting Set Up with the WP e-Commerce Plugin: Settings and Configurations
• WP e-Commerce SEO Tutorial
• WP e-Commerce Review for WordPress
• A Crash Course in Creating E-Commerce Websites with WordPress
• How to Sell Digital or Non-Digital Products Online with WordPress eStore Plugin

The form we’ll be creating will contain some basic fields (name, email, phone, website, and message) that are shown to all visitors who are filling out the form, but based on the reason they are contacting us they will also see a few other more specific fields. If the visitor selects “Web Design Services” as their reason for contacting us they will be prompted to tell us if it is a new website or a re-design, enter a budget, and tell us how they found us. If they select “Content Development Services” they will also be prompted to enter a budget, but with different options than the budget for web design services, and so on.

In the past our contact form has included a field to allow visitors to select a budget, but that was based on the assumption that they were contacting us regarding web design services. Since the budget field isn’t applicable for someone who is filling out the contact form just to say hi, this “advanced” form will only show what is relevant based on user input.

Conditional logic open up a lot of possibilities with contact forms, especially for designers and agencies that offer a variety of different services. The user has a better experience because they are not confused by fields that are not relevant to them, and more detailed data is possible because not every field will be shown to every user. This tutorial will show just one example of how this type of form can be used, most likely you can come up with some ways to put it into practice on your own site.

For this tutorial we will be using the Gravity Forms plugin for WordPress (a premium plugin). I purchased a developer’s license for this plugin a few months ago because it makes it very simple to create advanced forms, and I’ve already used it on several projects. With Gravity Forms you can create a simple contact form, a more advanced one like we will be doing here, a form that creates user-submitted posts (such as a community news section), and more. This post is not sponsored or supported in any way by Gravity Forms, and it contains no affiliate links. I believe this advanced contact form that we will be creating can be useful for just about any web designer or service provider, and using Gravity Forms provides a quick, simple way to get it done.

Why Use Gravity Forms?

There are countless contact form plugins out there for WordPress, many of them are free, and of course contact forms can also be coded without using a plugin, so why use Gravity Forms? The reason I chose to buy a license for the plugin is because of the time that it can save. Creating a more advanced form with other plugins takes much more time and effort.

Although there is an upfront cost to purchase the license ($39 for a single-site license or $199 for a developer’s license) there is no on-going cost like you would have with some options like Wufoo or FormStack. WordPress users will also like the fact that Gravity Form submissions can be viewed and replied to from within the WordPress dashboard (email notifications can also be set up).

How to Create an Advanced Contact Form with Gravity Forms:

The first thing you’ll need to do is get a license for Gravity Forms. Once you have the purchased the license, download it, install it, and activate it like you would any other WordPress plugin. Once you’ve done that you will see an option for “Forms” in the vertical navigation menu (just below “Comments”) in the WordPress dashboard. Click on “New Form” and we’ll get started. You can hover over the “Untitled” field and click on edit, then you will be able to enter a form title and description.

Setting Up the Basic Fields:

To start with, we’ll create a few basic fields that we want to be a part of every form submission, regardless of the purpose of the inquiry. So we’ll start with the first name and last name fields. Gravity Forms allows you to choose from a list of standard/general form fields (such as single line text, drop down, checkboxes, etc.) and it also includes “advanced” fields for specific purposes, such as name, email, date, etc. We’ll start with the name field, so at the right side of the screen click on the down arrow next to “Advanced Fields” and then click on “Name” and it will add the fields for first and last name.

We’ll make the name fields required, so hover over the fields and you’ll see an “Edit” link appear.

Click on “Edit” and it will open up some options. At the bottom click on the checkbox next to “Required”. This will prevent the form from being submitted without the name filled out.

After you have done that you can click on “Close” where the “Edit” link had been.

Next, we’ll open up the options for the standard fields by clicking on the down arrow, and we’ll select “Single Line Text”.

Click to edit this field, and chance the name from “Untitled” to “Company/Organization”, and then close.

The next field we want to add is for the user’s email address, so click on “Email” under the “Advanced Fields”.

We also want the email address to be a required field, so click on “Edit” and check “Required”, and close.

Then we’ll add a field for the phone number, so click on “Phone” under “Advanced Fields”. Next we’ll add a field for a URL, so select “Website” under “Advance Fields”. Neither of these will be required fields.

The next field we’re going to create will be the most important one, because it will impact what other fields are shown. We’ll create a drop down that allows the user to select the reason for contacting us. Click on “Drop Down” under “Standard Fields”. Then click on “Edit” and change the field label to “Reason for Contacting Us”. For the purposes of this tutorial we are going to create 6 options to chose, but what you create will of course be based upon the services that you offer and the other options that you want to allow visitors to select. The six options that we are using are: 1) Web Design Services, 2) SEO Services, 3) Content Development Services, 4) Consulting, 5) Advertising, and 6) Other. If the user selects “Web Design Services” they will see certain other relevant fields, if they choose “SEO Services” they will see different fields, and so on. So we’re going to create the first option to say “Please Select” so that none of the conditional fields are shown until the reason of contact is chosen (if “Web Design Services” is selected by default, all of those conditional fields will be shown before the user has really chosen “Web Design Services”). We’ll also check the box to make this a required field.

Using Conditional Logic:

Now we can start creating some fields that will be conditional based on the response to the previous field. First, we’ll add a checkbox (under “Standard Fields”) and click on “Edit”. Change the field label to “New Website or Re-Design” and edit the choices to be “New Website” and “Re-Design, and delete the third choice. Now, to make it conditional, click on the advanced tab and at the bottom you will see a checkbox for “Enable Conditional Logic”. Check that box and you’ll see some new options appear. Since we have only created one field that could be used for conditional logic it is the only one you will see. Change “Please Select” to “Web Design Services” and this field will be shown whenever someone is filling out a contact form regarding web design, but not for other services.

Next, we’ll create a drop down menu that allows users to select their budget range for web design services. So click on “Drop Down” under “Standard Fields” and enter whatever budget ranges are appropriate. Then, click on the “Advanced” tab, check the box for “Enable Conditional Logic”, and have it appear when the user selects “Web Design Services”.

We’ll also ask our potential web design clients how they found us, so once again click on “Drop Down” under “Standard Fields”. This time we’ll enter a few different options including search engine, referral, link from another website, I’m a blog reader, and other. Again, click on the “Advanced” tab and make it conditional on the user selecting “Web Design Services”.

Next, we’ll create a checkbox field that is relevant to SEO services, so click on “Checkboxes” under “Standard Fields”. We’re editing the field label to say “What Package Would You Like?”, and adding the following choices: keyword research, competitor analysis, and full site evaluation. Click on the “Advanced” tab and check the box for “Enable Conditional Logic”, and this time change it to be “SEO Services”.

Next, we’ll create a budget drop down that will apply to content development services. So click on “Drop Down” under “Standard Fields”. Change the field label to be “Budget” and add the appropriate budget ranges. Then click on “Advanced” and check the box for “Enable Conditional Logic”, and make it conditional upon the user selecting “Content Development Services”.

The last field we’re going to create is the message field that will not be conditional, every user will see it, and it will allow the user to add their comments or questions that will be emailed to us. Click on “Paragraph Text” under “Standard Fields”. Edit the field label to be “Message”, and make no other changes.

Setting Up Email Notifications:

Click on the “Save Form” button at the bottom of the page. Now that our form has been created we will set it up to send email notifications when a new inquiry is submitted, so click on “Setup Email Notification for This Form”.

Check the box next to “Enable email notification to administrators”. Then enter the email address where you would like it to be sent in the “Send to Email” field. (Gravity Forms includes routing options which sends the email to different addresses based on a field in the form, but we will not be using this feature for this tutorial.) In the “From Email” field select “Email” in the drop down. This will use the email address entered by the user as the “from” address, so if you reply to an email it will go to the user.

You can then set up the subject of the emails, and you can use form fields. So we’ll type in the text “A Message from” and then using the drop down we will select the first name and the last name.

Next, we’ll customize the body of the message that we receive. You can use the drop down to select form fields to include in the message, but we’ll keep it simple by selecting “All Submitted Fields”.

So the body of the message will now include all information that is provided by the user in the contact form.

Inserting the Form:

The last thing left to do is to insert the form into our Contact Page. So edit the page in WordPress, or create a new page if one doesn’t already exist, and you’ll see an icon to insert a form from Gravity Forms.

Place your cursor where you would like to enter the form and click on the icon. Then select the form from the drop down and you can choose to show or hide the form title and description.

Click “Insert Form” and you’re done. Now you’ll have an advanced contact form that makes it easier for visitors and provides more relevant information to you.

I hope this post has given you some ideas that can be put into practice on your own site.

For more WordPress-related content please see:

• 9 WordPress Hacks to User Interactivity
• 15 Exceptionally Useful Resources for WordPress Theme Designers
• 20+ Tutorials and Resources for Working with Custom Fields in WordPress

1. Show Most Recent Comments

One of the most important ways that blogs can encourage readers to get involved is through the comments. There are a number of different strategies for increasing comments and participation from readers, and many of them involve placing extra emphasis on the comments. By displaying the most recent comments (in the sidebar for example) you may be able to encourage more comments because visitors will see that you value their participation.

To display a list of the most recent comments, use the following code in your theme:

Source: WP Hacks

2. Allow Visitors to Email Posts to Their Friends

If your readers enjoy and appreciate the posts on your blog they may be interested in emailing them to their friends. On most news websites you’ll see a link that says “email to a friend,” but it’s not as common on blogs. Adding this functionality into your theme is not as difficult as you might think.

To add an “email this” link, use the following code in your single.php file:

Source: WP Recipes

3. Add a “Share on Facebook” Link

While social media and social networking are commonly integrated with blogging, it’s more common to see a Digg or Tweetmeme button than one that will allow readers to share the link via Facebook. Since Facebook is such an incredibly popular site, it may provide additional exposure for your blog and provide more opportunities for your readers to interact with your content.

To add a “share on Facebook” link, use the following code:

Source: WP Recipes

4. Add Custom Bookmark Links

Many blogs receive tremendous exposure from social media sites, and encouraging your readers to interact by voting or bookmarking can make a big difference in terms of traffic levels. There are plugins and widgets available for this purpose, as well as buttons and badges from the social media sites, but if you’d like more control over the look or if you would just like to do it yourself it is possible.

Bookmark with Delicious:

Digg:

Twitter:

StumbleUpon:

Source: Perishable Press

5. Rearrange the Comments to Show Most Recent Comments First

Having a blog that receives a lot of comments from readers can in some ways discourage others from participating. Some readers will not take the time to leave a comment if they feel like theirs will be buried below 100 other comments. One trick to reward those who are going to take the time to comment is to list the comments with the most recent on top, rather than the oldest one being on top.

Find the following code in your comments.php file (please note that not all themes use the same coding for the comments.php file):

and before it add:

Source: WordPress Forums

6. Add a User-Submitted News Section

User-submitted news or community news sections can be a great way for visitors to get involved at your site. With a news section you will be able to display links to relevant posts at other blogs, and your readers will be able to submit posts that they have found to be helpful, or get some extra promotion by submitting links to their own posts.

I included a news section when I launched DesignM.ag last year and since day one it has drawn significant interest from readers.

The process of adding a news section is more involved than just copying and pasting some code, so I will not be providing code for this one, but Tripwire Magazine published a post a few months ago that will lead you through the process. See How to: WordPress 2.7+ User Link Feed Submit Form and Widget.

7. Add Translation Links

As a blogger, you may be surprised to see how many of your visitors and subscribers come from various countries. While these people may be able to read and understand your posts, there may be some times when they have difficulty or where they would like to share the post with someone who may not be able to read it. In these case, translation can come in handy.

Inserting the code shown below will allow your visitors to easily use Google’s translation services:

Source: Perishable Press

8. Google Custom Search

One of the best ways for visitors to find what they are looking for is to use a site-wide search. Unfortunately, the default WordPress search isn’t much help in most cases. However, you can easily add custom search powered by Google to your blog (plus you can monetize the search through AdSense).

In order to get your own custom search from Google, you will need to sign up with them and they will provide the code. Pro Blog Design has a tutorial that takes you through all of the steps that are involved. See Make a Google Custom Search for Your Blog, and Make Money.

9. Display Facebook Status on Your Blog

Many blogs display most recent tweets, but it’s also possible to share your Facebook status on your blog. There are a few steps involved in doing this with WordPress, and Hongkiat has a tutorial that will lead you through the process. See How to Display Facebook Statuses on WordPress Blog.

For more WordPress-related posts please see:

• 15 Exceptionally Useful Resources for WordPress Theme Designers
• 20+ Tutorials and Resources for Working with Custom Fields in WordPress
• Top 10 Tutorials for Developing WordPress Themes
• 10 Excellent Sources for WordPress Design Inspiration

In this post we’ll feature 15 resources that may be of help to you while you are designing and developing WordPress themes. If you have suggestions for other resources, please leave a comment.

Frameworks:

Thematic

Thematic is a very popular WordPress theme framework created by Ian Stewart. This framework can be used as-is, or is excellent for using with child themes. In fact, a number of child themes for Thematic are available for free or as premium themes, including the free gallery theme distributed by Smashing Magazine.

Hybrid Theme Framework

The Hybrid theme framework, by Justin Tadlock, has also been created with child themes in mind. It includes 13 page templates for various purposes, 15+ plugins supported within the theme, breadcrumbs, and tutorials to help you get started.

Starkers

Starkers is a “bare-bones, blank-canvas, starting-point WordPress theme” from Elliot Jay Stocks.  Starkers has no formatting whatsoever, which will provide you will a starting point that can save time in development of your own themes.

Carrington Theme Framework

Carrington is a theme framework that better enables WordPress to be used as a CMS. Carrington makes it easier to create unique looks for different categories and posts with custom templates.

Testing WordPress Themes:

Using XAMPP for Local WordPress Theme Development

Jacob Gube of Six Revisions shows how to set up a local environment for theme development. This is a detailed tutorial that may be able to save you a lot of time and make your theme development much quicker and easier.

How to Set Up a Killer WordPress Testing Environment Locally

NETTUTS also has a tutorial for setting up a local testing environment. If you are designing and developing many WordPress themes you will want to check out one of these two tutorials.

nkthemeswitch

The theme switch plugin will allow you to show a different theme to anyone who is logged in to your site. This makes it easy to test a theme in development without your visitors seeing it.

Dummy Content:

WP XML Test Data Import

When developing themes one of the biggest frustrations can be the lack on content on a new installation of WordPress. Self Conclusion has put together an XML file with several posts and pages of dummy content with tags, categories, comments, links, lists, and everything you will need to test a theme. You can easily download this file and import it into WordPress to save the time of adding your own dummy content.

Sandbox Dummy Content

For Sandbox design competitions, a set of dummy content was released. It achieves the same purpose as the content from Self Conclusion that was just mentioned.

WordPress Test Post Pack

Think Design Blog also has a pack of dummy content that can be downloaded and imported into WordPress.

Cheat Sheets and Reference Guides:

Complete WordPress Theme Guide

Nick La of Web Designer Wall put together a three-part series to help those who want to learn more about WordPress theme development. The three parts are: installing WordPress locally, building a custom WordPress theme, and moving and exporting WordPress.

WordPress Template Tag Reference Guide

The template tag reference guide is a great resource to have close by when you are coding a WordPress theme. It lists all of the template tags, which can save a good bit of time during development.

WordPress Theme Development Checklist

This PDF checklist is helpful to make sure that you are not forgetting any steps during theme development. The checklist will help you to know what you have done and what still needs to be completed.

WordPress Template Design Cheat Sheet

The template design cheat sheet is another resource that is good to have handy during development.  It lists the various template files, template hierarchy, sample template coding, template functions, and more.

Coding Services:

WPCoder

If you are a WordPress designer and you would like to save some time in development of the theme, WPCoder is a group of developers that specialize in taking your designs in PSD format and coding them into WordPress themes.

PSD to WP

PSD to WP is another coding service similar to WPCoder.

From the WordPress Codex:

• Theme Development
• The Loop
• Template Tags
• Conditional Tags
• Stepping into Templates
• Template Hierarchy
• Custom Fields

For more WordPress-related content, please see:

• 20+ Tutorials and Resources for Working with Custom Fields in WordPress
• Top 10 Tutorials for Developing WordPress Themes
• Category Hacks for WordPress Theme Designers
• 10 Excellent Sources for WordPress Design Inspiration

Using WordPress Custom Fields: Introduction

This article from Justin Tadlock gives an overview of custom fields, and it’s actually the introductory post to a series on the subject of custom fields (other posts in the series are included in the list). If you’re not familiar with custom fields or if you just want to make sure you get the basics before moving further, this article is a great starting point.

Using Custom Fields

The WordPress Codex of course provides some documentation on the subject of custom fields. Although many of the articles that are featured here will get into more specifics, it’s always a good idea to remeber that the codex is available when you have questions, or keep useful articles on the Codex like this one bookmarked.

WordPress Custom Field Tutorial

Jin Yang explains custom fields and shows how you can use them to customize a blog post by styling the background. In the example he chooses a custom background image for the post, which is a pretty cool trick for making your blog unique.

Using WordPress Custom Fields: Part 1 – The Basics

Perishable Press has a two=part series on custom fields. The first part includes some basic information and shows a few ways that custom fields can be used, including adding images to the sidebar.

WordPress Custom Fields: Part 2 – Tips and Tricks

The second part of the Perishable Press series goes into more detail on working with custom fields. The article covers topics like conditional display of custom field data, and showing data only if a custom field exists.

WordPress Custom Fields: Adding Images to Posts

One of the more common uses for custom fields is to add images to a post. This article is part of Justin Tadlock’s series and he provides all the instruction and code that you will need to get a custom field to show an image on your posts.

Add Thumbnails to WordPress with Custom Fields

Tutorial9 also provides a similar tutorial for giving the basics of custom fields and using them to show thumbnails on the front page or on the post page.

WordPress Custom Fields: Laying Text Over Your Lead Graphic

Derek Punsalan shows a really nice approach to use a custom field for adding a background image behind the post title. This is another way to take advantage of the power of custom fields to create a blog that looks a little more unique.

How to Easily Get the Value of a Custom Field

This is a brif post from WPRecipes that explains how you can the value of a custom field, with the necessary code provided.

An Easy Way to Get the Contents of a Custom Field

In this article Nathan Rice shows a way to get the contents of a custom field by using less code. His approach involves editing the functions.php file, which he explains.

How to Display Multiple Values of a Custom Field Key

This article shows how you can use custom fields in situations where a post may have zero, one or multiple values of the same custom code. The example used in the tutorial is quotes. Some post may have none, while others may have several.

Display Inline Ads with Custom Fields and WordPress

This post shows how you can use custom fields to add AdSense or other ads to specific posts. While there are plugins for this purpose, knowing how to do it manually is never a bad thing.

How to Add Videos to Your WordPress Sidebar

This is another post in Justin Tadlock’s series. In this article he shows how you can add YouTube videos to your sidebar, controlled by custom fields. This is an interesting idea that you don’t see in action very often, but could have a lot of potential in the right situation.

WordPress Custom Fields: Listing a Series of Posts

If you often write posts in a series, Justin Tadlock shows how you can list other posts from the series by using custom fields. The end result would be similar to a related posts plugin, except you would have more control over which posts are listed.

In Praise of WordPress Template Tags: Part 2

Darren Hoyt has a two-part series about template tags and magazine-style themes. In the second part he covers a number of items, including custom fields as they relate to the magazine-style layout.

WordPress Tip: 3 Awesome Custom Field Tricks

Chris Cagle’s article covers three things you can do with custom fields: 1) a custom “read more”, 2) awesome thumbnailed recent posts, and 3) post-specific CSS overrides.

Jazz Up Your Site: 28 Ways to Use Custom Fields

Raj Dash’s article on Performancing can be helpful for seeing the potential of custom fields. You may see a few ideas on here that you hadn’t thought of before that would be useful on your site or for a client project.

Creating Custom Write Panels in WordPress

While custom fields have plenty of power and potential, they’re not always the most user-friendly for clients. Function has provided this tutorial for creating custom write panels that will allow you to accomplish the same things as custom fields, but may be a little more manageable for some people, especially non-tech-savvy clients.

Plugins for Working with Custom Fields:

In addition to the tutorials featured above, there are a number of plugins that enhance the use of custom fields in some way, or make them easier to use. Here is a small sampling of useful plugins that are compatible with the latest version of WordPress, 2.7.1.

Custom Field Template

This plugin adds the default custom fields on the Write Post/Page, making it a little bit easier to work with.

Custom Fields Shortcode

You can use this plugin to show custom fields in your posts by using shortcode, with no modification required for your theme.

Custom Field Images

With this plugin you can easily add images to your posts, pages and feeds. There is also functionality to display recent posts as images instead of text links.

Custom Field Taxonomies

Custom Field Taxonomies will allow you to enhance the capabilities of your site by making some of your custom fields act like tags.

Advanced Custom Field Widget

This plugin will allow you to easily show custom field data in the sidebar of specific posts, providing essentially limitless possibilities.

Custom Field List Widget

This plugin lists all values of a choosable custom field name, groups the values of of a post and (hyper-) links the values to their posts as a sidebar widget.

WP Custom Fields Search

This plugin helps to improve the functionality of the WordPress search by allowing multiple form inputs to search different aspects of a post. An example use (and the reason the plugin was created) is for searching a real estate website by factors such as price.

More Fields

More Fields is a WordPress plugin that adds boxes to the Write/Edit page. These boxes contains input fields, so that additional (more) fields can be added to a post.

For more WordPress-related content, please see:

• Top 10 Blogs for the WordPress Community
• Top 10 Tutorials for Developing WordPress Themes
• Category Hacks for WordPress Theme Designers
• 10 Excellent Sources for WordPress Design Inspiration

Styling posts differently according to its category has been possible in the past with WordPress, in fact, I wrote an article several months ago called Enhanced Sidebars with Dynamic Content. That post showed one approach using conditional statements in PHP to enhance the sidebar. With WordPress 2.7 it’s now possible to achieve a similar end result just by using CSS.

What We’re Going to Do:

UPDATE: I’m no longer using this approach on my blog, so you may notice that the examples are no longer relevant.

Instead of focusing on sidebar content like I did in the earlier post, I’m going to show you an easy way to add a brief message at the end of posts in a particular category. There may be a situation with your blog (or one of a client) where you would like to have some type of content at the beginning or end of a post, but only in a specific category. WordPress 2.7 makes this possible because of the new category classes that are added to posts.

Before we get started with the tutorial I’d like to show some potential reasons to use this technique to improve a blog.

1. Add diversity to your blog

Your regular blog readers and visitors will get used to seeing the same design and the same sidebar content, and most of them will tune it out. By adding something to posts in a specific category you can mix things up just enough to catch the attention of some visitors.

2. Make content more relevant and useful to visitors

A lot of times the links in your sidebar or at the bottom of posts may not be very relevant to those who are reading a particular post. With category styling you can add content and navigation that is targeted to specific content, making it easier for visitors to find what interests them.

3. Increase pageviews

One of the results of a more relevant and useful blog is an increase in pageviews per visitor. If you can use category styling to help readers find what they are looking for, they’re liking to stay on your blog longer and visit more pages.

4. Increase subscribers

One of the potential uses of this technique is to add a call for subscriptions on posts from a specific category. Many blogs include a call for subscriptions either before or after posts, but some bloggers choose not to do this because things are a little cleaner and less cluttered without it. But those bloggers may be interested in using a call for subscriptions only on posts in a specific category, such as a “featured posts” category.

5. Monetization

It’s possible that category styling could be used to promote products or services that are more relevant based on the category of the post. We’ll look at some of the possibilities for this in just a minute.

Possible Uses of Category Styling:

Category styling is a neat trick for WordPress developers, but knowing how to do it and applying it in a real-world scenario are two different things. The approach that I’m going to use for this tutorial could be applied for a wide variety of purposes. Here are some of the ways that you could put this tutorial into practice for yourself.

1. Link to a particular page or post that is of interest

Most blogs link to popular posts in their sidebars, but with category-based styling it’s possible to customize the links to point towards posts that are relevant to what the reader is seeing. These links could be in the sidebar or they could be at the bottom of the post, like the approach we’re going to use in this tutorial. Popular posts aren’t the only option here. Take for instance my other blog, DesignM.ag. One of the categories of posts on DesignM.ag is for the community news. Using this technique I could add a brief paragraph to the top of all posts in the news category that encouraged visitors to submit links to the news section, and I could link to the submission page.

2. Promotion of your own services or products

Say you have a design blog and you sell some premium WordPress themes from your site (or from anywhere else for that matter). Most likely you probably write some blog posts about WordPress, maybe tips or tutorials. In this case you could add some content to the beginning or end of the posts in your “WordPress” category that would provide some basic information about your premium themes and link to a page where visitors could buy them. You could do the same thing with any type of product or service. If it’s relevant to a particular category of blog content, the response from readers and visitors should be better.

3. Promote a specific affiliate program

A lot of bloggers attempt to monetize their blog through affiliate products. If you want to include an ad or a link to a product that is relevant to a specific post you could add a section at the end of posts that does just that based on the category of the post.

4. Cross promote another blog

In Enhanced Sidebars with Dynamic Content one of the specific examples that I used placed a sidebar link to my social media blog, Traffikd, when the visitor was seeing a post in the social media category. I could basically do the same thing. With the approach that I’m covering in this post I could add that content at the end of a post rather than in the sidebar and use CSS instead of PHP.

How to Set Up Category-Specific Content in WordPress 2.7

The example that I’m going to walk through in this tutorial will use my blog DesignM.ag. DesignM.ag includes blog posts in various categories, a community news section, and a design gallery. One of the post categories is “Inspiration.” In this category I publish posts that provide various types of design inspiration, and I’m going to assume that visitors who enjoy this type of content might also enjoy visiting the design gallery on the site.

What I’m going to do is set up a brief paragraph that will encourage visitors to browse through the gallery if they are looking for more inspiration. I’m going to use CSS so that this paragraph only shows up on posts in the Inspiration category.

Here is a screenshot of the end result.

Step 1: Add the div or Paragraph to the single.php File of the Theme

Obviously, the content of the paragraph or div that you use will depend on what you’re trying to accomplish. I’m just adding some simple content shown below.

Looking for More Design Inspiration?
We also have a web design gallery that you may enjoy. Several new websites are featured each week. You can subscribe to our all-inclusive feed if you would like to get updates on gallery submissions, articles, and news items.

Step 2: Make Sure The Theme is Set to Produce the Category-Based Class

Most themes being used will need to have a minor tweak in order to take advantage of the new feature in WordPress 2.7. In the DesignM.ag theme I added the following code to a content div that contains the post:

If your blog is on WordPress 2.7 and you have this code, it will produce a class according to the category of the post. For example, the content div in my theme will have the following code on posts in the Inspiration category:

Find a div in your theme that contains the post, and add the code to create the class.

Step 3: Give the Div or Paragraph an ID

In order to style the div I need to give it an ID, so I’m going to call it “gallery-promo”. See the example HTML code from my single.php below.

Step 4: Style the Div or Paragraph to display:none

The first thing we’re going to do is style this paragraph to not be shown. The reason for doing this is that I want to exclude it on every category aside from “Inspiration.” The code used is shown below.

Step 5: Style the Paragraph Appropriately for the Inspiration Category

WordPress 2.7 will add the class “category-inspiration” to all posts in the Inspiration category (Obviously, you would replace the word “inspiration” with whatever category you’re working with. So if your category is called “finance”, the class would be “category-finance”). So I want to add the CSS code shown below, which will override the display:none and the paragraph will be shown and styled on posts in the Inspiration category.

Here’s a screenshot of the end result in action. You can see it live by visiting 40+ Inspirational Non-Profit Websites.

Conclusion:

I now have a little “teaser” paragraph that shows up at the end of all posts in the Inspiration category that attempts to funnel visitors to the gallery. The paragraph only shows up on Inspiration posts. This technique could easily be used for any number of purposes.

Personally, I wouldn’t use this technique too much because your pages will wind up with a lot of code that’s not being displayed because of the CSS. But for one small div I think it’s a decent way to improve a blog.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions or critiques about this technique, please share in the comments.

If you like getting design inspiration by looking at excellent blog designs, you’ll love our new gallery site Blog Design Heroes.

About 10 months ago I published a collection of 20 specialty WordPress themes that I had come across at that time. Today I’d like to feature another 17 specialty themes, all of which are free. Over at DesignM.ag I published a list of the top ten premium specialty themes.

If you like getting design inspiration by looking at excellent blog designs, you’ll love our new gallery site Blog Design Heroes.

Agregado

A life streaming WordPress theme.

Crafty Cart

Free theme especially for e-commerce.

Album Theme

One of the new Revolution Two themes.

RevolutionTV

A theme for videos.

Church Theme

Revolution’s theme created with churches in mind.

Black Canvas

A photoblogging or gallery theme.

Sharpfolio

One of many themes intended specifically for portfolio sites.

Photo Clip

A gallery theme.

Snapshot

A free theme from WooThemes for galleries or portfolios.

Portfolio

Another popular portfolio theme.

Free Photo Gallery

Another photoblogging or gallery theme.

CSS Gallery Theme 2.0

A theme specifically designed for CSS galleries.

LaunchPad

A theme for use before your site is completed.

WP Contact Manager

For turning WordPress into a contact manager.

Gossip

A theme created for gossip blogs.

Linquist

A simple portfolio theme.

Portfolio Gratuit

Another free portfolio theme.

For more WordPress resources, see:

• Top 10 Blogs for the WordPress Community
• Top 10 Tutorials for Developing WordPress Themes
• Category Hacks for WordPress Theme Designers

Weblog Tools Collection

There is probably no better resource for staying up-to-date with theme and plugin releases than Weblog Tools Collection. Whether you want to find new themes and plugins from others or get some exposure for your own, Weblog Tools Collection is a great resource. In addition, it’s a great resource for general WP news.

WPCandy

WPCandy is one of my favorite sources of WordPress-related content. The blog publishes a lot of content that’s helpful for WordPress designers and users, and the site also includes a gallery of WordPress-powered sites, and a place for readers to submit news. You can also find reviews of new themes and plugins.

NETTUTS

NETTUTS is not specifically a WordPress-focused site, but if you’re looking for high-quality tutorials for WP development, this is the place to go. Not all of the content is WordPress-related, but NETTUTS provides some of the best, and most detailed, tutorials for building or customizing WordPress themes.

Daily Blog Tips

Daily Blog Tips is one of the leading blogs about blogging, and Daniel consistently publishes content for WordPress users. In addition to WP-related blog posts, Daily Blog Tips occasionally releases a free theme.

Cats Who Code

Cats Who Code is another excellent blog for finding tutorials for WP designers and users. The blog is updated frequently and the quality of content is high.

Pro Blog Design

Michael Martin of Pro Blog Design writes some of the best articles and tutorials for WP theme designers. The archives at Pro Blog Design provide plenty of content on a number of important issues for WordPress designers and developers.

WPZOOM

WPZOOM is a blog that focuses on all things WordPress. You’ll find collections of themes, theme announcements and reviews, and other information that WordPress users and designers can appreciate.

The WordPress Podcast

The WordPress Podcast is not updated extremely frequently, but for WP-related news it’s a good resource to have in your your feed reader.

WpRecipes

WpRecipes provides a lot of tips and brief tutorials for working with the WordPress platform. This site is only a few months old, but posts are published on a daily basis.

WordPress Hacks

WordPress Hacks publishes frequently, with an archive full of useful content. The posts focus on WordPress news, tips, tutorials, and reviews.

Other Great Resources for the WordPress Community:

Aside from blogs, these resources are excellent resources for both users and designers working with WordPress.

We Love WP

We Love WP is an excellent design gallery that showcases only websites powered by WordPress. If you design WordPress themes of any kind (free, premium, custom), you certainly could benefit from seeing what others are doing on the WordPress platform.

WPscoop

WPscoop is a social media site that focuses exclusively on WordPress-related news and content. Like any niche social media site, the audience is considerably smaller than major social news sites; however, if you’re looking to find the best WordPress tutorials, news, theme and plugin announcements, try WPscoop.

The Official WordPress Forums

If you’re having an issue with a WordPress theme or just have a general question about the platform, the WP forums should be one of your first stops. Often you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for just by searching the existing threads, and if that doesn’t produce an answer you can always post your question. The community at the forums is very active and you’re likely to get a quick and helpful response.

I’m sure many of you are already familiar with Elegant Themes, but you may or may not be aware of their business model and how it differs from most premium themes. With Elegant Themes you can pay $19.95 per year for unlimited access to their marketplace of themes. There are currently 16 themes available, some with multiple color schemes to choose from, and more themes are being developed.

The price for membership in Elegant Themes can’t be beat (unless you win one of the free memberships, in that case I guess it can be beat ) and the themes are high quality. If you’re not familiar with their work, please take a moment to check them out.

Contest Rules

As I mentioned earlier, Nick has agreed to give away one-year memberships to four of our readers. In order to enter the contest, please leave a comment on this post and simply state why you would like the membership, which theme(s) you would use, or what you would do with the themes if you were to win. I’ll choose two winners based on comments and the other two winners will be selected using a random number generator. Be sure that you leave a vaild email address where you can be reached in case you win. The winners will be chosen on Saturday, November 15th, so be sure to get your comments in before then. Rather than publishing a new post to announce the winners, I’ll update this post and the winners will be contacted by email.

A Glimpse of Elegant Themes

Cion

Influx

Wooden

UPDATE:

The contest has just ended. Here are the winners:

Random winners: Gretchen Imbergamo (comment #14) and Alison (comment #36)
My choices: Pablo (comment #23) and Matt (comment #19).

Congratulation! Nick will be contact you soon with the details.

Those of you who have been around the WordPress community for a while are no doubt familiar with Brian Gardner and his popular line of Revolution themes. The Revolution themes have been incredibly well-liked by bloggers, website owners and designers, and they’re probably the most recognizable of the premium WordPress themes.

In recent weeks Brian and Jason Schuller have taken some bold steps with the new generation of Revolution themes, Revolution Two. These high quality themes are now free and open source (the original Revolution themes are no longer available). Since WordPress is an open source platform, the idea was to align the focus of Revolution with that of WordPress in general.

Brian covered the subject of changing from premium themes to open source themes on his blog (see his announcement post for all the details). Here is a brief excerpt:

Jason and I want to develop a resource and community that is perfectly aligned with WordPress. Both he and I have been fortunate enough to leave our day jobs within the past year and have developed our own media companies. None of that would have been possible without the existence of WordPress, which is solely built and supported by the open source community.

Currently there are 11 themes available for download, free of charge. Users then have the option to purchase support packages that include access to tutorials as well as general theme support.

Last week Brian was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions for me. Those of you who work with the WordPress platform will most likely want to get familiar with these themes and the new business model of Revolution Two. The original Revolution themes had a huge impact on the WordPress community and were very influential in the premium theme marketplace. I expect that Revotion Two will also be extremely influential.

Here is the interview with Brian.

Do you currently have plans to release new themes in the future as part
of Revolution Two?

Yes, I currently have 2 themes that I am in the middle of developing, and Jason Schuller has 3 or 4 concepts as well that should be released in the near future.

What has the response been from users to the free themes with optional
services and support as opposed to selling premium themes?

The response has been overwhelmingly positive – this gives users a chance to play with the themes first, and then can purchase the support membership if necessary. Not to mention that $99 or $149 for access to all of the themes and support is a much better deal than any of the other situations out there.

Do the Revolution Two themes have any type of enhanced admin features or
functionalities like some premium themes?

Yes, I have a theme options page which makes implementing video, advertising, Feedburner and some other things very easy to do. I am also working a CSS switcher into the theme options page, so instead of uploading 3 color theme variations, they are built on the same core files and toggled with the switcher.

In the early days of Revolution Two, have you been able to tell if the
response has been stronger from designers or from end users of the themes?

I think the response has been stronger from users – there is a lot of involvement going on in the forums, and a lot of great sites already popping up with the new themes.

As the creator of these themes, how do you feel that Revolution Two
themes stack up to the popular premium Revolution themes?

From a functional and coding standpoint, the new themes were built on the old ones, but are already being enhanced, with plans in the future to continue to raise the bar.

Most premium themes have separate licenses for single use and for
developers who want to use multiple copies. Is there anything similar with
Revolution Two in terms of support? Can designers purchase a support package and use the themes for multiple clients?

Jason and I have completely abandoned the idea of policing theme licenses, which is one of many reasons we went open source. Our membership can be purchased either for 1 year, or lifetime. You can download and use the themes on any number of sites, we have no restrictions.

Thank you Brian for taking the time to answer these questions, and thanks for your contributions to fellow WordPress users!