WordPress Tips & Resources

WordCamp San Francisco Recap and The State Of The Word 2014

November 8, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Ah WordCamp San Francisco, the mothership of WordCamps. The two-day event focused around WordPress, was the largest WordCamp San Francisco to date with about 1,000 attendees, and all three rounds of tickets selling out same day. Thank goodness that as a speaker I got to snag my ticket in advance, and that Brian got his in the first round!

Planned Beautifully

The event, organized by Andrea Middleton and her team, was planned beautifully — even with a fire alarm and building evacuation on the first day.

Registration and t-shirt pick up were both fast and easy, the schedule was kept on time and was updated when there were changes — and the food (especially the chili) was great. Thanks for the vegan/vegetarian/dairy-free options and for posting the menus in advance!

What is the Genesis Framework? (And Other Genesis FAQs)

July 30, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

As Genesis recommended developers, we get asked a lot of questions about the Genesis Framework and Genesis themes — and it seems like there is some confusion about what it is, how it works, what you can do with it, and more.

We work with Genesis every day and all of our custom WordPress sites are powered by Genesis. We’re proud StudioPress affiliates too. So to help clarify a few things, I’ve gathered together this list of our most frequently asked questions about the Genesis Framework.

If you have any Genesis Framework or Genesis theme questions that I don’t address in this post (other than how to write code — we charge for that), feel free to ask in the comments below!

Now let’s get on to the questions …

WordPress Website Design and Development Project Features

June 28, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

We love design — web design, graphic design, logo design, print design, digital design — all types of design, and I know it’s in part because we get to work with some pretty awesome clients on some pretty fun projects.

While I do publish new content to the Bourn Creative blog regularly, sharing tips, tools, insights, tactics, and more, I tend to keep the content focused on education and learning. That means that I haven’t shared any of our projects with you lately!

So, today it’s time for some shameless self promotion and a peek at some of the projects we’ve enjoyed working on!

Understanding WordPress Archive Templates

May 9, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

An archive template lists all posts matching specific criteria in chronological order from newest (at top) to oldest (at bottom).

When you publish a new blog post, it is displayed at the top of your main blog page, pushing your older posts down the page. As more posts are published, old posts keep moving down the page until they no longer appear on the main blog page.

These older posts are still available if you click through pages of older posts, or if you click on an archive page link. For example, all posts in Category A are also available in the Category A archive.

In your WordPress site, you’ll have a few different types of archive pages available, including:

Understanding WordPress Page Templates

May 7, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

A WordPress website is made up of a combination of files, software, theme templates, add-on code (plugins), settings, and content and images stored in a database — that all fit together like the pieces of a puzzle to generate the final web pages on your site.

A WordPress theme can use just a couple templates or many templates, including custom templates, depending on the needs of the site it is being created for.

Outlined below are the most common templates found in WordPress themes, along with a sample of one of the basic custom page templates we add to every theme.

What Is A WordPress Widget?

April 30, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

A widget is a general term used when referencing a small gadget or mechanical device that has an unknown or unspecified name. So, a WordPress widget is the term used to describe a small area on a website that is used for a specific function.

What that means in plain English, is that:

A widget area is like a container for different types of content, and
A widget is a smaller container for a specific type of content inside the big container

Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple and easy way to give more control to the website owner over the design and content, and today they are used to add specific types of content and features to a site.

Content Tips For The WordPress Page And Post Content Area

April 29, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

WordPress began as a blogging platform and quickly expanded into a content management system that powers 22% of the entire internet.

In fact, according to Matt Mullenweg in his State of The Word 2013 address, 69% of those whom use WordPress use is only as a content management system for their website, not as a blog.

The primary content region on a WordPress site is referred to as the content area. It can contain all different types of content, from text and images, to video and audio. The content area is where the primary web page content or blog post content that you write is added and formatted.

NOTE: Even though content can also be put in a sidebar or in a footer, content in those areas are put into widgets, so they have different names such as, sidebar widget area, footer Widget area, Home page widget area, after-post widget area, etc.

Smart Strategies For Your WordPress Website Sidebar Design

April 25, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

A website sidebar is a vertical column or vertical bar of supplemental content that is displayed alongside the main content region of a page.

In the old days of the web, most websites used a sidebar/content layout, with the sidebar running down the left side of the web page and the content on the right side of the web page. But today the most common website page layout is a content/sidebar layout, where the content is on the left side of the web page and the sidebar runs down the right side of the web page.

Depending on the theme design, your WordPress website could include different page templates, different layout options, and multiple sidebars, including:

How To Remove The Genesis Blog and Archive Page Templates

April 19, 2014 Brian Bourn

With the recent release of WordPress 3.9, several new features for theme developers were introduced to further enhance what can be baked into new WordPress themes. Devin Price has a great post over at wptheming highlighting many of the new features. The inspiration for the Genesis specific filter below came from his post.

One reason we design and build WordPress themes on the Genesis Framework is the nature in which it is built. With Genesis, I have the ability to add, filter, or remove almost everything.

Up until WordPress 3.9, the Genesis blog and archive page templates were inherited by child themes and there wasn’t a simple way to remove them. Why does this matter? When we build custom child themes for clients, we use a variety functions to remove every unnecessary item and option from Genesis to create a simplified and focused back-end for our clients.

The Difference Between a WordPress Footer and a WordPress Footer Widget Area

April 16, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

A footer is the bottom section of a website, usually appearing on all pages throughout the site.

The most common use of a footer is a bar across the bottom of the page that includes the copyright information, and links to the privacy policy and disclaimer pages. Depending on the focus and design of your website, this area may also include your contact information and links to pages such as an affiliate page, a sponsors page, an advertising page, or even the contact page.

A footer widget area is the section above the footer that includes widgets (also referred by users as “boxes”) for content.

Typically the footer widget area is set apart from the rest of the content, either with a colored background, or a line or divider of some type. And, in many cases, they appear on almost every page of the website.

The number of widgets or content “boxes” in a footer widget area is determined by the design of the theme. Theme footer widget areas can contain one, two, three, or even four widget areas (or more) — and while many themes use three or four widgets that are all the same size, they don’t have to be the same size in width or height.

Website Menus And How They Are Used In WordPress

April 11, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

At the most basic level, a WordPress menu is a collection or list of links. The most common placement of a menu is in the site navigation area or navigation bar and is referred to as a navigation menu.

Each link in a menu is called a menu item. Some menu items may have sub-menu items that are displayed in a drop down menu.

EXAMPLE: A basic website navigation menu may include menu items such as About, Services, Products, Testimonials, and Contact. The Services menu item may display a drop down menu, with the sub-menu items Private Consulting, Group Training, VIP Day.

Below you’ll see a site with a primary navigation menu, a secondary header menu, and a drop down menu of sub pages under the Assessments menu item.

How To Design A Website Header (And What Should Go In It)

April 9, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

A website header is the area is one of the most valuable areas of your website. It runs across the top of the page and appears on every page of your website, except on sales or landing pages templates that have it removed.

The purpose of your website header is to promote your brand and make your site instantly recognizable to those who are already familiar with you. For many businesses, the header is the perfect place to efficiently and effectively convey exactly what your site is about and what your business does.

WordCamp Phoenix 2014 Recap: Learning, Community, Inspiration

January 25, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Last weekend Brian and I headed to Arizona for WordCamp Phoenix, a three day event jam-packed with training sessions of all types! With 750 attendees, is the second largest WordCamp in the United States and was better run than some of the larger, most expensive conferences I have attended.

I have to give huge compliments to April Holle (Lead Organizer), the whole organizing team, and all the volunteers for doing such a stellar job! Plus the Schedule and Speakers were pretty impressive.

We arrived on Thursday and had a fabulous dinner with some old and new WordPress friends — WordPress t-shirts were everywhere!
Friday kicked off the actual event with longer workshop style sessions for the Beginner User, Advanced User, Designer, Beginner Dev, and Advanced Dev — they really had sessions for everyone. That night was the speaker/sponsor dinner where I got to meet many of the other speakers.
The Saturday sessions built on the skills developed on Friday with a choice of sessions in three different tracks, including Content & Design, Community & Commerce, and Extension & Development. My presentation on Strategies to Turn Content into Cash was part of the Content & Design track — See what attendees had to say about it on Twitter.
Then there was the after-party, which offered great food, an open bar, an ice luge, multiple bands, a mock casino, and more time to connect with other attendees.
Sunday, the final day of the conference, was a little more informal and was structured as more of a Biz Dev / Contribute Day, with users, designers, and developers all attending joint sessions supporting business of WordPress.

Every session I attended reinforced best practices, taught me something new, and got me thinking about ways to improve our own services, processes, and business — and as usual, the event was free from self-promotion, sales pitches, and hype, which is truly appreciated!

Now there is simply way too much to share in a blog post, but you can get a feel for the event, energy surrounding it, and some opinions on the speakers in the WPwatercooler Recap of WordCamp Phoenix 2014. (Hint: They mention me!)

Bourn Creative Named Genesis Recommended Developer

November 1, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

It’s no secret that at Bourn Creative, we love WordPress — Heck it’s all we use when building websites! It’s also no secret that we’re huge fans of the Genesis Framework for WordPress.

We’ve been designing and developing custom WordPress sites since 2008, but once we discovered the Genesis Framework, we fell in love and made the decision to move all of our development for WordPress to Genesis — and it’s been one of the best decisions we’ve made, seriously.

While almost all of the websites we design for WordPress are custom, one-off solutions, they are all developed as child themes powered by the Genesis Framework — which provides our team of designers and developers a superior code base with HTML5 markup and ultimate flexibility when creating new WordPress sites.

Plus, Genesis 2.0 now supports Schema.org code, which allows you to output microdata in your site’s code. This enhances your site’s search engine optimization even further — as does Google Authorship identification, which Genesis makes incredibly simple. The Genesis Framework has always handled the basics of good SEO for you, like lightweight code for fast performance, and now it’s even better.

How to Add a Dropdown Indicator to a Genesis 2.0 Navigation Menu Automatically

October 24, 2013 Brian Bourn

Dropdown navigation menus, in previous versions of Genesis were handled with the Superfish script. This added a CSS class to the navigation menus that could then be used to create sub-menu indicators — like arrows. But now with Genesis 2.0, dropdown menus are handled solely with CSS — a decision that we at Bourn Creative are very happy with and prefer. The only issue with this new approach is that the CSS class used to add drop down indicators is no longer added automatically to the navigation menus.

Earlier this week WordPress 3.7 was released, and besides the much-hyped auto-update feature, WordPress now automatically adds a class to any navigation menu link that has a sub-menu. The new class is .menu-item-has-children. This simple change will make styling dropdown menus much easier for theme developers.

Customizing the Genesis 2.0 HTML5 Comment Form

September 9, 2013 Brian Bourn

Now that Genesis 2.0 has been shipped, we are building all of our custom child themes with the new HTML5 markup enabled — and absolutely love the new code base.

On a recent project the design specs called for a customized comment form. I have several code snippets saved for this occasion, but Genesis 2.0 child themes with HTML5 enabled use the native WordPress comment form, instead of the older comment form built into Genesis — so the code snippets I had no longer worked.

This is well documented within Genesis at /lib/structure/comments.php, which shows how older XHTML child themes will use the Genesis comment form for backwards compatibility, and child themes with HTML5 enabled will use the native WordPress comment form.

WordCamp Sessions Are Great, But The People Are Even Better

August 5, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Every time I come back from a conference or event, someone asks — well, a lot of someones ask: “What was the best part?”

I could tell you that the WordCamp San Francisco (@WordCampSF) sessions I attended as a whole were awesome. And, I could share that the event was well planned, well staffed, and well put together. Or maybe I could fill you in on the coffee, soft drinks, water, lunches, party food, libations, desserts, and free t-shirts that were included for the nominal event fee of only $40.

But honestly, the BEST part of WordCamp San Francisco wasn’t any of those things. It was the people.

Except for ONE really rude guy who was seriously not very nice (there’s always one isn’t there?), everyone I met — from advanced developers to new users — was welcoming, supportive, and nice.

As I shared in my post WordCamps: A Rising Tide Lifts All WordPress Websites, until now I had left the WordCamping to Brian. My perception was that it was only for developers, and that if you weren’t a developer you’d be an outcast — like high school (and sometimes Twitter) with the cool kids and the rest of the community. I won’t lie, there is still some of that happening — some people who act like they can’t be bothered to talk to you because they are so much more important. But these people, speaking from my experience, were the extreme minority.

WordCamps: A Rising Tide Lifts All WordPress Websites

August 1, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Brian has been attending WordPress WordCamps around the country for a couple of years now, but I just attended my very first WordCamp this past weekend in San Francisco. A WordCamp is a mini conference or workshop all about WordPress with tracks and sessions appropriate for advanced developers, mid-level consultants. And newbie beginners alike.

What blew my mind is that the WordCamp San Francisco attendees were such a diverse mix of designers, developers, business owners, bloggers, employees, freelancers, students, consultants, and more.

You see, I left the WordCamps to Brian to attend because I thought I didn’t belong. I thought that because I am not a skilled developer and can’t talk code off the top of my head, that I would be out of place. But Brian kept telling me that I had to experience a WordCamp for myself to understand what it was about. So we bought tickets for WordCamp SanFrancisco and planned a mini vacation around it.

My perceptions about what a WordCamp was were shattered.

Recap: WordCamp San Francisco 2013, State of The Word by Matt Mullenweg

July 30, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

This past weekend, I attended my first WordCamp — and I have a lot I want to share with you about the experience and the WordPress community, which I’ll do over the next few blog posts.

I want to start with a recap of the WordCamp San Francisco talk I was most looking forward — The State of the Word 2013 by Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress (with Mike Little) and The State of the Word Q&A.

This was the first time I’ve seen him speak and I found Matt (@photomatt) to be professional, charismatic, funny, personal, humble, and engaged with the people who work with it and use it every day. With every word he spoke, he emanated passion for WordPress and the community that surrounds and supports the free open-source software he created 10 years ago. He called out and praised contributors, leaders, and volunteers by name, thanked everyone he could, and expressed gratitude for every member of the community.

WordPress is where it is today because of the people — The People That Attend WordCamps — who donate and volunteer their time to work on it, to constantly improve it, to grow it, to teach others about it…

We’re On Fire! Four New Genesis WordPress Sites Live

April 29, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

With business events, entrepreneurial conferences, software conferences, our local Sacramento WordPress Meetup group, and a few WordCamps, Brian and I have been traveling a lot the past few months. Then when you throw in all our normal client work, and running our own business, things get a little crazy and the hours behind our computers get a little long.

Luckily we LOVE what we do — and we LOVE the Internet. In the past four weeks, we have taken four different Genesis WordPress sites live — Cool right?! Here they are:

5 Must Have WordPress Plugins We Use On Every Site

February 22, 2013 Brian Bourn

At Bourn Creative we have a stable of various paid and free WordPress plugins that we regularly use on our clients’ sites, depending on needed website functionality. Out of our collection of trusted WordPress plugins, there are five must have plugins that we use on pretty much every custom WordPress site we build — and this past week I shared these five plugins in a lighting talk I gave at the Sacramento WordPress Meetup.

WordPress Plugin #1: Akismet

Why We Recommend the Akismet WordPress Plugin:

Created, managed, and owned by Automattic
Save time with simple comment spam protection
Low monthly fee (still free for personal bloggers)
Download Akismet

WordPress 3.5 “Elvin” Released

December 12, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

WordPress 3.5 was just released and the biggest change that most WordPress website owners will notice is the dramatically changed media center. The media uploader has been completely rebuilt and now makes many tasks much simpler, including creating and managing new galleries.

Here’s a video overview from the WordPress.org blog highlighting 3.5:

PressNomics Review & Awesome Stats About WordPress

November 18, 2012 Brian Bourn

Last week I was in sunny Chandler, Arizona (just outside Phoenix) for the first annual PressNomics event; the economics of the WordPress ecosystem.

The event sessions were amazing and even better was the caliber of the attendees. There were all types of WordPress and technology professionals in attendance from around the world including freelance designers & developers, enterprise level web development agencies, hosting companies, commercial theme and plugin shops, representatives from Automattic including the founder Matt Mullenweg, tech startup founders, and many more.

It was a great reminder that people make up the core of any great group or business, including open source software like WordPress.

What Your “WordPress Consultant” Isn’t Telling You (About WordPress)

November 12, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

So I’ve got a pet peeve! I get irritated when people who need help turn to consultants — supposed experts — for help and are misled or fed incorrect or outdated information simply because the consultant doesn’t know the answer and they don’t want to admit it.

This drives me especially CRAZY in the WordPress world. Lies, myths, untruths, and false information about WordPress is being fed to business owners left and right — and it’s perpetuating false beliefs.

Let me explain. I LOVE WordPress — all of our sites are built for WordPress and I love the fact that it allows our clients to have total control over their websites. But this ability comes at a price. Now anyone can open a hosting account, install a theme, and plop in a custom header can call themselves a WordPress web designer or WordPress consultant. There are even some calling themselves WordPress developers that can’t even read PHP!

Why? Because WordPress is a “Hot Topic” for entrepreneurs who want to start online businesses. And for some, these so-called “Hot Topics” mean easy and fast cash.