Speaker: Evan Mullins
Twitter: @circlecube
Speaker slides: circlecube.com/wordpress

Learn how to mod themes the right way. Using child themes you won’t lose your edits when there’s a theme update

Child Themes 101

• your theme is your brand, design & identity
• http://codex.wordpress.org/themes
• Analogies: WordPress is the bones and muscles: the theme is the “skin”. Or if you think of your website as if you’re building a house: WordPress is the foundation and frame and the theme is the paint, curtains and flooring.
• Fun stuff: TheUselessWeb.com & GenerateWP.com
• Types of themes – just because you’re paying…doesn’t mean it’s better
  • custom
  • free
  • premium
  • customized
  • starter
  • framework
  • parent
  • child
• Framework – the admin functionality such as support for sliders, custom posts, etc.
• child themes – inherit characteristics of the parent theme
  • when the parent theme is updated your modifications are preserved
  • it’s a head start, for items that you use on a regular basis.
  • don’t edit core files!
  • parent theme styles aren’t automatically pulled into child
  • How to create a child theme?
    • install parent theme
    • make your child theme folder in the themes directory
    • add your style.css — wordpress requires in order to recognize the theme
    • copy parent functions.php (may not be necessary)
    • add your meta — use meta example “Template: twentytwelve”
  • plugin “Child Themify”

  Child Themes 102

  • reasons to child-theme
    • add widget areas
    • custom post types
    • custom taxonomies
    • responsive
    • rebrand
  • In the future, all themes may be required to facilitate a child theme
  • Popular Parent Themes
    • twenty somethings
    • thematic
    • genesis
    • hybrid
    • underscores
    • require foundation
    • starkers
    • Twentytwelve – responsive out of the box
    • Theme template hierarchy – which template file(s) will WordPress use when it displays a certain type of page? (lookup diagram)

Speaker: Nathaniel Schweinberg
Twitter: @nathanielks

• git doesn’t overload your HDD with all the extra versions
• git allows you to focus on the feature you’re writing
• git allows multiple developers to work on the same project

how to get started?

• install git
• open terminal
• get it setup
  • git init — inializes a git repositroy in current folder
  • git add . — adds file . to the staging area (. means current folder and all files inside)
  • git commit -m ‘initial commit’ — commits files added to staging area (-m adds commit message)
  • git status — shows the current status of the working directory
• branching encourages a few things
  • allows you to branch very easily
  • encourages feature based workflow
  • allows for experimentation
• git branch name — create new branch to work from
• git checkout branchname — sets the working branch to branchname
• git merge branchname — merges committed changes from branchname with current branch
• Repositories – bitbucket unlimited private and github unlimited public repos
• two basic actions
  • git push — pushes changes to remote repo
  • git pull — pulls changes from remote repo
• git clone — duplicate a remote repository to your computer
• commit early, commit often
• use descriptive commit messages
• master branch is stable ONLY. – always develop on a separate branch
• branch naming: initials/feature-name – ex mh/cool-feature

Resource: WordPress skeleton

Speaker: 
Teresa Rosche Ott
Twitter: @thesimplerweb
Speaker Slides: http://thesimplerweb.com/less

• Great tool – css2less.com
• use a compiler to turn it all into CSS
• @import ready-made libraries of goodness
• two types – less or sass.
  • LESS
    • better for people that just dabble in CSS
    • relatively simple language
    • easier initial setup than sass
    • power to spare for the average WordPress project
    • can run on the server
    • virtually everything you learn to do with less can be used with sass
  • SASS
    • better for programmers
    • can use compass – a robust & well maintained and updated library of SASS goodies
    • Initial setup can be a pain for non-developers
    • Programmatically more powerful than LESS: Can use logical comparisons to set styles
    • Has features that enable compiled stylesheets to be more concise
• 3 simple ways to start using LESS now
  • use variables to keep colors & fonts consistent & easy to change
  • color operations – great for darkening/lightening colors
  • mixins
• Using LESS with WordPress themes
  • create a “less” subfolder in the theme directory
  • duplicate the theme’s style sheet. move the copy into the /less directory & rename it from style.css to style.less
  • launch your compiler; set it to watch the /less directory you created
  • set it to save the compiled CSS to the theme directory, which will overwrite style.css
  • open the style.less file; import any LESS libraries you like: @import “bootstrap”;
  • Walk through your newly created style.less file & find repetitive & inefficient language to replace with LESS
  • Save & Compile
  • Upload the revised/new style.css – no need to upload the LESS files

Speaker: Diana Simon

dianasimon.net/colortheory is the site Diana used for demo. There you can find links to color wheels and a color scheme designer. She likes to sample colors from the photos in the website to use for text and graphics. Also visit Kate Smith’s Sensational Colors and Visibone to learn more about colors and find html and rgb color mixes. Pantone is famous for researching and leading color trends. Last year’s color of the year was tangerine, this year it’s emerald green (PMS 17-5641)

Adobe also hosts a site on the subject of color, called Kuler. Use a plug in for Firefox called Fire Picker to choose colors from any website. It will give you the hex number. You can change your colors to see what it will look like – if you like it, copy the code and use it to change the actual code in your website child theme.