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10 Tips to Improve Your WordPress Theme

After finishing up with the new design for [wp], here are ten tips I’ve got to improve your [themes].

improve

1. Make your sidebar tabbed

sidebartabs

One of my favourite features of the new [wp]design is the tabbed sidebar. How did I do it? First, I took a look at a couple of scripts, deciding on DomTabs. Next, I took a look at a tutorial on ProBlogDesign explaining one way to integrate DomTabs to get an idea of how other people are using DomTabs. After that, I integrated the code from the PBD tut and got styling! At this point in the design process, I’d styled some tabs on the PSD,  but I wanted something that’d fit in with the navigation. The solution: a three button tabbed sidebar area, using border-radius. The code is below, should you wish to use it on your site.

[css]/*Tabbed Sidebar bit*/

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Alex Denning
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James McFadden
November 30, 2015 6:58 am

Is it possible to write a define statement in wp-config that only applies to one website in a multisite environment?

Basically like conditional instructions per website…

e.g. All of website allows for define ( revisions 3 ); but I wan’t one of the website’s in the multisite environment to have define ( revisions 10 ); that is setup for training.

Any help would be appreciated.

There are other define statements that we’d like to include but if it isn’t possible there’s no use asking further 🙂

Thanks!!!

Mark Simchock
November 24, 2014 5:44 pm

re: Disable the Theme and Plugin Editors

I believe this is also possible via a filter(s). It might be worth mentioning that as fyi-ish alternative.

Ionut Neagu
November 25, 2014 12:13 pm
Reply to  Mark Simchock

thanks for pointing this out Mark!

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March 10, 2013 1:17 am

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Ryan S
May 11, 2012 2:39 pm

Great article thanks for sharing, other help me a lot, but I think first we should consider is the social sites 😉

lcd television usa
February 14, 2011 1:26 am

Thank you for good theme.

commercial wordpress themes
September 1, 2010 12:10 pm

This will improve my wordpress blog a lot. Thx for all those usefull tips and tricks.

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John
January 16, 2010 2:58 pm

great imput. Thanks I love changing themes and this will help for sure.

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Dmitriy
July 30, 2009 9:54 am

What single tool do you use to stick your design to CMS?

Jaspal Singh
July 29, 2009 6:30 pm

Wonderful post, really helpful to improve wordpress blog.

Hilmy
July 29, 2009 6:29 pm

I was on the look out for tabbed sidebar and found it here, excellent!
Also fall in love with widgetized footer and some others. Great compilation and thanks a lot.

Scott
July 29, 2009 6:29 pm

Great post, I love the tabbed sidebar. Subscribed to your site. I’ve got a question, though: in #5, why don’t you just advise people to use one of the existing social media plugins? I’m using “Sociable” and it seems to work fine…???

Richard
July 24, 2009 8:07 am

Just whatI wanted … a way to create these features without the use of plugins. Many thanks for spotting the target!

Matthew Kettlewell
July 29, 2009 6:28 pm
Reply to  Richard

I’m all over the Twitter and Social Media icons… (Number 10 & 5 )

Great post with lot’s of great links to other resources.

Thanks

Matt Kettlewell

Ashely Adams : Sticker Printing
July 24, 2009 7:30 am

Now this is really a nice and useful post. I have already bookmarked for future references. These tips are very helpful in improving wordpress blog. The idea of widgetized footer is great. And thanks for mentioning the “plugins installed”; they are really irritating at times.

Isaac | Go Blogger (dot) net
July 24, 2009 6:29 am

Interesting points. But I guess it is too techie for me. I’m more into content stuff.

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July 24, 2009 1:50 am

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Chris
July 23, 2009 2:59 pm

Some good tips. Thank you for sharing!

Rishabh Verma
July 23, 2009 1:51 pm

Nice tips to jazz up the wordpress themes, they are very useful to even hack the existing themes.

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