WordPress Articles from David Hayes

David B. Hayes used to be a co-owner of WPShout. He's been using WordPress since 2007, and has a mature love (like an old married couple) for the content managment system. He's done loads of client work with it, uses it on a variety of personal projects, and generally thinks it's worth most people keeping it in their toolbox.

In addition to WordPress, he's into cycling, board games, and being outdoors. He also loves coffee and write about it at LowKeyCoffeeSnobs.com. And lastly (for this space) he writes about code beyond WordPress at Thoughtful Code.



How to Create WordPress Custom Page Templates (& Why)

There are many many ways you can change the look of a specific page on your WordPress site. You can change the content inside the WordPress content editor. You can change the CSS rules that affect the site. Or create a new file in your WordPress theme’s template hierarchy to correspond to the specific page. Or you can use a theme page template designed specifically for that page. The last one is what we’re talking about here. In this tutorial we’ll cover both how to create a WordPress custom page template, and why you might want to do that. We’ll start with the why.



Course: WordPress Theme Development (Core Concepts)

person learning wordpress theme development

Welcome! WordPress themes are one of the most important topics that one must understand to be good at WordPress development. Themes underlie the entire visual half of WordPress sites, but often grow to do even more. Because of the visual importance, they’re a great place to dive in if you’re interested in getting to the “code-side” of WordPress. I myself “cut my teeth” on WordPress themes back in 2007 and 2008. WordPress themes were where I started to come to grips with the power (and limits) of PHP, CSS, and HTML. So this course is great for newbies, and those just looking to confirm their understanding of the whole system.


How to Set Your Site Icon (Favicon) in WordPress

One thing every WordPress site should have is a site icon, also called a “favicon”—the little tiny image that shows up in your browser tabs to let you tell one site from another. Ours at WPShout is a orange circle with a bullhorn inside it, so you which tabs are us. For the more visually-inclined, here’s a relevant summary image of a site icon:



Which is the Best SiteGround Plan? The WordPress Shared Hosting Comparison

WPShout was happily hosted on SiteGround for years, from about 2015 to 2020. We recently switched this site over for the slightly higher performance possibilities of a (significantly more expensive) Kinsta account. But I’m still the proud owner of a SiteGround GoBig account for Low-Key Coffee Snobs, and a number of other personal sites. That’s why we’re offering you this SiteGround plan rundown today.