Author Profile: Jeff Starr
Jeff Starr is a professional web developer and book author with over 15 years of experience. Jeff works with WordPress every day, designing themes, developing plugins, and securing sites. His books include Digging Into WordPress, WordPress Themes In Depth, and The Tao of WordPress.
Tools the Pros Use
Bauke Roesink rounds up 126 top designers and asks them which software they use for web and graphic design. Super informative article with lots of insight :)
WordPress Themes In Depth
Super stoked to announce my new book, WordPress Themes In Depth! It covers the entire process of setting up, development, distribution, and everything in between.
WordPress Themes In Depth is literally overflowing with over 450 pages of in-depth theme-building action. And it includes example themes and lots of project demos. If you want to develop, customize, and even sell your own awesome WordPress themes, you’re gonna benefit greatly from this book.
Pile Gallery
Awesome new gallery plugin that enables grouped animated galleries based on categories and more. Sorta hard to explain but you can see how it works via the demo. DigWP people can save a few bucks on the personal or developer version.
Editor’s note: 404 link removed.
WinningWP FTW
Just wanted to let everyone know about WinningWP and some of the great tips, tricks, and resources that they’ve been sharing for the past year. Definitely worth checking out if you’re into WordPress and that sort of thing :)
WordPress Backup and Restore Theme Options
After taking the time to set a whole bunch of theme options, it’s nice to be able to make a quick backup of your theme settings. Many themes have this functionality built-in, but for themes that don’t, here is a plug-n-play snippet to create a “Backup/Restore Theme Options” page. You can see the technique in action in my shapeSpace theme (100% free and open-source WordPress starter theme).
H5 Theme Update
Theme update! The H5 Starter Theme is all updated and afresh for your theme-building adventures. The previous version of H5 still works great, but there was a lot of room for improvement, especially with all of the new features and functionality made available in recent versions of WordPress. So now the H5 starter theme is better than ever and as always 100% free download for everyone.
Disable Default Dashboard Widgets in WordPress
Continuing with tips for customizing the WordPress Dashboard, here is a look at one way to remove unwanted widgets and clean up the default WP Dashboard.
Book Giveaway Winners!
Congrats go to Susi Schuele, Anmol Makkar, and Hardee Asrani for winning free copies of the PDF and full accounts at DigWP.com — your books are on the way! :)
DigWP Update – Version 3.8
Digging Into WordPress update! The book is now current with the latest version of WordPress, 3.8 “Parker”. The Parker update is focused primarily on improving the appearance of the Admin Area, along with the usual blend of bug fixes and enhancements. As with all DigWP updates, the new version is a FREE download for everyone who owns the book.
User Submitted Posts – Pro Version
After months of development, the premium version of my free User Submitted Posts plugin is finally available. It’s got hundreds of features and makes it easy to create unlimited front-end forms. Create customized forms for front-end post-submission, user-registration, contact forms, forum topics, and even art-directed content. On one site, I use USP Pro to replace FIVE other plugins. Learn more at Plugin Planet.
Find the perfect WordPress theme
Search and filter through thousands of WP themes, both free and premium. If you’re in the market for a new theme, this free tool at wpbyexample.com could be a huge time-saver.
Bring Back Single-Column Dashboard
After updating to WordPress 3.8, the single-column Dashboard disappears with no options to bring it back. For years, users could set the number of columns in the Dashboard to suit their needs, but apparently some brilliant decision was made to just remove it. Personal opinions and feelings aside, here is a quick snippet to bring back single-column Dashboard layout for those who were using it and wish to continue doing so.
Getting WordPress Background Updates to Work
The new background updates feature in WordPress 3.7 is great for security and productivity, but it can be tricky getting it to work. This post explains how the same technique posted here also worked for enabling background updates.
Contest Winners!
Congratulations to our five lucky contest winners! Mike, Shea Bunge, Konstantinos Kouratoras, Stephanie Stiavetti, and Gretchen Louise will each receive a free copy of Digging Into WordPress plus all bonus material, exclusive themes, and lifetime updates. Thank you to everyone who participated!
