WordPressifying (from scratch) the redesign of stutteringiscool.com (my podcast about stuttering), is coming along as expected. A bumpy ride but rewarding at the end. So far:
1. My images wouldn’t show up except for background images designated in my stylesheet. After a bit of searching and some praying, turns out I need to specify WP-speak in my <img>. For example, <img src=”images/title.gif”> is supposed to be <img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_directory’); ?>/images/title.gif”>. Why? I had my theme images in the theme folder, which is also known as the stylesheet_directory. It’s obvious now that I know but odd choice of name, IMHO.
2. Fun with the_title(). After reading through a few tutorials listed in the recommended reading area of The Loop page, I brightly came to the conclusion that <?php the_title(); ?> lists the post’s title. I quickly found out it doesn’t become a link! Ok, so programming needs a little more work than that. After a bit of searching on the wordpress.org site, I tried this:
<a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a>
…and it worked. I’m beginning to get the hang of the language of WordPress and really do wish there was a good textbook I could read instead.
It’s hard to explain what I’m trying to accomplish with my site without showing you the design but imagine 3 areas of the landing page each devoted to a category: my podcast, my comics and links. The area devoted to my podcast is split in 2: the left side will show my latest episode and the right side will show a list of the most recent 5 episodes (minus the one on the left).
The area devoted to comics will list the 3 most recent comics. The area devoted to links will show only the most recent post (these are links about stuttering and such that I stumble across and share with my fellow stutterers).