Oh, and if you don’t see your feature request on this list, don’t worry, it may actually already be in the works! I do have a whole month before this ends. And don’t worry, just because a feature is on here does not mean you have to wait until March or later for it because I will start on the really popular ones right away. And finally, if you have a request that is not on here you can always post a comment, but just so you know, I have archived over 45 features that have been requested so like I said, it could be in the works!

A Sample of the Front End View

It has been a while in coming but today I released the first Beta version of Calendar Press, a plugin to add a very powerful event calendar to your Wordpress site. Though this is a limited version at this time, the back end is fully functional and allows a user to add and manage both events and categories. After you install this plugin you should create a page where your calendar will display, then select that page on the Calender Press settings page.

The front end is currently limited to a calendar style display and limited event information. Future versions will add an RSVP system, Google Maps, short codes and widgets. If you have any other features you would like to see in this plugin, please suggest them in the announcement thread on our support forum.

The overview screen

Development on this and other plugins will continue slowly as this is the last week I have of no employment – I start back to work on Monday, January 18th. I still plan to complete the plugin and enhance it over the coming weeks, but would really like your suggestions as to what features you would like to see come up first. You can post a comment here or use the support forum.

Enjoy!

Other additions to the plugin

In addition to the language translation support, I have added the following enhancements:

• Recipe ingredients are now entered line by line and are fully sortable.
• Added a divider option with title into the ingredients so you can separate different parts of the ingredients.
• Fixed several bugs that prevented recipes from being displayed correctly on widgets and in posts or pages.

There is a lot more coming so stay tuned!

New Comments Display

I just submitted Recipe Press 0.8 to the repository, and this one adds the long awaited recipe comments to the mix. I spent 12 hours today working on this update, testing it on various installs of both stand alone Wordpress as well as Wordpress MU, and making sure I left no debugging code to mess up your sites. But there are other updates and changes including:

• Comments! Of course, this is the big thing, and I think you will like how it works.
• New settings for comments added to the Recipe Press Settings page.
• New option to remove all Recipe Press data on plugin deactivation added to settings page.
• Consolidated all plugin options into one record  to clean up the options table.
• Added a lot of template tags for the comments – more coming for categories and recipes soon.

Upgrade Notice

The addition of the comments meant that the recipe-display.php template file had to be modified to show these  comments. Luckily, it is just a little change. If you are using a custom template for your site, you must add <?php $this->showComments(); ?> to your template before the comments will show on your site.

Another change was to consolidate all the Recipe Press settings into one record in the Wordpress options table making it easier to uninstall this plugin. Of course, the added option on the settings page to remove all data helps with that. Don’t worry though because I included a script on activation to convert your old settings to the new format, and remove all the old settings.

What does the future hold?

The next major enhancement to the plugin will be the ability to add photos to the recipes. I have decided to use the built in Media Library for this so that images uploaded from the site can be used in recipes, and vice versa. This enhancement will be another major marathon of coding and likely will not happen until after the holidays. If you have any requests or suggestions now is the time to send them in.

To make the plugin more configurable, I have already started coding in Template Tags, Actions, and Filters similar to the Wordpress features. Once these are added there will need to be some modifications made to your template files if you are using custom templates. I will post instructions for this when that happens.

I am also going to improve on the Categories function to integrate these more into Wordpress navigation. In an upcoming version I will add an option to auto generate a page for each category that will automatically show the recipes in that category with no extra code needed. You will be able to move these pages around and order them in any way you want using the standard Wordpress page hierarchy.

Finally, I am looking into how to allow this plugin to create RSS feeds as well as output recipes in a standardized recipe format. This upgrade will be a ways off but I am looking for your ideas and suggestions for this. Either post below or send me an email if you want to contribute to this or any other feature.

So, enjoy the new features and as always, please visit the Support Forums to report any bugs or ask any questions.

Upgrade Experience

As many of you know, I manage a lot of Wordpress sites, the number is fast approaching 100. I have a half dozen that are not considered any where near mission critical so the become the test bed for upgrades. So far, so good, in fact, with 8 sites already updated to Version 2.9 I have found absolutely no issues with sites breaking or data loss. Just before starting this article I updated this site to Version 2.9 and used some of the new features to complete this post. I still recommend making a backup of your site if you don’t already have one before upgrading. Then, check out all the new features and enjoy!

My Favorite Upgrades

This new version finally takes care of a couple of issues for me, the most annoying has been the work needed to update plugins. I run many web sites, and each of those sites runs from 8 to 35 plugins depending on the needs of the site. Previously, I would need to upgrade each plugin individually. Version 2.9 adds a one stop plugin update script that will save a lot of time. I have already tried this feature on a half dozen blogs and it works great. Wordpress was even able to determine if the plugin would work in 2.9 and not update those plugins. And yes, there is still the option to update plugins individually.

The other upgrade is the photo cropping capabilities added to the Media Manager. Now when I take a screen shot I don’t have to open the file in GIMP or some other graphics program first. I just upload it to the site and use the built in editor to crop and resize the photo. You can see some screen shots below, which were all edited using this new feature.

Screen Shots of New Features

There is a lot more to the new version, but rather than list them all here, I’ll just refer you to the Official Announcement on the Wordpress.org blog. In my opinion, the upgrade is well worth the two clicks it takes to complete, and so far has not caused me any issues. Thank you Wordpress for some wonderful new additions – keep them coming!

Required Form Fields

A new option in the plugin settings page is selecting which fields on the form are required, giving full control over how your users submit recipes. Any field name checked on this page will be required before the recipe is submitted. These fields will be indicated in red (customizable with CSS) on the form. In addition, if the user misses a field yet types in the correct reCaptcha code, the system will not prompt them for a new code. On the admin side the only field required is the Recipe Name at this point.

Removal of [recipe-submit] shortcode

In previous versions, a user would have to create a page for the submit form, then remember to add the shortcode to the form. This version eliminates the submit form shortcode and automatically places the form above or below the content of the selected page, or completely replaces any content. The location of the form is selectable on the settings page. I did leave in some code to clear out the shortcode so it is not necessary to remove it manually if you were using a previous version. And before you ask, the “thank you” page automatically replaces all the content on the page, so if you have anything you want to add to the thank you page you need to copy and edit the recipe-thanks.php template file.

The Future of Recipe Press

Version 0.8 is due out next week and will add in the long awaited “comments” and “tags” to the plugin. I have created the entire comments backend and over the next week, while I am on vacation from school, will add in the front end capabilities as well as the tag functions. Early versions will likely not include AJAX functionality which may be added in future versions if there is demand.

Version 0.9 due in January will add the ability to attach photos to the recipes. I have not yet decided how I will handle photos, either through the built in Media Library in Wordpress, or perhaps with a hook into the NextGen Gallery plugin. I welcome comments on this if you wish to share or give other ideas.

I plan to release version 1.0 once the bugs from adding comments, tags, and photos are complete. Version 1.0 will also include search capabilities and RSS feed functions. Then I can go on to complete other enhancements including recipe ranking, friending, following, etc. Any other ideas?

Migrating from Recipe Share to Recipe Press

I have not created a script to migrate recipes and categories from the old plugin to this new plugin, however, the table schema is the same. If you wish to migrate your recipes you will need to access your database and rename the tables or copy the contents into the new tables. Most hosting providers offer access to your database through a program such as PHPMyAdmin.

• wp_recipes becomes wp_rp_recipes
• wp_recipes_cats becomes wp_rp_categories
• wp_rp_options is a new table that you will not need to migrate.

The prefix for your tables may not be wp_ based on your installation of Wordpress. If it is different, as would be the case in Wordpress MU installations, make sure to retain the same prefix as the old file, just change the parts after the _ character.

What the future holds

I am still not working but need to find a full time job to pay the bills, unless enough donations come in, so I am only able to work when I am not on the job hunt or working on small projects for individuals. The current plan for feature additions include, in this order:

• User comments
• Recipe photos
• User contributed modifications
• User contributed photos
• Recipe search function, possibly integrated into Wordpress search.
• RSS Feeds for recipes, likely NOT integrated into Wordpress RSS functions.
• More thoughts?

Keep watching for more updates, but with the holidays coming, the releases will be few and far between – unless someone gives me reason to work harder on this.

The other recent updates was in the Better RSS Widget plugin. I have added a short code to this plugin to allow you to embed RSS feeds into posts and pages.  I have included a couple samples of embedded RSS (you may need to view the full article) and you can find more information and usage instructions on the RSS Shortcode page. Future additions to this plugin will include conditionals so that you can place widgets only on specific pages, and perhaps a feed aggregator function to bring multiple feeds into one widget.

Example of Embedded RSS with Date and Author

better-rss feed=”http://wordpress.org/development/feed” items=5 show_date=1 show_author=1

• BuddyPress for One (and All!) February 26th, 2010 Jane Wells
• Menus, the Merge, and a Patch Sprint! February 23rd, 2010 Jane Wells
• WordPress On The Go February 17th, 2010 Jane Wells
• WordPress 2.9.2 February 15th, 2010 Ryan Boren
• WordPress Foundation January 21st, 2010 Jane Wells

Same RSS Feed with Summary

better-rss feed=”http://wordpress.org/development/feed” items=5 show_date=1 show_author=1 show_summary=1

• BuddyPress for One (and All!) February 26th, 2010
  Back in April of last year, Matt posted here on the dev blog about the release of BuddyPress 1.0, a plugin that adds a social networking layer to an installation of WordPress MU. Many people were excited about the idea, but were unable to experiment with BuddyPress because they ran single installations of WordPress rather [...] […]
  Jane Wells
• Menus, the Merge, and a Patch Sprint! February 23rd, 2010
  A Report from the 3.0 Development Cycle Menus There’s been a flurry of blog posts about the integration of the WooThemes Custom Navigation into WordPress core, so I thought it was time we posted the official word. For 3.0, the main user-facing feature we wanted to include was a better site menu management system. Currently, dealing with [...] […]
  Jane Wells
• WordPress On The Go February 17th, 2010
  I like to moderate comments when I’m waiting for something: a checkout clerk to help me, the dentist to call me back to the office, a soy chai to be made. I don’t lug my laptop everywhere I go,* so I love it that we have mobile apps that make this possible. I don’t know [...] […]
  Jane Wells
• WordPress 2.9.2 February 15th, 2010
  Thomas Mackenzie alerted us to a problem where logged in users can peek at trashed posts belonging to other authors. If you have untrusted users signed up on your blog and sensitive posts in the trash, you should upgrade to 2.9.2.  As always, you can visit the Tools->Upgrade menu to upgrade. […]
  Ryan Boren
• WordPress Foundation January 21st, 2010
  It is with extremely great pleasure that I point you to the first post at the new WordPress Foundation site. Not only am I excited about the things that will happen under the auspices of the Foundation, I’m excited to see a site running the 3.0 development version and the nascent theme called 2010. Go [...] […]
  Jane Wells

Note: The text in italics is the actual shortcode used to create the output. The plugin does not display this, it is simply included on this page so you can view the examples.

Hopefully within the next week or so I can get back to my regular schedule and get many of the little nagging problems fixed in the Recipe Share plugin, and just a few moments ago I did in fact fix a bug with static pages in the Login Configurator plugin. I also have a couple new plugins that I started on before I get sick that will be added as time permits. Thank you for your patience, and I hope to be back at it hard within the next couple of days.

1. To join the Google Group, visit http://groups.google.com/group/GrandSlambert and register for immediate access.
2. To join the Facebook Group, visit http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=161820369569 and join.

I will use these groups to announce new plugins, updates, and provide other information about the plugins and eventually themes I am working on.

Features

• Will automatically create an excerpt from your page or you can assign the text in a custom field.
• Uses either a default text link or an image you set using a custom field.
• Can add an image linked to the page using a custom field.

So today I quickly programmed this  plugin to answer the question of “how do I make RSS links open a new window.” This plugin actually uses Wordpress functions to retrieve and display the RSS, adding in the critical feature of a link target. No need to hack any code or make any changes, except to replace your existing RSS feed widgets with the new Better RSS Widget.

Features

This plugin is similar to the built in widget it is designed to replace, however, you can now set the defaults for every RSS widget you add, then override the defaults for each widget. All of the features of the built in widget are included with the addition of the link target.

Enjoy…

Recipe Share

A Wordpress plugin that will allow you to share recipes on a Wordpress site. After searching for hours and asking around I was unable to find any plugin that had the following features: categories, tagging, comments, searching, pictures, ratings and sidebar widgets.

I just started developing this and have made quite a bit of progress. I am on a truncated timeline and will be beta testing before the weekend. I am looking for a few people who can test this new plugin for me. Use the form below to request to be a beta tester.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

In the past I have used the plugin named .html on Pages plugin, but found this to be a little bit limiting as it only allows .html extension. When a client came to me with a site that had all its pages ending with .htm, I began my search for a new plugin, but was unable to find one. The .html on Pages plugin has not been updated for a while, and I did not have time to wait for the author to create a new version.

This resulted in a new plugin called Custom Page Extensions released today. This allows me to set any extension I want for the static pages so I can match what the previous site had. Now a site can be easily migrated to Wordpress without the problem of losing links that area already indexed in popular search engines. Get this new plugin now by visiting the official page here on Wordpress @ GrandSlambert

• Protect Feed: This option will let you choose whether or not the Login Configurator protects your feed. Uses the correct Wordpress function so any feed on your site will be affected by the option.
• White-list URLs: If you want to protect your entire site aside from a couple of pages, such as an about or contact page, you can add them to the list of white-listed URLs in the settings page.

If you already have this plug-in installed, you should be given the option to automatically update it on your sites plug-in administration page. If not, you can [Download not found].

In addition, I have corrected some URLs in the plugin and added a new support forum for the plugin. If you have any questions or suggestions for this plugin, please comment here or use the support forum.

The Home Page Template

This trick uses the home page template so that our changes only affect the home page of the site. If your theme does not already have this file, I suggest you copy the index.php template file and name it home.php. There are only a couple of changes you need to make in this template file for this to work. I want to continue to take advantage of the settings on the Reading Settings page to control how many posts appear on the home page, so I will not be using the query_posts() option that could be used here. Instead, I will initiate a counter and use that to decide how to display posts.

The first thing we need is to create a counter before the Loop but after the header. I have found that starting it before the header caused a problem on paged pages, so I moved it after the header. For this, I used the variable name $displayed that I will increment in the Loop. So, after the code to include the header but before the Loop, add the following code:

<?php
 if ($paged == 1)
  $displayed = 1;
 else
  $displayed = 2;
?>

This will start our counter. You may wonder why we check for $paged == 1 in the code and set the variable differently. I wanted only the very first page of blog posts to have the featured post, and any additional pages to have only excerpts. This trick works for that purpose.

Full Text or Excerpt

Now that we have our counter started, we need to use it inside the Loop. You will be looking for the template tag the_content() which is what currently displays the content. In my theme the line appeared as

<?php the_content(__('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;', 'kubrick')); ?>

which would use the <!–more–> page feature if used in posts. Regardless of how the tags look, we need to add a conditional to this by replacing the line with the_content() tag with:

<?php
 if ($displayed > 1) {
  the_excerpt();
  ?>
  <p><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php printf(__('Permanent Link to %s', 'kubrick'), the_title_attribute('echo=0')); ?>">Read the full article &raquo;</a></p>
  <?php
 } else the_content(__('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;', 'kubrick'));
?>

I will explain the code line by line:

1. Start the PHP code.
2. A conditional statement to see if the variable $displayed is greater than 1 and if so execute lines 3 through 6.
3. Use the built in the_except() template tag to display the excerpt for the post.
4. Drop out of PHP to display a line of HTML
5. Use some built in template tags to to create a read more link to the articles permalink.
6. Go back into PHP code.
7. If $displayed is not greater than 1, display the full content.
8. Close the PHP code

There are some plugins that will allow you to use advanced excerpts and such, but I chose to stick with built in functions for this project.

Now we need to add a line of code just before the end of the loop to increment our counter.

<?php endwhile; ?>

Replace with:

<?php
 ++$displayed;
 endwhile;
?>

Locate the code in line 1 in you template file and replace it with the code in lines 5 through 8. This will increment the $displayed variable by one with each iteration of the Loop. Save these changes and upload the file to your theme folder. Your home page should now show one full text article and the remaining articles will display an excerpt.

You could stop at this and be very happy with your home page. I wanted to have the excerpted posts displayed in two columns under the featured posts and on any additional posts. You can accomplish this by following the next steps.

Styling the Excerpted Posts

On this blog, you will notice that the full text post is full width, while the rest are stacked neatly in two columns below that post. I have created a really simple trick to doing this with only one change to the template file:

<div class="Post">

Changes to:

<div class="Post  <? if ($displayed > 1) echo 'PostNarrow'; ?>">

This will add an extra style sheet class to the post block which we will need to set the width of the excerpted blocks. To complete the styling, you will need to add a .PostNarrow class to your style.css file setting the width and floating the blox:

.PostNarrow {
float: left;
width: 373px;
}

The float: left; setting will allow posts to float into columns and the width: 373px sets the width of each box. The width you set for this class will depend on the width of your content and the number of columns you choose to display. Remember to consider any margins around the boxes when you calculate the width.

One final thing you will need to add is a way to clear the float after each row. If you do not do this, your display could be mangled if one box is taller then another in the row. First, you will need to create a css style for clearing the float. Some themes may already have this, if not, I suggest this style:

.cleared {
float: none;
clear: both;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: none;
font-size:1px;
}

You will also need to add code to add code to clear the float. For this we will be looking at the home.php template file again and adding more lines where we increment the counter.

<?php
 ++$displayed;
 if ($displayed / 2 == floor($displayed / 2) ) echo '<div></div>';
 endwhile;
?>

This code assumes that you will be displaying 2 columns. If you wish to have three or more columns, replace both instances of 2 with the number of columns you wish to have.

Conclusion

It is ironic to think that it took me a lot less time to make this work on my site then it did to write this blog post. In fact, even with creating the two column look I spent only 15 minutes making this change, while the blog post has taken nearly two hours. Good luck, and feel free to ask any questions by commenting on this post.

The feature we will be working with is available after you have created at least one page in your Wordpress site. Wordpress has the ability to create both posts and pages, and you will create a page by clicking on the “Add New” link under the “Pages” sub menu. By default, Wordpress creates a generic “about” page so you will likely already have one created, however, for this to work you need to create a page that will contain the content of your home page. It’s probably best to call this page “Home”, but you may prefer to name it differently. You can put some basic content there for now and change it after things are set up, but make sure you publish this page so it can be displayed.

Now that you have the page created, you will need to tell Wordpress to use this new page for your “home” page. This is done on the Reading Settings page. You can access this page within your site administration area by opening the Settings sub-menu and click the “Reading” option. A page similar to the screen capture to the right (click to enlarge) will appear. The option you will change is the “Front Page Displays” option. First, click the “A static page (select below)” option, then use the drop down next to “Front Page” to select the page you want to be your home page. Save this setting and your site will now display the selected page for your home page.

Now I know you are going to ask me about the other option on that screen. If you have no intention of writing a blog, just don’t select anything there, it can be left as is. However, if you plan to have a static home page but also a blog page, you can use this option to select which page will show your blog posts. You will need to have created a page in Wordpress for this purpose. You do not have to write any content on the page you create since Wordpress will replace it with your blog posts. Create an empty page with whatever name, probably “Blog”, and publish it, then return to the Reading Settings page and select that page for the blog posts.

As you can see, though Wordpress wasn’t specifically designed for it, a person could use WordPress for a static type web site. In fact, I have done it several times. Here are some examples:

• Whole Food Nation
• 77 Ingredients
• Interest Blogs

Theme Installer

For quite a while now Wordpress has had a wonderful tool for finding and installing plugins in Wordpress, but themes was a different story. Though the Wordpress.org web site listed hundreds of great themes, the only way to get them to work for your site was to download a zip file then upload the files to your web server. If you didn’t know how to use FTP or open a zip file, you could really be lost with this. I have seen quite a few sites running Wordpress that are using the classic them included with the Wordpress software.

This changes with Wordpress 2.8 with the addition of the “Add New Themes” tool that is built into the software. When you click on the option, you get a screen similar to the one on the right (click to enlarge) where you can search for themes with specific keywords, or select from a variety of options (tags) to find a theme. With the hundreds of themes already available you are certain to find one you can use.

When you search for a keyword, or by tag, or use either the “Featured” or “Newest” options on the “Add New Themes” page you will be presented with a list of themes to choose from. You can preview the themes before you install them, but be warned that the preview will have the sample data similar to what you see on the Wordpress.org web site. To see how it will look with your data, you will need to install the theme first. Don’t worry, just installing won’t change your site, you still need to activate it.

Once you find one you want to try, click on the install link to install the theme. The pop up window that shows up is a bit confusing at first as you have to scroll the window down to find the button to install the theme. Once you do this the system will download and install the theme for you, then you can preview it with your content or activate the theme on your site. If you don’t like the look of the theme once it’s installed, you can easily delete the theme from the Appearance page.

This feature will really make it easier for people to apply different themes to their site. The fine people at Wordpress even included a link to upload themes on this new section so that theme developers can easily share their themes from inside their own site.

There are quite a few other great new features that I want to talk about, but we’ll wait for tomorrow to post those. Let me get a chance to check them out before I tell you all about them. If you want more information on all the wonderful new features of Wordpress 2.8, you can check the official announcement or the codex page.

The default 404 Not Found Page

It is great to see that Wordpress handles 404 Not Found errors gracefully and displays your web site rather then just a blank page. However, the default page supplied with most themes does not provide much help to your visitor. Click the image to the right to view a sample of the default 404 Not Found page. With a little manipulation, we can make that page a lot more useful.

The 404 Page Not Found pages for your site are generated by the file 404.php template file in your theme. If your theme does not have one of these template files, you should copy one from the “default” folder in your wp-content/themes folder into your theme folder. Open this file in a text editor to make changes or in the Theme Editor area built into the Appearance menu of Wordpress.

Page Title

The first change I make is in the header of the page area, where it says “Not Found”. I like to have something a bit more personal in that area. For this site I have changed it to “Content Not Found”. To change the page title, you need to locate the code <?php _e('Not Found', 'kubrick'); ?> in the file and change the text “Not Found” to what you want it to say. This is a pretty simple fix.

Page Content

The default error page has the text “Error 404 – Not Found”, which is too cryptic for most normal web users. I suggest changing this to something more descriptive, perhaps providing instructions on how to fix the problem or at least a link to your home page. To change this text, find the code <?php _e('Error 404 - Not Found', 'kubrick'); ?> and replace the text with your message. You can remove the PHP function if you wish, but leaving this in will allow others to create a language file in their language for your theme. The default page wraps this text in an <h2> tag so if you are creating a longer message, you may want to remove this tag.

A Better Not Found Page

You can stop at changing the page title and the message displayed, which would be a great improvement over the default page. However, the page still is not very useful to your visitors. I like to give them somewhere to go without having to first click on the home page link. For this I list the pages on the site using the wp_list_pages() method in Wordpress. To achieve this I add the following code after the message:

<?php wp_list_pages('title_li=<h2>Pages</h2>&show_date=1'); ?>

Now my 404 Not Found page is much more helpful to my visitors. A person could do even more on this page including listing a tag cloud, recent posts or displaying a random post. I will cover these in later articles.

Template Files

The template files in Wordpress are used to display the content of your site. There are many template files used for the different areas in your web site. By manipulating these template files you can create a custom look for your site. The template files recognized by Wordpress are:

• style.css - (Required) The main stylesheet. This must be included with your Theme, and it must contain the information header for your Theme.
• index.php - (Required) The main template. If your Theme provides its own templates, index.php must be present.
• comments.php - The comments template. If not present, comments.php from the “default” Theme is used.
• comments-popup.php - The popup comments template. If not present, comments-popup.php from the “default” Theme is used.
• home.php - The home page template.
• single.php - The single post template. Used when a single post is queried. For this and all other query templates, index.php is used if the query template is not present.
• page.php - The page template. Used when an individual Page is queried.
• category.php - The category template. Used when a category is queried.
• author.php - The author template. Used when an author is queried.
• date.php - The date/time template. Used when a date or time is queried. Year, month, day, hour, minute, second.
• archive.php - The archive template. Used when a category, author, or date is queried. Note that this template will be overridden by category.php, author.php, and date.php for their respective query types.
• search.php - The search results template. Used when a search is performed.
• 404.php - The 404 Not Found template. Used when WordPress cannot find a post or page that matches the query. This template could be modified to include a table of contents or list of posts for your site.

Theme

The theme for your Wordpress site is the collection of template files, images and style sheets that create the entire site. At the very minimum, a theme file will include the template files index.php and style.css. If the theme you are using is missing any template files, Wordpress will use the built in files using the Template Hierarchy. It is this hierarchy that makes developing themes for wordpress quick and easy as you do not need to create or modify every template file.

Once you know and understand how the template files and the theme work you can begin to modify an existing theme or build a new theme. In the next few weeks and months I will share with your some fun tricks to making your Wordpress web site unlike any other.