Magnus Jepson » wordpress http://www.jepson.no Co-Founder of WooThemes.com Wed, 20 Oct 2010 07:57:19 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 How to exclude specific tag from query_posts http://www.jepson.no/how-to-exclude-specific-tag-from-query_posts/ http://www.jepson.no/how-to-exclude-specific-tag-from-query_posts/#comments Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:17:16 +0000 Magnus http://www.jepson.no/?p=436 On the upcoming theme I’m working on I needed to have a featured section on the left side, and normal posts on the right. Usually I would put the featured posts in a category, and excluded that from the normal posts. But for the end user, it is much easier to just tag the posts they want to be featured with “featured”. That way they don’t have to create a category called featured, select that in the options panel etc.

It isn’t so well documented,  so after talking to Adii we came up with the following code that does the job perfectly for the right hand side normal posts:

  1. get_var("SELECT term_ID FROM $wpdb->terms WHERE name=’featured’");                     
  2.  
  3. $paged = (get_query_var(‘paged’)) ? get_query_var(‘paged’) : 1;
  4. $args=array(
  5.    ‘tag__not_in’ => array($tag),
  6.    ‘paged’=>$paged,
  7.    );
  8. query_posts($args);
  9. ?>

The left side query is simple and just looks like this

  1.  
  2. <?php query_posts(‘tag=featured’); ?>
  3.  
]]> http://www.jepson.no/how-to-exclude-specific-tag-from-query_posts/feed/ 5 Irresistible & Groovy http://www.jepson.no/irresistible-groovy/ http://www.jepson.no/irresistible-groovy/#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:41:27 +0000 Magnus http://www.jepson.no/?p=392 I haven’t been designing anything new lately, since I’ve been put on the task of coding some of the themes from our WooContest held back in ’08.

Irresistible

Irresistible

The first theme I finished coding on (basic coding done by PSDtoWP) was Irresistible, which we release as a free theme on WooThemes. It was designed by Izzudin Helmi who also designed the whole Groovy Series which I’ve now been put in charge of.

Groovy Video

Groovy Video

First up was Groovy Video which I coded from scratch to lay the foundation for the other two themes in the series. After I designed and coded WooTube, I sorta got the hang of how to do a video theme, so this was naturally my first pick to code.

Next themes I will be working on will be Groovy Photo and Groovy Mag(azine), and hopefully the base work I’ve done with Groovy Video will make development time much faster for these new ones.

]]> http://www.jepson.no/irresistible-groovy/feed/ 5 Redesigning my first ever project http://www.jepson.no/redesigning-my-first-ever-project/ http://www.jepson.no/redesigning-my-first-ever-project/#comments Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:06:18 +0000 Magnus http://www.jepson.no/?p=355 A long, long time ago, when html was html, tables were the sh*t, and hover effect on links was the hottest thing out there, I made a website. Specifically it was my first “real” project, where I would actually receive some sort of compensation, and it was for my local golf club where I actively play, Stavanger Golf Club.

sgk-01

The new design of Stavanger Golfklubb

So what has changed then since then? Well first of all, I actually make a living of designing websites now, and I’ve made quite a few in the 3-4 years since I did the initial design. The main reason for doing the redesign was to get the site up and running on my beloved WordPress platform. The old site was built on html, tables (yuck!) and a simple php news system (CuteNews), and it just can’t compare with the brilliance of WP.

sgk-02

Powered by WordPress

Surprisingly, the original design has stood it’s ground all these years, at least in my eyes. So I didn’t want to drastically change the design, since the colors and layout had done so well. My main goals were simply; Re-use the color scheme, make it 960px wide and make it easier to read. The old design was lacking in the typography department because I was heavily influenced by all the Flash sites back in 05/06 that used mini fonts. I’m glad that has worn of, and I now enjoy new design trends that allow for more white space and better typography.

sgk-03

The old design

The design took about a day to finish in Photoshop, and the coding was done the following day. The tweaking part is what take up most of the time. The production of the site took about 4 days, and although it isn’t completely propped with content yet, it is 95% done. I was quite pleased with the end result, and that always leaves a good feeling, and gets me motivated about keeping it looking good for the years to come.

]]> http://www.jepson.no/redesigning-my-first-ever-project/feed/ 7 The Popularity of Fresh News http://www.jepson.no/the-popularity-of-fresh-news/ http://www.jepson.no/the-popularity-of-fresh-news/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:30:16 +0000 Magnus http://www.jepson.no/?p=315 thinkvitamin

It’s not a secret that Fresh News is the most popular theme on WooThemes, and that it has been customized far beyond what I ever intended the theme to be when i first designed it. One of the best customizations of this theme came from GoMediaZine, who are experts in graphic design.

On Monday, one of the more popular web developer magazines, Think Vitamin, changed their look to… you guessed it… Fresh News! I was very pleased to see my design on such a popular site, which is produced by the incredible Carsonified, a world renowned web company who run great projects like Future Of Web Design conference, which I’ll hopefully be attending in London later this year.

Although I was pleased, I wasn’t shocked, as I’ve seen this growing trend a long time now. As discussed on the latest post on WooThemes, it is becoming very popular for web designers to use a template to cut production time and cost. This is one of the reasons that we are able to make WooThemes such a successful venture, and I think that more designers/bloggers/entrepreneurs have yet to discover this.

I did honestly think that Think Vitamin would customize Fresh News beyond the default look, but I understand that the focus is not on the uniqueness of the site, but more on the content.

So what do you think about this growing trend of using templates instead of building a site from the ground up? Have your say here or on the WooThemes blog post!

]]> http://www.jepson.no/the-popularity-of-fresh-news/feed/ 7 I’ve been a Busy Bee http://www.jepson.no/ive-been-a-busy-bee/ http://www.jepson.no/ive-been-a-busy-bee/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:45:34 +0000 Magnus http://www.jepson.no/?p=232 On friday evening, I had a little time to myself, so instead of doing the normal stuff (tv, movies or misbehaving in town), I decided to start up Photoshop. I know that sounds incredibly geeky, and I won’t deny that it is… but I enjoyed the heck out of it :)

Busy Bee

A couple of beers later and I had a new theme designed for WooThemes, and we’re planning on releasing it sometime in December. Let me know what you think!

]]> http://www.jepson.no/ive-been-a-busy-bee/feed/ 41 How I designed and coded my website in 24 hours http://www.jepson.no/how-i-designed-and-coded-my-website-in-24-hours/ http://www.jepson.no/how-i-designed-and-coded-my-website-in-24-hours/#comments Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:51:10 +0000 Magnus http://www.jepson.no/?p=159 I thought I’d write a little post about how I actually managed to sit down in front of my new 24″ monitor, boot up Photoshop and design my site in a little over 24 hours. And by 24 hours, I don’t mean 24 hours of straight working, cause that would just be silly to work that long. The effective work hours is probably about half of that, since I had to eat, sleep and get my daily fix of The Office US in as well :) So how did I go about designing and coding a fully fledged WordPress theme in that short amount of time? Simple.

I cheated.

Over EasyYep that’s right… I consider it cheating, because I didn’t code my site from scratch, but instead used Over Easy, my latest contribution to the ever growing WooThemes theme collection. I finished making Over Easy a few weeks ago, and I liked the simple layout I had created in that theme. The only big difference between my new website and Over Easy is the front page, which took me the longest to code. But as you can see from the blog page, the layout is pretty similar, although I have changed the sidebar and the list styling.

This should be good proof of the usability of a standard WooThemes theme, and as you can see from our showcase, there are quite a large number of web designers doing the same as me; cutting corners. So is this kind of “cheating” a bad thing, or is this becoming the norm for designers wanting to save production time and increase profit from their clients? Let me know what you think by posting a comment!

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