Curtis Henson

Say you want to use the next_posts_link() and previous_posts_link() functions to display your post navigation. But you want to use some clever looking arrow images(or just plain boring text). You also want the images(or that plain boring text) grayed out when there are no more pages to link to.

WordPress 2.7 includes a few new exciting features and functions for theme developers. I go over how to use these functions and give a few links on learning more about WordPress 2.7.

The WordPress conditional tags are some of the most powerful tools a theme designer can master. As WordPress themes get more complicated and more CMS like, everyone will eventually run into the need for conditionals. In my previous post I showed you how to write less code using conditional tags and the WordPress hierarchy. Quite [...]

A while ago a user asked me how the widget hover effects were done in my Checkmate theme. Well I’m going to tell you. It is a little black magic, a little jquery, and passing through the outer realms of probability. But I think anyone can handle it.

So what have I’ve been doing for the last few weeks? I’m happy to announce the launch of GRUNT at gruntdesign.com. This is my new business identity and a step forward in my freelance career. CurtisHenson.com started out as a portfolio, and then became a blog, I recently redesigned the site to [...]

One of Checkmate’s features is the ability to select multiple categories as feature categories. It wasn’t until far after the release a user brought up the fact it didn’t work…at all. So I set off to fix it thinking it was a trivial task using query_posts or get_posts. I was wrong. To keep everything as compatible as could be and offer the ease of use I intended took some digging. I ended up skipping all of WordPress’s functions and going strait to the database by writing a custom function.

Happy WordPress Day. Today I show you how to make sections out of your Wordpress categories for a similar look to MSNBC’s site. Perfect for content heavy sites, or to complete the magazine or news theme you have been working on!

Google has released their Ajax Libraries API, and I for one welcome it. Anything I can do to speed up websites and offload files is something I’ll likely take advantage of.

A quick tip on how to make your WordPress themes more user friendly. Get a category ID from a category name and save your users some headaches.

I show you a quick easy way to keep WordPress widget areas organized and easy to use when developing themes with multiple widget areas.