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Customizing WordPress: Layout

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Removing non-essential features

First things first, start chopping off some of that extra sidebar content you don’t need. Are you going to link to friends? Do you want a link to validate your code? Should a brief description of your blog really exist on the sidebar?

Let’s say you decide to get rid of the later of the two: the page description. In the default wordpress theme, the very first thing you see in the sidebar is the description of the blog, and some short information on where exactly you are at the moment (Say, About Page.) Many times, this is just un-needed extra information.

Find the huge block of code looking like below, and delete it.

[php]


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    • [/php]

    Let’s start tweaking your sidebar by adding some images from your flickr account. To accomplish this, we need a plugin. There are many flickr wordpress plugins available, but in this instance, will use the Random Flickr Favorite. Download and install the plugin by following the instructions, and be sure to activate it.

    Now, insert the follow code right before the closing div (last line) in the sidebar.php file.

    [php]
    ;[/php]

    Now, let’s spice things up one more time. This time, we’ll pull the x amount of recent comments from your blog, and place them in the sidebar. This is accomplished using the Get Recent Comments Plugin.

    Below the code you just added, try placing an [html]

    [/html] tag to create some separation. After you download, upload, and active the Recent Comments plugin, you’ll need to add this code into your sidebar.php.

    [php]


    • [/php]

    You can define how many comments you want to be shown in the Options, Get Recent Comments tab. (Run into a code error? Read the solution here.)

    After making the changes to the sidebar, your new sidebar should look like this.

    [php]

    [/php]

    Next Week

    That concludes this weeks lesson on WordPress. With these code changes, your sidebar has become a bit more useful, and you’ve learned how to make some basic changes to the wordpress index. Next week, I’ll break down customizing the design portion of the WordPress layout, and show you how to archive a more complex design.

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