It would be easy to assume that everyone on the internet speaks English. The majority of software is produced in English simply for the reason that doing so gives it a larger potential audience (or, maybe more appropriately, gives it access into the American market). However, you shouldn't assume this means everyone reads and writes English at the same level, or that non-native speakers wouldn't want software in their own language. There is a world of speakers outside of English and now is the time to tap into them.
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This guide is another in the Inside WordPress series and attempts to show how to produce a translation for an already-prepared theme, plugin, or WordPress itself. Even if you have little PHP or HTML skills you can still contribute to making WordPress a truly international experience by providing localizations for existing themes and plugins.
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Pings and trackbacks are a way for weblogs to communicate with each other and say 'hey, I talked about your site'. They allow you to see how far your site has spread, and exactly who is reading your content. By default, WordPress mixes pings and comments together, clogging up the conversational flow and making it hard to follow what people are saying.
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This guide is another in the Inside WordPress series and will show you how to install a WordPress theme. While this is a relatively simple task it is one of fundamental importance to WordPress and is often overlooked. As such it is a potential cause of problems to beginners, and not being able to successfully install themes will prevent you from customising your weblog and taking it beyond the default style.
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This guide is another in the Inside WordPress series and will show you how to install a WordPress plugin. While this is a relatively simple task it is one of fundamental importance to WordPress and is often overlooked. As such it is a potential cause of problems to beginners, and not being able to successfully install plugins will prevent you from accessing the very large world of WordPress plugins.
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I've started a series of WordPress guides which I've titled 'Inside WordPress'. My aim with these is to explain different aspects of WordPress from a practical point of view. That is, they will be focussed on showing you how to do things rather than telling you what to do. I've already made a start with several guides explaining some of the more simpler aspects of WordPress, as well as some going a little further. The guides will not always be aimed at beginners and, if there is enough interest, I already have plans to dig deep inside the belly of the beast.
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Thanks again go to Tai for his translation of the second part of the Theme Guide series into Japanese. Great work!
Also, Simos Xenitellis has produced a Greek localization for the Giraffe theme. You'll need the .mo file for the theme, and the .mo file for WordPress (taken from this Greek translation website and converted into a .mo file). Check it out from the Localization menu in the sidebar of this website, or visit his website for the full effect. Thanks Simos!
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A lot of people have asked for a printable version of my WordPress theme dissection and so I've been beavering away and have now released a PDF. This has been fully revised and expanded, and weighs-in at just over 1MB.
In a further fit of productivity I've also made a version available to buy from the online publisher Lulu. The guide is the same, so you can download the PDF and print it out yourself, but you also have the option of ordering a professionally printed and bound copy. As more of an incentive, the Lulu version has an extra chapter including my guide to installing WordPress on your own computer, as well as extra bookish things such as content pages etc. There's also a full-colour durable cover - just like a real book!
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We generally become WordPress users to create a blog for everyone to see. This can involve the purchasing of a domain name and web hosting. These we treat as black boxes on which the WordPress software is installed, and everything magically works. This is exactly how it should be.
Although WordPress provides a comprehensive management interface, there are times when it would be better to have our own local copy, running on our own machine. There are several reasons we would want to do this:
A working backup of our online site A development site to develop plugins and themes without affecting our online site A testing area to try out hacks and new versions of WordPress without fear of corrupting the live site A staging area to create and verify posts, before releasing them live
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In previous guides we have concentrated on the building blocks of creating a WordPress theme. A basic design structure has been defined, followed by enclosing header and footer elements, and finished off with a navigational guide. While important aspects of any blog, they are secondary to its main purpose: the content.
In this fourth and final part we carefully dissect the process of taking the content from WordPress and arranging it on screen. Attention is paid to the many alternative methods of grouping this information, from the many posts of the front page to search results and archives.
We will look at how WordPress distributes the responsibility for this work, and how everything is tied together with the all-seeing all-knowing construct known as ‘The Loop’.
By the end of this guide we will not only have a fully working theme, but we should have enough experience and knowledge of WordPress to be able to extend our theme beyond the basic design presented here.
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