Stephanie Leary

Writer and WordPress consultant

  • Books
    • Content Strategy for WordPress (2015)
    • WordPress for Web Developers (2013)
    • Beginning WordPress 3 (2010)
  • Blog
    • Fascism Watch (2016-17)
    • Content Modeling for WordPress series
    • WordPress Hidden Gems series
  • Work
    • Portfolio
    • Services
    • WordPress Plugins
    • WordPress Themes
    • Presentations and Interviews
    • on GitHub →
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Listing child pages with a shortcode

June 8, 2010 Stephanie Leary 7 Comments

If you don't want to list child pages on all your empty pages using a [link id="2865"]page template[/link] or a [link id="5246"]filter[/link], you can create a simple shortcode: Then place [[children]] in your page content where you want the list to appear. … [Read more...]

WordPress Posts and Pages, shortcodes

Listing children on empty pages as a filter

June 3, 2010 Stephanie Leary Leave a Comment

Yesterday, I showed you how to automatically list child pages if a page's content is empty. That code would go in your theme's page.php file. What if you wanted to use it in any theme? The best solution is to turn it into a little plugin: Paste the code into a file in your … [Read more...]

WordPress Navigation, Posts and Pages

Automatically list children on empty pages

June 2, 2010 Stephanie Leary 5 Comments

Here's a little snippet I use in my theme's page templates. It figures out whether a page's content is empty, and if it is, a list of all its child pages is printed where the content would usually go. To use this, find the_content() in your page.php file and replace it with that … [Read more...]

WordPress Posts and Pages

Take control of your excerpts

February 9, 2010 Stephanie Leary 4 Comments

Here are three short functions you can add to your theme's functions.php file to change the way excerpts work on your site. When you use the_excerpt() in a theme file, WordPress will first use the contents of the Excerpt field from your Post→Edit screen. If it's empty, … [Read more...]

WordPress excerpts, Metadata, Posts and Pages

Listing child pages

August 9, 2009 Stephanie Leary 2 Comments

The Codex offers a way to list the children of the current page by adding this to your theme: … [Read more...]

WordPress Navigation, pages, Posts and Pages, template tags

Posts vs. Pages

August 3, 2009 Stephanie Leary Leave a Comment

Should you use posts or pages for your content? On the surface, they are much the same in WordPress. They share a similar editing screen1. Both can accept comments and trackbacks. How do you decide which is best for you? If your site contains a blog of any variety — a … [Read more...]

WordPress excerpts, Posts and Pages, strategy, subscribers, taxonomy

Latest WordPress Book

Content Strategy for WordPress

A short book for content strategists and managers on implementing a complete content strategy in WordPress: evaluation, analysis, content modeling, editing and workflows, and long-term planning and maintenance.

Read the sample chapter

Kindle Nook iBooks Kobo Smashwords

WordPress for Web Developers

WordPress for Web Developers (9781430258667)

This is a book for professional web designers and developers who already know HTML and CSS, and want to learn to build sites with WordPress. The book begins with a detailed tour of the administration screens and settings, then digs into server-side topics like performance and security. The second half of the book is devoted to development: learning to build WordPress themes and plugins.

This is the second, much-revised and updated edition of Beginning WordPress 3, with a more accurate title. Everything’s been updated for WordPress 3.6.

WordPress for Web Developers is out now. See what's inside...

The best WordPress features you’ve never noticed

  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Screen Options
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Bulk Edit
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Private Status
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Dashboard Feed Readers
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Options.php

Content Modeling for WordPress series

  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 1: analyze content
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 2: functional and organizational requirements
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 3: a sample content model

This is an excerpt from Content Strategy for WordPress.My latest books are Content Strategy for WordPress (2015) and WordPress for Web Developers (2013). Sign up to be notified when I have a new book for you.

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