• I joined StudioPress in November, 2009
• At StudioPress, I was privileged to build the Genesis Framework
• We released a truckload of excellent child theme designs for Genesis
• Then, we build a new truckload of awesome plugins
• StudioPress merged with Copyblogger
• My wife and I bought our first house
• Copyblogger launches Authority Rules, I was fortunate enough to be involved
• I got to build a sweet WordPress Membership plugin
• Copyblogger hired these ridiculously awesome people
• I (finally) switched my site over to using Genesis

Not a bad way to spend one’s time.

So yeah, I’m back, and I will be writing again. I’ve learned an incredible amount of new stuff over the last few years, and it’s time I start publishing all those goodies. Expect the usual, but with a Genesis twist. I did build the theme, after all.

If you notice that the comment form looks a bit off, you’re not crazy. It probably is. I just haven’t gotten around to fixing it.

So I figured I’d share the spotlight with 9 other people that make up the top 10, and help introduce you to them. Here they are!

1. Joost de Valk (@yoast)

Joost (pronounced “Yoast”) is a prolific WordPress blogger, author of some sweet WordPress plugins, SEO Expert, and host of the very popular new podcast called Press This.

I highly recommend you follow him. He definitely deserves the top spot.

2. WPlimits (@wplimits)

This account is managed by Nathan Barry. I’m not very familiar with this account, it seems to be a good source of WordPress related articles, themes, and plugins from around the net.

3. Brian Gardner (@bgardner)

Of course, my good friend Brian is someone you should definitely be following. Brian is the founder of the Premium Theme movement in the WordPress community via his Revolution Theme (now StudioPress), and he’s definitely an influential twitter-er among WordPress users.

4. Adii (@adii)

Adii, who’s first claim to fame was the popular “Premium News Theme”, has gone on to become the co-founder of WooThemes where he and the guys produce some of the most visually stunning themes in the market. He is also a sharp entrepreneur who is kind enough to share his insights on his blog throughout the week.

5. Ian Stewart (@iandstewart)

The man who started the craze around theme framworks with his Thematic theme, Ian is also a savvy WordPress blogger and Twitter-er. He usually shares links and resources via his twitter account, as well as his newest project, WPazo.com (@WPazo).

6. Nathan Rice (@nathanrice)

That’s me!

7. Theme Forest (@themeforest)

As many of you know, Theme Forest has made a splash in the WordPress community by taking a new direction in the world of Premium Themes. They allow users to submit themes to their site and sell them, splitting the profits. This unique model has created one of the largest Premium Theme outlets on the net.

Like other Twitter-ers on this list, they routinely share helpful WordPress resources via their twitter account.

8. Mark Jaquith (@markjaquith)

Mark is lead developer on the WordPress project, so if anyone knows what he is talking about, it’s him. Follow him for the raw WordPress nerdery, as well as the awesome libertarian eloquence!

9. Jean-Baptiste Jung (@catswhocode)

The guy behind the very popular WPRecipes.com and CatsWhoCode.com. If you’re looking for some seriously helpful WordPress and Web Development resources around the net, look no further. The stuff he publishes and links to is killer.

10. Roger Byrne (@imrogb)

Another name I’m not familiar with. Roger is a social media expert who works at Envato (the guys behind ThemeForest), so he’s probably worth following. 20,000 people already are!

Honorable Mentions

A couple of notable characters are missing from the list, most likely because they haven’t added themselves at the WeFollow.com directory. It’s only right that I mention them here:

1. Jeff Chandler (@wptavern & @jeffr0)

Jeff is the host of the popular WordPress Weekly podcast. He also runs WPTavern.com (blog and forum) where discussions of all things WordPress happen on a daily basis. If you want to pow-wow with the WordPress big-wigs, go get yourself an account and start posting.

2. Chris Pearson (@pearsonified)

Chris is the author of one of the best premium themes in the market, Thesis. He’s also a HUGE personality and is worth following, if for no other reason than his sharp wit and “linguistic porn” (as he calls it).

3. Justin Tadlock (@justintadlock)

Justin is one of the most knowledgeable WordPress developers in the community. His claim to fame is is deep commitment to his Theme Hybrid community where he does some killer work on the free WordPress theme, Hybrid. He also writes some killer articles at his blog that will teach you how to make WordPress bend to your will! You will learn something by following Justin.

4. Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt)

Of course, no list of WordPress Twitter-ers would be complete with out the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg. It’s mostly an aggregation account, but it’s still worth following if you are a fan of WordPress.

Of course, there are a couple of options already available to you: you can make IE6 crash when users visit, you can move on to bigger and better things and ignore IE6 altogether, or you can do like I do and display a little message to IE6 visitors encouraging them to upgrade (this plugin makes that pretty easy).

But, if you’re not in the business of pandering to inferior browsers, but you don’t necessarily want to be seen as a jerk, I have a solution that might work out perfectly for you.

Let’s Do Some Browser Detection

True, it’s not perfect. But as we’ve pointed out before, browser detection can go a long way towards delivering a smooth experience for users of all browsers.

What we want to do is detect the visitor’s “User Agent”, then tell WordPress to use the default theme (that is, the Kubrick theme) whenever an IE6 user visits our site. So, we do a little PHP magic to detect the User Agent.

if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'MSIE 6') !== false) {
	// do something
}

This IF statement will evaluate whether or not the user’s browser is reporting IE6 as the User Agent. It should be noted that some browsers allow users to spoof their User Agent. So it is theoretically possible that someone is spoofing an IE6 User Agent and forgot to switch back. Possible, but very unlikely.

Tell WordPress to Use the Default Theme

So, now that we know whether or not the visitor is using IE6, we need to tell WordPress do something with that information. Fortunately, WordPress offers some filters for us to use. The code looks something like this (including the browser check from above):

add_filter('template', 'serve_default_to_iesix');
add_filter('option_template', 'serve_default_to_iesix');
add_filter('option_stylesheet', 'serve_default_to_iesix');
function serve_default_to_iesix($theme) {
	if(strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'MSIE 6') !== false)
		$theme = 'default';

	return $theme;
}

Making the Plugin

Because this bit of functionality is used to determine which theme gets loaded, this is one of the few things that you can’t do using your theme’s functions.php file … you have to actually use a plugin. But no worries … here’s exactly what the plugin code should look like:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Serve Default to IE6
Plugin URI: http://www.nathanrice.net/blog/serve-ie6-visitors-the-default-wordpress-theme
Description: This plugin will serve the default theme to any visitors using IE6.
Author: Nathan Rice
Author URI: http://www.nathanrice.net/
Version: 1.0
*/

add_filter('template', 'serve_default_to_iesix');
add_filter('option_template', 'serve_default_to_iesix');
add_filter('option_stylesheet', 'serve_default_to_iesix');
function serve_default_to_iesix($theme) {
	if(strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'MSIE 6') !== false)
		$theme = 'default';

	return $theme;
}
?>

And if you aren’t the best “copy and paste”-er, here’s a download link. Just upload the plugin and activate, and you’re good to go.

Please note that, because this functionality relies on dynamic template serving, it will be incompatible with plugins like WP-Super-Cache.

There you go! Now, whenever someone visits with IE6, they’ll be seeing your site courtesy of the Default theme. But you don’t have to stop there … if there is another theme in your wp-content/themes directory that you’d like to use instead of the default theme, just find its directory/folder name and replace ‘default’ with the directory/folder name of the other theme you’d like to use (case sensitive). For instance, if you’d like to use the “classic” theme, you’d modify the code above like so:

...
	if(strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'MSIE 6') !== false)
		$theme = 'classic';
...

Pretty cool, eh?

What’s That? A New Premium Theme Shop?

As you know, I live and breathe WordPress code (pretty much). I’ve written countless tutorials, built themes, written plugins, even submitted a patch or two to the WordPress core. Let’s just say that when it comes to WordPress, I know my stuff, some of which has recently been added as new functionality to the themes at StudioPress.

So it should go without saying that if I’m going to be helping run my own WordPress business, it’s going to be top-notch quality with some solid code. You can count on it.

I was, however, late to the party, so I haven’t had a real chance to get my hands dirty with any of the code there at ModThemes.com, but I’m currently busy on several projects that will have my signature solid code foundation that I’ve worked so hard to develop.

What is ModThemes All About?

The three things that I think make a Premium WordPress theme are the following:

1. Killer Design
2. Solid Code / Awesome Features
3. Superior Support

Seriously, I think that about covers it. And that’s our commitment to our users. We want to provide beautiful, functional themes, and if you need help after the sale, we want to be there for you.

So if you’re ever in the market for a new theme for you site, or for one of you clients, do yourself a favor and check ModThemes.com out first.

We’ll Sweeten the Deal

If you’re interested in purchasing our Breaking News Theme this week, we’re offing a 15% off “launch special”. All you need to do is enter discount/coupon code “LAUNCH” at checkout and you’ll get an instant 15% discount. Not bad, eh?

But act fast. That discount code is only good for the first 50 people that use it. For other deals and discounts, as well as news about new themes, prerelease teasers, and other cool stuff, be sure to follow @modthemes on Twitter, or of course, follow me @nathanrice on Twitter.

A couple of weeks ago, I invited a few people to join a private beta of the theme (called Prodigy, in case you hadn’t gathered), and it has been silky smooth. Hardly any complaints or bugs, and TONS of compliments. So, I think the theme is ready for a public beta, and you’re all invited!!!

Just to be clear, this theme is definitely for developers (right now). After a little more work getting the framework settled, we’ll start pumping out some killer designs based on the Prodigy framework and everybody will be able to enjoy the benefits of Prodigy. Until then, I’d recommend waiting unless you are somewhat comfortable with PHP and CSS.

The Default Child Theme

Prodigy, by itself, is pretty ugly. It’s completely unstyled. But I’ve created a default theme for Prodigy called “Legacy” that will serve as a sample theme for you to use as your guide to creating child themes with Prodigy. To see it in action, head over to Prodigy Central and take a look around. Yes, it’s simple, minimalistic, and bare-bones. But it does offer a solid typographic foundation to build on, and with a splash of color via CSS, it could look pretty darn sweet.

Oh yeah, both Prodigy and Legacy are both COMPLETELY FREE, and always will be. We’ll probably develop some commercial child themes in the future, but the framework itself will always be 100% free and GPL.

What Makes Prodigy So Special?

Well, that’s a hard thing to explain. What I tried to accomplish with Prodigy is offer an HTML framework that could be utilized out of the box, but could be easily extended or replaced with your own creation by taking extensive advantage of Hooks. These hooks are scattered throughout various locations in the HTML output, offering you endless options for inserting custom code exactly where you want it without editing core files.

If that sounds like gibberish to you, fear not. There will be a variety of awesome tutorials to come shortly that will explain all these concepts in greater depth, with some real-world examples.

Along with offering a solid HTML framework, I’ve added some killer SEO options that make fine-tuning your SEO a breeze. The theme takes care of most of the work, but there are a few options that you can tweak from within the post/page edit screen. Take a look:

As you can see, Prodigy makes it super-easy to control the SEO of each individual post/page.

I could go on forever. There are functions to easily create new widget areas, feedburner redirection (say bye-bye to the Feedsmith plugin), hooks all over the place, included reset.css and WordPress recommended styles, and other stuff that just can’t be explained.

So How Do I Become a Beta Tester?

Easy … just follow the instructions at Prodigy Central. You can either download the ZIP or you can pull the code directly using SVN (which I highly recommend).

All I ask is that you help provide constructive feedback for me so I can make the theme better. I want this entire project to be one of the best themes available, and I can’t do that without you.

Providing Feedback

I’ve set up a P2 site that lets us talk about Prodigy features, bugs, requests, etc. If you would like access to post to that blog (the equivalent of starting a forum thread) just email me and I’ll set you up an account. Be brutal, but be courteous. I want to make the theme everything you want it to be, so I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts.

Also, I’m a VERY active Twitter user (follow me @nathanrice) and I’ve chosen #prodigywp as the official hashtag for Prodigy discussion on Twitter. Just hashtag your tweet with #prodigywp and I will absolutely see it, along with the rest of the Prodigy community. And if you want to track the conversation around Prodigy on Twitter, just follow the #prodigywp hashtag in your favorite Twitter client, or on search.twitter.com.

Oh, and By the Way

The site you’re looking at right now (NathanRice.net) was build completely on the Prodigy Framework as a child theme. It just goes to show you how flexible frameworks are, and how much the Prodigy offers you in the way of extensibility and flexibility. Yes, you CAN create a site like this one, and much more complex sites too, all on top of the Prodigy Framework, without ever editing core code.

The conclusion? The PHP files in WordPress themes must inherit the GPL, but CSS and Images do not. From the email:

The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code.

Obviously, since many premium theme developers, including iThemes, have adopted the GPL completely for their themes, including CSS and Images, this news doesn’t make a big difference for us.

But because neither side can claim they were 100% correct, the declaration is bittersweet to those on both sides of the issue.

Those claiming that themes must be completely covered by the GPL can no longer claim that:

… the images and CSS are not [subject to the requirements of the GPL]. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.

But those claiming that they can license their themes — in their entirety — under a restrictive license seem to have been in the wrong as well. Or were they?

In the last paragraph of the email, it seems there is, at the very least, a potential loophole.

Finally, we note that it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress’s copyright, but such a theme would have to forgo almost all the WordPress functionality that makes the software useful.

If it’s possible, though not ideal, for a WordPress theme to run independent of WordPress itself, then one must assume (at least from the wording of that paragraph) that the PHP code isn’t necessarily required to be subject to the requirements of the GPL.

Obviously, this is the first time anyone has been able to speak about the issue with authority, so this is helpful. But I’m afraid this story isn’t over yet.

I, obviously, support licensing themes (free or paid) under the GPL. But despite this latest news, I’m still very reluctant to say that the legality of the issue has been completely cleared up. There are still too many questions, and not nearly enough answers. One thing is for sure, theme authors have been adopting the GPL all over the place lately. And WordPress just launched their commercial GPL theme directory today. Perhaps the legality of all this GPL talk doesn’t even matter any more.

What do you think?

If I pick your question, I’ll answer it (in as much detail as necessary) here on the blog, and link to you as the source of the question.

Hopefully this will be a BIG help to everyone out there, and make for some really good conversation! Leave your questions in the comments.

Even though we both believed that we would have been within our rights to copyright the entire work, we decided that we would license all WordPress code in our themes (function calls, loops, etc.) as GPL, and protect our images, stylesheets, etc., under a copyright. We felt it was a good compromise.

Ever since then, we’ve been internally debating the subject, going back and forth over the benefits vs. risks involved with licensing our themes completely under the GPL, and have finally decided, in the interest of our users, and the WordPress community at large, that we should cover all our themes, in their entirety, with the GPL license.

What This Means for Us

Not much is going to change here. We’ll still continue to bring premium WordPress themes to our customers on a regular basis. For us, this was about respecting the license of the platform upon which we build our themes, WordPress.

What This Means for Future Customers

Again, not much is going to change there either. The themes will still be the product, and they will continue to be “for sale”. However, because we are adopting a less restrictive license, there are a couple of changes that will have to happen:

• All our themes will be “multiple use”
• Prices will likely drop
• Our support model will likely change

But for previous customers, don’t worry, nothing much is going to change for you. The only difference is that if you purchase a “single use” package sometime in the past, you are now free to use the theme on as many sites as you would like.

Yes, iThemes Is Now 100% GPL Compliant

So there you go. Though it wasn’t a huge change from our previous license, we do want to celebrate. Ultimately, this is good for everyone. We understand that there will likely be some questions and concerns, so please don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments below, or sending an email to us. We’ll do our best to answer everyone who emails us.

You can also go and read the official announcement from iThemes.

What do you think? Do you consider this a good move? A bad move? Let me know in the comments below. I’m very interested in what everyone thinks.

In fact, one of the biggest barriers to using what is referred to as a Theme Framework or creating their own plugins is the fact that they rely heavily on Action Hooks to function properly.

Understanding this concept accelerated my level of development skills immediately after I figured out what hooks were, and how they worked. And today, I want to help you find that path too.

So, What Are WordPress Action Hooks?

This can be a very easy, and a somewhat difficult thing to explain. Action hooks are essentially placeholders. Wherever an action hook is placed, it will execute any code that has been “hooked” to it.

So, let’s try to visualize this with some default WordPress action hooks that are in most themes. You can find wp_head and wp_footer in just about every single theme available, and most people don’t realize these are action hooks. They’re simply placeholders that plugins can use to insert code into the <head> and footer of the theme. Often times, they use these action hooks to insert things like CSS or Analytics code. They create a function that generates the code, and then “hook” that function to either wp_head or wp_footer.

If I could wrap up the concept in one sentence, it would be this: WordPress action hooks are a means of providing a way for other developers to insert their own code in specific locations within your code, in order to change or expand the functionality of your code.

Why Action Hooks Are Necessary

Like any other major piece of software, WordPress evolves. Every few months a new version is released.

Let’s assume that action hooks didn’t exist, but you wanted to change or extend some function of WordPress. In order to do this, you have to modify core WordPress files. And when it comes time to upgrade, you’re left with a choice: do the upgrade and lose all my modifications, or stay with the old version.

But if you use action hooks to modify how WordPress works, you can upgrade knowing that your mods are in a separate file which makes the changes the correct way, and you won’t be in danger of having those mods overwritten during the upgrade.

How Do Action Hooks Work?

Going back to the example of the wp_head and wp_footer actions, let’s assume that you wanted to insert some CSS in your <head> section of your theme so that you can override the link colors.

(don’t worry about the “what” so much. the “how” is much more important here).

The first thing you need to do is create a function that inserts the code. Because action hooks only allow functions to be “hooked” to them, we’ll need to create a function that generates the code:

function insert_some_css() {
	echo <<<CSS
<style type="text/css">
	a {
		color: #08FF00; /* green */
		text-decoration: none;
	}
	a:hover {
		color: #FF0000; /* red */
		text-decoration: underline;
	}
</style>
	CSS;
}

So, once you have your function constructed, it’s time to “hook” the function to the wp_head action hook. It’s pretty easy:

add_action('wp_head', 'insert_some_css');

In layman’s terms, that line of code is saying, “Whenever the wp_head action shows up in the theme code, execute the insert_some_css function.”

My final code usually looks something like this:

add_action('wp_head', 'insert_some_css');
function insert_some_css() {
	echo <<<CSS
<style type="text/css">
	a {
		color: #08FF00; /* green */
		text-decoration: none;
	}
	a:hover {
		color: #FF0000; /* red */
		text-decoration: underline;
	}
</style>
	CSS;
}

It’s really not a difficult concept, if you think about it. All you need to do is find an action hook that you want to use to output some code, create a function, and hook the function to that action using the add_action code I gave you above.

As always, be sure any PHP code is placed between opening and closing PHP tags, or it will not execute.

Creating Your Own Action Hooks

While WordPress does provide you with a LOT of action hooks that you can take advantage of, you can create your own too, giving your theme or plugin the same benefit of letting other people make changes to your code, without having to edit your code.

So, if you want to provide an action hook that will execute any functions that are “hooked” to it, just use this code:

<?php do_action('my_action_hook_name'); ?>

Of course, change the my_action_hook_name to something unique that describes the location and/or purpose of the action hook.

And now, anyone can come along and hook their own function to your newly created action hook.

Other Sources on Action Hooks

• Ian Stewart explains action hooks for Child Themes
• Raymond Selda explains the concept, with examples
• The Codex page for Plugin API has some good info
• The Codex lists all the default actions hooks you can use

So, now you know what the fuss is all about. Take it for a spin, and let me know what you think of it in the comments. And if you have any questions, I’d be happy to try to answer them.