TwentyEleven

Removing the credits in the Twenty Eleven footer

Posted by hgmeister

Remember – do not make changes to the Twenty Eleven theme files. Only make changes to files for your child theme.

That said, to remove the credits in the footer you’ll need to place a copy of the footer.php file located in the main Twenty Eleven theme folder into your child theme folder using ftp or your file manager. (I rarely edit files inside of WordPress just in case…).

Once you’ve copied over the footer.php file, open the one in your child theme folder in an editor.

Click continue reading to view the code.

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Twenty Eleven plugins that can help with customization

Posted by hgmeister

There are a couple of recommended plugins for Twenty Eleven that can take the headache out of figuring out some of the coding. Especially when it comes to resizing headers or moving the navigation bar to the top of the site.

Search for the following plugins in which you can either install them from the backend of your site or manually through ftp.

Twenty Eleven Theme Extensions

Once you install this plugin, you will find it under Appearance.

Each option offers a help box, so if you want to know what the choices do simply click the question mark.

Options offered:

  • Widget Sidebar
  • Widget Titles
  • Headline Post
  • Header Image Size
  • Custom Colors
  • Custom CSS

Upper Menu for Twenty Eleven

This plugin will basically set your navigation up above the header image and round the corners. There’s no setting for it, just once you activate it the job is done. If you don’t like it, deactivate the plugin.

Of course, if you’re good with code and CSS you can always try to restyle the way these things look, but I leave that up to you.

 

Creating a Twenty Eleven child theme

Posted by hgmeister

I will try to keep up with documenting the changes I make to Twenty Eleven by using a child theme to do so. If you’d like to learn how to make a child theme, follow along. Or visit WordPress Codex here.

A note about why you’re doing this – Twenty Eleven is a framework that you can build off of with your own themes. But instead of messing with the original files, you create your own. Most of Twenty Eleven’s files will be read by your child theme. All you want to be able to do is style it and customize it to what you like.

What you’ll need:

ftp access OR

access to the file manager on your hosting area. These instructions are for a self-hosted blog through a hosting company such as Host Gator or TMDHosting, etc. You can use either ftp or the file manager on your hosting account to do this.

You’ll need to navigate to your wp-content/themes folder.

Inside the themes folder, create a new folder and give it the name of your child theme. I shall call mine squishy (don’t you just love “Finding Nemo?”). Hence, I made a folder called squishy.

Click continue reading to learn more.

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New site, lots to build

Posted by hgmeister

I’ve been attacked by jerks who have placed phishing files on my site. After a major cleanup (deleting directories, getting rid of old files and sites that are no longer around, etc.) I decided to redo my own site.

Ah, actually, dumb me forgot to backup the database for my previous site – that’s the real reason for the redo… I accidentally wiped it out along with the other databases I had built (for practice, learning and otherwise).

So……… what a pain.

I had built a beautiful site for a client using the Twenty Eleven framework using a child theme, so I thought I’d try it with my own. I customized the template for them quite a bit and built it off of the provided artwork. That site is not live, yet. But in the meantime, I will post information about the customizations that I did as posts here.