WordPress Theme Release Rulebook – The Works

The demand for customized websites developed with the latest Content Management Systems (CMSs) has seen an exponential rise. Right at the top of the CMS lot is WordPress. As we speak (or rather, type!), there are countless individuals and companies looking to hire WordPress programmers to conceptualize and develop their websites for varied purposes, such as Ecommerce, informative portals, company intranets, etc. Specially designed themes play a significant role in the WordPress development. What’s in a theme, some would say. Maybe, but its more about what should be borne in mind before setting up a WordPress theme for sale on popular marketplaces such ThemeForest.

First up, do you like protected posts, where unauthorized viewing is restricted via password? Inserting a simple post_password_required () check in the comments.php file will ensure this. Creating an attachment.php file, even if a template does not exist, is advantageous as it helps visitors to your site view images in full screen mode with the site navigation still accessible. Modifying the rtl.css file will override the main style.css file and set WP_LANG variable to accommodate right to left written languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew. This helps keep your site flexible and open to posts from visitors across the globe. You can even supply an editor style by setting up the TinyMCE editor on WordPress. To ensure that your visitors can read paginated entries, insert the wp_link_pages tag within the loop.

Additionally, check that all the default widgets displayed by WordPress are visually appealing and have the best display resolution. Never forget to insert the wp_footer() before closing the body tag and the wp_head() before closing the head tag. Custom menus and custom backgrounds are supported by WordPress 3.0, which means you have to take extra care when posting a theme. You can also ensure that user-strings are translatable to languages other than English. After completing the design, make the theme consistent and run the WordPress.org Theme Unit Test for       ironing out any creases left behind.

Best Mobile App Development Tools

The path from the flash of brilliance to the working mobile app has been long and unfaithful. So the good news is that help is on the way as companies develop tools and frameworks that smooth the journey.

Here is a best collection of 6 mobile development tools that are revolutionizing the way we make apps. There are some really great multi-platform developer tools in the market today, using which you can easily achieve your aim. Here is a list of the top 6 dev tools for cross-formatting mobile applications.

RhoMobile

As per my experience most of the developers prefer RhoMobile tools so it should be on the top of the list because it offers Rhodes, which is an open-source framework based on Ruby. This permits the developer to make local apps, spanning over a stunning range of OS’ and smartphones. The OS’ include Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone and RIM, which pretty much covers it all.

The framework supplied by RhoMobile is such that you only need to code once. This code can be used to build apps for most of the major smartphones. Native apps are great for working with available hardware, so your job gets done with ease, speed and accuracy.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap, which won great acclaim at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco’s 2009 Launch Pad event, is an FOSS environment that allows developers to create apps for Android, Palm, Symbian, BlackBerry, iPhone, iTouch and iPad devices. This platform uses standard web development languages such as HTML and JavaScript.

PhoneGap allows the developer to work with device hardware features such as accelerometer, GPS/location, camera, sound and much more.

Appcelerator

The Titanium Development Platform from Appcelerator, which incidentally has a formidable fan following in Twitter, aids the development of native mobile, tablet and desktop apps via web programming languages such as HTML, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby and Python. It now powers over a 1,000 native apps per month. The best thing about Titanium is that if gives users easy access to over 300 APIs and location information.

MoSync

MoSync, yet another FOSS multi-platform mobile app dev SDK tool, is based on standard web programming. This SDK offers the developer integrated compilers, libraries, runtimes, device profiles and other useful tools. While support for JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Python and such other languages is planned, MoSync now includes Eclipse-based IDE for C/C++ programming.

WidgetPad

WidgetPad is a collaborative, open-source environment for development of smartphone apps. This program uses standard web technologies, such as JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3. Included in this platform are source code editing, collaboration, debugging, project management, versioning and distribution. 

Whoop

This one, though not really a top tool, is interesting. Whoop confidently states that they are “The one-stop mobile app publishing platform for non-developers”. Even if you are not a developer, you can still get some cross-formatting done with Whoop.