WordPress – customising the content of our blogs

WordPress includes powerful functions to enable the contents of a blog to be customised. For example, we might want to display Categories using their full descriptions, not their short names, in part of a blog. This is done using template tags. Typically a blog owner might do this by making changes to the PHP template files for the theme chosen for the blog.

With WordPress Multi-User, things aren’t so simple. Any given set of theme files, such as those for the 3K2 theme used for this blog, may be used for many blogs. Changing any of these files, then, will affect all those blogs. How to get round this? I spent a bit of time on this over the break, and thought of a number of ways it could be done with some pros and cons. Unable to find a discussion of the topic on the web, I raised a question in the WPMU support forum to get some pointers to what others do. There were 2 replies within two hours, this and this and problem is solved.

This quality of support is excellent, and better than that I’ve known under many expensive support contracts. I feel a strong sense that we should try to contribute what we can back into the WordPress community.

Published by

David Gilmour

Learning Technologist East Lothian Council

2 thoughts on “WordPress – customising the content of our blogs”

  1. Hi David – Happy New Year!
    With the laptop trouble I’ve had I’ve lost your email address. Can you get back in touch with me to discuss eduBuzz etc etc.

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