Join the Public Developer Beta for the Prodigy Theme

Nathan Rice on July 15, 2009

For the last several months, I’ve been quietly developing a theme framework for iThemes — a framework we could use to offer solid code, killer designs, and futureproofing (one of our most common requests at iThemes).

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!!! Read More

Final Word on WordPress Themes and the GPL?

Nathan Rice on July 2, 2009

Matt Mullenweg, the founder and lead developer of the WordPress blogging platform, emailed the Software Freedom Center recently asking about the legality of WordPress themes being licensed under copyright not compatible with the GPL, and they’ve now responded, which Matt has published on the WordPress Development Blog.

The conclusion? The PHP files in WordPress themes must inherit the GPL, but CSS and Images do not. From the email:
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What Do You Want to Know About WordPress?

Nathan Rice on June 30, 2009

Over the next few weeks, I want to take reader-submitted questions about WordPress and answer them here on the blog. Have a question about themes? Plugins? Simple or complicated — it doesn’t matter!

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.

iThemes, WordPress, and the GPL

Nathan Rice on June 11, 2009

Since starting iThemes back in early 2008, one thing Cory, and I when I joined the team, were justifiably concerned with was protecting our products, and of course our hard work, from being stolen or used without permission. This was our livelihood, so we couldn’t fool around.

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. Read More

An Introduction to WordPress Action Hooks

Nathan Rice on June 10, 2009

If you’re going to be doing any level of WordPress development, themes or plugins, you will invariably run into the need to take advantage of the WordPress Action Hook system. But the more I am able to talk to people in the community, the more I realize that people simply don’t understand the concept very well, or at all.

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. Read More

How To Redirect a Page Using Custom Fields in WordPress

Nathan Rice on June 8, 2009

Today, I wanted to share a very quick tip that will allow you to insert an internal or external URL in a custom field for a page, and when a user visits that page, they will be redirected to the URL you put in the custom field.

Why would you need to do this? Well, if you want to add a link to your navigation menu, instead of editing code, you could just create a new page, and have that page redirect your users to the URL you specified. I’ve had clients in that situation before, and this code has come in pretty handy for them. Read More