Limited time only, so be quick about it! My LiveLessons video series on Expression Web 4 is being sold straight from QUE at 50% off – so a ridiculous $20 for 5+ hours of training – right now. Just follow this link.

The sale also includes a bunch of other great titles including Office 2007 and Windows 7. Full details below:

“LiveLessons are video courses organized into bite-sized, self-contained sessions so you can learn key skills in as little as 15 minutes. Each session begins with well-defined learning objectives and ends with comprehensive summaries, which help you track your progress. LiveLessons video training video formats include standalone DVD-ROMs, value-priced DVD/Book Bundles, Safari Books Online subscription services and purchases, and immediately-downloadable (streaming) lesson sets or individual lessons.

For a limited time, SAVE 50% on these featured LiveLesson DVDs and full course downloads. Discount is automatically applied to the shopping cart.”

Click here for all the details and a complete listing of courses available.

Combined these three educational products form a solid base for anyone who wants to learn how to build standards-based web sites and publish their content on the web using Expression Web and WordPress. All three were written and developed to teach you not only how these applications work but also how you can use them effectively to produce solid web content fast. They are all based on my own work process and adopting the techniques in the book and video series’ will make you a better and faster developer no matter what level you are currently at.

Click here to preview a sample chapter: HTML – An Introduction.

Code Snippets

The last half of the presentation centers around creating Custom Page Templates and Custom Fields for layout purposes. To help you along in your own WordPress site development, here are those code snippets ready to be cut and pasted into your templates:

Custom Page Templates in 5 lines of code

This block of code is inserted at the very top of the Custom Page Template file. To get started, simply open the page.php file, save it under a different name, paste these 5 lines of code at the top of the document, save and upload to your server. To activate the new Custom Page Template just select it from the Template menu under Attributes in the Page Editor within WordPress.

<?php /*
Template Name: Whatever 
*/ ?>

Custom Fields in one line of code

This code can be used in any template file including but not limited to page.php, any Custom Page Templates, index.php, archives.php, single.php etc etc. The code returns a string of text that matches the text inserted in the custom field. Remember to replace $key with the actual name of the custom field. You can read more about Custom Fields and how to use them in the WordPress Codex.

 <?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, '$key', true); ?>

Custom Field that parses PHP code

This code is used to parse (interpret) PHP code inserted into custom fields. It is a bit wonky – for instance it terminates any other custom field code placed directly after it in a page – so use it with caution. Otherwise it works exactly as the code above.

<?php $boxContent = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'centerBox', true); ?> 
<?php eval('?'.'>'.$boxContent); ?>

Applications Used in the Presentation

After the presentation several people came up to me and asked what applications I used, so here is a short list:

BitNami WordPress Stack

The demo site I used in the presentation was actually installed and running locally within Windows 7. To achieve this I used an ingenious application named BitNami WordPress Stack. Once installed this application will run a fully functional version of WordPress with database entry, plug-ins, custom themes and everything else you want to throw at it right inside Windows (XP, Vista and Windows 7 supported) so you don’t have to keep uploading your files to a server or hassle through complicated XAMP installs to play around with WordPress while offline. You can even install several different WordPress and other open source CMS stacks on your computer simultaneously to further increase your productivity. I have no idea exactly how it works but BitNami works incredibly well. Just remember to set the IP address to “localhost” when you install it.
You can download the BitNami WordPress Stack here. For Mac users there is a similar application called MAMP but I know nothing about it.

Web Developer Add-On for FireFox

FireFox is my absolute favourite browser and I use it for browsing as well as in the design process. One of the main advantages of FireFox is the myriad of add-ons you can install that make web site development a lot easier. The one I use the most is the Web Developer Add-On. This small application within an application lets you see and mess with CSS, turn styles and JavaScript on and off and do tons of other stuff that makes it easier to dissect and troubleshoot buggy web pages. Combine it with the HTML Validator add-on and you have a true powerhouse in a small browser window.

Microsoft Expression Web 2

My web development platform of choice is Microsoft Expression Web 2. This new offering from Microsoft is what enables me to build custom WordPress themes and web sites like AnnyChih.com from scratch in less than 24 hours. There are many great things you can talk about with Expression Web 2 but for WordPress theme development the two main features is full PHP support, unrivaled CSS integration and Standards Based CSS generation right out of the box. If you want to know more about Expression Web 2 or want to learn how to use it you can read more on this blog or pick up a copy of my book Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours. It’s a good read, I promise.

In the meantime I found an excellent video at ThinkSwedish that explains how to transition from Adobe’s MXML and ActionScript 3 to XAML and C#.

Interestingly the ThinkSwedish blog is built on a Flash platform (so I can’t embed the video here) – a concept worth exploring in Silverlight as well.

Video link 

In this video I demonstrate how I created the side buttons using Expression Design and how to do some quick alterations to the site in Expression Web using the fantastic CSS features. It’s quick and dirty but should give you a small glimpse of how to do things.

The reason why it’s taken so long for me to post a new video? Expression Media Encoder is damn near impossible to use! I’ll be ragging on this in a separate post once my head cools but just to give you a small taste it took 17 tries to get the video above to export to below the magic 22mb that is required for Silverlight streaming. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. But like I said, more on that later. For now I hope you get something out of my most recent video and be sure to check back for more.

Staying true to the Microsoft Expression experience the video is a Silverlight application hosted on Microsoft Silverlight Streaming. As you can see from my previous post I had some difficulties actually creating, uploading and posting the application but then a little bird tipped me off to this article that explains how to post Silverlight Streaming apps using iFrames and now it works splendidly.

So, without further ado, here is the first video. If you want a larger version to see all the small intricacies click here to openn a separate window. I advise you to do so so you can see what I’m doing.

Just a note: You’ll need to install the Silverlight RC plug-in to be able to play my video. It’s a small 2mb download that is completely safe, free and platform independent. You can download Silverlight by clicking here.