stefandvlpr

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Essential files for every Wordpress Theme

Let’s start with basics. Creating WordPress Theme is not something you can create in one, two nights and hooray!

WordPress Theme takes time and patience if you want to create something that people besides yourself can use. 

First of all, write down everything you need on the theme, all extensions, basically draw your theme on a piece of paper so you would know which steps to take and which ones to avoid. Why would you search for a sidebar if you don’t want one on your theme? Draw your theme, write extensions down, colour it if you want totally up to you, but it’s essential to know what are you creating before you start to actually type it. 

3 most essential files your WP Theme must have are:

1.Index.php

2.Style.css(you must have, but you don’t have to style from this file)

3.functions.php

Index.php

Index file is used for showing your front page. You need to include get_header() at the top as well get_footer() on the bottom if you want the sidebar to include it below header with get_sidebar(). 

Page.php can be used as a replacement for Index.php, and single.php can be used for showing your articles.

Style.css

Stylesheet file can be used for Meta info about your Theme while your main.css(name can be different) is your primary CSS file used to editing and styling the theme, however, you can always use style.css for all edits if are not sure how to pass the lead command to another file.

Functions.php

Function file is used for enabling theme WordPress functions. If you need a featured image, all sorts of different articles you need to enable few codes that WordPress needs in order to understand what extensions you want. All those extensions and codes you can find on WordPress.org (WordPress Codex). However, do not add stuff you don’t need cause more stuff you add more loading time your website needs. Be careful, and stuff you need or you think people might and surely activate a plugin called WP Cached, that plugin will grant your website to load faster.

More Files with additional information will be added in the next blog!

[stefandvlpr]

How to type your first code

Where to start

Every beginning is quite difficult, but after making first few steps, you get that feeling like “Yeah I got this!” we all love that feeling, and you feel proud when you reach that point, so I’ll try to help you and to lead you towards that feeling.

First of all, start using the everyday technology we all have. Google is your best friend to start using it. For start, type where to learn code? Then read a bit do some research after a while you will find few websites where you can learn how to code. Some of them might be paid ones but you can always find free ones with no less education quality. Be sure to know what you want before doing all the research, if you ain’t sure what exactly you are interested in, use youtube. On youtube, today, you can find all sorts of information, from how to clean desk properly to how to program a 3d game. If you are deciding between website development and website design, search on youtube, differences between development and design, differences in salaries, differences in work stress, can you improve yourself or is it a dead-end? Typing, reading and searching for your ideas will result in you finding stuff you always wanted to do, or it may even lead you to a career change. The Internet is full of information you just need to learn how to use it properly.

What happens when you find an ideal website

Once you have found a website that you think is worthy of your attention is the moment when hard work steps in. As I may be sure that you have read article section above and you know what are you looking for, let’s provide how to approach it. Every course that you have found has a positive and negative side, meaning you could change something that would be more suitable to yourself. You mustn’t think like that, your course tutors know how things are getting done so stay with them without any negative thoughts. Many times, tutor in the course that I have taken was from India or similar and I found the way of speaking funny, but in the end, he thought me valuable things which I’m grateful for. Be sure to type every info you think is important, even if you don’t understand it type it down and do a google search, you will find your solution just have patience. Even after passing many courses I’m still stuck on some stuff for many hours trying to figure it out but I’m not well focused on it. Disable IG, WhatsApp everything that’s luring your attention cause programming demands hard work, and focus in order to properly understand it. 

I think I know that

We all have moments like this one, you see a familiar code and you are like “I know this” how to be sure, make something with it. Not asking to build an empire just something small that requires code that you say you know. Example: Form code is familiar, I know it. Close down already written code of contact form, create one yourself, totally different colours if CSS is afflicted, make something imaginary, just do a little check on how well you know stuff you are so sure of. I have many situations where I thought I know how to create stuff only cause that code was so familiar, well, when I started to create it all alone every few seconds I had to take a peak in order to be sure what I’m writing is truly working, once you are typing without checking is the moment you are sure you know something.

Summary

This blog is written totally based on the opinion from my angle. I won’t share any link, what you should learn from this blog is that you can find everything you need on the google and youtube so happy hunting!

[stefandvlpr]

Employee || Freelancer

The whole topic will be written purely on opinion!

Decision

If you ever find yourself to be able to choose between two types of work, your decision is gonna be crucial. Don’t pick based on salary! Choosing between freelancing and being an employee holds big elements, each, so be detailed when you are about to decide which path you are gonna take.

When I say being an employee I mean going to the office every day(weekend off), working from 9am-5pm,  you can also be an employee when you are a freelancer but work hours are flexible.

Being a freelancer

Let’s start with salary cause that’s what most people are looking to read first.

Salary

So, salary is flexible. When you work as a freelancer you are not closely tied to any company, you are your own man. Salary each month depends on how much projects you applied for and after all, depends on how good you are at a specific type of job you are currently learning for. The salary for starting freelancers are not over 500$ at the start, cause you need to build a reputation first before people are willing to pay you for your services cause there’s always a bunch of those who already got huge reputations and they would rather pay them extra bucks before they wanna hire some newbie. So, start looking for small jobs, by small I don’t categorize them by difficulties, by small I mean to apply for jobs that are paying small, start building your reputation piece by piece and next thing you know you got a bunch of positive grades and bigger fishes will wanna hire you. When you build a stable profile for yourself, you could earn anywhere between 1.000$ and 10.000$ monthly.

Working hours

Well, you don’t have them. You are not tied to get up at 08am and suit up for work, you can pretty much work in your pajamas. You do have a deadline, meaning, since when you need to finish given task but you ain’t tied to any specific type in a day. Whether you work last 3 days like a beast or every day for few hours, they don’t care, as long as you finish the given task.

Team || Solo

When you are a freelancer you mostly do solo work, in like 99% of projects. That way you lack human interaction. Solo work could affect positively or negatively on you, depends on how social you are. What do I mean, how can that affect negatively on you, you are used to sending emails, do texting and else while projects work but you are not talking to anyone face to face, which could result in losing contact with friends and else, as I said depends on how social you were before the whole thing. My advice based purely on my opinion is to have fun with people when you are not working, do any type of human interaction.

Summary

+ Salary could go even more than employees at companies.

+ Work hours are flexible.

+ You can make yourself comfortable.

+ Picking only projects that you like.

- Salary could go way less than employees at companies.

- Organization loss(when to work, when to sleep).

- Working in pajamas could result in non-serious work.

- Being bored by picking same projects all over again.

Being an Employee

same as freelancing we will start with salary.

Salary

Salaries at most companies are pretty decent, of course, that depends on what type of business you are interested in. You have to understand that not every business brings the same amount of money, being an employee of a programming company and gardening company is not near in salary at all. How salary system works in almost every company, you will receive stand paycheck when you sign for them, as you work and improve you will likely earn a promotion, that’s extra few % added to your salary.

Example: Software Developer at Microsoft Corp has salary range from 65.000$ - 133.000$

Not every position holds the same salary, so be sure to ask for the right amount before you sign any papers!

Working hours

At most companies, your working hours will be from 9am to 5pm with the possibility to stay longer, depends on the work you are doing. You will most likely have an office with personal pc or laptop with your desk, keeping that desk organized is one of the most crucial things to know, besides the job of course. You will work most likely every day MON - FRI(weekend off). Paid vacation and extras.

Team || Solo

When you have company job, you will have team projects, on those projects you have to learn how to function with a team without major issues. Well coordination and team effort will result in positive words from the boss and you will improve at that line of work, people love when somebody is capable of communicating on the next level and if people like that means companies will as well.

Summary

+ Fixed salary, promotion option.

+ Fixed work hours, organized according to them.

+ Suit up, be serious.

+ Working with people, develop communication skills.

- Promotion could take a while.

- Risk of getting fired for being late.

- Chance of getting too serious.

- Might get you annoyed when you have to discuss whole day on the project.

THANKS FOR READING

[stefandvlpr]

Looking for forums/communities where you can easily ask questions when you need help or give help when others are in need?

You came to the right place, below I will mention 4 websites where you can easily ask for help whenever you need one.

#slack

Why Slack?

It simplifies communication 

Slack brings all your team’s communication together, giving everyone a shared workspace where conversations are organized and accessible.

It helps everyone find the answer they need

 You don’t have to go to every meeting to stay informed. Slack builds a searchable archive of your team’s conversations, decisions, and work - made more useful with machine learning - putting knowledge in everyone’s hands.

It streamlines your workflows

Slack integrates with nearly every enterprise and productivity product available, and you can also build your own with our open API. Adding apps to Slack keep your team coordinated and working faster.

CodeProject

CodeProject has more than 9 million members and acts as one of the most active discussion board. It is a place for almost all of the languages but still, they comprise of some special experts of C#, ASP.NET, VB.NET and C++. They also give support for jQuery, MySQL, PHP, XML, MVC, Java, Javascript and more. As encouraging the programmers/developers, they have put up a widget on the site’s sidebar which shows the top 5 experts. By scoring each member with their involvement in the site, they listed up such things. This can motivate experts to help other beginner or learners. Join CodeProject by logging on to codeproject.com. 

CodeGuru

Following CodeGuru is the best way to learn to program by discussing with the experts. Their main goal is to teach programming to the people who approach them. They also have a forum for public users who want to discuss programming and developing. They cover almost all areas of programming. C++, Visual C++, C#/.NET, Visual Basic and more. Their forum consists bunch of Microsoft Developers who may help you in developing Microsoft Windows applications. you can join their forums by heading to forums.codeguru.com.

Codecall

Another best active forums for programmers is Codecall. They help on both Software development and also Web development. Experts of Java, Python, C, C++, C#, Assembly and a lot more software developers are present here. Web developers like PHP, ASP.NET,Perl, Ruby, MySQL and more experts actively help other programmers. Head to forum.codecall.net has infinite support.