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WordPress.Edu: 25 Incredibly Useful WordPress Cheat Sheets & Checklists

by admin on Jun 30, 2009

Are you a WordPress fanatic? No telling how many people share your passion, but there are plenty of WordPress cheat sheets, checklists and blogs dedicated to the WordPress blog flexibility and open structure. Twenty-five of those articles, hacks and checklists are listed below for your endless WordPress cravings.

The list below is split between overall tips and checklists and those specifically aimed at theme developers and wanna-change-my-look hopefuls. WordPress themes can be easy or difficult to play with, but the tutorials and cheat sheets we’ve pulled together may help make sense of all the PHP tricks involved.

Both sections of the list are in alphabetical order, which means we do not favor one cheat sheet or checklist over another.

General

1. 3 WordPress Hacks For SE-Friendly Blog Archives : Three easy and simple cheats to make your WP blog archives more search-engine friendly.
2. 4 Simple Ways To Speed Up WordPress: Here are some quick tips on how to speed up a self-hosted WP site. They’re easy to do, and you don’t need to be a WP developer to handle these tasks.
3. A Checklist of Preparing A Working WordPress Blog: This is a quick short checklist of things that need your attention when you develop a WordPress blog. Most of the tasks can be done easily through the WP admin control panel.
4. Compilation of WordPress Hacks: If you need it, you may find it on this list. WordPress Hacks wrote a ton of tips, hacks and cheat sheets for any WP fanatic to use.
5. Custom Fields Hacks For WordPress: If you’ve wanted a way to customize those custom fields, then read this article by Smashing Magazine…it’s your ticket to ride the custom field express.
6. DiggProof your WordPress: This author blames server configuration for WordPress crashes with Digg traffic. And, he supplies answers as he addresses Apache, MySQL Query Cache, Other MySQL Tweaks, Optimize MySQL and Worpdress Specifics.
7. From Del.icio.us to WordPress: How to automatically post daily links: Are you a lazy blogger? Or, are you enamored with Del.icio.us to the point where you’ve developed a Del.icio.us trigger finger? Use your habit to populate your blog with this great cheat sheet.
8. Lorelle on WordPress Blogging Tips: This entire Web site is useful for anyone who develops and maintains a WP blog. The link takes you straight to the category archives for blogging tips.
9. WordPress Accessibility Hacks: Bruce Lawson is known for his work in Web accessibility. Here, he claims his love for WordPress, especially if users take on his hacks for even better accessibility for users.
10. WordPress as a CMS – Content Management System: The Graphic Design Blog offers an easy step-by-step explanation on how to make your WordPress installation a CMS foundation for a gallery, portfolio site, e-commerce and more.
11. WordPress Blog Maintenance Checklist: If WordPress is installed on your own server, you can use this list to conduct maintenance. Failure to do so can render your blogs sluggish and vulnerable to security problems.
12. WordPress Codex: WordPress developers started and maintain this site so WP users can find quick and easy answers to seemingly difficult questions.
13. WordPress Hacks: This link takes you to WP Engineer’s archives for all their hack articles. You don’t need to be a developer (nor an engineer, for that matter) to understand how to accomplish these hacks.
14. WordPress Hacks: Moving a Static HTML Site to WordPress: This is for intermediate users who have a little skill with .htaccess files and plugins. It’s a pain, but it can be done.
15. WordPress Help Sheet [PDF]: Liquidicity offers a useful and easy-to-use help sheet that covers basic template files, PHP header snippets, PHP template snippets and “extra stuff.”
16. WP: Keyboard Shortcuts: The shortcuts shown may not work exactly the same in all browsers, but it’s worth a shot!

Themes

17. 15 Useful WordPress Tricks to Make Your Theme Even Better: While fifteen tips seems paltry, these tips address many topics you won’t see elsewhere – like how to use a simple PHP snippet to eliminate those curly-cue quotes that keep turning into gibberish on your blog.
18. How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch: This tutorial looks at turning an HTML/CSS template into a functioning WordPress theme. The steps are short and sweet, making this one of the easiest cheat sheets around.
19. How To Create WordPress Themes From Scratch Part 1: This ‘cheat sheet’ demands Photoshop, slicing, coding into fully css based HTML, and WordPress implementation. The instructions are easy to follow, however, so if you’re vaguely familiar with Photoshop and code, this article should work for you.
20. Mastering Your WordPress Theme Hacks and Techniques: This link is to the first of four articles from the Powerful guide to master your WordPress. Not only is this article filled with hacks and techniques for your theme, it carries plenty of links to help out as well.
21. So you want to create WordPress themes huh? Learn the WP lingo while building your first theme. The author swears it’s easy, and the steps are outlined in an easy checklist style.
22. Widgetizing Themes: This page contains technical instructions on updating a theme for use with widgets. You’ll need basic PHP editing skills, but you probably won’t have to write any code of your own in the processes shown.
23. WordPress Theme Development Checklist: Visit this link to download an extremely useful PDF version of the WordPress Theme Development Checklist. The checklist includes answers to stylesheets, browser compatibilities and more.
24. WordPress Theme Generator: Talk about cheats! This generator supports WP 2.1 to 2.7, and it was talked about at CNET News . Why not? Give it a whirl!
25. WordPress Theme Hacks: If you’re more of a designer than a programmer, then you can use the tips offered by this tutorial on theme hacks that range from conditional tags to custom fields and more.