WordPress Theme Frameworks Explained

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Bronson Quick

This panel was recorded at WordCamp Sydney 2012 so that WordCamp attendees could learn how different WordPress developers make use of theme frameworks or starter themes for producing WordPress websites. This session gathers some of the WordPress theme development gurus who use theme frameworks or starter themes. We explain about why we use them, which frameworks we use, and their benefits and drawbacks in a Theme Development workflow.

The panel includes (from left to right):

Dee Teal – The Web Princess who uses Genesis Framework by StudioPress
Tony Cosentino – who uses the Builder framework by iThemes
Peter Wilson from Floate Design Partners – who built his own ‘Big Red’ framework
Bronson Quick – who uses WordPress Twenty Eleven and _s (underscores) the starter theme developed by Automattic

The panel is chaired by Peter Bui from PB Web Development.

Sennza’s Web Design Process

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Bronson Quick

We are often asked by potential clients about our web design process and although we have a little infographic on our ‘what we do‘ page we decided that this information could be presented in a fun way. We were approached by Claude from Kinetext who produces text based videos for businesses and we worked with Claude on a script, which he then turned into the fabulous video below.

Let us know what you think of the video in the comments!

2012 WordPress Predictions Followup

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Lachlan MacPherson

Tardis

At the start of this year I made 5 Predictions about where I thought WordPress would be by the end of the year.

WordPress gets an “App Store”
WordPress + Social
Better Media Experience
WordPress Dominates the Web (Specifically 20% of top 1 million sites)
Party Up Front (Front End Editing)

So let’s see how I did…

WordPress Adelaide Meetup

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Bronson Quick

I was lucky enough to head down to Adelaide for the first time last month for the second WordPress Adelaide Meetup on November 15. Ivaylo Stamatov organised the first meetup down there and this time Rebecca Collins joined forces with Ivaylo to organised the biggest meetup yet!

The Meetup was held at the Majoran Distillery which is the first co-working space in Adelaide. The Majoran Distillery has only been around since July 2012 and already it’s proven to be so popular that the boys who run the space have had to start work on creating a co-working space that’s 4x larger than the current space! I’ve worked in 2 co-working spaces over the last 2 years and I highly recommend them for both freelancers and small businesses who are chasing a fun and interesting office space rather than an isolated office.

What we covered at the Meetup

Intros and details about what happens at the Meetups - Ivaylo and Rebecca
Who are you and how do you use WordPress? – Everyone in the room
WordPress in Australia & Around The Globe – Myself
WordPress Triva - Ivaylo and Rebecca

WordPress in Australia & Around The Globe

Rebecca suggested the topic “WordPress in Australia & Around The Globe” for my talk at the Meetup so that I could give the Meetup members a bit of an idea about the WordPress community in Australia, how to get involved and also how you can get involved in WordPress around the world.

I’ve added the audio and slides of my talk at the Meetup below. Thanks to Ivaylo for capturing the slides and the audio at the Meetup!

WordPress In Australia & Around The Globe from Sennza Design

Developing Client Friendly Websites

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Lachlan MacPherson

At WordCamp Sydney 2012 I gave a talk entitled “There’s More Than 1 Way To Skin a Theme” which was aimed at encouraging other developers to plan and develop websites in a more “client friendly” way. What I mean by this is developers should think more about how a client would use and manage their website, and less like how a developer would code it, after all, the client will be the one who uses the website long after the developer has finished.

Thank You WP Engine

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Lachlan MacPherson

After watching the recent Mixergy interview with Jason Cohen as few weeks back I felt like I should write a quick thank you to WP Engine.

Ever since we started Sennza I have been on the look out for a hosting company that knows WordPress back to front. We have had our fair share of war stories from hosting companies. Believe it or not, we once used Distribute IT before they died a painful death, but that’s another story.

After using upwards of 7 different hosting companies plus experiencing many other hosting environments with our clients I can say that for hosting WordPress websites, WP Engine is second to none.

WordPress Security

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Lachlan MacPherson

Yesterday we had a call from someone that who had their WordPress website hacked and was in a panic to get it fixed ASAP.

For something that is easily avoidable this happens way to often. After getting in and fixing the website we were asked for a list of things to ensure this doesn’t happen again going forward, which made us realise, although there is some great documentation on this online, we don’t have a post about it on our blog.

First thing we did was enlist Sucuri to fix the malware. We could have poked around for serveral hours and fixed the problem, but that the end of the day these guys know security and malware back to front and for such a reasonable price it simply a no brainer. They found the malware pretty quickly so that left us to harden WordPress.

WordPress Security

The Trouble With Sidebars/Widget Areas In WordPress

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Bronson Quick

As I’m sure most of you are rather aware, I have been pro-WordPress as a CMS for a rather long time! I think the hardest thing for us as WordPress developers is working out a way to deal with different sidebar areas and page templates. The more sidebars we declare, the harder it is for the client to update.

I’m an avid fan of keeping things as simple to update as possible but as WordPress developers we tend to end up with a crazy amount of sidebars when a client clicks through to Appearance-> Widgets. Even a lot of WordPress frameworks end up with a crazy amount of widget areas! Sure “we” understand all the widget areas but the client doesn’t! Continue reading

Sennza – 2 Years In

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Bronson Quick

Happy Birthday Sennza

I’m happy to announce that Sennza has now been in business for 2 years and it’s time for me to take a few minutes to reflect on what has happened since our first birthday. We’ve come a long way in the last year so I’ll do a “quick” list of some of our achievements:

We’ve got our own office!
We helped organise WordCamp Gold Coast!
We found time to redesign our website
We’ve worked with 3 publicly listed companies
More site traffic!
Massive WordPress Meetup growth
Another team member
Sennza represents at SXSW!

Continue reading

10 Tips For Creating A High Quality WordPress Theme

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Lachlan MacPherson

1. Don’t forget php wp_head(); ?>

If you look inside most WordPress themes <head> tags, you will find a function called wp_head(). From a first glance, this function may seem fairly useless, however it is extremely important. A large percentage of plugins require the wp_head(); function to “hook” into the WordPress header. Without this code between your <head> and </head> tags, you may find that a large portion of your plugins will not work. Similar to wp_head(), you will find wp_footer() in the footer.php file of a majority of themes. This function is used by plugins to hook into your footer to hook code in. An example of something that requires this is Google Analytics.

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