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Joseph Casabona

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I'm a freelance Web & WordPress developer and part time faculty member at my alma mater, the University of Scranton. I am constantly developing on WordPress and always looking to try new things with it! If you want to know more about me, you can check out Casabona.Org or follow me on Twitter.

The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress

The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress

Joseph Casabona on Jan 9th 2012 with 18 comments

2011 was a big year for the advancement of HTML5 in the web development community. It became pretty widely adopted, especially for the mobile web. There have been major projects that help developers use HTML5, like Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate (technically 2010, but popularized in 2011) and books galore! I would strongly recommend Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers, published by the venerable A Book Apart (a service by Happy Cog). But what started as a movement in 2010 became the proper way to do things in 2011, from mobile websites to progressive enhancements, and that includes integrating HTML5 into WordPress themes.

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DIY WordPress Framework Part 4: Using the Framework as a Boiler Plate

DIY WordPress Framework Part 4: Using the Framework as a Boiler Plate

Joseph Casabona on Nov 21st 2011 with 6 comments
This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series DIY Theme Framework

Last time we used our framework as a child theme, creating a totally new theme that depends on the framework. Today we’re going to use our framework as a boilerplate, copying the folder and making edits right to it.

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DIY WordPress Framework Part 3: Using the Framework as a Child Theme

DIY WordPress Framework Part 3: Using the Framework as a Child Theme

Joseph Casabona on Nov 16th 2011 with 11 comments
This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series DIY Theme Framework

In the last installment of this series, we created our theme framework, which amounts to a fairly simple boilerplate, where we added some functionality that we commonly use. There are 2 ways that we can use our framework now: as a child theme and as a true boilerplate that we just copy and edit. Today we’re going to use our framework as a child theme.

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DIY WordPress Framework Part 2: Creating the Theme

DIY WordPress Framework Part 2: Creating the Theme

Joseph Casabona on Nov 7th 2011 with 32 comments
This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series DIY Theme Framework

When I last left you, we had looked at some design principles, explored other frameworks, and came to the inevitable conclusion that we’d build our own. In this tutorial, we’re going to cover the steps I took to create what I called my WordPress Boilerplate, taking a close look at the CSS, functions.php, and select template pages.

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DIY WordPress Theme Framework Part 1: Defining Your Needs

DIY WordPress Theme Framework Part 1: Defining Your Needs

Joseph Casabona on Oct 29th 2011 with 18 comments
This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series DIY Theme Framework

One of the best things about my education at the University of Scranton was the recurring lesson we learned about reuse. Reuse is incredibly important in programming for many reasons: easier testing, saving time, the ability to focus on more advanced things, etc. Once I graduated and entered the wonderful world of full-time freelancing, I decided if I was going to keep doing WordPress work, I would need to apply those reuse lessons to my everyday life. Number one on my list was a simple WordPress theme framework.

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Create a Responsive Slider Plugin With FlexSlider for WordPress

Create a Responsive Slider Plugin With FlexSlider for WordPress

Joseph Casabona on Oct 3rd 2011 with 74 comments

Sliders seem to be all the rage these days, and for good reason! You can add photos, content, videos, and more to an eye-catching, animated area of your website. While there is a wealth of slider plugins out there (my current favorite is the one for Nivo Slider), there is not one for FlexSlider, a slider that has keyboard shortcuts and works with swipe on touch screens. In this tutorial, we’ll create that plugin!

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14 WordPress Plugins For SEO And Marketing

14 WordPress Plugins For SEO And Marketing

Joseph Casabona on Sep 13th 2011 with 20 comments

As a web developer, possibly the most common request I get from clients is that they want to be number one on Google. While this is not impossible, it’s a pretty huge undertaking that will take months of very active work. However, if you just want your website to be more search engine friendly, well that’s a different story, especially on WordPress. There are tons of plugins that will help you with both your SEO and SEM game. Let’s take a look at some of my favorites.

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Creating a Simple Child Theme Using Twenty Eleven

Creating a Simple Child Theme Using Twenty Eleven

Joseph Casabona on Aug 6th 2011 with 27 comments

One of the first things I noticed when I started using WordPress was how well it employs the developer’s mantra, “Separation of Concerns.” In the programming world, you want each component to rely on the other components as little as possible; this makes each component more reusable. A perfect example of this in WordPress is Themes. They totally separate the design from the content. We can change the theme, and the content remains unchanged. WordPress does something similar with they way we can build on themes in WordPress. Instead of modifying an existing theme (and risk losing the changes at the next update), we can create a child theme, which separates our changes from the parent. In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a simple child theme.

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Using Custom Post Types to Create a Killer Portfolio

Using Custom Post Types to Create a Killer Portfolio

Joseph Casabona on Aug 3rd 2011 with 55 comments

Quite possibly the best addition to WordPress 3.0 was that of Custom Post Types. This took WordPress from being a CMS that can manage posts and pages to being able to manage anything the user can think of rather easily. You no longer have to add custom fields to posts- you can add high level support to your own types, creating their own theme page files and admin areas. One of the first things I did using custom post types was revamp my portfolio and today I’m going to show you how I did it!

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WordPress 3.2: What You Need to Know

WordPress 3.2: What You Need to Know

Joseph Casabona on Jul 7th 2011 with 42 comments

WordPress 3.2 (aka “Gershwin”) came out on the 4th of July, and it features some radical new changes that you’re going to want to know about. A new dashboard design, new default theme, and other enhanced admin features that make using it even easier to use – let’s dive into the changes.

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