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Start your free trialZac Gordon
Treehouse Guest Teacher_S WordPress Theme Customization
Hi everyone!
This forum contest is designed to test off a person's front-end and back-end WordPress skills with a small project customizing the _S Underscores theme. In this contest you will start with a completely blank WordPress theme. Then use your front-end CSS skills to edit the main style.css file to design the best looking site you can. With your backend skills you can use the functions.php to enhance the functionality of your theme.
After you've watched the video, please read the details below carefully:
Instructions:
- First, download the _S Underscores theme from (http://underscores.me/)[http://underscores.me/] and install on a live server that you can link to
- Add whatever content you like using Posts and Pages, no custom post types. Set whatever settings you like, no plugins though.
- Style the site to the best of your ability editing only the main style.css file. No including external CSS ;)
- You can add code to the functions.php file, but you must be able to understand and explain what the code is doing.
- No editing any template files besides the style.css and functions.php
Rubric
- 20% - Site architecture, content
- 60% - style.css customization
- 20% - functions.php functionality
Due Date: All entries must be submitted by Sunday 13th at 11:45pm ET. Here's a timezone chart so you can see what time that is for your locale.
How to Submit Respond below with a link to your site and a bullet list breakdown of the customizations you did.
Prize: The entries will be judged by Treehouse teachers based on both design and code. One winner will receive a free month of Treehouse Pro on us! :) We'll announce the winner on Monday, June 30th and reveal the next contest.
16 Answers
Zac Gordon
Treehouse Guest TeacherAlright everyone, it's time to announce the winner of the _S Theme Customization contest!
First, let me thank the three folks who entered the contest:
- Adel Tahri - http://pixeldima.com/item/dola/
- Andrew Rowberry - http://rwwb.us/mycontest/
- Alex CHAVET - http://drink-eat-andco.com/code_challenge/Wordpress-Challenge/
You all followed the instruction and spirit of the contest well and each produced great sites based on the restrictions.
The prize, however, goes to Alex, with Adel at a close second.
At first, I had picked Adel's entry as the winner. However, I saw a fairly significant bug in the main menu not responding well at handheld device size (http://cl.ly/WZTc & http://cl.ly/WaMf) and because of this went with my original second pick, Alex, as the final winner.
I want to thank again all of you for entering as well as give you an opportunity to steer the next contest. This first contest involved both front and backend skills, however, the next contest is only going to test one of these. So, which direction do you want to go?
Front-end WordPress contest or Back-end WordPress contest (Respond to this comment thread specifically, rather than main comment thread)?
Danielle Hill
26,062 PointsHi Zac! I vote for a Front-end challenge for the next WordPress contest.
Adel Tahri
Courses Plus Student 3,052 Pointsgood work Alex :) congratulation
Andrew Rowberry
3,579 Pointscan we upload font/image files to the theme?
Adel Tahri
Courses Plus Student 3,052 Points<p>Hi all,</p>
Here is mine Personal Blog & CV.
Customizations <br>
- Built with Sass.
- Responsive.
- Easy to customize, all colors with sass variables.
- Add 5 shortcode "Dropcap","Mark","Skill bar","Contact form","Callout".
- Well structured sass (colors.scss, function.scss, mixins ,fonts, layout'header footer...' ,typography, UI, button, media queries....')
- work on all modern browsers .
Function.php customizations
- 5 shortcode .
- Filter to change site title and change the titel to profile image.
- Support featured image.
- Add google fonts and icons font (font_awesome).
- Change the footer.
- Add favicon
ALEX F CHAVET
7,465 PointsData base connection error ?
Adel Tahri
Courses Plus Student 3,052 PointsIt works fine for me ! Alex CHAVET
ALEX F CHAVET
7,465 PointsYep I confirm it's back ! Nice wordpress man !
Ryan Duchene
Courses Plus Student 46,022 PointsAm I allowed to use Sass?
Andrew Rowberry
3,579 Pointsi dont see why not since Sass is really just editing the style.css
Zac Gordon
Treehouse Guest TeacherCorrect :)
Mousa Alqarni
22,619 Pointsi hope to do it before that day . just time ^_^ .
Mousa Alqarni
22,619 Pointscould you correct the link for other ,, thanks
Andrew Rowberry
3,579 Pointscan we add additional markup to the index.php?
Diego Lucero
10,588 PointsDoes that mean we cannot change the content contained within the markup?
ie. Images, titles, any ipsum text etc
UPDATE: Never mind, I just read the Original Post. It has all the information I need. Thank you!!
David Scanu
20,160 PointsAfter reading this post, I started theming my own blog because I got a couple of article I want to share. You got me digging into _S and that is a very good thing ! I may not finish before the 13th but it is a very good excercice !
Is there any way we can show more "meta" informations like author, date, comments and categories without touching the index.php file ? Same thing for the footer, how can I add categories, links or social links ?
ALEX F CHAVET
7,465 PointsAs we get a custom version of the theme, and we are uploading it manually do we have to work on a child theme ? The stylesheet is already well organized, is it better to modify the lines directly or to create an "Edits" section at the bottom ? Thanks for your help
Andrew Rowberry
3,579 PointsI just downloaded wordpress from wordpress.org then downloaded the _s underscores theme. Then Threw the theme into the wordpress themes folder then activate it inside wp-admin. Zac Gordon has lots of great videos on how to upload wordpress from localhost to server. It looks like the pre-existing styles in style.css are just boilerplate styles, I would just add on top of the pre-existing styles and edit them as needed.
Karen de Graaf
14,350 PointsThis is what the creators say about the theme "Hi. I'm a starter theme called _s, or underscores, if you like. I'm a theme meant for hacking so don't use me as a Parent Theme. Instead try turning me into the next, most awesome, WordPress theme out there. That's what I'm here for." So no need for a child theme!
Adel Tahri
Courses Plus Student 3,052 Pointscan we use icons-font like font awesome ?
Paul Yorde
10,497 PointsDo we still use widgets to be styled and changed in style.css and functions.php? Also, once I've created a function, does that mean I can use it inside Wordpress ( as long as I'm not touching the theme files?)
Diego Lucero
10,588 PointsI'm looking forward to working on my entry for this contest!
Seth Barthen , what do you think, do you want to throw your hat in the ring too?? :)
Seth Barthen
11,266 PointsI can give it a shot! Thanks for the shout out :D
Adel Tahri
Courses Plus Student 3,052 PointsPlease any one can answer me ,can we use icons-font like font awesome / Google font ? i finished my design i need to know if it is a possible to make the final setup !
Montalvo Miguelo
24,789 Pointsare allowed font face google fonts???
Andrew Rowberry
3,579 PointsMy Contest Entry-- rwwb.us/mycontest
- Created responsive grid layout.
- Added CSS animation to title.
- Add colors and content, change font sizes.
- Add category and text widgets, style and position them.
- Wasn't sure if we could upload font files so i created a javascript function in the text widget that appends link elements, and sets the href attribute to the google font CDN's.
ALEX F CHAVET
7,465 PointsHi guyz, Here's my entry : http://drink-eat-andco.com/code_challenge/Wordpress-Challenge/ I'm synchronising everything with github now so you'll be able to see the background ;)
ALEX F CHAVET
7,465 Pointshttps://github.com/cyponthemic/Wordpress-Challenge This is the repo !
Heather Newton
13,598 PointsHeather Newton
13,598 PointsCan you clarify the dates for this contest? Is it due by July 13th at 11:45p with the winners to be announced on July 30th?