Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, 3rd Edition

Chapter 13: Extra Functionality

You can do a ton of things with WordPress. This chapter is all about showing off some of the cool functionality you may want to use in a project or on a site. You’ll take a look at tabbed boxes, login forms, doing stuff with RSS feeds, making WordPress print friendly, and more. Many of the elements described here can be used in myriad ways; because every site is different, your solution may very well vary a lot from the ideas presented here.

For each element described, I also explain when it is a good idea to use the technique and when you should forget about it. Between plugin expandability and the various features you can put in your theme, there are a great deal of options, and it is way too easy to clutter a site with items it just doesn’t need. You should question every addition, even if it is hard to resist adding some cool features sometimes.

Tabbed Boxes

Tabbed boxes are a great way to save some of that all-important screen real estate. On blogs and somewhat dynamic and living sites, tabbed boxes can be used to show off popular posts, recently commented posts, and similar elements that can be grouped together in a natural way. The key is to make sure that tabbed content that isn’t shown by default doesn’t always have to be visible. In fact, that’s the key thing with tabbed boxes right there: Make sure that you don’t hide something crucial on a tab.

Technically, tabbed boxes aren’t very hard to create or manage. Some of them may not even ...