10 High Quality WordPress and BuddyPress Tutorials From September 2011

Finding high quality WordPress tutorials can be a challenge if you don’t maintain a lot of RSS subscriptions and follow all the right people on Twitter. While catching up on my Google Reader subscriptions I decided to put together a list of some of the highest quality WordPress content from September. I read all of these blogs religiously and they are great sources for learning more about working with WordPress. Check out our summary and get subscribed to your favorites.

3 Ways to Reset the WordPress Loop

This tutorial acquaints you with the WordPress template tags that you need to reset the loop when working with multiple, customized loops. You’ll learn how and when to use them. This tutorial is definitely one to bookmark, especially if you develop or customize WordPress themes.

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Developing BuddyPress Themes – Part 1 : Working with the BuddyPress API and Loops

This one is for all the BuddyPress fans out there. High quality tutorials for BuddyPress are few and far between, but I’m glad to recommend this one to anyone who is just getting started theming for BuddyPress. This tutorial will help you learn how to use BuddyPress template tags, recognize and customize the various loops and learn how to use conditionals. You’ll also get an introduction to creating and editing a basic BuddyPress child theme.

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Developing BuddyPress Themes – Part 2: Creating a Custom Style and Home Page

This is part 2 to the tutorial above and it expands on creating and customizing a child theme for BuddyPress with CSS and the custom.php file. You’ll also learn how to create a custom home page and integrate loops into your custom pages.

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Theme Wrappers

Scribu helps you get rid of code duplication in this awesome tutorial.

You’ll learn how to effectively use get_template_part() in your WordPress themes.

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How to Create Additional Image Sizes in WordPress

In this tutorial WPbeginner shows you how to use the built-in WordPress post thumbnails feature along with the add_image_size() function, which lets you specify image sizes and give you the option to crop. If you get a good handle on this, you can virtually eliminate the need to use a 3rd party image resizer in your WordPress themes.

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Actions and filters are NOT the same thing…

Do you know the difference between actions and filters? Check out Otto’s tutorial on the basic differences and uses of both. This tutorial will be especially helpful to beginner plugin developers.

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“Posts per page” dropdown for BuddyPress single forum topic view

Here’s another one for the BuddyPress crowd. Boone Gorges shows you how to allow your members to select how many posts they’d like to see at a time when viewing a single forum topic. Follow his quick instructions or modify them to suit your needs.

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WordPress Essentials: Interacting With The WordPress Database

This is a more advanced tutorial from the new Smashing Magazine WordPress section. It covers how to get started with the $wpdb class, how to retrieve data from your WordPress database and how to run more advanced queries that update or delete something in the database. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to learn how to create more tailored and specific queries.

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Quick Tip: User Permissions and Your Plugin

This tutorial contains a few short tips for plugin developers. You’ll learn what you should be using to determine who can see the various admin menus of your plugin.

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Add a Customizable Header image to your WordPress Theme

The ability to change your WordPress theme header from within the admin panel is included in the Twenty Ten theme. This tutorial shows you how to add this functionality to your own theme. It’s actually fairly easy to do if you follow the instructions and use the snippets posted in this guide.

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