24 Days of WordPress – The WordPress Advent Calendar

THE CALENDAR:

(one tutorial will be unveiled each day)

1. Custom fonts with Google Fonts
2. Creating WordPress Child Themes the Smart Way
3. Twentyten header image as home button
4. Using WordPress 3 Custom Menus
5. Adding custom WordPress 3 menus to your theme
6. Pretty Permalinks and How To Keep Old Links Alive
7. Brand Your Social Links with the Page Redirect Plugin
8. Styling Author Comments
9. Setting Up WordPress Comments with Disqus
10. Creating New Widgetized Areas
11. Creating and Using Custom Page Templates
12. Using the All in One SEO Pack plugin
13. Using the Featured Image (Post Thumbnail) function in WordPress
14. Posts Within Posts — Playing With The Loop
15. Upgrading WordPress and MySQL manually
16. Using Custom Headers, Sidebars and Footers
17. Using Custom Category Templates and query_posts
18. Creating Custom Single Post Templates
19. Creating a Blog Within a WordPress Site
20. Using JavaScript Libraries in WordPress the Right Way
21. Add Custom WordPress 3 Background Functionality to Your Theme
22. More Custom Fonts with FontSquirrel.com
23. 24 Hours of Free Lynda.com Access + The World’s Best Turkey
24. Vidunder — a Free WordPress theme just for you

24 WordPress tutorials in 24 days! Need I say more? Starting on December 1st 2010 I will be publishing one WordPress tutorial a day all the way up until Juleaften (misnomered by English speaking folk as “Christmas Eve”). The tutorials will cover everything from custom font embedding to menus, child-themes, plugin configurations and security features. Consider this your own geeky chocolate calendar: One box will be opened each day to reveal a surprise treat in the form of a tutorial that will help you add new features and functionality to your WordPress powered site.

Why I’m doing this (the back story)

As kids my brothers and I would always look forward to the month of December, not just because of the humongous piles of snow that would bury our house and force us to ski to school but also because of the amazing calendar my mom had made for us. Each morning my brothers Kim, Ole and I would fall over each other rushing to be the first to open one of the small houses on the calendar and reveal the treat within. One year it was components of what would become a Playmobil space ship surgery complete with lamps, bed and doctors. Another year it was comics. We never knew what came next and it was always hugely exciting.

In my native Norway traditions around the celebration of Jul are heavily engrained in the culture. It has been said noone celebrates the season like Norwegians and I think it’s right. As the snow starts falling and the days become shorter the warmth of people’s love for family and the ancient traditions of the Jul celebration change the entire country into a magical place. And the Jul calendar is a huge part of that tradition. Kids usually have several calendars, including the chocolate calendar, one for the Jul calendar show that airs every night on TV, a gift calendar and even calendar candles. And for the grownups there are calendar bottles for fine sherry and even scratch-and-win calendars that give away millions of Kroners in prices.

So I figured it was time I brought this time honoured tradition to the hyper commercialized Christmas celebrations here in North America. Consider this tutorial series a gift from me to you with wishes of a festive Jul and a happy new WordPress year.