How to add backward compatibility to a WordPress 3.0 ready theme
The latest major release of our favorite blogging platform – WordPress 3.0 – has brought quite a few new features to the table. Among them, the custom navigation menus and the post thumbnails (featured image), the latter being available since version 2.9 came out. This started a whole new trend between theme developers, most of them rushing to announce WordPress 3.0 ready themes.
In all this rush, some of the themes released suffered from one big problem: backward compatibility. Why is that important and how can we give some backward compatibility to our WordPress 3.0 ready themes?
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A Look Into the WordPress Themes’ Options Pages
For a long while the option panels where something that people could only find in premium (commercial) themes, and for a good reason. The pricing of their licenses allowed the premium theme developers to invest more time in giving theme users the ways to do through these panels what they could not do through coding.
With the buzz created around these themes, regular users became aware of what could really be achieved, and thus, those that could not afford the license of a premium theme, became more selective with the free ones. A good-looking theme was not enough anymore, and WordPress developers realized it.
A good premium theme would bring its developer not only a good amount of money, but also recognition in the community, and this is where the free theme developers scored their biggest points. Now that their “turf” was endangered they had to react, and they did. For premium themes like Thesis or WP Unlimited, users have now alternatives like Thematic, Hybrid, Carrington, WP Framework or my own (even if not a framework) Simple Balance.
Why should free theme developers consider adding an options page?
Because being “cool” is just not enough anymore. Theme developers need to learn how to be useful. Free stuff can be either useless and ignored or useful and praised. I’m yet to see the developer offering a free theme without gaining something from it, be it awareness, expertise, backlinks, donation money, you name it! But none of these are achieved through an uncompetitive – even if free – product.
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WordPress How To: Latest Posts by Category Archive
One technique that is most common with WordPress magazine or news style themes is the display of an archive of the latest posts by category, as simple titles or with post excerpts. This is useful for the previously mentioned theme styles, but not only. It can be used to set up custom blog homepages, 404 pages, landing pages or even a special archive page.
This tutorial will help you build a ‘Latest Posts by Category Archive‘ in a very easy way. The widths in the CSS styling presented below have been calculated based on the default WordPress theme, assuming that is the most common theme available to anyone.
If you are looking for a plugin to generate such an archive, please check out: WP Plugin: Latest Posts by Category Archive.
Setting up the page template
Open up you favorite code editor and create a blank document. Save the document as ‘category-archive.php’ (or any other name you’d prefer) in the default WordPress theme directory (wp-content/themes/default).
The first step is to asign our new template a name and a page-like structure, so based on the default theme’s page template, the code you should paste in your new document is:
< ?php
/*
Template Name: Category Archive
*/
?>
< ?php get_header(); ?>
<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
< ?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h2>< ?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<div class="entry">
< ?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this page »'); ?>
< ?php wp_link_pages(array('before' => '<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ', 'after' => '</p>', 'next_or_number' => 'number')); ?>
</div>
</div>
< ?php endwhile; endif; ?>
<!-- Category Archive Start -->
<!-- Category Archive End -->
</div>
< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>
< ?php get_footer(); ?>
The template above will make sure to display the page name you set up, and also, any additional content you might want to add before the archive, from you WordPress page editor. We will be adding our ‘latest posts by category’ code between the ‘Category Archive Start’ and ‘Category Archive End’ comments.
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10 Must-See Videos on WordPress.TV
As some of you might already know, back on January 17th, the folks at Automattic have launched WordPress.TV, a website they plan on turning into “Your Visual Resource for All Things WordPress”.
This is a definitely a great project that will undoubtedly become a WordPress resource hot spot. On what do I base my belief? On the amazing community of people around this extraordinary blogging (and not only) platform that is WordPress.
It’s enough to check out their support forums and see the kind of involvement that people show, how willing they are to help, solve problems and answer questions. So yes, I think that the WordPress TV will be a success.
The reasons behind this launch are simple. The WordPress community needs a place where video information (news, tutorials and so on) finds its way to people, after passing through a certain quality filter, where it will be kept up to date with ad/spam free.
By the looks of it, after only one week of existence, the community response is amazing.
So, in case you’ve missed the launch (but not only for this reason), in this post I’m going to guide you to 10 must-see videos on WordPress.TV.
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FeedBurner Email Subscription in Simple Balance 2.0
Since its launch, over 1800 people downloaded the Simple Balance 2.0 WordPress theme. For that, I thank each and every one of you!
The idea behind this theme was to keep it as simple as possible, yet effective. Simplicity in administration is one of the keywords behind its creation. But some things need a bit of coding knowledge to tweak.
One of them is the email subscription form, which, once you install the theme, serves only as a design template that does not work unless proper code has been added to it.
I’ve been asked via comments and email what’s wrong with it, or how can it be made functional and this made me write the following step-by-step tutorial on how to integrate the FeedBurner email subscription form in Simple Balance 2.0.
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Post Excerpts and the More Tag in WordPress
Not only once, it has been said that displaying full posts on your blog home page, category pages or archive pages increases the chance of being penalized for duplicate content.
In WordPress, using post excerpts has proven to be a good alternative, but one that has its downsides:
- You lose control over text formatting;
- Images won’t be displayed;
- If you don’t take time to write them yourself, WordPress might not select the most appropriate fragments;
- Readers might not be convinced to further click, if the excerpt is not attractive enough.
Better Post Excerpts
If you’re concerned about your writing style, you’ll most definitely take care about how you structure your posts, where you insert images and how you write the introductory paragraph.
With these in mind, you basically got yourself a very good post excerpt, one that you should not leave to WordPress to decide when and where to cut.
The ‘More’ Tag
This is the most valid alternative to displaying post excerpts, if the_excerpt() template tag does not fit your needs.
More is what the WordPress developers call a quicktag, designed to cut-off large posts into two fragments: one that will be displayed as an excerpt and one that users will continue to read from after clicking the “read more” link. It serves as a marker inside the post so that users who come from the excerpt link, will start reading the content from that point on, and not from the beginning, again.
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Blog SEO Tips – SEO Friendly Titles (H1, H2, H3)
Another quiet Sunday in the blogosphere, as usual. This morning I thought about writing another link share post or a WordPress theme recommendation, but later I’ve decided to break the pattern (since it’s all so quiet) and make Sundays the host of a blog SEO tips series. In this first post I’m going to talk about the importance of using SEO friendly titles (H1, H2, H3) and the right way to do so.
Usual Coding Patterns in WordPress Themes
If you’re even a bit familiar with the WordPress themes, by now you’ve probably took a look at your theme’s files. Blog pages are rendered through an association of a few PHP files with standard names (index.php, archive.php, single.php) with different templates of the theme, based on the content type.
The index.php file usually stands for your home page, also being capable of replacing any other template that hasn’t been already defined. So, if you don’t have a template for search results (search.php), the index file will take over and render your search results page.
Each of these templates includes smaller pieces of code to build up the final result. The most used are header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php.
For now, we’ll limit our attention to the following files in your theme’s folder:
- header.php
- index.php
- single.php
- page.php (not every theme has it)
- archive.php, search.php (not every theme has them)
Optimizing the Header File
Having your primary keyword present at the top of you page it’s very important.
Considering the fact that most themes come with text based logos instead of graphics, we’ll be looking for the <h1> tag in the header.php file.
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My Link Order Plugin: Validation Error Solution
As you might remember, a while ago I’ve recommended you the plugins developed by GeekyWeekly: My Link Order, My Page Order and My Category Order.
I’d still recommend them to everyone how wants to organize his blog easier and better, even if recently I’ve found out that the My Link Order plugin generates an XHTML validation error, specifically: it creates an ID duplicate for each blog roll category that you add.
The validation error could look like:
ID "mylinkorder" already defined
or
anchor "mylinkorder" already defined
My Link Order Fix
So, how to fix this? Actually it’s pretty simple.
1. Navigate to your plugins folder and open for editing the mylinkorder.php file;
2. Find this line of code:
'category_before' => $before_widget, 'category_after' => $after_widget,
Depending on the plugin version, it should be between lines 180 and 200.
3. Comment the like by adding 2 slashes at the beginning, so the end result would look like:
//'category_before' => $before_widget, 'category_after' => $after_widget,
4. That’s it! Upload the file and enjoy your valid ordered blog.
How To Remove the White Space in wp_list_pages()
wp_list_pages() is one of the most common WordPress template tags. Sometimes, the little white space that some browsers add to the output of this function can create a big mess in your theme’s template, making it hard to style, especially when trying to create a horizontal list. The fix for this is quite simple and requires minimum coding knowledge, if none at all.
The Problem
The wp_list_pages() generates either a series of <li> elements containing links to all of you blog’s pages, or a full unordered list with a heading at the beginning.
The output of this list looks like this:
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WordPress Template Tags: wp_get_archives()
Welcome to our new series’ first post! The “WordPress Template Tags” series is intended to bring into spotlight some of WordPress’ less common, but very useful template tags. While the contents can’t be considered a revelation to advanced WP users and developers, it can be of big help to those who take their first steps in the amazing world of online publishing using this famous blogging platform.
But enough chit chat! Here’s our first recommendation:
wp_get_archives()
Have you ever thought of how to display a list of your most recent posts? Or a list of all posts published in the last 10 days? Or 6 months? Or 2 years?
Click here to read the full blog post!
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