Today, we are totally pumped to unveil our new theme showcase.  To say that we have some amazingly talented users is a massive understatement, but this isn’t news to us.  Now that we have a centralized place for users to post their sites and generate traffic, you can help us prove to the world what we have always known.

The theme showcase is user-driven and allows you to submit your site and have it automatically appear for others to check out.  Not only is it a great way to increase traffic, but we will also be rewarding the highest rated sites on a semi-regular basis.  We will provide more details on this at the end of February (hint: the prize is tiny, shiny and starts with an “i”).  You can get a jump start on the contest by submitting your site today. Don’t forget to tweet your followers to help your ranking.

Visit the theme showcase now.

Workspace is a minimalist theme for WordPress that features eight optional homepage apps that can be enabled or disable from the theme options page.  This theme is perfect for a photo, design, or panorama portfolio.  This is a child theme for our Modularity theme framework.  You must have Modularity installed for this theme to work.

Main features

• Close to 100 theme options
• Optional homepage slideshow
• Optional full-screen homepage video
• Homepage sliding thumbnails
• HD video player
• Four widgetized areas for custom content
• Color picker tool for easy site customization
• Easy logo insertion
• Tracking code and RSS Feedburner integration
• Drop-down navigation for displaying categories
• Crazy good S.E.O.
• Ability to choose which categories and pages appear in navigation from theme options
• Automatic post thumbnails

Upload your own background image from the theme options panel to create a unique, layered theme design.  Use this theme for your integrated portfolio & blog to help drive traffic, attract readers and attract new clients.

• Modularity
• F8
• F8 Remixed
• High Def
• Modfolio
• Modslider
• On Assignment
• Work-a-holic Pro
• Workspace

Functionality enhancements include:

• 7 optional, customizable links can now be added to the navigation from the theme options panel.  (replaces automated PhotoShelter integration links)
• Automatic thumbnail resizing for images inserted into your blog post hosted externally.  If you haven’t set a post thumbnail, or uploaded an image into WordPress using the Add Media button, our script will scan your post and use the first image inserted, resize it to fit your theme design, and use it as the post thumbnail.  This will be a major plus for those users hosting images on Flickr or PhotoShelter.  Because these images don’t exist in your WordPress Media Library, you cannot use WordPress’ cropping tools for these externally hosted images.
• Sticky posts now possible on featured app

Behind the scenes enhancements include:

• Slideshow styles moved into theme-css.php and out of header
• Removed deprecated files

Bugs squashed:

• Optional externally hosted RSS feed in footer fixed
• Slider app now displays correctly in Opera browser
• Extra black background behind search removed
• Special characters on category names bug fixed

Should I upgrade?

You only need to upgrade if you:

• Use externally hosted images
• Use externally hosted RSS feed
• Want more control over your automated integration links in your navigation
• Need to use special characters ( ‘ or & or foreign characters ) in your homepage application titles

How do I upgrade?

1. If you haven’t done so already, upgrade to the latest version of WordPress.
2. Make a backup of your existing theme, including Modularity.
3. Download the latest version of the themes from your member page.
4. Using FTP, replace the old theme folders with the new theme folders.
5. Double check to make sure your theme folder has 755 permissions and that the files inside have 644 permissions.  99% chance you won’t need to do this.
6. Visit your theme options page and add your new navigational links, if you want the new custom nav links.

The above upgrade should take you 3 minutes, tops.

Preview Example Child Theme

Download Example Child Theme

What you need

• Modularity 2.5 or higher
• WordPress 2.9 or higher
• A text editor.  We use Coda.  Anyone of these will work, though.
• A wee bit of css, html and php knowledge (don’t worry if you don’t…we’ll give examples)
• FTP access to your server & WordPress install

How a child theme works

A child theme inherits all of the theme files of the parent theme, unless specified in the child theme.   At the very minimum, a child theme must consist of the child theme folder (call it whatever you want, no empty spaces) and a style.css file.  If you add any one of these template files in your child theme, WordPress will use them instead of the parent theme files.  Now, because Modularity contains many additional files (sliders, slideshow, other homepage apps) that don’t exist in the WordPress template hierarchy, we’ll need to change the file paths to where these new template files will reside.   More on this later.

Style.css

As I mentioned above, a child theme must have a style.css file and it must contain this info at the very top:

/*
Theme Name: Child Theme
Theme URI: http://graphpaperpress.com
Description: Child Theme for Modularity
Author: Thad Allender
Author URI: http://graphpaperpress.com
Template: modularity
Version: 1.0
*/

@import url("../modularity/style.css");

The @import rule must precede all other rules. All styling rules you add must be placed after it. This rule instructs the browser to: Jump one level up (../) into the themes directory, go into modularity, get the content of style.css and @import it here.  You can override any css styles contained in the parent theme by adding the css to this stylesheet beneath the @import rule.  For example, if you wanted to change the background color from black to white, you would add this to the child theme’s style.css file:

body { background: #fff }

Now, if we put all this together, we would have this code on style.css:

/*
Theme Name: Child Theme
Theme URI: http://graphpaperpress.com
Description: Child Theme for Modularity
Author: Thad Allender
Author URI: http://graphpaperpress.com
Template: modularity
Version: 1.0
*/

@import url("../modularity/style.css");
body { background: #fff }

Important notes about style.css:

1. The child theme will not be recognized by WordPress unless a file called style.css is found in its directory.
2. WordPress identifies themes by reading the part between /* and */.  If you leave this off, your theme won’t work.
3. The Template line is important, since it declares the parent theme. The parent must be declared by the name of its directory exactly as you see it, case-sensitively — not by the name of the theme. The two are often different.

You can add as many css classes as you would like to style.css. To figure out which css classes you would like to override, we like to use the Firebug extension for Firefox.  This tool allows you to point your cursor on an item on the page and inspect the exact css classes that control it’s styling.  You can also edit the css live on the page.  When you like the results, you can save these changes onto your child theme’s style.css file.  Watch this video tutorial on using Firebug for more info:

Functions.php

Functions.php is a very powerful file for WordPress themes.  It is typically the place where theme authors insert additional functions that can manipulate the WordPress admin panel, add theme options, insert javascripts, define global variables, and much more.  All child themes for Modularity must have a functions.php file.  At a bare minimum, it should contain the following info:

<?php

// Define Theme Options Variables
$themename='Child Theme';

?>

This one line will defines the name of your child theme.   Below is a more advanced functions.php file for the child theme we are building:

<?php

// Define Theme Options Variables
$themename='Child Theme';
$default_thumb = get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory') . "/images/default-thumb.jpg";

// Load some javascripts for child theme
if (!is_admin()) add_action( 'init', 'load_base_child_js' );
function load_base_child_js( ) {
 wp_enqueue_script('fader', get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory').'/js/jquery.fader.js', array('jquery'));
}

?>

Important notes about functions.php:

Here, we are defining a new default thumbnail to be used and we are also loading a new javascript called jquery.fader.js.  There are one important takeaway from the code above: The use of stylesheet_directory.  This statement makes WordPress look in the child theme directory for the files that it is inserting, rather than the parent directory.  To make WordPress look in the parent directory, you would change stylesheet_directory to template_directory. You can read more about the bloginfo(); function at the WordPress Codex.

Header.php

We have added header.php into our example child theme because we are going to replace the default navigational items (nav.php) with a series of custom navigation links.  We have to overwrite the header.php file so that WordPress doesn’t use Modularity’s header.php file and thus, insert Modularity’s nav.php file.  This might be tough to grasp at first.  If so, re-read the paragraph above until it sticks.  Here is child theme’s header.php file:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" <?php language_attributes(); ?>>
<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">

    <title><?php wp_title( '-', true, 'right' ); echo wp_specialchars( get_bloginfo('name'), 1 ); ?></title>

	<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="<?php bloginfo('html_type') ?>; charset=<?php bloginfo('charset') ?>" />
	<meta name="description" content="<?php bloginfo('description') ?>" />
	<?php if(is_search()) { ?>
	<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />
    <?php }?>

<!-- BeginStyle -->
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" />
	<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/styles/print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />
	<!--[if IE]><link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/styles/ie.css" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" /><![endif]-->
	<!--[if IE 7]><link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/styles/ie7.css" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" /><![endif]-->
<!-- EndStyle -->

	<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="<?php if ( get_option('gpp_feedburner_url') <> "" ) { echo get_option('gpp_feedburner_url'); } else { echo get_bloginfo_rss('rss2_url'); } ?>" />
	<link rel="pingback" href="<?php bloginfo('pingback_url'); ?>" />

	<?php wp_head(); ?>
	<!-- Conditional Javascripts -->
	<!--[if IE 6]>
	<script src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/includes/js/pngfix.js"></script>
	<![endif]-->
	<!-- End Conditional Javascripts -->

	<?php if ( is_singular() ) wp_enqueue_script( 'comment-reply' ); ?>

</head>

<body <?php body_class(); ?>>

<!-- BeginHeader -->
<div id="top">
<div id="masthead">
        <div id="logo">
            <h1 class="sitename"><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>" title="<?php bloginfo('description'); ?>"><?php if(get_option('gpp_logo_off')=="true") { bloginfo('name'); } else { ?><img class="title" src="<?php if ( get_option('gpp_logo') <> "" ) { echo get_option('gpp_logo'); } else { bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/logo.png<?php } ?>" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /><?php } ?></a></h1>

            <div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
        </div>

</div>

<?php include ('nav.php'); ?>

<div class="clear"></div>
</div>
<!-- EndHeader -->

<div class="container">
<div class="container-inner">

<!-- BeginContent -->

If this looks scary, don’t fret, because there is really only one line we are interested in talking about. Locate line 48:

<?php include ('nav.php'); ?>

This code says this: Include the contents of the file nav.php and insert it right here.  Please note:  nav.php must be located relative (in the same directory) to header.php.  If you didn’t overwrite header.php, WordPress would use the header.php file from Modularity, and thus, insert the nav.php file located in the Modularity theme folder.

Nav.php

As I mentioned above, we are overwriting header.php so that we can change the navigational items to custom, “hard-coded” links.  The nav.php file in Modularity contains about 226 lines of code, which is pretty large considering that it merely outputs a few lines of html code that makes your navigation.  Most of this code is used to query the navigational display options that you have set on Modularity’s theme options panel.  If all you wanted to do was to show your categories in one drop down list in your child theme, you could add this to nav.php located in your child theme:

<!-- Navigation -->
<ul class="sf-menu">
  <li>
    <a href="#" title="Navigation">Navigation</a>
    <ul>
      <?php wp_list_categories('title_li='); ?>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

If you wanted to show a few links to pages, you could do this:

<!-- Navigation -->
<ul class="sf-menu">
  <li>
    <a href="#" title="Navigation">Navigation</a>
    <ul>
      <?php wp_list_categories('title_li='); ?>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a href="/about/" title="About page">About</a></li>
  <li><a href="/contact/" title="Contact page">Contact</a></li>
</ul>

If you wanted to “hard-code” in a series of links in a drop-down list to other websites, you could do this:

<!-- Navigation -->
<ul class="sf-menu">
  <li>
    <a href="http://example.com">Sub list</a>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="http://example.com">Sub list 1</a></li>
      <li><a href="http://example.com">Sub list 2</a></li>
      <li><a href="http://example.com">Sub list 3</a></li>
      <li><a href="http://example.com">Sub list 4</a></li>
      <li><a href="http://example.com">Sub list 5</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a href="#" title="Navigation">Navigation</a>
    <ul>
      <?php wp_list_categories('title_li='); ?>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a hef="/about/" title="About page">About</a></li>
  <li><a hef="/contact/" title="Contact page">Contact</a></li>
</ul>

You can refer to these instructions for listing all pages and these instruction for list all categories. You can even pass parameters to these WordPress template tags to have further creative control over what the tags output onto in your navigation.

Home.php

This is the main file that controls how your homepage looks and where the homepage apps are arranged vertically.  Here is the contents of Modularity’s home.php file:

<?php get_header(); ?>

<!-- Pagination -->
<?php if ( $paged < 1 ) { ?>

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_welcome') == 'true' || !get_option('gpp_welcome') ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/welcome.php'); } ?>

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slideshow') == 'true' || !get_option('gpp_slideshow') ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/slideshow.php'); } ?>

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_video') == 'true' ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/video-home.php'); } ?>

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slider') == 'true' || !get_option('gpp_slider') ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/slider.php'); } ?>

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slider_posts') == 'true' ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/slider-posts.php'); } ?>

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_featured') == 'true' || !get_option('gpp_featured') ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/featured.php'); } ?>

<!-- End Pagination -->
<?php } ?>

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_blog') == 'true' ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/blog.php'); } ?>

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_category_columns') == 'true' || !get_option('gpp_category_columns') ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/category-columns.php'); } ?>

<!-- Footer -->
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Starting at the top, we get the header with this template tag:

<?php get_header(); ?>

Next, we tell WordPress to only show the Welcomebox, Slideshow, Video, Slider, Slider Posts and Featured apps on the homepage with this statement:

<?php if ( $paged < 1 ) { ?>

The statement ends a few lines down with this:

<?php } ?>

Why?  If you choose to enable the Blog app on your homepage, you will more than likely want to be able to paginate to older posts.  You likely won’t, however, want your Welcome message to appear on every paginated post.  This is why we wrap these apps in the if ( $paged < 1) statement.

Home.php checks your theme options settings to see which apps you have enabled.  If they are enabled, then home.php includes the app file with this statement:

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slideshow') == 'true' || !get_option('gpp_slideshow') ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/slideshow.php'); } ?>

In English, this statement reads like this: If the slideshow is turned on or the slideshow option isn’t set yet, then include the contents of the file located in /moduarity/apps/slideshow.php.  Each one of these similar statements on the homepage checks your theme options setting and includes different app files.  You can rearrange the files simply by copying and pasting each homepage app statement where ever you want on home.php.  You can even paste these statements into any other theme files, assuming that you are inserting them into a region that spans the full 950 pixels of the page and not inside another WordPress loop. In the example below, I’m going to cut and paste the homepage Welcome app (welcome.php) into the header right below the EndHeader comment, and wrap it in an if ( is_home () ) statement, so it only shows on the homepage:

<!-- Only show welcomebox on the homepage -->
<?php if(is_home()) { ?>
<div class="container-inner">
<?php if ( get_option('gpp_welcome') == 'true' || !get_option('gpp_welcome') ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/welcome.php'); } ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>

Now, lets say that you wanted to create you own app, or replace an existing app with your own.  Using the Featured app as an example, you would want to change this on home.php:

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slider_posts') == 'true' ) { include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/apps/featured.php'); } ?>

With this:

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_featured') == 'true' || !get_option('gpp_featured') ) { include ('featured.php'); } ?>

Important

Notice that we have removed TEMPLATEPATH, the dot (.), and also /apps/ from the statement.  Assuming that you have added this newly customized home.php file into your child theme folder, this tells WordPress to look for the featured.php file right next to your new home.php file located in your child theme.  If you wanted to adhere to the same folder structure as seen in Modularity, you could do this instead:

<?php if ( get_option('gpp_featured') == 'true' || !get_option('gpp_featured') ) { include ('apps/featured.php'); } ?>

And make sure you put featured inside a folder called apps located in your child theme folder.  Either way is fine. It’s your code, so do whatever you prefer.  I like to keep all child theme files on the top level in my child themes because the files are more directly accessible.

Now that we are telling WordPress to use our own featured.php app, we need to create on.  Here is the example featured.php file:

<?php
$featured_category = get_option('gpp_featured_cat');
if($featured_category=="") {$featured_category = "Latest";}
$featured_category_ID = get_cat_ID($featured_category);
?>

<div class="span-24 last">

<h3 class="sub"><?php echo "$featured_category"; ?></h3>

	<?php $my_query = new WP_Query("cat='$featured_category_ID'&showposts=9"); ?>
	<?php $i = 0; ?>
	<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID; $i++;  ?>

			<div class="span-8<?php if (($i%3)==0) { ?> last<?php } ?>">
			<div class="post-<?php the_ID(); ?> portfolio-image-wrapper">

			<?php get_the_image( array( 'custom_key' => array( 'photo-310x150' ), 'default_size' => '310x150', 'width' => '310', 'height' => '150', 'image_class' => 'thumbnail-310x150' ) ); ?>

			<p><?php if (the_category(', '))  the_category(); ?></p>
			<h6 class="title-overlay"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title() ?></a></h6>
			</div>
			<div class="clear"></div>
			</div>

	<?php endwhile; wp_reset_query(); ?>
</div>

<hr />

This new feature.php file, which we also refer to as the “Featured” app, is a three column grid of thumbnails, where each thumbnail represents a separate post.

Archive.php

Now, lets say that you wanted to change the way your category archives page looks.  You want a 950 pixel wide, three column grid of thumbnails that represents each post.  Because the archive.php file is part of WordPress’ template hierarchy, you can simply create a file called archive.php, paste the code below, and drop it into your child theme folder. Here is the code:

<?php get_header(); rewind_posts(); $i=0; ?>

<div class="span-24 last">

		<?php
		query_posts($query_string.'&posts_per_page=24');
		$default_thumb = get_bloginfo('template_url') . "/images/default-thumb.jpg";
		if (have_posts()) : ?>

 	  <?php $post = $posts[0]; // Hack. Set $post so that the_date() works. ?>
 	  <?php /* If this is a category archive */ if (is_category()) { ?>
		<h3 class="sub"><?php single_cat_title(); ?></h3>
 	  <?php /* If this is a tag archive */ } elseif( is_tag() ) { ?>
		<h3 class="sub">Posts Tagged &#8216;<?php single_tag_title(); ?>&#8217;</h3>
 	  <?php /* If this is a daily archive */ } elseif (is_day()) { ?>
		<h3 class="sub">Archive for <?php the_time('F jS, Y'); ?></h3>
 	  <?php /* If this is a monthly archive */ } elseif (is_month()) { ?>
		<h3 class="sub">Archive for <?php the_time('F, Y'); ?></h3>
 	  <?php /* If this is a yearly archive */ } elseif (is_year()) { ?>
		<h3 class="sub">Archive for <?php the_time('Y'); ?></h3>
	  <?php /* If this is an author archive */ } elseif (is_author()) { ?>
		<h3 class="sub">Author Archive</h3>
 	  <?php /* If this is a paged archive */ } elseif (isset($_GET['paged']) && !empty($_GET['paged'])) { ?>
		<h3 class="sub">Blog Archives</h3>
 	  <?php } ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); $i++; ?>
	<div class="span-8<?php if (($i%3)==0) { ?> last<?php } ?>">
		<div class="post-<?php the_ID(); ?> portfolio-image-wrapper">
			<?php get_the_image( array( 'custom_key' => array( 'photo-310x150' ), 'default_size' => '310x150', 'width' => '310', 'height' => '150', 'image_class' => 'thumbnail-310x150' ) ); ?>
			<div class="title-overlay">
				<h6><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title() ?></a></h6>
				<p><?php if (the_category(', '))  the_category(); ?></p>
			</div>
		</div>
	</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

<div class="clear"></div>

<div class="nav-interior">
			<div class="prev"><?php next_posts_link('&laquo; Older Entries') ?></div>
			<div class="next"><?php previous_posts_link('Newer Entries &raquo;') ?></div>
		</div>
<div class="clear"></div>

	<?php else : ?>

		<h2 class="center">Not Found</h2>
		<?php get_search_form(); ?>

	<?php endif; ?>
</div>

<!-- Begin Footer -->
<?php get_footer(); ?>

You can download the child theme that we just build above right here:

Download Child Theme

If you found this tutorial helpful, considering signing up for a Graph Paper Press membership to watch over two hours of video tutorials, receive support from developers, and download any of our themes and plugins.

The Post Thumbnail

There is now a unified way of handling post thumbnails in WordPress.  Hallelujah!  Over the last few years, I’ve tinkered with dozens of different ways of handling post thumbnails to create “magazine” and “portfolio” themes.  From custom fields to custom scripts, all of these techniques proved to be either inflexible or unintuitive in my opinion.  Despite a few shortcomings, the new post thumbnail function is a much needed feature that simplifies the process of choosing which image becomes your post thumbnail.

Important note:  This feature must be enabled on your theme to work.  Below is a list of our themes that support this new feature. You can download these themes from your member page.  We plan to update the remaining themes, including the Monochrome series, later this week.

• Modularity (version 2.5, updated and revamped with new javascripts)
• Modfolio (version 2.5)
• Modslider (version 2.5)
• On Assignment (version 2.5)
• Workaholic Pro (version 2.5)
• Workaholic (version 2.0)
• Fullscreen (version 2.0)
• F8 (version 2.5)
• F8 Remixed (version 2.5)
• F8 Lite (version 2.0)
• F8 Static (version 2.0, updated and revamped with new homepage layout)
• Berlin (version 2.0, updated and revamped with new homepage layout)
• Gridline (version 2.0)
• High Def (version 2.5)
• Deadwood (version 2.0)

If you have switched themes recently or uploaded images with incorrect dimensions, you will likely need to “regenerate” your thumbnails to the new dimensions. To do this, you need the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin.

Video: How to use the post thumbnail feature

Further reading:

• Post thumbnail information for developers – via Mark Jaquith
• Ultimate guide for post thumbnail – via WPEngineer.com

Crop, Rotate, Flip

About 90% of the time, automated image crops generated by computer scripts deliver surprisingly acceptable results.  But if you have ever had a beautiful portrait becomes an odd neck-to-torso photo, you certainly know the limitations of automated image cropping.  This all changes in WordPress 2.9 with the new cropping, rotating and flipping tools.

Video: How to use the crop tool in WordPress 2.9

Include & Exclude images from galleries

Until now, every image that you uploaded into a WordPress post would be thrown into the gallery.  To remove the image from the gallery, you had to delete the photo.  With WordPress 2.9, you can now choose images to include or exclude from each post gallery.  Please note that include and exclude cannot be used together.

Video: How to include & exclude images in WordPress 2.9 galleries

Further reading:

Gallery Shortcode – via WordPress Codex

Video Embedding

Embedding video and images from third party sites like YouTube, Flickr or Vimeo into a WordPress post can be a pain.  Unless you use custom fields or another similar approach, more times than not, you video code would become a big garbled up mess in the write post panel.  WordPress 2.9 now uses the new oEmbed API to simplify video embedding.  Now, you can merely paste the link to the YouTube or Vimeo video into the post, and WordPress will generate the embed code for the video on the fly.  I am using it on this post to embed all of the Vimeo videos.  Pretty neat, eh?

Video: How to Add Videos to WordPress 2.9

Suggestions for core WordPress developers

Here are a few suggestions that I hope core WordPress contributors consider for an upcoming WordPress release:

• Integrate image editing with the Piknic API.
• Add include/exclude photo gallery checkboxes.  Memorizing attachment ID’s gets old.
• More buttons, fewer text links in the Add Media user interface.
• Dynamically generated post thumbnails.
• Ability to use oEmbed in custom fields for improved data/content-type separation.

What improvements would you like to see in future versions of WordPress in terms of image handling?

We turned two years old, so we baked a cake. Happy Birthday us!

December 7th marks the two year birthday of Graph Paper Press. What a ride it has been! We have watched as WordPress and the theme market have literally exploded. We are lucky to have connected with amazingly talented users who are passionate and continually pushing the envelope when it comes to publishing artwork, design, photography and video on the World Wide Web.

Discounts

In celebration of our two years making stuff, we are offering 30% off all annual subscriptions for the month of December. To take advantage of this offer, signup here and use the following coupon code: ED64B25D77

For the month of December, we have partnered with some of the best WordPress plugin developers to bring you savings on a few must-have plugins. They include:

• 25% off Gravity Forms – the best form management plugin available for WordPress
• 20% off WP SEO – the best search engine optimization (S.E.O.) plugin for WordPress

To receive these discounts, simply sign up for an account here. The instructions for receiving these discounts is located on your member page.

Upcoming theme releases

Screenshot of F22

Poll: Tell us what you want

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. ]]> http://graphpaperpress.com/2009/12/03/graph-paper-press-is-two-years-old/feed/ 10 http://graphpaperpress.com/2009/12/03/workaholic-pro/ http://graphpaperpress.com/2009/12/03/workaholic-pro/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:20:58 +0000 Thad Allender http://graphpaperpress.com/?p=683

Workaholic Pro is a modern and clean portfolio theme for Wordpress created by designer Chandra Maharzan. Workaholic Pro allows you to separate your portfolio from your blog, without editing a single line of code. This colorful child the for Modularity comes with preset three color palettes, variable sidebar content, jQuery-powered image-hover effects, plus much more.

Major features

• Close to 100 theme options
• Easy logo insertion from the theme options panel
• Twitter Integration
• Homepage design options
• Optional homepage slideshow
• Optional homepage video
• Built-in HD video player
• Automatic thumbnail generator
• Multi-level drop down navigation
• Four widgetized areas (sidebar and footer)
• Three pre-built designs with killer color palettes

Requirements

• Modularity 2.2.4 or higher
• Wordpress 2.8.6 or higher

This theme includes what we call “apps” which you can enable or disable from the theme options page. These apps can transform the theme into a portfolio site for photographers and multimedia producers, a magazine-style site, or a normal blog-style homepage literally at the click of a button.

Screenshots of 2 other color palettes

Limegreen

Monotone

On Assignment is a Wordpress child theme for the Modularity multimedia theme framework. It is primed for photographers, videographers and journalists who need to feature their portfolio and connect with followers and potential clients with status updates and news/blog posts.

Main features

• Close to 100 theme options
• Optional homepage slideshow
• Optional full-screen homepage video
• Homepage sliding thumbnails
• HD video player
• Four widgetized areas for custom content
• Color picker tool for easy site customization
• Easy logo insertion
• Tracking code and RSS Feedburner integration
• Drop-down navigation
• Crazy good S.E.O.
• Ability to choose which categories and pages appear in navigation from theme options
• Automatic post thumbnails

And that is only a start. We guarantee that if you present a snappy portfolio and fresh, regularly updated content, you are sure to attract readers and attract new clients. With On Assignment, this is all ridiculously easy.

Example sites

We released On Assignment about one month ago to Graph Paper Press paying members. Here are a few example sites using On Assignment:

• Lia Ballentine Photography
• Jack Gruber – USA TODAY Photojournalist
• Daniel Houghton – Photojournalist
• Pete Marovich – Photojournalist

If you would like to be added to this list, please submit your site.

Case study

Jack Gruber is a staff photojournalist at USA TODAY, the largest newspaper in the U.S. With his new site, which is powered by Wordpress and the On Assignment theme, Jack is able to display his portfolio, provide status updates while covering the war in Afghanistan and provide visitors with overviews and links to his recently published projects.

About

This free plugin for Wordpress allows anyone to post to their Twitter account directly from your site’s sidebar. Want to test it out? Try it out in the sidebar.

Download

To download this plugin, sign up for a free account and download twitter-overload.zip from the downloads section.

Installation

Unzip twitter-overload.zip and move the entire twitter-overload folder into wp-content -> plugins. Activate the plugin on your Wordpress admin panel. Finally, visit your Appearance -> Widgets panel and drag the Twitter Overload widget into one of your widgetized areas.

How’d we do it?

Twitter has an API that allows developers to tap into posting and displaying updates on Twitter. There are many methods for interacting with Twitter remotely, including the oAuth approach, but we decided to use the PHP CURL approach because it’s flexible and easy to integrate into a plugin.

Error handling is handled with jQuery. Test it out by leaving one of the blanks empty and click submit. You’ll get a fancy little notice on what you did wrong.

Discount coupons

We have extended our 30% off subscription coupon for annual and annual developer membership subscriptions until Dec. 1, 2009. Only a limited number of coupons are still available, so please sign up soon so you don’t miss out.

• Coupon code: ED64B25D77
• Get the discount now.

Theme updates

Last week, we released updates to Modularity and all of its child themes, High-Def, F8, F8-Remixed, Modfolio, Modslider, and the newest of the bunch, On Assignment (more on this theme tomorrow). These updates provide users with a massive amount of flexibility and customization that didn’t exist before including the following:

• Color picker for easy site color customizations
• Easy logo insertion
• Manage slideshow images from the theme options
• Customizable navigational menu
• Close to 100 theme options. Click here to see all of the new theme options.

You can download these themes from your member page. If your membership expired, you will need to re-activate your subscription.

Tim Thumb (a thumbnail generating script) was removed to prepare our themes for a new and exciting feature in Wordpress 2.9, which is just around the corner. You can read more about the new cool photo cropping and thumbnail functions over at WPEngineer.com. It’s good to see Wordpress take a more unified approach to image and thumbnail management for posts. I was beginning to loose track of all the available image and thumbnail plugins. This will undoubtedly make Wordpress more user-friendly for visual folks.

Photo Galleria Plugin Updated

Yesterday I spent a few hours updating our Photo Galleria plugin to work with the latest version of Wordpress and the latest version of jQuery. Here are the major changes:

• Javascript is now added via the enqueue_script function, which Wordpress introduced a while back to help resolve javascript conflicts in plugins & themes.
• What this means to you is the plugin won’t conflict with themes containing existing javascript libraries nor should it conflict with any plugins
• Same simple activation: Simply activate the plugin and all of your existing galleries inserted into posts will use the script. No configuration needed.

PhotoShelter Plugins

We are currently beta testing and squashing server-specific bugs on our new PhotoShelter plugin. The new plugin merges all three previous plugins into one plugin. Here is an overview of the changes:

• Merges all 3 plugins into 1 plugin.
• Improved navigating through thousands of archived images
• Adds photo display options (lightbox overlay or direct link to PS photo page)
• Improved Searching
• Improved error handling

We would like to have a bullet-proof version for public consumption available by the end of next week. If you want to help beta test the new version, please get in touch.

New theme and plugin changelog

Curious to see how we work? Want to follow our theme development? Please check out our new and improved changelog: http://graphpaperpress.com/changelog/

Kudos to Philip Arthur Moore and our friends at Codebase on this project.

Wordcamp & Future of Web Design in New York

This weekend, I’m heading to New York to attend Wordcamp NYC and the Future of Web Design to, well, frankly, mingle with people who are way smarter than me. Hopefully some of it will wear off on me. I’m really looking forward to sharing ideas and meeting folks who I’ve been tangentially connected with over the last four years. Follow us on Twitter if you want to receive news snippets and updates from these events.

Next month

The next month is going to be massive for Graph Paper Press. We are releasing four new themes, each of which caters to the visual crowd. You can expect to see a few things that you have yet to see in Wordpress themes in our upcoming releases, including resizeable, full screen images, crazy cool modern portfolio designs, and best of all, continued killer support.