In the next two hours I added two new bits of functionality to the Accumulo theme.

1. I extracted photos from RSS feeds in the RSS widget. These photos display in the tooltips that pop-up when you mouse over the feed items
2. I added a brand new RSS feed widget. This widget displays the feed item titles as before, along with a short snippet of the item content and a photo if available.

Advertising

At the weekend I also got a support query asking about advertising options in Accumulo – so I decided to add that in as well. The advertising options allow you to add adsense banners to the website above and below the page content. You can also optionally (and individually) turn them on and off, and you can override the adsense code with your own code should you wish.

These new additions continue to make Accumulo a powerful feed aggregation theme and you can see the functionality in action on the Accumulo demo site, or test it yourself on the Pro Theme Design preview site.

As normal all Accumulo customers can download updates from the accounts control panel.

The problem with this is you then have no control over what happens to their content in the future. If they delete a post, close the website, change the url structure, or generally change things around, then your website will end up linking to broken content – and that’s not good.

I experienced this same problem on WPVote.com – so I decided to come up with an automated method for fixing it.

So, I created a function that would check 10 articles at a time, in a never ending loop (it runs twice a day for as long as the theme is active). I decided to limit the number of articles scanned to ensure that the server does not get overloaded as the check can be a slow process. Technically the system uses curl to check the external articles header response. Based upon the response it does a variety of actions.

• 200 – all safe, you can carry on as normal
• 404 – the article has been deleted. There’s no redirect so the submitted article on your site is moved to the trash (you can always move it back if you wish)
• 301 – the article has been moved. The article link gets updated and things carry on as normal
• 501 – server error. The article gets moved into your post drafts so that you can check it and republish or trash it as you wish
• 0 – no response… nothing happens.

Each time a scan is done you will receive an email explaining any changes that are made so that you can double check/ modify things as required. If you have a reasonable amount of articles submitted then I would guess you will get a lot of emails to start with while old posts are scanned, and then it will even out over time.

As I mentioned in the status list above, sometimes no response is received. In this case you will be told about it in the email. In my tests on WPVote.com I have had a response of 0 in all sorts of instances – often for what should be 301 or 404 errors – and so I go in and edit things manually.

The goal of this update is to make it easier to manage your Nominate powered websites content, and to keep your site relevant and up to date.

To update just grab the theme from the accounts control panel and reupload it to your site. Everything else will happen automatically.

If you make use of it then please do let me know how you get on in the comments below.

TimThumb is actually an invention of our own – something we originally developed for Mimbo Pro. As soon as the flaw was discovered I set to work fixing as many issues as I could. In the following week I committed at least half a dozen security improvements. The person who announced the issues went so far as to rewrite TimThumb introducing even more new security features.

To ensure that TimThumb is up to date on your website you should either:

1. Update your theme from the accounts control panel
2. Update TimThumb from the Google Code site

The version of TimThumb used on Pro Theme Design themes is always up to date. For releasing theme updates I created a build script. A file that zips up the theme files, updates the translation files, creates the right to left css file for rtl languages, and then updates TimThumb from the latest Google Code source file.

Security has always been a concern with TimThumb and now that there is an extra pair of eyes helping with the code it will be an even higher priority and kept as strong as possible.

In this example I will show you how to add an image url into the theme and then display the image in the submitted post.

First things first we need to add a functions.php to the Nominate custom directory. You can read how to customise child themes (including Nominate) here. The reason for this, as opposed to modifying the built in functions.php, is that when it’s time to update the theme – you won’t lose your changes.

So once you have your custom functions.php, you can start adding code.

The following code will add custom fields to the submit post form. I have added comments that explain the different settings. If you’re familiar with WordPress custom theme functions it should be very obvious what is happening:

NOTE: You need to make sure this code is wrapped in php tags or it will not work.

function add_customSubmitFields ($fields) {

	// set properties of value to store. You can create as many of these as you like
	// name = the variable name (don't use spaces or punctuation besides _ or -)
	// label = the value to use on the submit post form
	$fields[] = array (
		'name' => 'test_image',
		'label' => 'Custom Image',
	);

	return $fields;

}

add_filter ('bm_submitFields', 'add_customSubmitFields');

Once you have added this you will have a working form. Couldn’t be simpler right? Next up, you need to display the content somehow. Since this is an image url I will display it if the value has been set. Again – there’s a lot of properties set that explains how things work:

NOTE: Be aware of data sanitization. You should always make sure user submitted data is cleaned up before it is used. In this case I am using WordPress built in function esc_url to make sure the image url is ok

function insert_customSubmitFields () {

	// get the image value using the custom variable mentioned before
	$image = bm_getSubmittedField ('test_image');

	// make sure the image is set so that I don't try to display something htat doesn't exist
	if (!empty ($image)) {
		// display image (use esc_url to make sure the url is safe!)
		echo '<img src="' . esc_url ($image) . '" />';
	}

}

add_action ('bm_contentAfter', 'insert_customSubmitFields');

To save you some time you can download the file created for this tutorial here.

Ever since Mimbo Pro, all those years ago, I have wanted to create another magazine theme, but I wanted to try something a bit different.

So, I decided to partner with a friend of mine, Jack, and he came up with the seed that became Byline. To make the theme more unique we designed a clean layout that could be personalized easily. We also introduced the unique concept of coloured categories, not seen before in a WordPress theme. Match that with a flexible homepage design and easy to digest content pages and you have the perfect recipe for a magazine style website.

A Screenshot of the Byline WordPress Magazine Theme

Byline is powered by Elemental and, as with all Elemental themes, it has a wide variety of options and customisations such as advanced font controls, powerful SEO out of the box, and a whole heap of custom page templates.

If you’re running a magazine website and fancy a new look then you check out the Byline info page, the Byline demo, and you can even preview the Byline admin for yourself.

Exhibitor is an Elemental child theme, and makes use of the latest WordPress technologies – such as custom post types – to make managing the website content as easy as possible.

Gallery and Portfolio WordPress Theme

Exhibitor uses TimThumb to intelligently resize your artwork so that they are consistently sized and viewable on as many screen sizes as possible.

Keeping bloggers in mind I also added a blog area to the homepage so that you can post news and updates about anything you like.

Since Exhibitor uses Elemental as it’s parent theme, it automatically inherits all of the benefits of that theme. In particular there are more than 15 custom page templates, and a comprehensive SEO optimisation to give your website the best chance it can have.

One of the coolest features about Exhibitor is the custom colour scheme. Inside the theme admin there is a colour wheel, that you can use to pick the colour scheme to use on your site, giving you a nice easy way to personalise the site. This is on top of the standard font options that are always available in Elemental themes.

If you are in the market for a new gallery theme then you can test it before you buy, on the theme preview site available here.

I just want to let you know that I recently “changed” theme to Pagelines.com’s PlatformPro. I didn’t really have any reasons except the fact that it seemed to bring additional possibilities for setting up the site “differently” (my website). Things went quite alright, but I quickly found the lack of structure in their files (specifically CSS files). This and the fact that I just felt/feel at home with Elemental, made me go back to Elemental rather quickly.

I once again learned that, one really have to know what one wants to show and focus at. The structure of Elemental and its associated child themes simply stand out, and feels good to work with.

So, I’m back to “normal” and still see the number of visitors increase. In tandem, the administration in Elemental is a lot more intuitive and doesn’t require additional tools like Firebug in order to personalize the website.

Reinar uses a heavily modified version of the Elemental child theme Meteora – and I must say, his site looks great.

This time the testimonial is specifically about Elemental and how Reinar finds it easy to use. 2 things I love to hear. It’s great to get this sort of feedback. If anyone else has any feedback, positive or negative, then I would love to hear it.

Dennis from ComedyHype.com - with a Tiger

This testimonial comes from Dennis at ComedyHype.com, a comedy based website that uses Nominate to power the social voting community.

What did you gain as a result of buying Nominate?

Purchasing Nominate allowed me to fulfill my lifelong dream of running a social voting site dedicated to the art of comedy… okay, maybe it wasn’t a lifelong dream, but having a WP theme that does the things that Nominate does, I was more than happy when I found it. In fact, I threw a party with cake and cookies about it… okay, maybe I didn’t throw a party and it was just a regular weekday lunch for me, but I was happy about the Nominate theme.

What specific feature did you like most about Nominate?

The best feature is the one that automatically logs you in to BigChicksNeedLoveToo.com. Other than that, the front page tabs in the main body is pretty cool where you can navigate between incoming posts, top posts for the week, and the blog is pretty tight. Sort of like the aforementioned’s clothing.

Would you recommend Nominate? If so, why?

Is water wet? Do dogs lick their man berries? Of course I would recommend this theme! Although, I must admit that I don’t want to share this piece of gold with the rest of the world. Mine! Mine… all mine! PRECIOUS! If anyone is looking to start a social voting site, Nominate is the way to go… especially if you like big beautiful women.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

I have decided that Ben and I are having a virtual affair… and I’m kind of okay with that. KIDDING! Sorry, Ben, but I love vagina. However, in all seriousness, the customer support given by the Pro Theme Design Team is top-notch. I’ve e-mailed several times about something and BAM, solutions were found. And, believe me, I was as annoying as an ex-girlfriend that swears she left her eyeliner on the dresser. IT’S NOT THERE!!! Sorry about the flashback. In any case, Ben’s support was almost as good as my gigantic jock strap and I truly appreciate the inordinate amount of e-mail replies.

Besides this Nominate has also had a number of bug fixes, and a couple of small speed improvements, so if you like the look of it now is a great time to grab a copy.

If there’s anything else to do with Pro Theme Design themes that you’d like to see video tutorials for then please do let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.

Today I am pleased to say that I have finally found, and released, the answer!

Pro Theme Design Preview

The Pro Theme Design Preview is a new section of the Pro Theme Design site, that allows you to create a test site, and then apply any of the Pro Theme Design themes to it. This will let you test the administration panel, and all of the themes features before you make your choice.

Since Elemental, and all of it’s child themes, now include a feature for exporting the theme settings, you can also setup a blog, export the settings (and site data using WordPress export tools) and then use it when you make your final decision (and hopefully purchase a theme!).

The only limitation of the system is that the sites get deleted after 36 hours. Hopefully this will be long enough for you to get a taste of the themes and how they work. If you need longer then you can always create a new site.

Would love to know what you think of the system, and if there’s anything else you would like to see included?