This was no ordinary WordPress blog. The specifications demanded something that I have never seen on any other site. Instead of a normal blog main page, a type of landing page was required. This page had to show just thumbnails form the latest articles. The problem was that these thumbnails had to be repeated 5 times as the articles to be shown here come from 5 different categories. In other words, there had to be 5 photo galleries with each thumbnail being a link to the relevant article.

I knew the standard WordPress loop would not do the job. Fortunately WordPress itself is so flexible it allowed me to get the task done even though it meant that I ended up with 53 categories and 58 post tags.

This was not the end of the story. The sidebar had to be dynamic meaning that it changed depending on which page you were on. This sidebar also had to show 7 random thumbnails each from a different category. There were also 21 text links on the sidebar again from 21 different categories.

When I started the job I nearly ran away. I really thought the guy was nuts and that he was expecting the impossible. The problem was however not with the owner of the site, it was with me. The problem was that I was stuck in a rut. When I thought of WordPress I thought only along the lines of the default theme. To use the old cliche – I had to start thinking outside the box.

The code for the file index.php on a normal blog reads something like this:

<?php get_header(); ?>
	<div id="content">
		<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
			<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
				<!--code to show post if it exists-->
			<?php endwhile; ?>
		<?php else : ?>
			<!--code if no post exists-->
		<?php endif; ?>
		<!-- this is the main loop. It continues running until the number of posts required has been reached -->
	</div>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

This code simply fetches the latest posts in the database and displays them one below the other. What I needed was 5 different loops each showing articles from its own category. The code I eventually used was something like this:

<?php get_header(); ?>
		<div id="content">
			<div class="featured">
				<div class="main-page">
					<h3>Photo Posts of the moment</h3>
					<p>Free for all - click to view, comment, or post your own</p>
					<?php query_posts('cat=17,19,38&showposts=8'); ?>
					<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
						<?php
						$thumb = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'Thumbnail', $single = true);
						?>
						<?php
							if($thumb !== '') { ?>
							<div class="left">
								<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Click to view <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><img src="<?php echo $thumb; ?>"
								alt="" width="120" height="120"
								/></a>
							</div>
					      	<?php }
							else { echo ''; } ?>
					<?php endwhile; ?>
				</div>
				<div class="main-page">
					<!-- The same type of loop as used above is now repeated for each of the desired categories-->
				</div>
			</div>
		</div>
	</div>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

This code fetches the latest articles from a specific category and displays the thumbnail attached to each article. This process is repeated 5 times eventually showing the thumbnails from the 5 categories that were required. You will notice that the standard loop is nowhere to be seen on this page anymore.

The sidebar was even more of a headache but that is a tale for another day.

What is the point of this article? When we use WordPress we do not have to follow blindly that which others are doing. In my opinion the only limitation WordPress has is the imagination of the person who puts it all together.

I think the problem these days starts with the designers. These guys come up with some fantastic designs but unfortunately they stay within the boundaries of what they think WordPress can do. The developers then take these designs and make them work. The result is that all possibilities are not explored and we all end up with sites that have a similar look and feel to them.

What about you? Have you used WordPress in any special way? Next time you need to design a new site please let your imagination go, you will be surprised to find out just how far WordPress will allow you to go. I am sure this same thing is true for most of the other blogging platforms as well.

Oopsie, nearly forgot. You would be welcome to visit the site I have been discussing.

Till next time.

If you have found this article useful, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed. You could do this via your favourite feed reader or via Email.

Many of the WordPress hacks, tips and bits of advice provided on this blog, include code snippets. If you are making use of any code provided here kindly take note that I cannot be held responsible for anything that might go wrong on your blog because of the new code. Before making any changes to your files please ensure that these files have been adequately backed-up.

If you are passionate about WordPress and you are interested in guest posting for Nice2All, please contact me.

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I want to add a menu listing the pages on my blog but I need to add other links to the beginning and end of the menu. I notice that at Nice2Create you have done something similar in that you have a home menu before the pages and a register link at the end. How should I do this?

I cannot tell you how you should do this, I can only tell you how I did it. In pre-WordPress 2.7 days we used the WordPress function wp_list_pages to show the page menus. WordPress 2.7 brought along with it a new function called wp_page_menu. This function is actually just a wrapper for the older function and it provides us with some pretty nifty features. Amongst other things it allow us to show a link to the home page at the start of the menu.

On Nice2Create I did not use the new function as it does not allow one to make changes to the home link nor does it allow one to add something at the end of the menu (or at least, not very easily). I reverted to the older function to be able to do what I wanted to do.

I used the following XHTML to code the menu:

<div class="menu">
	<ul>
		<?php if(is_home() && !is_paged()){ ?>
			<li class="current_page_item"><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/" title="You are Home" rel="nofollow">Home</a></li>
		<?php } else { ?>
			<li><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/" title="Click for Home" rel="nofollow">Home</a></li>
		<?php } ?>
		<?php  wp_list_pages('depth=1&title_li'); ?>
		<?php wp_register(); ?>
		<?php wp_meta(); ?>
	</ul>
</div>

I have a conditional statement on the code to add the home link at the start of the menu. I wanted to highlight the current page on the menu. This loop allows me to know if the current page is the home page or not. What changes did I make to the home link? I changed the title of the link depending on if it is the home page that is open or not. If you are on the home page the tool-tip text will show You are Home, if you are on another page the tool-tip text will display Click for Home.

I then used the wp_list_pages function to add the pages on the site to the menu. The depth setting on this portion is there to ensure that child pages are not shown. Just how to show child pages on a menu is a topic for a different discussion.

After this I simply used the standard code to add a Site Admin link to the end of the menu. This link is only visible to the logged in users. If your settings allows it, this link will become a Register link for non logged in users.

To make this all work I needed the following styling:

.menu{width:100%;float:left;overflow:hidden;margin:10px 0;text-align:center}
.menu ul{list-style:none;margin:0;padding:0;list-style-type:none;padding:5px 0;margin:0;}
.menu ul a{height:auto;}
.menu ul li{display:inline;padding-right:10px;margin:0;padding:0 10px}
.menu ul li a:link,.menu ul li a:visited{background:#fff;color:#000;text-decoration:none;}
.menu ul li a:hover,.menu ul li a:focus{background:#fff;color:#bb0000;text-decoration:underline;}
.menu ul li a:active{background:#fff;color:#bb0000;text-decoration:none;}
.menu ul li.current_page_item a, .menu ul li.current_page_item a:hover,.menu ul li.current_page_item a:focus, .menu ul li.current_page_item a:active{background-color:#fff;color:#000;cursor:default;text-align:left;border-top:1px solid #000;border-bottom:1px solid #000;text-decoration:none;}

Note I styled the current_page element differently so that it will highlight the current page on the menu. In this same code I also changed the cursor to be shown when mousing over the current page item on the menu.

That was that. I now had a menu showing the pages with a Home link at the beginning and a Site Admin link at the back. I hope this answers your question.

Till next time.

If you have found this article useful, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed. You could do this via your favourite feed reader or via Email.

Many of the WordPress hacks, tips and bits of advice provided on this blog, include code snippets. If you are making use of any code provided here kindly take note that I cannot be held responsible for anything that might go wrong on your blog because of the new code. Before making any changes to your files please ensure that these files have been adequately backed-up.

If you are passionate about WordPress and you are interested in guest posting for Nice2All, please contact me.

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Themes are built with a whole lot of PHP snippets in place that gather the required information from the database. If these snippets are left in the theme then it means that this same information will have to be retrieved from the database on every page load. Some will argue that this is unnecessary overhead and the download times can be shortened considerably should these database calls be hard coded with the actual information.

I personally have never seen any hard evidence proving that the saving in database calls that can be achieved in this way, really results in a significant speed difference.

This is a debatable topic but be that as it may, there are some who want to know how they can get rid of these ‘unnecessary’ database calls.

Let’s have a look at our latest theme, the Prism Theme. In the head section of the file header.php you will find the following code:

< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
< html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” < ?php language_attributes(); ?>>
< head profile=”http://gmpg.org/xfn/11″>
< meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”< ?php bloginfo(’html_type’); ?>; charset=< ?php bloginfo(’charset’); ?>” />
< title>< ?php bloginfo(’name’); ?> < ?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> &raquo; Blog Archive < ?php } ?> < ?php wp_title(); ?></title>
< link rel=”stylesheet” href=”< ?php bloginfo(’stylesheet_url’); ?>?v=< ?php echo filemtime(TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/style.css’); ?>” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />
< ?php
global $options;
foreach ($options as $value) {
if (get_settings( $value['id'] ) === FALSE) { $$value['id'] = $value['std']; } else { $$value['id'] = get_settings( $value['id'] ); }
}
?>
< ?php if ($prism_color_scheme == “blue”) : ?>
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”< ?php bloginfo(’template_url’); ?>/blue.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />
< ?php elseif ($prism_color_scheme == “red”) : ?>
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”< ?php bloginfo(’template_url’); ?>/red.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />
< ?php elseif ($prism_color_scheme == “gray”) : ?>
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”< ?php bloginfo(’template_url’); ?>/gray.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />
< ?php elseif ($prism_color_scheme == “green”) : ?>
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”< ?php bloginfo(’template_url’); ?>/green.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />
< ?php elseif ($prism_color_scheme == “orange”) : ?>
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”< ?php bloginfo(’template_url’); ?>/orange.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />
< ?php endif; ?>
< link rel=”pingback” href=”< ?php bloginfo(’pingback_url’); ?>” />
< meta name=”description” content=”description here” />
< meta name=”keywords” content=”comma separated keywords here” />
< link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”< ?php bloginfo(’name’); ?> RSS Feed” href=”< ?php bloginfo(’rss2_url’); ?>” />
< link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”< ?php bloginfo(’url’); ?>/favicon.ico” />
< meta name=”robots” content=”all” />
< script src=”< ?php bloginfo(’template_url’); ?>/js/menu.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
< script src=”< ?php bloginfo(’template_url’); ?>/js/tabs.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
< ?php if ( is_singular() ) wp_enqueue_script( ‘comment-reply’ ); ?>
< ?php wp_head(); ?>
< /head>

This might appear like rocket science to some but it is actually all very simple. The red bits in this code are all the PHP snippets that I am talking about. All of these are database calls that could be hard-coded. You will notice that I have not marked all the PHP in red. This is because some of the calls should rather not be hard-coded in this theme. The title is set in a very specific way in the theme and the version number is added to the call to retrieve the stylesheet. Hard-coding these pieces could mess things up a bit.

So now we know what the snippets are that we can replace. Now what? You now need to get the actual information and replace the PHP calls with this info. How do you get the actual info? You view the code on your live page, copy the required information and paste it into the theme.

On my site, the PHP bits marked in red here would be replaced with the following:

This is a lot of work and then we are not even sure if it is really going to result in a big improvement in speed. In my opinion it all depends on your PHP skill level. If you are used to using PHP, go for it by all means. If you do not regularly use PHP, maybe not, the chances of something going wrong is far greater than any possible benefit. Should you do something like this please remember to backup your files first.

If you have done something like this on your site, I would love to hear if you experienced any noticeable difference in download times.

Till next time.

If you have found this article useful, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed. You could do this via your favourite feed reader or via Email.

Many of the WordPress hacks, tips and bits of advice provided on this blog, include code snippets. If you are making use of any code provided here kindly take note that I cannot be held responsible for anything that might go wrong on your blog because of the new code. Before making any changes to your files please ensure that these files have been adequately backed-up.

If you are passionate about WordPress and you are interested in guest posting for Nice2All, please contact me.

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This is our first free theme that along with many other features, comes with an options page. We have tried to incorporate all the latest trends in this new theme and hopefully quite a few people will find a use for the theme.

The thing that I am the proudest of is the fact that out of the box, this theme meets most of the accessibility standards and contains valid XHTML and CSS. Even if some have no use for the theme itself, it is hoped that the theme will serve as an example of just how a WordPress theme can be built all the while keeping others in mind.

Okay, so what makes this one different? For us, the biggest change has got to be the options page.

The following are the options that automatically update the theme:

• Color Scheme – The theme offers the user a choice of 5 color schemes. You now know where the name comes from. The default is still blue but the user can also select gray, green, orange or red.
• Dropdown Menu – The theme makes provision for a drop-down menu which allows child pages to be shown in the menu. This menu can be turned off should the user so wish. The reasoning behind this is that some prefer to use child pages as a way of hiding certain pages and therefore do not want them shown in a menu.
• Breadcrumb Navigation – This navigation can be turned off should the user so wish.
• Sidebar Position – The user can decide if the sidebar should be on the left or right.
• EMail Subscrition – A RSS subscription button appears in the sidebar by default. The user can decide if they want to include an email subscription along with this.
• Categories/Archives tabs – The theme also shows the categories and archives in Javascript tabs on the sidebar. This can be turned off via the options.
• Twitter Followers – Should the user so choose this widget will appear on the sidebar. The widget shows the number of Twitter followers a user has and invites the readers to join these followers.
• Copyright Notice – This is not an option in the true sense of the word. A user simply enters the year the blog was started so that the theme can automatically update the copyright notice in the footer every year.

The Prism Theme also includes the following features:

• The WP Generator does not generate the version of WordPress in use. This version is not shown in the code.
• Related Posts are built in and work without the need for a widget or plugin. These related posts are based on tags.
• Wide images (640px) can be posted. Should images accidentally exceed this width the theme will automatically scale the images.
• The sidebar is widgetized so the user can select their own widgets to be shown on the sidebar.
• Changing the page order of pages changes the order in which pages appear on the menu.
• CSS date graphics for every post on the main page.
• Return to top link in the footer.
• The theme is WP PageNavi ready. Just download and activate the plugin, the theme will do the rest.
• Drop caps can be used in the articles.
• Content loads first even if sidebar is placed on the left.
• Comments and trackbacks are separated.
• Comments are gravatar enabled.
• Threaded comments work if selected.
• It is possible to create pages that have comments on them.
• The search, archives and 404 pages have been customized so that they are useful to the reader.
• The ‘more’ tags have been customized so that they do not all read exactly the same.
• Stylesheets sorted alphabetically to aid with customization.

Apart from the options themselves, the options page also contains various customization tips. Amongst others the following are covered:

• How to change the header and/or footer graphics.
• How to use the drop caps that have been included.
• How to add ads to the header, the sidebar, after the first article on the main page as well as on the single pages.
• How to add a page with comments on it.

Just like all our free WordPress themes, this one comes with free support via a support forum.

I have included a demo page and download facility at Nice2Create.

The theme has been submitted to WordPress for inclusion in the WordPress Theme Directory. The theme is available for download in the meantime but as soon as the theme has been approved the download links etc. will be changed so that they point at the theme directory.

Should you download and spot any errors/omissions I will be grateful for a heads-up on this.

As I always say when we release a new theme – this theme is yours, take it, tear it apart, make it uniquely yours, and turn it into something special. Above all have fun with it and enjoy your tweaking.

Till next time.

If you have found this article useful, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed. You could do this via your favourite feed reader or via Email.

Many of the WordPress hacks, tips and bits of advice provided on this blog, include code snippets. If you are making use of any code provided here kindly take note that I cannot be held responsible for anything that might go wrong on your blog because of the new code. Before making any changes to your files please ensure that these files have been adequately backed-up.

If you are passionate about WordPress and you are interested in guest posting for Nice2All, please contact me.

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I have decided to stay with blue as the default color of the theme but the users will now have an option of one of 5 basic colors (blue, gray, orange, red or green). Because of all the different colors the theme will be called the Prism theme.

Apart from the color scheme the users will also have options to turn the breadcrumb navigation on or off, to select if the sidebar is on the right or the left, if they want to display an email subscription request on the sidebar, if they want to display a tabbed box (similar to the one on this site) on the sidebar, as well as if they want to display a Twitter widget on the sidebar. All of this stuff can be done from the back-end without any need for plugins and/or widgets. The theme also offers quite a few other goodies, but these I will leave as a surprise.

This past week in short

• I started the week off with a post entitle Free WordPress Themes. In this post I asked the readers for their ideas on just what should be included in a free theme and what not.
• In the next article I took a look at the script for breadcrumb navigation I recently updated.
• I Baptize Thee was the title of the next post. Here I provided a little demo of the planned new theme mentioned above and asked the users for their input.
• In the last article for the week I took a look at just what one can do to spruce up those search pages a bit. An interesting concept that came out of the comments on this article was the fact that the standard WordPress search function could be replaced by a custom Google search engine. This is a topic that I will definitely be addressing in the near future.

What’s up in the world of Wordpress?

The big news this week has to be the whole saga regarding the GPL situation within WordPress. A lot of articles were written, some harsh words were uttered, and opinions were received from experts on the topic. The bottom line is that apart from the CSS and graphics a WordPress theme should be released under the GPL license.

I have always been of the opinion that WordPress themes should not be sold. If you want to charge money for these you should only charge for services that surround the actual theme e.g., support etc.

This debate is far from over and it will be interesting to see just what the ‘premium’ theme guys do next.

Inside Scoop

This last while I have been receiving a lot of tweets from my Twitter followers with links on them leading to pornographic sites. I have tried to weed out the culprits but the problem continues.

I noticed that most of the people responsible for this are also using the default Twitter avatar. I know I am generalizing but I have been forced to stop following anyone using the default avatar. I will also no longer follow any new follower showing this avatar. The following should clearly demonstrate what I am in the process of doing:

This might seem a bit harsh but how difficult is it to show the world just who you are in your avatar. There is absolutely no need to hide behind some horrid default avatar.

That’s it from me this week. Hope to see you around here again next week.

Till next time.

If you have found this article useful, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed. You could do this via your favourite feed reader or via Email.

Many of the WordPress hacks, tips and bits of advice provided on this blog, include code snippets. If you are making use of any code provided here kindly take note that I cannot be held responsible for anything that might go wrong on your blog because of the new code. Before making any changes to your files please ensure that these files have been adequately backed-up.

If you are passionate about WordPress and you are interested in guest posting for Nice2All, please contact me.

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I was doing some work on a new theme and I wanted some way to spruce up the search pages in WordPress. Normally if a user searches for some or other keyword, a rather bland page is returned. This page normally has a heading something like Search Results. The excerpts of the relevant articles are then listed below this heading.

I found an article on WP Recipes that provided some code that went a long way towards solving this problem. This code returns the number of items found for the relevant keyword as well as the keyword itself and places these in the heading of the search page. This made a lot of sense to me and I decided to try it out.

The code that I placed in the same place as the original heading in search.php was the following:

<h2 class="pagetitle">Search Results for <?php /* Search Count */ $allsearch = &new WP_Query("s=$s&showposts=-1"); $key = wp_specialchars($s, 1); $count = $allsearch->post_count; _e(''); _e('<span class="search-terms">'); echo $key; _e('</span>'); _e(' - '); echo $count . ' '; _e('articles'); wp_reset_query(); ?></h2>

I added a bit more code on the same page just before the call to get the heading of the articles returned from the search:

<?php
$title 	= get_the_title();
$keys= explode(" ",$s);
$title 	= preg_replace('/('.implode('|', $keys) .')/iu',
'<strong class="search">\0</strong>',
$title);
?>

This code calls a class called search. I added a bit of styling for this class in the stylesheet:

strong.search{background:#014c9f;color:#fff}

In case this is confusing allow me to show the complete code for the actual working bit in search.php:

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
	<h2 class="pagetitle">Search Results for <?php /* Search Count */ $allsearch = &new WP_Query("s=$s&showposts=-1"); $key = wp_specialchars($s, 1); $count = $allsearch->post_count; _e(''); _e('<span class="search-terms">'); echo $key; _e('</span>'); _e(' - '); echo $count . ' '; _e('articles'); wp_reset_query(); ?></h2>

	<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
		<? if (function_exists('wp_list_comments')) : ?>
			<div post_class() id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
		<?php else : ?>
			<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
		<?php endif; ?>
		<?php
		$title 	= get_the_title();
		$keys= explode(" ",$s);
		$title 	= preg_replace('/('.implode('|', $keys) .')/iu',
		'<strong class="search">\0</strong>',
		$title);
		?>
		<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php echo $title; ?></a></h3>
		<small>Posted <?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?>  by <?php the_author() ?> | <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?><?php edit_post_link('Edit', ' | ', ''); ?></small>
		<div class="entry">
			<?php the_excerpt("Continue reading " . get_the_title('', '', false)); ?>
		</div>
	</div>
	<hr />
<?php endwhile; ?>

I now searched for the keyword test on my test site and received the following output:

I think the otherwise bland page now looks somewhat better and offers a tad more to the user. One can now see exacly how many results were found and the actual keyword is highlighted there where it appears. I hope you can find a use for this little snippet.

Till next time.

If you have found this article useful, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed. You could do this via your favourite feed reader or via Email.

Many of the WordPress hacks, tips and bits of advice provided on this blog, include code snippets. If you are making use of any code provided here kindly take note that I cannot be held responsible for anything that might go wrong on your blog because of the new code. Before making any changes to your files please ensure that these files have been adequately backed-up.

If you are passionate about WordPress and you are interested in guest posting for Nice2All, please contact me.

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I have finally made my mind up as to what will be going into the new theme.

A few years ago, when I first started web development, it seemed as if all successful websites and templates were blue in color. Through the years this tendency changed and today there are very few bluish themes/websites out there. I have never yet developed something in blue but that is about to change (who says one has to follow the norm?).

I am going to give you all a sneak preview of the theme but as always there is method to my madness. I am struggling to find a name for the new theme and I am hoping somebody will come up with a stunning name. Unfortunately I have nothing to give away to the person who comes up with the winning name, you will just have to settle for my gratitude.

The theme will have an options page. The options included will however not have a direct effect on the CSS styling and the CSS (and HTML) will still validate. Those options that will directly effect the CSS have not been included in the options page. A custom stylesheet will be added to make it as easy as possible for users to change things like link colors, background colors etc.

Users will be able to choose on which side the sidebar appears, should there be breadcrumb navigation or not, they will be able to insert their Adsense ads directly from the back-end as well as a couple of other options.

The theme is going to get most of the basic website accessibility features built into it. There will be a drop-down menu in place but this will be the only Javascript included in the theme. There will also be quite a few other little goodies but I have to leave something for the actual unveiling.

You are welcome to have a quick look at the demo page. Your thoughts would be welcomed especially those on a possible name for the theme.

This is merely a demo and the links etc. go nowhere. The stuff currently on the sidebar are some of the things that a user could place there via the options page. The sidebar is fully widgetized and all the standard widgets can be placed on the sidebar as well. You will notice that the same Twitter widget as used on this site is also available on the theme. The code for this was written by Rarst and he has graciously consented to its use in this theme. Thanks Andrey.

The demo also includes the stuff provided by the plugin WP-PageNavi. This plugin will not be distributed with the final product but support for the plugin will be built-in. A user will just have to activate the plugin to make it work.

As is always the case with my themes, the emphasis will be placed on the fastest download times possible as well as all the security functions that can be added via a theme.

The theme is not finished as yet and will also only be released at Nice2Create if and when it has been approved by WordPress.

I am looking forward to hearing your opinions.

Till next time.

If you have found this article useful, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed. You could do this via your favourite feed reader or via Email.

Many of the WordPress hacks, tips and bits of advice provided on this blog, include code snippets. If you are making use of any code provided here kindly take note that I cannot be held responsible for anything that might go wrong on your blog because of the new code. Before making any changes to your files please ensure that these files have been adequately backed-up.

If you are passionate about WordPress and you are interested in guest posting for Nice2All, please contact me.

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An interesting question came out of the comments that were made on yesterdays post – is breadcrumb navigation really necessary for a WordPress blog?

WordPress makes it possible for us to add pages in a hierarchical way. We now also have the same functionality with regards to categories. This could mean that just maybe there is still a need for breadcrumb navigation in WordPress. I decided I am going to give it a shot and include this form of navigation in my next free WordPress theme.

There are quite a few plugins available that provide this functionality but I wanted some or other script to add the functionality directly to the theme. I have previously posted about a little script for breadcrumbs but this script fell short in that it made no provision for child pages. I have now updated this script just a little bit.

This script was written specifically for a main menu making use of the different pages in WordPress. Should the main menu be based on the WordPress categories, this script will have to be adapted to provide the hierarchical functionality needed for categories. As the script is now, you will receive the following output:

This script is anything but perfect but it does provide the basics I was looking for to use in the mentioned free theme. The code for the navigation is the following:

<?php if(is_home()) { ?>
	<span>You are here: Home</span>
	<?php } else { ?>
  		<span>You are here: </span>
		<a href="<?php echo get_bloginfo('url'); ?>" title="">Home</a>
		<?php
		if (is_page()) {
			$parent_id  = $post->post_parent;
			$breadcrumbs = array();
			while ($parent_id) {
		  		$page = get_page($parent_id);
		  		$breadcrumbs[] = '<a href="'.get_permalink($page->ID).' title="">'.get_the_title($page->ID).'</a>';
		  		$parent_id  = $page->post_parent;
			}
			$breadcrumbs = array_reverse($breadcrumbs);
			foreach ($breadcrumbs as $crumb) echo ' &raquo; '.$crumb;
			echo '&raquo; ';
			echo the_title();
		} elseif (is_category()) {
			echo '&raquo; ';
			echo 'Archives for ';
			single_cat_title();
		} elseif (is_tag()) {
			echo '&raquo; ';
			echo 'Archives for ';
			single_tag_title();
		} elseif (is_day()) {
			echo '&raquo; ';
			echo 'Archives for ';
			the_time('F jS, Y');
		} elseif (is_month()) {
			echo '&raquo; ';
			echo 'Archives for ';
			the_time('F, Y');
		} elseif (is_year()) {
			echo '&raquo; ';
			echo 'Archives for ';
			the_time('Y');
		} elseif (is_author()) {
			echo '&raquo; ';
			echo 'Author Archive';
		} elseif (isset($_GET['paged']) && empty($_GET['paged'])) {
			echo '&raquo; ';
			echo 'Blog Archives';
		} elseif (is_search()) {
			echo '&raquo; ';
			echo 'Search Results';
		} elseif (is_single()) {
			echo " &raquo; ";
			the_category(' &raquo; ');
			if (is_single()) {
				echo " &raquo; ";
				the_title();
			}
		}
	  ?>
<?php } ?>

This code I saved in a file called breadcrumb.php. To call the script in the place where you want the breadcrumb to appear, you need to code the following:

<div id="breadcrumb">
	<?php $filename = TEMPLATEPATH . '/breadcrumb.php'; if (file_exists($filename)) { include($filename); } ?>
</div>

I would like to get your opinion. Do you think this script goes far enough? Should the script rather be expanded to include further options? Should breadcrumbs be used at all?

Phew, I am asking a lot of questions these days!

Till next time.

If you have found this article useful, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed. You could do this via your favourite feed reader or via Email.

Many of the WordPress hacks, tips and bits of advice provided on this blog, include code snippets. If you are making use of any code provided here kindly take note that I cannot be held responsible for anything that might go wrong on your blog because of the new code. Before making any changes to your files please ensure that these files have been adequately backed-up.

If you are passionate about WordPress and you are interested in guest posting for Nice2All, please contact me.

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All of this has got me thinking. If people are having existing themes changed, could it mean that the free themes that are available out there, are not really delivering the goods? Is it possible that the free theme developers have not kept pace with the requirements of the WordPress community?

I have not released a new free theme for a while now. I have started work on my next effort but maybe it is time that I first try and determine just what it is that the users of these free themes require.

The following are the issues that I would like to receive some clarity on:

• Javascript – Should these features be included. Here I am referring to those drop-down menus, the fancy tabs or maybe even sliding panels. What about those who have turned Javascript support off in their browsers? Should we be worrying about these guys?
• Navigation – What should the main navigation consist of? Should pages or categories be used in the main menu?
• Breadcrumbs – Is there still a place for this type of navigation?
• Options Page – Should this be there and if so, what kind of options are we looking at?
• Sidebars – Left or right, that is the question? Maybe a combination of both?
• Headers -Should this space be used for other purposes apart from the main form of branding? Here I am speaking about ad banners, subscribe buttons, social site buttons, search bars etc., that could all be placed directly into the header section.

I have now asked quite a few questions so I am not going to end this post with my customary question. I will really appreciate your feedback on the matters raised above.

Till next time.

If you have found this article useful, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed. You could do this via your favourite feed reader or via Email.

Many of the WordPress hacks, tips and bits of advice provided on this blog, include code snippets. If you are making use of any code provided here kindly take note that I cannot be held responsible for anything that might go wrong on your blog because of the new code. Before making any changes to your files please ensure that these files have been adequately backed-up.

If you are passionate about WordPress and you are interested in guest posting for Nice2All, please contact me.

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A few weeks ago I moved the WordPress themes that used to be on this site to Nice2Create. At the time I mentioned that I was expecting this to have a negative influence on this site as these themes generate a lot of traffic from wordpress.org. So far things are not going too badly. There appears to have been another Google PageRank update this last week. This site has managed to hold onto its PR and Nice2Create now has a PR of 2. I am pleased with this but I am not sure for how long this situation could last.

This past week in short

• I started this week off with an article entitled Seeing the Big Picture. This post took a look at just what we can do to ensure those big graphics do not break our themes.
• This article was followed by a look at a plugin called WP-Memory-Usage. This post was quite popular and led directly to a guest post which was published later in the week.
• In the next article I took a very basic look at styling lists on our blogs. I still think it is a good idea to keep the flow of tutorials for beginners going.
• The last post for the week was a guest post by Brian Geisel entitled Monitoring WordPress Performance. This post was rather technical and it did not generate too many comments. It did help to generate a lot of traffic though. My thanks to Brian. It was because of this traffic that I let the post run for a day longer than what I normally would have, before I posted the next one.

What’s up in the world of WordPress?

On the development side we have now reached version 2.8.1 beta 2. The new versions are appearing quite fast after one another and the final release of version 2.8.1 should be around anytime now.

I have noticed that quite a few people have complained about WordPress version 2.8 saying that this version was not adequately tested. Maybe this is a good time to remind everyone that WordPress is open source. The testing is, and should be, done by the users out there, that means you and I. I just find it a bit unfair for anyone to knock Wordress for their so-called lack of testing before new versions appear. I we want the testing to improve, we should be looking at doing our bit. If you have the time, download the development versions, test, send in error reports and in so doing, you will be assisting the entire WordPress community.

Inside Scoop

For quite some time now I have had a request for guest posts at the end of all the articles published on this site. Thus far I have only managed to get one guest post and this is something that is worrying me.

With my move to Luanda at the start of next year this whole thing could leave me with quite a problem. I know that I am going to be taking a couple of steps back as from next year, I will be blogging via a dial-up modem. This is not something I am looking forward to.

The idea was that I could overcome this problem by publishing guest posts every now and then. It does not appear as if this is going to happen. Maybe I should be looking at a way of collaborating with other bloggers on this site. Has anyone ever done something like this? Just how would one go about getting something like this off the ground?

Enough moaning and groaning. Enjoy you week and hopefully I will meet you here again during the week.

Till next time.

If you have found this article useful, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed. You could do this via your favourite feed reader or via Email.

Many of the WordPress hacks, tips and bits of advice provided on this blog, include code snippets. If you are making use of any code provided here kindly take note that I cannot be held responsible for anything that might go wrong on your blog because of the new code. Before making any changes to your files please ensure that these files have been adequately backed-up.

If you are passionate about WordPress and you are interested in guest posting for Nice2All, please contact me.

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