Yes the annoying update/upgrade notice that appears at the top of the admin screen can be a bit annoying. It can also be quite dangerous. DANGEROUS you say…how so?

Well if you have designed a CMS for a client using wordpress and added extra things even its its simple things like changing the admin images or the memory usage. All will be wiped when the client upgrades and their precious site suddenly looks different or doesnt work at all.

Taking the top update nag isnt the only way to update via the admin panel of course buts its the most obvious one.

So lets get rid of it:

First open: wp-admin/includes/update.php

Scroll to line 135 (if file is in original condition)

Find this line:

add_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 );

And simply comment it out like thus:

/* add_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 ); */

or

// add_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 );

Both will work, once uploaded hey presto no more top update nag. Nag nag nag…your not my Mum Wordpress!!

I decided to start a classified ads website for my local area a few months ago. I searched Google for a couple of days and couldnt find software that was quite right.

I found Noah’s Classifieds and although I was not totally sold buy their website and demo of the software, I did find the recent feature of a bridge to Wordpress very interesting and useful. So having found nothing better I decided to purchase the latest E-Commerce SEO version at $199.95 and the Wordpress Noah Premium Widgets at $49.95 (I believe the actual bridge is free).

So having just spent $249.90 I was eager to get started. The email arrived from Steve (the owner) with the script and plugins etc, it also contained a link to a video guide for installation.

I watched the installation and carried it out without to much bother. So I had a Wordpress installation with a Noah installation in a sub folder. I then initialised the premium widgets/plugins and the bridge. I then set about getting used to Noah (as Im pretty good with Wordpress I thought I would leave that until last), this I found was no easy feat. The admin is poorly laid out, illogical and clunky. The code is also not the best Ive seen, a lot of use of tables and inline styling. It also feels like it hasnt been built from scratch, more like its been adapted from something else.

Anyway having fiddled around with it a bit I decided to make a start on my Wordpress theme. Upon trying to log into the Wordpress admin area I found I couldnt. It threw an error and gave me no access. I asked Steve for help and he couldnt understand my priblem and why I was having difficulties and told me to simply start again. Install Wordpress then Noah then initialise the bridge. I did this and it seemed to work until I tested out the functionality of the bridge and widgets.

The bridge hardly functioned at all; I created an account in Wordpress and tried to login to Noah with those details….it didnt work. I also found out from another Noah user that the bridge only works one way! So it only works if users register through Wordpress…well it didnt even do that for me, but even so releasing the bridge in this state seems like its only half done.

So obviously I looked to Steve for support and found none, he simply replied “nobody else seems to have these problems”. Which is obviously a lie as there is numerous people unhappy with the software and Steve’s lack of support, he replies to your emails quick enough if you are interested in buying Noah but as soon as you hit any problems you will be lucky to get a reply!

After countless attempts to get it working, contacting Steve (to get no reply) and visits to the ‘cleverly’ called Norum which is the owners forum (which also uses a horrible forum script, thats slow, clanky and looks rubbish) that is rather sparsely populated and you will need to wait for a reply if you get one at all. Steve also doesnt support his product through the forum, he lets other Noah customers do the work for him.

It got to the point where I was so annoyed with everything I asked for a refund, to which Steve replied with an email basically saying that nobody else had any of my issues and that other noobs to the software manage fine and so its my fault. Doing his usual and not addressing the issue raised. I pushed the matter further and now receive no feedback whatsoever.

I thought I would check the terms and conditions on the Noah website and found these two lines:

“REFUNDS: Payments made to Noahsclassifieds.org are final and shall NOT be refunded under any circumstance.”

“REFUNDS: Payments made to Noahsclassifieds.org are final and shall NOT be refunded under any circumstance. Unless you elect for a 30-day Money Back Trial Period.”

I dont remember an option for a 30-day money back trial period when I made the purchase….funny that!

I suppose its my own fault. If you look at the Noah website, the checkout system, the forum. Non are particularly good and well designed so why would the classifieds script be any different. I hope by writing this review that people looking to purchase a classified script will avoid Noah like the plague and realise the lack of support should you run in to difficulties.

Im currently looking into other options and think I found a good alternative which I will write a review on when I have tested it. Still Im angry that I have wasted over £150 on rubbish that I no longer want to use and have no hope of getting a refund for.

UPDATE: I have found a really good out of the box classifieds software called ikiclassifieds. Its very easy to setup and has excellent admin customisation options. It also boasts excellent adsense and banner ad integration. You can set top ads (featured ads) and homepage placment ads payable via Paypal. Overall the site is excellent with phpBB included. Ihavent customised the code too much as I havent felt the need to, eveything is almost perfect straight out the box…a highly recommended bit of software. Support is slightly slow (think the time difference effects it) but so far so good, they have answered all my comments etc. I also think its quite new so cant wait for updates!

You can purchase it here:

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Once you start messing about with Wordpress and looking to expand it to fit your websites requirements you will undoubtably want to use different headers, sidebars, footers and even comment templates.

Its actually really easy to do in Wordpress and because you will be utilising files that should already exist in your template, it doesnt take long at all.

I guess most people will want to change the sidebar first, implementing new menus i.e. floating it left or right to create different page styles etc, so I will focus on sidebars but applying the principles will work for every template file mentioned above.

OK lets get started.

First create a new template file called called ’sidebar2.php’ or similar and open ‘the original ’sidebar.php’. Copy the code from sidebar.php and paste it into sidebar2.php. Now you have a new sidebar! Obviously you will want to make changes to the structure using CSS etc but I will leave that up to you.

Now that we have the new sidebar2.php file how to we get Wordpress to display it? Just replace this line:

with this one:

You would use this line to include all your new files i.e.

or

However getting the new comment template to display is slightly different. You must replace this line:

with this one:

Well there you have it, you can now create as many different template files as you want and implement them on your Wordpress site. Sweet!

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I realise this is a very simple thing to achieve in Wordpress and has probably been written about a thousand times, however I thought about what a great tool it is in Wordpress’s arsenal and surprisingly not used on too many sites Ive seen.

Aside from being able to use page templates to create different page designs they are very useful when using Wordpress plugins such as NextGen Gallery and SimplePress Forum.

These two plugins benefit greatly from using a full width page template i.e. no sidebar. So I will not go into the full intricacies of page templates and their many uses and implementations. Instead I will just show a simple example of how to create a full width page template with no sidebar. Ideally used for galleries and forums.

First of all open the directory containing all your Wordpress template files, normally found here: your-root/wp-content/themes/your-theme-name/

Look for the file entitled ‘page.php’ open it in your favourite code editor. Next create a new file called ‘page_fullwidth.php’ or similar in the same folder as page.php.

Next copy all the code from page.php and paste it into page_fullwidth.php, you can now close page.php as you no longer need it.

You must tell Wordpress that this file is a page template, to do this we must add the following code right at the top of the code:

You can call the template whatever you want, instead of ‘Page Full Width’ you could use ‘Forum’ or ‘Gallery’. This is the name that will be displayed (and can be set) in the ‘Attributes’ section on the right hand side under ‘Template’ in the add/edit page screen.

OK, now you are ready to make the changes to the structure of the page. In this case we want to remove the sidebar. so look for the following line and remove it:

Now you have to add some CSS. Namely adding divs that are the correct width for the new page. SO your CSS will probably have a container for the content called ‘container’ or ‘contentwrapper’ etc and will probably look something like this:

#contentwrapper {
	float:left;
	width: 620px;
	margin: 0 0 15px 10px;
	padding: 0;
	text-align: left;
  }

Obviously the width is to small to allow content to flow right across your new page template so me must change it to match the width of the containg div (if your theme is full screen and all widths are in percentages dont worry about doing this, most are fixed width these days though). Anyway create a new contentwrapper just for this page template. It should look something like this:

#contentwrapper2 {
	float:left;
	width: 910px;
	margin: 0 10px 15px 10px;
	padding:0;
	text-align: left;
  }

Remember and change the div declaration name in your page_fullwidth.php:

so the page template uses the new CSS.

There you have it, a full width page template with no sidebar.

Check out my next tutorial and learn how to setup and implement multiple/different sidebars, footers, headers and comment templates.

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