Hints and Tips
Hide Wordpress Update Nag Without a Plugin
Feb 18th by Neil under Hints and Tips, Wordpress
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!!
Using multiple/different headers, sidebars, footers and comment templates in Wordpress
Sep 29th by Neil under Hints and Tips, Web Design, Wordpress
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!
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) PostsPage Templates in Wordpress
Sep 29th by Neil under Hints and Tips, Tutorials, Web Design, Wordpress
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:
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.
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) PostsUsing Google Adsense for Search in Wordpress
Sep 4th by Neil under Hints and Tips, Tutorials, Wordpress
Google Custom Search
OK so first things first:
Create a page called ’search’ or ’search results’ in the admin section of your Wordpress site. Take a note of the page id, this can normally be found if you hover the mouse pointer over the ‘View Page’ link or go to ‘Edit’ in the Pages menu and hover over the search page (its the number at the end you need). I would also select the full page template for the search page (what do you mean your theme doesnt have a sidebar-less full page? Spose I could write a tut on that too). Good now we have the search page published and the id of said page.
Next create your Google Custom Search in your adsense account. I’ll not go through all the steps but remember and get the search page url right and set the width correctly for the page! OK you should now have your search code blocks. Highlight the second block of code, go to your Wordpress admin and edit the search page and insert the code into the main text window (use html view and publish).
Then highlight the first/top Google code block and put that in your theme wherever you want the search to appear.
That should be the search fully operational test it in some different browsers to check. “WAIT” I here you cry. I dont want a stupid page called Search Results in my page menu! Quite right, remember the page id I told you to take note of, well here is where you use it.
In your sidebar code you will no doubt have a line like this:
We need to add an exclude function to this line which will look something like this:
Change the ‘86′ to what ever your page id is and hey presto the jiggery pokery is complete!
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) PostsPassword box different size from text box in IE
Jul 23rd by Neil under Hints and Tips, Web Design
Just a little web design hint for your enjoyment.
If you have forms on your website you know how annoying it is that IE renders password boxes smaller than normal text boxes. Well there is a quick and easy CSS fix:
input{
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:12px;
}
Obviously you can change the family and size to suit your site.
More Advanced Menu only logged in users or certain users can see
Jul 23rd by Neil under Hints and Tips, Tutorials, Wordpress
This is a follow on tutorial from the previous one: Menu only logged in users or certain users can see
In this one Ive added a few extra features. I suddenly thought about the previous tutorial example and saw that any logged in user can see the control panel menu in the sidebar and all the options within it. What if you only want users of a certain level to see the ‘Write New Post’ and ‘Write New Page’ options.
OK Im just gonna list the whole block of code for the sidebar login that I have implemented on this site then talk a bit about the new bits:
OK so if you have read my earlier tutorials on this topic you will recognise a lot of this code and Im not going over it here. So lets take a look at the new bits so we know what changes have been made.
First new line is after the else statement. This basically sets the user level that can access the following menu code. I have set this to level 2, as users granted level 2 status on effutio can write posts etc, but you can set this to whatever level you like (see my previous login tutorial for Wordpress pre set levels).
Then you will notice I have added a second else statement which allows any other users which are lower than level 2 to see a different menu again. Because any user lower than a level 2 cant write posts etc they can only see the ‘Dashboard’ and ‘Logout’ links.
Well I really love this login/menu code for the sidebar, I hope you do too.
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) PostsDisplay your Wordpress posts on other pages
Jul 6th by Neil under Hints and Tips, Tutorials, Wordpress
Here is the scenario:
You have a Wordpress blog in a subfolder on your website. The main website might be static html or even php pages and you want to display your Wordpress blog posts on the other ‘main website’ pages.
How do you do that?
Well I shall enlighten thee! Firstly I assume that you have your blog site in a subfolder (my subfolder is cms – so change this to your folder name), secondly if your other pages are html that is to say they are named ‘index.html’ you will have to rename them to ‘index.php’ etc. Now this will upset your links so I would do it in Dreamweaver so it automatically updates all your links.
After renaming all your files you can now start the coding, put the following code at the top (I mean the top! Before any html or anything) of each page that is to display the recent posts:
Note: change ‘cms’ to your folder name containing your wordpress blog. To control how many recent posts are displayed change the ’showposts=5′ line to however many you want (leave it like this and it will display 5….obviously)
OK all good so far! Now we need the code that will display the posts, place this somewhere in your page:
Now this will simply list your post titles, which are linked to the relative post. There are other options when listing them, you may want to list the excerpt and a read more link etc. If so the code will look like this:
Read more...
You can also pull in the your Wordpress pages instead of the recent posts, simply use this code:
Replace this line
query_posts('showposts=5');
with
query_posts('page_id=7');
or
query_posts('pagename=about');
Pretty sweet – I recently used it on www.honeybeekeeping.co.uk
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) PostsMenu only logged in users or certain users can see
Jul 6th by Neil under Hints and Tips, Tutorials, Wordpress
I thought I would add this as a quick follow on from my previous tutorial showing you how to make a login form in your Wordpress sidebar (find it here), it used a technique to show a menu once a user had logged in.
So if you want to hide a menu from readers but show it to registered users you could use the following example:
Say you had a menu that looked something like this in your sidebar:
Registered User Menu
-
Registered user menu options here!
If you only wanted registered users to be able to see and use this menu simply add <?php if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ){ ?> before the code above and of course close the php statement with <?php }?> at the end of it. Nice one now only registered, logged in users can see the menu!
What if you need a menu that only appears to users of a certain level? Well can use another handy php staement. Place <?php if (current_user_can('level_10')){ ?> at the beginning of your menu code block and close it again with <?php }?>. This example will show the menu only to admins ‘level_10′ you can change this to suit whichever user level you want. Below is the standard wordpress user level list:
Administrator: level_10
Editor: level_7
Author: level_2
Contributor: level_1
Subscriber: level_0 (although you would never use this as you could use is_user_logged_in() function)
You can of course create your own user roles and levels using this plugin
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) PostsLogin directly from a page in Wordpress using a sidebar login form
Jul 6th by Neil under Hints and Tips, Tutorials, Wordpress
As you can see I use a sidebar login for here on Effutio.com that completely bypasses the standard Wordpress 2.8 login screen page. No big deal you may be thinking but it is one less page that users have to wait to load, it adds a professional look and encourages people to login.
OK now that you are convinced that being able to login from home page (or any page where the code is placed) I’ll show you how to achieve it. Ive placed my login form at the top of the sidebar but feel free to experiment putting it elsewhere (maybe the header).
So we need to create a form that captures and the users login details, here is mine:
Insert this form code into your sidebar code probably between some <li> tags and hey presto you have a login form that allows users to login directly from the page. You will also see a checkbox allowing users to stay logged in too just like the standard Wordpress login page (so we dont lose any functionality).
Lets expand on the above form by adding the option for users to register and recover their password if forgotten! These two lines of code do the job:
Excellent now it looks really professional and has everything we need…….or does it. What about logging out I hear you cry! Yeh it would be cool if the option to logout only appeared if the user was already logged in! Well I’ll show you how to do that too. So how do we say ‘if the user is not logged in show the the login form and if not show the alternative menu with logout option’? Like this:
Login
Control Panel
You can see that I display a control panel menu when the login form is not displayed. This code is taken directly from my sidebar.php file and of course you will probably have to adapt it slightly to fit your own theme.
This code is designed to work with Wordpress 2.8+, it wont work in previous versions.
You can take this hidden menu further and I do in my next tutorial here
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) PostsPre-installation Wordpress checklist
Jun 22nd by Neil under Hints and Tips, Wordpress
I want to run through the things I do with Wordpress before I even upload it to my server. My host offers the option to install it directly into a sub-domain folder but I prefer to upload it myself, and have the exact copy on my hard disk as is on the server.
I edit and create my Wordpress 2.8 themes in Dreamweaver using the ThemeDreamer extension. I really cant recommend both of them highly enough, I couldn’t live without them!
Well here is my Wordpress checklist I hope it helps (part of the reason of writing it is to remind me too!):
1. Create an email address on my server (host) associated with the new installation.
2. Rename the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php. Then edit its contents. Define your database name, database username and password that you have set up on your server (host). I have created one database to hold all my wordpress doings, that way I never need to create a new database on the server etc. However if you do this (which I advise) you have to change line 56 on wp-config.php; $table_prefix = ‘***_’; replace the *** with the prefix of your choice, normally a shortened version of your domain name.
3. Open this file in folder /wp-includes/class-phpmailer.php; enter the email address from step 1 into lines 75 and 88. If you are on a shared host i.e. Bluehost, Justhost or Hostmonster then this setting is especially important as it will make sure that emails from your Wordpress site will have a ’valid from header’ (the sender of the email). If you dont change this on a shared host the email comes from username@box***@yourhost.com….very undesirable. The code should look something like this:
var $From ='info@yourdomain.com'; /**   * Sets the From name of the message.   * @var string   */  var $FromName         = 'Root User';  /**   * Sets the Sender email (Return-Path) of the message. If not empty,   * will be sent via -f to sendmail or as 'MAIL FROM' in smtp mode.   * @var string   */  var $Sender           = 'info@yourdomain.com';
4. Change and customise the admin graphics (login graphic etc). Find them in /wp-admin/images/. The ones you want are named: logo.gif, logo-ghost.png, logo-login.gif, wordpress-logo.png, wp-logo.gif and wp-logo-vs.gif. So 6 images to change in total. Keep them the same size and file type, just change the way the look. Open them up in Photoshop or Fireworks and stick in your website logo. If the images do not look as expected then you will have to optimise or save the file with the correct settings i.e. for .gif files choose the ‘web adaptive’ setting.
5. Open /wp-settings.php and edit line 13 to read ‘64M’ instead of ‘32M’. This is not absolutely necessary but if you intend to extend the functionality of your Wordpress site by using multiple plugins then this is good practise. Personally I think Wordpress should set it to 64M as standard.
Well thats my top 5 suggestions on pre-installation changes to Wordpress. Now your good to upload!
Let me know what pre-installation changes you make to Wordpress 2.8 using the comment form below.
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