Search Engine Optimized (SEO), Adsense-Ready Free WordPress Themes
I have uploaded the latest beta build, Beta 2 of WP Post Thumbnail 0.2 to the website. You can download the plugin here.
Beta 2 contains mainly bugfixes, error handling and compatibility updates for WordPress 2.8 (currently in beta 2) which should be released soon.
I’ve also created a dedicated page for WP Post Thumbnail plugin. It’s something which I should have done earlier.
Hi guys,
Would you mind testing WP Post Thumbnail 0.2 beta 1? You’ll find a link to download the plugin in a zipped file at the bottom of this post. It is placed down there in hope that you might spare a few minutes of your time to read about WP Post Thumbnail 0.2 beta 1.
Here’s a rundown of version 0.2’s major changes and things to note:
Continue reading ‘WP Post Thumbnail 0.2 beta 1′
Download WP Post Thumbnail 0.1.8
Update 27th May 2009: WP Post Thumbnail 0.2 Beta 2 has been released for testing. I urge you to install 0.2 Beta 2 because WP Post Thumbnail 0.1.8 codebase is not longer maintained.
WP Post Thumbnail plugin adds an image upload, crop and save panel in ‘Write Post’ screen. It allows you to easily upload a .jpg image file. Once the image file is uploaded, you can crop it before saving it as your thumbnail. That’s it.
Spend less time messing around with Photoshop everytime you need to make a thumbnail (or two) for your post. Also, saves you time and trouble from manually copy-and-pasting uploaded image URLs into custom key value fields.
For theme developers, particularly magazine-style WordPress theme developers, you can configure up to 3 different thumbnails to be used in each post. For instance,
- a big 320px by 180px widescreen thumbnail for leading featured post to be displayed prominently on the front page.
- a square 125px by 125px thumbnail for recent posts.
Dimensions as varied as your theme requires can be easily configured in an XML file. Save the file as ‘wppt.xml‘ and put it in your theme’s folder (ideally, the main folder but any folder will do). WP Post Thumbnail will scan your theme folders, look for your theme’s ‘wppt.xml‘ file and read your theme’s thumbnail(s) configuration.
Doing away with manual custom fields
I’m capturing the steps to upload and crop various formats of thumbnails for WordPress entries. It is one of the main features I’m building for use in my free WordPress theme. Previously, my solution for assigning thumbnails to WordPress entries was via “custom fields“. After a while of using custom fields, it began to feel tedious and I looked for a better way to handle thumbnails.
On top of that, one of my themes in development allows the use of up to 3 thumbnail formats (widescreen, square and rectangle) for every WordPress entries. Can you imagine every time you write a post, you have to fire up Photoshop to create three thumbnails. Each of them in different dimensions and aspect ratios. Uploading them to your blog. And finally copy-and-paste their URLs to custom keys. It certainly needs a more streamlined and convenient way of handling thumbnails. Manually doing it the custom field way just won’t cut it in the long run.
Continue reading ‘WordPress post thumbnails without manual custom fields’
WordPress 2.6.1 is out. A maintenance release but for many including myself, it’s the time to move up to 2.6 altogether.
As I look back the past few weeks of testing 2.6 on several blogs, I’m delighted to say it’s been a wonderfully smooth experience. Unlike the upgrade to WordPress 2.5, my sites did not experience much trouble when using WordPress 2.6. I deployed 2.6 on several websites and found it was a breeze to work with. It played well with my themes too. Plugins did not break down. Tonight I’ll be upgrading all my sites running WordPress to 2.6.1 and I hope I won’t run into any problems.
As WordPress theme designers, we’re often faced between the choice of going for purely CSS drop-down menu or javascript drop-down menus in our struggle with cross-browser compatibility.
The aim of this short tutorial is help you build a simple multi-level drop-down menu in your WordPress theme using jQuery’s JavaScript library to ensure cross-browser compatibility.
Continue reading ‘WordPress Multi-Level Drop Down menu using jQuery’
… or perhaps entries posted in the last 48 hours? Ever wanted to put a small image label next to your post telling readers “Hey, this post is barely 2 days old. It’s new!”
Of course, putting a new post label is nothing new. But again, this tiny feature does not come with default WordPress. Luckily with just one or two lines of PHP code, you can modify your WordPress theme to label your new entries automatically.
The following code sample shows how you can label your posts with a tiny image ‘new.gif’ if your post is less than 2 days old. Within your latest entries Loop, we’ll put the ‘new.gif’ image label right new to your post title:
Continue reading ‘Putting a ‘New Post’ image label next to WordPress entries posted within the last 24 hours’
WordPress has given the first planned release date of 7th July 2008 the miss and aiming for the next which is 14th July 2008. There’s a couple of hours left to see if it manage to keep its deadline if WordPress gets released tonight.
WordPress Release Candidate 1 has just been released two days ago so I really doubt they’ll make it today. Of course, I’d be glad to be proven wrong this time.
Sorry for the long and confusing title. Do allow me to illustrate and describe what I have in mind.
What we’re going to do here is for every top-level categories, we will:
Something like what we have here on the right illustration. Using WordPress, I’ve always wanted to replicate the myriad of ways most news and magazine-style websites present its contents.
If you are familiar with wp_list_categories(), which is the one of main category tags that handles how categories are formatted and displayed, you’ll realise wp_list_categories() alone is not enough. We’ll also use get_categories(), get_cat_ID()and a wpdb query direct into WordPress’s database.
Also, I think the coding in this article is more suited for WordPress themers who prefer to hard-code it into their themes. The solution is a very straightforward sequential code where you can just copy and paste it into your sidebar.php (or wherever you wish) for instance.
Let’s get down to the source codes …
