One of my themes has a generated sidebar title for the default sidebar. However, on the dynamic version of this when someone chooses their widgets, it uses the standard construction inside a functions.php file via register_sidebar() to construct the structure of the widget. This is common for 99% of the themes, and would never really need to be looked at, like so:

if (function_exists(‘register_sidebar’))
 register_sidebar(array(‘name’ => ’sidebar1′,
  ’before_widget’ => ‘<li id=”%1$s” class=”widget %2$s”>’,
  ’after_widget’ => ‘</li>’,
  ’before_title’ => ‘<h2 class=”widgettitle”>’,
  ’after_title’ => ‘</h2>’,
 ));

Clearly though, this is unacceptable when you need to generate the sidebar title and have a specific font for it, that is created from a script. It was quite difficult in finding this little known function, but Adrian Mummey has written a great article on it and shown how to use it.

So first of all, I cleaned out that sidebar registration in the functions.php file, so now it’s bare like so:

if (function_exists(‘register_sidebar’))
 register_sidebar(array(‘name’ => ’sidebar1′,
  ’before_widget’ => ”,
  ’after_widget’ => ”,
  ’before_title’ => ”,
  ’after_title’ => ”,
 ));

Now, further down in the same functions.php file follow Adrian’s instructions and add this:

add_filter(‘dynamic_sidebar_params’, ‘reclamation_sidebar_params’);

For me this was part of the theme I was fixing, Reclamation, so I named my function reclamation_sidebar_params(). This is where the magic is, here is that function which I fleshed out:

function reclamation_sidebar_params($params){
 $params[0]['before_widget'] = ‘<div class=”block”><div class=”block_title”>’;
 $params[0]['before_title'] = ‘<h3><img src=”‘ . get_bloginfo(’stylesheet_directory’) . ‘/sidebartitles.php?letters=’ . @$params[0]['widget_name'] . ‘” />’;
 $params[0]['after_widget'] = ‘</div><div class=”block_bottom”>  $params[0]['after_title'] = '</h3></div>

 return $params;
}

This function lets you really got to town on the sidebar parameters, which the ordinary method does not. Now with the code above as you can see, I called a php file called sidebartitles.php which created the text using a separate font. This is one method of making sure a theme uses a font regardless of whether the viewer has it on their machine.

So thanks to Adrian, this is a method to really tailor your sidebar, very useful if you’re a theme author and want to go to town on your creation.

Then I found a great post by Matt at Webmaster-Source. He detailed a way to upload an image in the functions.php file, absolutely perfect for what I wanted. But my problem was that I needed multiple media uploads on the page, which he nearly had but just needed a slight alteration.

Basically add a simple form with these two lines in:

<input id=”upload_image” type=”text” size=”36″ name=”upload_image” value=”" />
<input id=”upload_image_button” type=”button” value=”Upload Image” />

So here is his javascript (jquery) code that handles it:

$(document).ready(function() {
 $(‘#upload_image_button’).click(function() {
  formfield = $(‘#upload_image’).attr(‘name’);
  tb_show(”, ‘media-upload.php&type=image&TB_iframe=true’);
  return false;
 });

 window.send_to_editor = function(html) {
  imgurl = $(‘img’,html).attr(’src’);
  $(‘#upload_image’).val(imgurl);
  tb_remove();
 }
});

So I altered it just a tiny little bit and here is the alteration. The first bit is to take his first function and slightly alter it for each instance of the form, the ‘upload_image_button‘ id and the formfield variable that selects the ‘upload_image‘ id:

 $(‘#upload_image_button’).click(function() {
  formfield = $(‘#upload_image’).attr(‘name’);
  tb_show(”, ‘media-upload.php?type=image&TB_iframe=true’);
  return false;
 });

In the second function, use the variable that he had set up earlier (formfield):

 window.send_to_editor = function(html) {
  imgurl = $(‘img’,html).attr(’src’);
  $(‘#’ + formfield).val(imgurl);
  tb_remove();
 }

That should do it. Every time the media file is selected, then the submit/upload button event puts the media (image, in my case) url into the input box. Use your functions.php know-how to save it as an option for your theme, and use it as a background etc.,

What has changed? Well I have added twitter support, so in the admin backend you can put your twitter username, and how many tweets to show, and then in the widgets section add a widget to a sidebar to show them.

Also there has been a minor fix in the excerpts section. People have reminded me that I had left in references to the_excerpt_reloaded() which shouldn’t be there, and I’ve put it back to the_excerpt().

So far so good, it’s nearly done. The final bits and pieces are now under way, the browser work to make sure it’s ok on all (most) browsers. I will -not- be developing for IE6, it’s a waste of time.

At this point that’s about it, I had hoped to get it done for this weekend, but it looks like this week.

Someone had asked about jquery – yes it’ll have jquery, and yes you’ll need it.

It will be a 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 column wordpress theme. It will be (of course, given the number of possible derivations) highly customizable, and with lots of admin backend options, it is suitably complex. Hopefully I will be able to get this released this coming weekend, we’ll see!

The theme is transparent for modern browsers – this won’t work with older browsers, but then again given we’re in the latter stages of 2009, people should be using a modern browser anyway.

There are some backend admin alterations, but these are mostly for user experience.

One of these that I found out solely by accident today is centering. We used to use FlexiSign to design signs, and it’s a powerful package in its own right but Illustrator is better suited for our purposes.

Centering however, became an issue. In Flexi all we’d do is select a group of elements by clicking and ctrl-clicking then click one button to center it all or right align, left align, and so on. Easy. In Illustrator you’d select your elements, go to the align box, use the dropdown menu and select the align by object then go back to the drawing board, select the object, then back to the panel to select what alignment you wanted like center, left align and so on. Very laborious especially when you’re used to two steps.

Today I found a quicker way. You select your objects in the drawing board by click then ctrl-clicking, release any held button then left-click on the object to be aligned against (rather than use the dropdown menu in the panel), then click on the relevant alignment button. SOO much easier.

This is an older two-column corporate-style theme that has been recently updated for full release. It has a Thesis analog which was actually developed first before this new release, but this theme has been in constant use for over a year now at the GRS Sign Company blog.

This WordPress Theme is a two-column theme with theme options on the backend. As you can see from the screenshot below, the ‘Green Col. Options’ appear in the Appearance section. Clicking it leads you to the theme options page.

You can set the global font style in the theme options too, as well as the font size. This sets the font throughout the theme. If you want to add more you can edit the functions.php file and add them in (there are comments to show where) although there is already a comprehensive list.

The menu options let you select what pages in the blog that you want added to the menu bar in the blog. By selecting your twitter username, the twitter icon will be added on the right side of the menu.

The theme is fully widgetised and the search widget has been slightly modified inside the functions file.

The theme has been tested and built on WordPress 2.8.4 and presumably works with others in the same development line although this is not tested. The platforms that it has been successfully tested on are: FireFox 3.5.2, Opera 9.64/10, IE7/8, Safari 4.0.6,.

If you like this wordpress theme, or others, please consider making a donation.

Download the Green Column Theme (current version 1.0.0 – October 17th, 2009). Not released yet, due on the 17th.

The release page for the Reclamation Thesis Theme just shows a screenshot and has a little bit of blurb. I will of course be updating it if any bugs are found. You can see this in action here, although as I do more Thesis ports that site will update with them instead of the Reclamation theme.

On the viewing side it’s easy too, but codewise, this is a way that can let you separate your posts, or do something special to those that have been posted today, maybe add a ‘New’ graphic, or ‘Posted Today’, or something like that.

Easy to do, like this:

$post_date = mysql2date(“Ymd”, $post->post_date);
if ($post_date == date(‘Ymd’)) {
?>
<div class=”post-new”> </div>
<?php
}

In this case it’s shown in the theme I created for Percent Savings, where a ‘New’ graphic is shown on the right side of the index page if there is a new post. You can do a whole slough of things though, maybe add some reply options?

I linked the mysql2date function to the Codex, it’s useful in this, and can be used for more than just the day. Perhaps you want to highlight an entire week, or the last hour (if you have a -really- busy blog)?