Theme Customization easy as 1,2,3 with Firebug
I often get support questions like “I want to change the color of element “X” from default black to red” (or similar). If you have a look into the CSS files you normally should find out pretty fast which areas you need to edit to change colors, fonts and even sizes of specific elements. But sometimes it´s not so obvious and searching for the right CSS selector can be a pain. The famous Firefox addon “Firebug” makes it easy as 1,2 3 to find the right CSS.
Custom Excerpt “more” Link in BranfordMagazine
Recently I have written about individual excerpt lenghts in BranfordMagazine. Today I will show you how to customize the excert “more” textstring and make it a real clickable link for a better user experience. If you use BranfordMagazine version 4.2 that functionality is already included by default.
WyntonMagazine – The “3-Column Page”
Setting up the additional page template for the three-column-page in WyntonMagazine version 1.x is a bit different to the way it´s done for BranfordMagazine as of version 4.x. The main difference is, Wynton does not have an options panel yet and you need to do some minor code changes. This tutorial shows you how it works. Don´t worry. It´s easy as 1,2,3.
Images not displaying? Solving possible issues with TimThumb
BranfodMagazine uses the great open source TimThumb image resizer script, by famous WordPress developer Darren Hoyt, to automaticly crop and scale images to fit into their position on the homepage, the archives (e.g the category archive) and the additional 3-column page template. Normally it runs without any issue but sometimes images are not properly displayed. This tutorial explains the basic requirements for the script to run.
How to edit the tabed interface of BranfordMagazine
BranfordMagazine comes with a nice tabed interface on the homepage. By default (see my demosite) it has three pre-defined tabs but of course you can add or remove tabs to meet your specific requirements.
Setup the homepage of WyntonMagazine with categories and images
WyntonMagazine, my prominent Wordpress magazine style theme, unfortunately does not have an optionspanel in the backend in the current version 1.1. That´s why you need to adopt some things right in the code. But don´t worry: It´s no rocketscience and this tutorial shows you how.
Using optional excerpts for more content control
In another article I already wrote about using individual excerpt lengths in BranfordMagazine. This brief tutorial shows you how to use individual excerpts for every post in order to get more control over your content. I use this in the leadarticle of my BranfordMagazine demosite.
Individual Excerpt lengths in BranfordMagazine 4
BranfordMagazine uses the excerpt template tag for auto-shortening texts on the homepage and in other areas. This is nothing spectacular since many themes do it like that. But BranfordMagazine (as of version 4.1) uses the power of WordPress 2.9x to provide a function for individual excerpt lengths. Be aware that this doesn´t work with WP versions prior to 2.9. By default this is used for shorter excerpts in the featured articles section.
How to find the category IDs in WordPress
If you setup BranfordMagazine for the first time you need the category IDs to define which categories are displayed e.g on the homepage. This is not very obvious since WordPress version 2.5 anymore. This tutorial shows two simple ways how th figure out the IDs.
Using images on the homepage of BranfordMagazine
The use of images in BranfordMagazine is as easy as 1, 2, 3. Just write your article, upload an image, publish it and you´re done. You don´t even need to insert the image inside the article.
