AutoFocus 2.0

A new and vastly improved version of AutoFocus is now available at my professional design & development site fthrwght.com.

Here’s a brief description:
In short, AutoFocus 2.0 is a clean and simple WordPress theme developed for photographers looking to showcase their work. A slight departure from the original verision, AutoFocus 2.0 takes things a bit further by providing stronger markup, better browser support, and Theme options that enable you to customize various elements of the theme without ever touching code. I’ve also ported over the back-end to Thematic, one of (if not) the strongest WordPress theming frameworks to date. That means AutoFocus 2.0 and Thematic come together to make for a pretty slick theme that can be used for almost any type of site. There’s both a Free version and a Pro version($15) available which comes with tons of new and ever developing features.
Speaking of features, here’s a few notable ones:

  1. 5 widgetized sidebar areas.
  2. Fully configurable color options through an admin options page.
  3. An optional EXIF data display.
  4. An optional Featured Posts section which pulls “sticky” posts and displays them front and center.
  5. Much improved CSS styles for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, & Internet Explorer (including the dreaded IE6!).
  6. An admin configurable logo option (Pro Version only).
  7. A per-post sliding Gallery (Pro Version only).
  8. And tons more…

I hope you like it!

Neutica+ for Thematic

Neutica+ is quite simply a ‘suped-up’ version of the original Neutica theme created over a year ago. Neutica+ is a much stronger theme both on the front-end and the back-end. The CSS for the front-end has been slimmed down to the bare minimum, which makes page loads much faster and editing easier. I also ported over the back-end to Thematic, one of the (if not the) strongest WordPress theming frameworks to date. That means Neutica+ and Thematic together make for a pretty slick theme design that can be used for almost any type of site. The Neutica+ theme options page also makes it a cinch to customize, while fixing a lot of the common issues/concerns that popped up in the previous version. Check out the demo, and if you like what you see, buy it now for only $15.

More info here.

How to add Youtube video to a WordPress post — The EASY way.

One of my clients recently asked me how they could add a Youtube video to their blog post. I thought that the correct way to do this was common WordPress knowledge, so I figured I could point them to an easy to find Youtube video with instructions on how to do this. I was shocked when I couldn't find a single video on how to add Video to a WordPress post, without using a plugin OR switching to the HTML editor (which is SCARY to many of my clients). Granted, with WP versions prior to 2.5, switching to the HTML editor was the way to go. But it seems like no one knows about this 'secret' button that makes adding Video to WP super simple in WP 2.5+. That said, I am going to let the secret to this button out of the box.

Step 1 - Reveal the extra WYSIWYG icons.

Default WordPress Post Editor icons

Default WordPress Post Editor icons

The default WordPress post editor probably looks something like the image above. To get to the 'MAGIC' button just click this icon: Advanced WYSIWYG Editor which opens up a ton of other WordPress features that very few people seems to talk about. Continue reading →

Custom Category/Post Template Plugin.

This is probably the single most valuable plugin to date (exaggeration?). It basically checks to see if a post in a certain category, and then assigns that post a separate custom template. Genius. And it doesn’t stop there. It also, allows you to assign a custom template to any post ID which means you can make one specific page look completely different than all of the others — an extremely powerful plugin.

I found this over at wpelements.com in an old feed article. The plugin was created by Ryan Boren way back in 2005 and it is still very much effective today.

Here’s the code. Enjoy.

Updated to use dynamic categories on 10/11/2010


/*
Plugin Name: Custom Post Templates
Plugin URI: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://boren.nu/">http://boren.nu/</a>
Description: Load custom single post templates.
Author: Ryan Boren
Author URI: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://boren.nu/">http://boren.nu/</a>
Author: Lon F. Binder
Author URI: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.foodmayhem.com/">http://www.foodmayhem.com/</a>
Version: 0.9.1
*/

function cpt_custom_post_template($template) {
global $wp_query;

$post = $wp_query-&gt;post;
$id = $post-&gt;ID;

$templatePath = get_template_directory();

// If a template exists for this post ID, load it.
if (file_exists("$templatePath/single-$id.php")) {
return "$templatePath/single-$id.php";
}

// If a template exists for this post's category ID, load it.
$categories = get_the_category($id);
// TODO: ascend parents for hierarchical single cat templates
foreach ($categories as $cat) {
$catId = $cat-&gt;cat_ID;
if (file_exists("$templatePath/single-cat-$catId.php")) {
return "$templatePath/single-cat-$catId.php";
}
}

return $template;
}

add_filter('single_template', 'cpt_custom_post_template');