Custom Post Type

You like that carousel / slider in the home page? Well that is due to the amazing code known as the roundabout by Fred LeBlanc. You can easily change the contents of this carousel in two ways:

1) Using a custom post type

In the left hand side of the admin area you will notice a section called “Roundabouts”. Simply add a new roundabout and give it a title, some content and attach a “feature image”.

The images are automatically resized to the right dimensions. Also – you’re only allowed up to 5 roundabouts.

2) Change the static code

If you decide you don’t want to use the custom post type feature – you can simply change the HTML. Inside home.php you will see an unordered list with each item as follows:

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<li><a href="#"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/586x360.jpg" alt="Need Image Here" /></a><div class="hiddendesc">Need to Enter Image</div></li>

Simply replace the values of your images, title and link and you’re set to go.

The Navigation Menu

This by far is my favorite 3.0 feature – custom menus. It’s simply amazing. I’ve added the code to Rotary that lets you design the main navigation of the theme.

Simply drag and drop items to the menu builder and save.

Feature Images

Just like the roundabout items – all posts in this theme can have its own feature image. Simply use the “Set feature Image” option for each post:

This image will show as thumbnails in the archive pages, and a medium photo inside the single page template:

Conclusion

Truly by using the features above – you can utilize the power of WordPress 3.0 as well as turn your blog into a cool CMS. Give Rotary a spin – it’s cool, it works and it’s free!

So, why do I give away my themes away?

Because I believe in you people. I believe that if you like my work so much – that you’ll follow me in Twitter, like me in Facebook or even subscribe to my feed. I believe that you WILL NOT remove my credits in the bottom of the theme. I even believe that you will make a small donation – so I can keep building other things that can be useful to you in the future.

First thing you have to do is check the “Anyone can Register” option under “Settings” > “General”. Don’t forget to leave the “New User Default Role” as “Subscriber”.

Lock Down the Registration Process

Now that you have your site open for registration, it is best that you install these plugins first to enable tighter security:

Hide the WP Admin Panel

So registration is open, security is tight – you still don’t want users to see your WordPress admin area. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – but it just looks more sophisticated when all is done in the front end. Install the following plugins:

The following screenshots show the login page, as well as the profile page generated by the plugins that I’ve mentioned:

TDO Mini Forms

We’ve come to the meat of the project. This is the plugin that does all the magic. TDO Mini Forms allows users (registered on not registered) to submit and edit posts to your blog. It comes with its form creator that lets you design the post submission form any way you want. Widgets that let you drag and drop components into your form, as well as a form “hacker” that allows even deeper code tweaking. What I especially liked is that it hooks up with your “Akismet” for spam protection.

After specifying all the configuration settings with TDO, go ahead and create a form with “Form Creator”. The form creator is a somewhat decent drag and drop interface where you grab the widgets in the bottom and drag it to the form. Widget settings are applied by clicking on the settings tab and it brings up the settings window as shown below:

Once you’ve decided on the fields and the settings, you can now alter the code to change the verbiage, along with adding HTML elements in order to be able to style it in your stylesheet. Below shows my contribute form:

Maybe some Custom Code

Depending on your pages – you might need to add some PHP conditional tags and functions to the theme manually. This is to link the new pages to each other. Simply copy your theme’s page.php file and rename it to something.php – convert it into a template by adding the code on top of the page:

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<?php
/*
Template Name: something
*/
?>

Now below the call for the content, add the conditional tag with from the Theme My Login plugin:

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<?php if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {?>
   <div >I bet you would like to submit a Guest Post. Click <a href="yourwebsite.com/conribute">here</a> to access the contribute form. </div>
<?php } ?>

The screenshot below shows the custom link to the contribute form that we just created:

All you have to do now is to wait for guest post submissions and depending on the content – simply approve, edit or deny. The submissions are saved as draft posts and are in the moderation view of TDO mini forms:

Conclusion

Now that you have converted your blog into a more automated (and sophisticated) posting process – think of all the possible scenarios you can create. Of course I’m completely aware that my guest posts will not land any successful submissions any time soon – it’s just good to know that it’s available. Not to mention, it was fun to make.

Let’s not forget to donate to the plugin authors!

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<div><?php wp_footer(); ?></div>

So much for a name change. Nonetheless, Aparatus is packed with features and design delight that aims to tickle your innermost web mag fancy. I have included extensive theme options that will leave you not needing to touch a single line of HTML. I have cufonized fonts for the headings and the site logos – that you need not create your own. I have modified the WordPress loop so much that it covered almost all possible looping scenario. Last of all, Aparatus comes with four different stylesheets targeted to suit your color schema.

Updated Twitter Badges!

I received enough comments on the Twitter badge to say “Follow ON Twitter” as supposed to “Follow IN Twitter“. So here they are:

• Maroon Badge
• Blue Badge
• Green Badge
• Black Badge

Simply replace the existing badge image in the Theme’s images folder.

The Slide Show

As for many magazine styled websites – a slideshow is a must have. Thanks to JonDesign’s Smooth Gallery – which made this possible. The slideshow by default pulls your five latest posts. The loop then continues to present the remaining of your posts directly below. The theme options allow total exclusion of the slideshow, as well as automatic slide. You can also specify a specific category to be pulled into the slideshow – without ever duplicating the posts in the bottom. All while the default loop logic is still acknowledged and functional. What this means is that – the loop still recognizes the options you enter in WordPress admin – not just in the theme (i.e. number of posts to show, etc); in addition, the paging system (next page etc) still works and automatically hides the slideshow in the inner pages. Oh, I also re-styled the WP-Navi Plugin (the right way), by de registering it’s default stylesheet.

WP 2.9 Thumbnail Ready!

The images in the slideshow as well as the thumbnails per post can be set by using the new “set as thumbnail” feature in WP 2.9!. This supersedes the old school way of inserting “custom-fields” – but will still work with either! You can use the thumbnail feature or custom fields set to “image”.

Ads, Twitter, Widgets and Everything else

The sidebar comes with advertising blocks which you can set up in the theme options panel. When you enter your Twitter account in the options, this will dictate the @replies in the Tweet Me buttons, the big “Follow my Updates” in the header, as well as the last tweet in the sidebar. The popular posts and recent comments tabbed area are all non-plugin driven – which means the code is all inclusive with the theme, without needing to install a plugin. Lastly, the sidebar supports widgets, the comments are threaded, gravatar – ready, as well as suckerfished drop down menus for the categories in the header.

That’s Enough! Download Already!

To view a live preview of Aparatus – click here. You can download the theme from this link. If you like the theme – you can do one of many things to keep me happy: Follow me in Twitter, Donate some coffee money, Tweet about it, subscribe to my feeds or even just leave a nice comment below.

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<div><?php wp_footer(); ?></div>

A number of leading designers have already dominated this WordPress premium themes market; quite notably: Woothemes, DIYThemes and StudioPress.

But amongst these big names you may have come across a more succinct, straightforward and classy premium theme designer – simply named “Elegant Themes“.

Who is Elegant Themes?

Elegant Themes is owned by a designer named Nick Roach. This means that all of the designs and code that is produced from Elegant Themes is from this mighty fellow. According to Nick:

I created this website to provide WordPress themes of quality and integrity. I craft my themes with a goal of simplicity and professionalism and strive to inject each design with a dose of modest elegance. I believe that your website is not just a tool, it is an integral part of your identity. My job is to respect each customer by providing attractive and userfriendly templates that will help you achieve your online goals.

What’s so special about Elegant Themes?

Quality over quantity. Elegant Themes is hardly a large collection – I mean, there’s only about 30 downloadable themes at the time of this writing. But note they are quite high quality. Check out some of them below:

Wooden

Very down to earth, classy and professionally done – this theme can transform your blog into a modern website wonder.

Lumin

Soothing to the eye with subtle textures and sharp, detailed accents – this theme is packed with visual amenities that scream WEB 2.0!

GrungeMag

Semi-magazine, semi-newspaper – beautiful textures, slider, thumbnails – simply stunning.

Evid

Create your own “Hulu” styled video website with this theme:

Deviant

The ultimate grunge look! Random page tears, crumpled paper, dirty textures – you want your blog to stand out from the crowd – this be the theme for you!

Like Nick said – “each design is injected with a dose of modest elegance”. With each theme you will find excellent color schema, superb use of typography, plenty of textures, just the right amount of Javascript, and above all – originality. The themes obviously took time to build.

You Can’t Beat 20 Bucks a Year!

I don’t think I can elaborate on this any further. $20 dollars a year gives you unlimited access to all of Elegant Themes. Whether you’re a blog owner, an entrepreneur, or even a web developer – you’ve already won by having this arsenal of elegant designs to beautify your websites; all for about the same price as a bucket of fried chicken. Head on over to Elegant Themes!

This tutorial will show you how to create a simple style switcher from your themes options panel. It will have a single drop down list with all the available styles to pick from. Once saved – your theme will switch to the selected style. Ready to get started – let’s begin:

Part 1 – Set up functions.php

First thing you need is a functions.php file. A functions file is an optional “plugin” type of file you can include in your theme directory folder. One of its’ purpose is to setup administration options for your theme – which is exactly what we’re doing. Create a file and name it “functions.php” and paste the code below. Note that you need to change variables that define your theme name ($themename) and the short name ($shortname) to match your themes:

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<?php 
 
$themename = "My Sweet Theme";
$shortname = "mst";
$options = array (
array( "name" => "Style Sheet",
	"desc" => "Enter the Style Sheet you would like to use for Sweet Ass Theme",
	"id" => $shortname."_style_sheet",
	"type" => "select",
	"options" => array("default", "green", "blue", "yellow"), 
	"std" => "default"),
);
?>

The above code initializes your theme options structure. First it defines several variables, including a multi-dimensional array (which will become our drop down list containing the four selectable options that will dictate our style sheets). Next is to copy the code below. This code loops through each iteration of the array we declared previously. It assigns a type of form field, displays labels and applies the correct descriptions etc. It also includes several functions that saves the form data, resets information and displays status messages etc. It’s a wee bit technical – so its better if we simply copy and paste the code.

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<?php
function mytheme_add_admin() {
 
global $themename, $shortname, $options;
 
if ( $_GET['page'] == basename(__FILE__) ) {
 
if ( 'save' == $_REQUEST['action'] ) {
 
foreach ($options as $value) {
update_option( $value['id'], $_REQUEST[ $value['id'] ] ); }
 
foreach ($options as $value) {
if( isset( $_REQUEST[ $value['id'] ] ) ) { update_option( $value['id'], $_REQUEST[ $value['id'] ]  ); } else { delete_option( $value['id'] ); } }
 
header("Location: themes.php?page=functions.php&saved=true");
die;
 
} else if( 'reset' == $_REQUEST['action'] ) {
 
foreach ($options as $value) {
delete_option( $value['id'] ); }
 
header("Location: themes.php?page=functions.php&reset=true");
die;
 
}
}
 
add_theme_page($themename." Options", "".$themename." Options", 'edit_themes', basename(__FILE__), 'mytheme_admin');
 
}
 
function mytheme_admin() {
 
global $themename, $shortname, $options;
 
if ( $_REQUEST['saved'] ) echo '<div id="message" class="updated fade"><p><strong>'.$themename.' settings saved.</strong></p></div>';
if ( $_REQUEST['reset'] ) echo '<div id="message" class="updated fade"><p><strong>'.$themename.' settings reset.</strong></p></div>';
 
?>
<div class="wrap">
<h2><?php echo $themename; ?> Settings</h2>
 
<form method="post">
 
<?php foreach ($options as $value) {
switch ( $value['type'] ) {
 
case "open":
?>
<table width="100%" border="0" style="background-color:#eef5fb; padding:10px;">
 
<?php break;
 
case "close":
?>
 
</table><br />
 
<?php break;
 
case "title":
?>
<table width="100%" border="0" style="background-color:#dceefc; padding:5px 10px;"><tr>
<td valign="top" colspan="2"><h3 style="font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><?php echo $value['name']; ?></h3></td>
</tr>
 
<!--custom-->
 
 
<?php break; 
case "sub-title":
?>
<h3 style="font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman',Times,serif; padding-left:8px;"><?php echo $value['name']; ?></h3> 
<!--end-of-custom-->
 
 
<?php break;
 
case 'text':
?>
 
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="20%" rowspan="2" valign="middle"><strong><?php echo $value['name']; ?></strong></td>
<td width="80%"><input style="width:400px;" name="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>" id="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>" type="<?php echo $value['type']; ?>" value="<?php if ( get_settings( $value['id'] ) != "") { echo get_settings( $value['id'] ); } else { echo $value['std']; } ?>" /></td>
</tr>
 
<tr>
<td><small><?php echo $value['desc']; ?></small></td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-bottom:5px;border-bottom:1px dotted #000000;">&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
 
<?php
break;
 
case 'textarea':
?>
 
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="20%" rowspan="2" valign="middle"><strong><?php echo $value['name']; ?></strong></td>
<td width="80%"><textarea name="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>" style="width:400px; height:200px;" type="<?php echo $value['type']; ?>" cols="" rows=""><?php if ( get_settings( $value['id'] ) != "") { echo get_settings( $value['id'] ); } else { echo $value['std']; } ?></textarea></td>
 
</tr>
 
<tr>
<td><small><?php echo $value['desc']; ?></small></td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-bottom:5px;border-bottom:1px dotted #000000;">&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
 
<?php
break;
 
case 'select':
?>
<tr>
<td width="20%" rowspan="2" valign="middle"><strong><?php echo $value['name']; ?></strong></td>
<td width="80%"><select style="width:240px;" name="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>" id="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>"><?php foreach ($value['options'] as $option) { ?><option<?php if ( get_settings( $value['id'] ) == $option) { echo ' selected="selected"'; } elseif ($option == $value['std']) { echo ' selected="selected"'; } ?>><?php echo $option; ?></option><?php } ?></select></td>
</tr>
 
<tr>
<td><small><?php echo $value['desc']; ?></small></td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-bottom:5px;border-bottom:1px dotted #000000;">&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
 
<?php
break;
 
case "checkbox":
?>
<tr>
<td width="20%" rowspan="2" valign="middle"><strong><?php echo $value['name']; ?></strong></td>
<td width="80%"><?php if(get_option($value['id'])){ $checked = "checked=\"checked\""; }else{ $checked = "";} ?>
<input type="checkbox" name="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>" id="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>" value="true" <?php echo $checked; ?> />
</td>
</tr>
 
<tr>
<td><small><?php echo $value['desc']; ?></small></td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-bottom:5px;border-bottom:1px dotted #000000;">&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
 
<?php break;
 
}
}
?>
 
<p class="submit">
<input name="save" type="submit" value="Save changes" />
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="save" />
</p>
</form>
<form method="post">
<p class="submit">
<input name="reset" type="submit" value="Reset" />
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="reset" />
</p>
</form>
 
<?php
}
add_action('admin_menu', 'mytheme_add_admin');
?>

Test out your theme options by going under the “Appearance” section > “Your Theme Name Options” tab. You will see the drop down list with the selectors already in place. Once you hit “Save Changes” – it saves your data. While clicking “Reset” sets it back to the default selector. We also see nice status messages appear on top each time we update.

Part 2 – Create the Style Sheets

Create four .css files that correspond to the drop down list selections we defined in our functions.php. The names do not have to exactly match the selectors (but is wise to have some meaningful relation to the names). Save these four files in the root directory of your theme:

style.css – this style sheet is for a black background page with white colored fonts.

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/* CSS Document */
body {background:#000000; color:#FFFFFF;}

green.css – this style sheet is for a green background page with white colored fonts.

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/* CSS Document */
body {background:#3bae09; color:#FFFFFF;}

blue.css – this style sheet is for a blue background page with white colored fonts.

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/* CSS Document */
body {background:#038aba; color:#FFFFFF;}

yellow.css – this style sheet is for… you get the picture.

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/* CSS Document */
body {background:#f6f658; color:#333333;}

Part 3 – The Switch Statement

Now that we have our options working in the back end, and we have our four style sheets sitting in the root folder waiting to be called, all we need now is a way to flip the style sheets in our header file. We achieve this by using a standard switch statement. A switch statement in php is an alternative to the the “if…else” statement. It uses the case keyword which we use to match our selectors to execute a statement that calls the appropriate style sheet. In the default header.php file – look for the line of code below and delete it:

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<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />

This is the standard call for the default style.css file which we no longer need. Next, paste the code below inside your header.php file:

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<?php
	global $options;
	foreach ($options as $value) {
		if (get_settings( $value['id'] ) === FALSE) { $$value['id'] = $value['std']; } else { $$value['id'] = get_settings( $value['id'] ); }
	}
	?>			
	<?php switch ($mst_style_sheet) {
		 case "default":?>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />
	<?php break; ?>	
	<?php case "green":?>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/green.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
	<?php break; ?>
	<?php case "blue":?>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/blue.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
	<?php break; ?>
	<?php case "yellow":?>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/yellow.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
	<?php break; ?>	
	<?php }?>

The above code is quite self explanatory. First it grabs whichever values we’ve stored in our theme options. Second – is the switch statement for our drop down list, followed by cases for each entry – with its unique statement calling the style sheets.

Now if you go back to your style switcher and select “blue” – your theme style should switch to blue – and so on and so forth.

You can have as many styles as you wish to integrate in your options. As well as the amount of customization in the actual .css files is completely up to you. You can download the source files from this link – simply add these files in your theme folder and change some values – and your theme will instantly have it’s own style switcher.

We all know that a typical grid design uses some kind of block containers to house content. This block container may be DIV or list that span a couple, three or four times across inside a parent DIV. Now with CSS – we simply apply the proper left or right margins to all the containers except the last one in the pattern:

The result is the children containers line up perfectly inside the parent DIV. To achieve this effect we apply the same class to all the children DIVs, and append a unique class to the last one like below:

HTML

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<div id="parent">
<div class="child">
	//content goes here
</div>
<div class="child">
	//content goes here
</div>
<div class="child last">
	//content goes here
</div>
</div>

CSS

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.parent {width:415 px;}
.child {width:125px; margin-right:20px; float:left;}
.child.last {margin-right:0;}

The Challenge:

Since content inside these containers are typically coded using a form of recursive technique such as “the Loop” in Wordress; how are we to designate that unique class to that second, third or fourth child DIV?

For instance, if we were to house our posts inside one of these children DIVs, the PHP would look something like below:

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<div id="parent">
<?php if(have_posts()):?><?php while(have_posts()):the_post();?>
<div class="child">
<?php the_title();?>
</div><!--child-->
</div><!--parent-->

This block of code inside the parent DIV will just keep repeating for all posts with the same “child” class. We need to a way to select just the second, third or fourth child to not have that extra margin.

The Trick

A not so popular arithmetic operator known as the modulus – represented by a (%) symbol is what we’ll use to do the trick. The modulus operator is the same as division – but returns the remainder instead. Since we’re only targeting every “nth” div or child item, all we need to create is a pattern that has a multiple of some value in order to apply our special class. Take a look at the code below:

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<div id="parent">
<?php $r_count = 1; ?>
<?php if(have_posts()):?><?php while(have_posts()):the_post();?>
<?php if($r_count%3 == 0){
	$r_class = 'last';
	}else{
	$r_class = '';
 	}
	$r_count++;
?>
<div class="child <?php echo $r_class; ?>">
<?php the_title();?>
</div><!--child-->
</div><!--parent-->

First we create a variable $r_count and initialize its value at 1 right before the loop starts. Right after the call for the posts, we add a conditional statement with the modulus operator for 3 is equal to 0 (since we want every 3rd element to have that unique “last” class), everything else returns empty. Lastly, we increment $r_count by one.

In our HTML, we call the regular “child” class, then we echo our special $r_class. The end result will be an alternating call of styles depending on what we define for our modulus operator:

Of course – depending on the number of columns you would like to display – all you have to do is change the modulus operand and you should get the same effect. Thanks to PHP master David Young – who showed me how to do this trick.

Features

The slider in the home page templates are dynamic. Meaning – they are actual posts in your blog that you set in a specified category (i.e. feature) – so they show up in the slider. You can set it to run automatically and are allowed up to eight slides. The slider uses CSSGlobe’s “easy slider“. All images that link to other images automatically loads “FancyZoom” – which which is the amazing javascript zooming effect you see in many modern websites. Monte Cristo also comes with four different “characters” or color schemes: Jacopo is the gray and burgundy guy, Danglars swaggers in brown and taupe, Mondego likes it purple and green while Dantes is different shades of blue.

Why Friendly?

Monte Cristo has a built in options panel where you can set your preferences. Friendly because this way – you don’t have to know HTML, or Javascript to tweak the code. You can set which character you want from the options panel, set the slider categories, automatic or not, plugin your logo files – just about all that you need to customize Monte Cristo to fit your website.

Why Buy?

Monte Cristo is up on sale at ThemeForest.net for a measly $25.00. You can check out the live demo from this link. Why buy if I have been giving away stuff for free? Oh I don’t know – maybe because since I spent a whole lot of time making this theme that I figured I might as well try to make money off of it. Maybe since I give away free support once you purchase is another reason. Or maybe if I make enough money from this that I can now spend more time with my son – teach him not to say bad words like “what the heck“. Of course, its completely up to you.

Updated to Version 1.3 – Drop Down List Support for the Page Navigation!

For those of you who have asked for a drop down list for sub pages – the update is here. I will be glad to send you the update files if you contact me. If you already have Monte Cristo running and have made some edits to the css files – contact me, and I will send you the code to paste in the css files.

Get the Updated Files Here!

It looks like the only thing it has in common with Kubrick is the rounded corners and the slim page width of 728 pixels. Anywho, you can take Kubrick on Crack! and install it in your WordPress site for free.

Home Page with a Feature Post

Unlike the original Kubrick – this theme automatically takes your latest post and converts it to a Feature post. It sits atop of a dark fading background with a custom image field that looks like its on top of a stash of photographs. It uses the custom field key: “image“. To learn how to use custom fields (which I strongly recommend) – read it from the codex. No image resizing is required – they’re all automatically cropped, thanks to the TimThumb script by Darren Hoyt. But for best results – upload an image that is wider than 424 pixels and longer than 284 pixels in height.

The search form magically appears in a fade in box. This script is “Thickbox” and provided by jQuery. The spectacular smoke art background is by Applse Actually of Deviantart.com.

Theme Options

Kubrick on Crack! comes with a control panel so you don’t have to touch the code in order to customize for your website. The options include the following:

1 – Header Logo, once your logo is uploaded, enter the url here. I recommend using a transparent .png to preserve the look.

2 – Twitter account, this will save to the link that is behind the twitter icon in the header.

3 – Custom Feed, this will save to the RSS icon in the header. If no value is provided – the default blog rss will be used.

4 – Google Ad Sense, this will create an ad space right below the single post page. (use the the 728 leatherboard style). To learn more about Adsense, click here

5 – Google Analytics, this saves your Analytics code below the footer – which of course is invisible. To learn more about Analytics – click here

You can see Kubrick On Crack! in action at my Demo site. Download the theme from this link.

Update: the original PSD files can be now be dowloaded from this link. *There are 3 photoshop files in the zip – one for the main layout which contains all of the elements except two buttons – which are in the other psd files.

All I ask is for you to leave me a comment, Retweet or Digg this article, or follow me in Twitter.

What the heck are “Magic Quotes”

For those who know PHP, the language is designed to avoid conflicts in strings (mostly characters used in variables) through the use of escape sequences. Escape sequences are formed by providing a (“\”) backslash in front of characters such as double quotes, to convert them into a literal string. The people who wrote PHP wanted this to be an automated process, so they decided that all text passed through online forms are automatically escaped with a backslash. This is known as Magic Quotes. Although their intentions were good, it has caused more problems than fixes. According to the PHP.net: Magic Quotes are deprecated as of version 5.3 and will not be part of future versions.

WordPress Fix

Although you can disable Magic Quotes in your server php.ini file, it won’t do me any good since I’m developing a theme to be released for public use. This means that users of my theme will have various server configurations and telling them to turn this feature off is simply not an option. Luckily, WordPress has adapted PHP.net’s function “stripslashes deep” – which disables Magic Quotes at runtime. All you need to do is paste the following code into your theme file and should take care of the issue:

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<?php 
if ( get_magic_quotes_gpc() ) {
    $_POST      = array_map( 'stripslashes_deep', $_POST );
    $_GET       = array_map( 'stripslashes_deep', $_GET );
    $_COOKIE    = array_map( 'stripslashes_deep', $_COOKIE );
    $_REQUEST   = array_map( 'stripslashes_deep', $_REQUEST );
}
?>

The above code strips slashes when data arrives via $_POST, $_GET, $_COOKIE, and $_REQUEST methods. In my case, I’ve pasted this code inside my functions.php file which contain my theme options. This page alone will serve multiple textarea input fields which will allow special characters such as Google Analytics and AdSense code. Note that this can be used in any page with input fields such as a contact and RSVP forms.

Javascript / jQuery Goodness

I’m a big fan of animation in web design. Especially ones that enhance your pages functionality, accessibility and of course – quality. This is the case in the tabbed containers that you get in Pork and Beans’ top sidebar and comments form.

The code is from Queness, I was able to squeeze a lot of content into such constrained spaces. Content that are to be grouped logically in the first place. For instance, in the comments area, the form shows up as default, but you can also switch from a selection of subscription options, as well as a list of related posts.

Other Javascript features include the sliding captions on the images – courtesy of Buildinternet.com, and a Scroll to the top button found in the footer area.

Colors Schema, Aesthetics and Auto Resizable Images,

The original design didn’t include a wood background, nor was there a patch of grass in the footer – but I figured, it needed some identity. I know what you’re thinking: What does it have to do with “Pork and Beans”? Absolutely nothing. Who said the name had to relate anyway? Picked up the color scheme from the “Moboogie” Color template from Adobe’s Kuler website. Images are automatically resized using a custom field entry (image). For best results, use images wider than 562 pixels.

Plugins Needed

The sidebar has a Flickr Box included which will need you to download the flickrRSS plugin by Eightface. The sidebar is also fully widgetized, styled to match the rest of the page’s elements. You will also need the Similar Posts plugin by Rob Marsh – which will pull related posts to the current article. This will show right below a single article, in the last tab in the comments form.

Conclusion

Pork and Beans is ideal for the traditional blogger. Although it may work best with people who have high quality and vivid photos to include with their articles. I do not suggest customizing it to match another look – since the colors and the background images will be difficult to mess with. Well, if you really must need to tweak, then by all means. I must also mention that I started to code to satisfy IE 6 quirks – but gave up. There is also a bug that the body background shifts to the right on scroll, but goes back to the original position. I don’t know what causes it, but if any of you experience the same thing – please leave a comment.

You can see Pork and Beans live in action from this link, Download the theme from here. All I ask is to spread the word, leave a comment or follow me in Twitter.

Update – You can now download the PSD:. Note that the PSD does not look exactly like the demo (changed my mind a couple of times during coding).