Adding it to a WordPress theme has its benefits as well. For one, the code stays with the theme. Anyone who uses it gets this effect automatically. Not to mention, it’s pretty easy to implement.

This article will walk you through how to add Lightbox into your WordPress themes. I’m also going to assume that you have created WordPress themes before, for you will need to know how to work with template files and such. Ready to get started? Let’s begin.

Grab Pretty Photo

There are many lighbox plugins out there. I choose one called Prettyphoto from no-margin-for-errors.com. Prettyphoto uses jQuery, and is quite extensible. But the main reasons why I chose it is because the animation is flawless and the design is awesome. Download the production version from this link

Extract the .zip file into your hard drive. Inside prettyPhoto_compressed_3.1.2 – you will find the following folders and files. Copy them according to below:

• prettyPhoto folder (from prettyPhoto_compressed_3.1.2\images) and place inside (yourtheme\images\)
• prettyPhoto.css (from prettyPhoto_compressed_3.1.2\css) and place inside your theme root folder
• jquery.prettyPhoto.js (from prettyPhoto_compressed_3.1.2\js) and place inside (yourtheme\scripts\)

Include the Scripts

First we need jQuery. There is a preferred way to include jQuery into our themes – that is to use the wp_enqueue_script function. Open functions.php and add the code below. *If your theme doesn’t have a functions.php file – go ahead and create one.

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function insert_jquery(){
	wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
}
add_action('init', 'insert_jquery');

Note that this is the preferred way because since WordPress is already shipped with a bunch of scripts (including jQuery) – you might as well use them. It is also considered good practice because updating Worpdress will include these javascript libraries (and how often do you do that!)

Add the Prettyphoto script and css into your theme header.php file:

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<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/prettyPhoto.css" type="text/css" media="screen" charset="utf-8" />
<script src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/scripts/jquery.prettyPhoto.js"></script>

Custom Code

Modify the code in prettyPhoto.css. This step is necessary so the path to the images for prettyPhoto is corrected according to your setup:

• open prettyPhoto.css
• CTRL + F (Find) all instances of “url(../”
• And replace with “url(” *There should be around 100 occurences
• Save the file

Again, this is due to the location of the images and the css file has changed from the example files from prettyPhoto. This ensures the images needed for our lightbox is functioning properly:

Open header.php – and add the following code:

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<script type="text/javascript">  
jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
   $("a[href$='.jpg'], a[href$='.jpeg'], a[href$='.gif'], a[href$='.png']").prettyPhoto({
	animationSpeed: 'normal', /* fast/slow/normal */
	padding: 40, /* padding for each side of the picture */
        opacity: 0.35, /* Value betwee 0 and 1 */
	showTitle: true /* true/false */			
	});
})
</script>

What the above code does is selecting all links with the href attribute that equals to anything ending in .jpeg, .jpg, .gif and .png, and applying the prettyPhoto() function to it. This means that any link tag that leads to an image (file extensions mentioned) will trigger prettyPhoto. The script is also enclosed inside a document ready event using a jQuery noConflict wrapper. This is to prevent any compatibility issues with other javascript libraries that maybe included with your theme.

I also went ahead and added some options such as the animation speed, padding and show title to our .prettyPhoto function. For additional customization options – refer to the no-margin-for-errors documentation.

Conclusion

If all goes well – you can test your work by clicking on an image that links to another image. This should launch the prettyPhoto code that we’ve just plugged in. You can also apply the same code to links with inline content, external files, youtube movies or other flash based content. Again, refer to prettyPhoto documentation.

So what has Changed?

As you see from the demo, I’ve tried to preserve Aparatus’ original design. The few things that I changed is more for performance rather than visual. I went ahead and removed the Tweetmeme buttons in the archive pages – which greatly improved page loads. There was a horizontal scroll bar bug in the old version – which is now fixed.

The theme still utilizes Cufon – but only for select areas of the theme such as the Logo and the footer. The logo now has an etched and gradient look – which is a big enhancement. I also added some Google fonts – to the post and comments headings. A few CSS 3 code is also used to improve the presentation of the text a little bit more.

A new post thumbnail handling code is used. Both feature images and custom fields still work, it just handles the resizing better. The feature image also appears in the single post page – this is something many users have requested for.

The theme now supports the new WordPress menu system. You can now customize the menu according to your craziest “navi-wishes”.

Lastly, a smarter theme options is integrated. If you don’t enter a Twitter account – no button or feed will show in the theme. The same goes for the large ad button.

How to Use:

Installing the theme is just like any other WordPress theme. Simply go to the “Appearance” > “Install Themes” section in your admin panel. Click the “Upload” link – browse to the theme .zip file and “Install Now“.

Adding Post Thumbnails to your Posts:

To add images to your posts you can use the Post Thumbnail feature of WordPress. Simply go to the post in “Edit” mode. On the right side of the page – click on “Set Featured Image“:

This will trigger the image uploader. Upload your image and as soon as that’s done, click the “Use as Featured Image” link:

Note that you should keep the file sizes to a smaller size. The resizing script has a maximum size limit.

How to Use the Slideshow:

The slideshow automatically pulls your most recent posts (5 maximum). You can change this to pull from a specific category by going to “Appearance” > “Aparatus Options” and putting the category slug in the field: “Category Name for the Content Slider“. You can also take out the slideshow or choose to not automatically slide – by checking the appropriate boxes in the theme options.

Also, if you see the slider with the “Oops…Looks like” message (shown below) – that means you haven’t assigned a post thumbnail to your post. Read the section above called “Adding Post Thumbnails to your Posts“.

How to insert a Photo Gallery:

Adding a photo gallery into Aparatus is as easy as pie. Simply go to the post / page you want in “Edit” mode and click on the image uploader. Navigate to your local directory and highlight the images you want and click “Open“.

As soon as the images upload, click on “Save Changes” and additional settings will show. Select your options and click “Insert Gallery“.

Update your post / page and preview it. You should see your gallery in place.

How to Customize the Navigation Menu:

Go to “Appearance” > “Menus” and start by creating a new menu. Enter a menu name and click “Create“.

This will create a blank menu panel in the right side of the page. The idea is to select categories, pages or custom links from the left side, click the “Add to Menu” button – and it will appear on the menu panel in the right. In this panel, you can drag and drop the links so you can design the menu hierarchy. Links that are staggered underneath become the drop down links from the respective parent – you get the drift.

Once the menu is done – hit “Save Menu” and in the top most left column box called “Theme Locations“, select the menu you just created from the drop down called “Header Menu”. Click “Save” and view your website. You menu should now be in place.

Switching Stylesheets

Aparatus comes with 4 different color styles – also known as stylesheets. Go to “Appearance” > “Aparatus Options” and in the top most section is a drop down called “Style Sheet”. Select Maroon, Black, Blue or Green and “Save Changes“.

Adding the Twitter Badge and Latest Tweet:

Still in the theme options, right underneath the Style Sheet drop down, is the Twitter account field. Enter your Twitter user name in this field.

Save your changes and view your website. You should see a nice Twitter Badge in the Header – and your latest Tweet in the sidebar area.

Advertising Blocks:

You can ad advertising blocks in the sidebar area right in the theme options. You can do 1 large 300 x 250, and 4 small 125 x 125 squares. Go to the theme options page – and see the “Advertising Blocks” area. Enter the image source of the ad (where the image is coming from), and the destination (where the link goes when the image is clicked).

Save your changes and view your site. You should see the ad blocks in the sidebar nicely lined up:

Frequently Asked Questions:

I’ve gathered a several most asked questions in regards to Aparatus. Read below to see if your question is one of them.

Modify the Twitter Badge Image

Many want to modify the large Twitter Badge in the header. Please note that the font I’ve used in this badge is called – League Gothic, and you need to download that in your Fonts folder to twiddle the .psd file.

Slideshow is not showing images

If you’re using custom fields – make sure you have GD library installed. You also have to make sure that the cache folder inside scripts (themes/aparatus/scripts/cache) is fully writeable. In addition, you need to enter at least a couple of posts to kick start the slideshow.

How To make posts in the slideshow appear below the slideshow

By default posts inside the slideshow does not duplicate underneath – where the rest of the post are. Many like it this way – but some have asked how to make them show below as well. To do this look for this line of code inside gallery.php and delete it:

$saved_ids[] = get_the_ID();

How to fill the Author Box Information

The “About the Author” box right in the single posts page grabs information from your profile. Go to “Users” > “Your Profile”, under Biographical Info – enter your stuff there.

The Header Text takes too long to convert into the logo

Sometimes Cufon takes a bit of time to do its thing. Aparatus uses this to use your site name and automatically convert it into a decent looking logo. But sometimes – due to client browser constraints, it performs poorly.

For this issue it would probably best to use an image for your logo. If you really like how it looks with Cufon – just take a screenshot and convert the image into a jpeg and replace it inside the header.php.

Conclusion:

Enough of the FAQ! Download already! I hope you enjoy this theme as much I’ve seen it in many blogs. If you want to visit the original release post, click here. Otherwise, leave your comments and questions below. Happy blogging!

Features

The layout itself is very modern. The page is housed in a beautiful etched container with very subtle textures. The large feature section showcases the “Apps” main message with large “call to action” buttons to get the viewers to instantly join.

There’s a blue ribbon separating the main section and the latest posts / sidebar. I imagined this to be an expanding area for categories and what not. Typically a little javascript should do this trick. The rest is pretty conventional, icons, typography, grid spacing and pixel perfect alignment.

The .psd file itself is grouped, layered and organized. Feel free to use – under creative commons license. I would like to know if this type of design still suit clients out there. If you feel it’s a bit “played out”, out dated – whatever, Please let me know in the comments section. Download the file from this link.

Corporate Blue Home Page

The design is a modern layout ideally for a financial or business institution (anywhere a progress chart can be represented). A large feature area with a colorful bar graph sits right below the header. Underneath this area are three even columns with large thumbnails that can house summaries of your company profile, links or even the latest news.

Finally, the page includes a mid-size footer with a grayscale version of the logo, page navigation and copyright information. All buttons are vector shapes for easy customization. Page elements are professionally spaced using the 960 grid system, while text layers are anti-aliased to represent how real web fonts look in a live browser. You can download Corporate Blue from this link

Bang Business Cards

This second template is a submission from one of my followers: G S Vineeth. The Bang Business Cards is ideal for start ups, graphic designers or even a product. The design features bright rays of green as a background, topped with a rounded container with subtle gradients. The text elements are beautifully etched, also with the same green shade.

The fonts used are called 20th Century which can be downloaded from this link. You can view additional work from GS Vineeth from his Graphic River portfolio. Download the Bang Business Card template from this link.

Conclusion

So it has been a good couple of years. I have a steady rate of readership, a number of downloads as well as a few followers. My posts keep coming, client work is steady – all is good. Once again, I ask you to keep me going – by simply leaving a nice comment below or follow me in twitter and facebook. I hope you make use of the .psd files and maybe make your next project a little bit easier.

Features

The one pager Sifiso has all the right stuff for a strong personal portfolio:

How to Edit

The source code is very pretty straightforward – simply edit the HTML with your own. The PSD contains 4 files – one for each main section of the page. All files are layered, grouped and labeled. To edit a text section – find the layer and edit the text within. Fonts used are “AR Blanca” (for the logo), and “Helvetica Nueu LT Std” for everything else.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that even though Sifiso may be full of images, it is still coded professionally to conform to standards and SEO. I hardly used any “image” tags (except for the portfolio section), and still used HTML text where it should be (see screenshot below).

*Note that I talked about how to code this way in my 3 part post: How to create a single page portfolio from scratch.

Credits to the icon developers:Coffee Mug by Omercitin, Paintbrushes by ArtDesigner.lv and Briefcase by thirteen eightyone.

The project I envisioned was a full website turn around. The company was still using static pages with old style tables and in line styling. My proposal was to completely overhaul their site into WordPress.

As you can see from above I planned on using WordPress as a CMS. A large section that will house a jQuery Content Slider or another form of slideshow that leads viewers to try out the demo. Directly below are a set of three column containers which will pull posts from different categories. A slightly different approach for the footer – which contains six mini columns as the main sitemap.

Feel free to download this fully layered and grouped PSD file from this link. Hopefully you can find a good use for the template. If one of you should become successful in taking some company away from static pages – then I’m happy.

Part 1: The Key

Using the Rounded Rectangle tool, Create a new shape of a square, with fill color #2c2c2c

Using the Add Anchor Point, add new anchors at both lower corners of the shape. Drag these new anchor points upwards to form a nice edge.

Apply a Gradient Overlay on the shape. Adjust the settings as shown below or you can choose your own gradiation.

Duplicate the layer you just created and Ctrl + T to transform. Transform it to about 90% less than the original size. Make sure you constrain the proportions.

Apply a new layer style – Stroke, with fill type as gradient, size of 3 and the rest of the settings like shown below:

Using the rounded rectangle tool and the ellipse tool, create two more shapes. The rounded rectangle will have a fill color of #ffffff, the ellipse with fill color #2c2c2c. Apply the same layer styles to both – stroke with gradient fill. Play around with the gradients and try to match the outer shapes:

Next is the shaft of the key. With the Pen Tool, start outlining the jagged edges of the key shaft. You can use a real key as a guide. I used two shapes for the shaft – one for the main, the other for the underlying teeth behind the main shaft. I also used the line tool to draw a line on top of the main shaft.

Again, apply some layer styles to the two main shapes. First is a stroke with gradient fill type – reduce the size of the stroke line to 1 and adjust the gradient colors. Do the same thing for the teeth.

The final result should be something like below. We now move on to the car alarm part.

Part 2: The Car Alarm

Hide all the layers you’ve done so far so you won’t get distracted. Starting again with the rounded rectangle tool, create a new shape – slightly bigger than our key head before. Make the radius to 50 pixels for a more rounded look. Go to “Edit” > “Transform” > “Perspective” and drag the upper handles closer to each other.

Again, apply layer styles to the new shape: An angled gradient overlay with the setting below, as well as a thick stroke with gradient fill type – again play with the shades.

The first shape should look like something like below. Note that when playing with gradient fills – there’s no exact way to do it. You just have to follow what looks right with your eye considering the light, shadows etc.

Next is to add two more shapes using the ellipse tool. One is for the keyhole which is smaller, the other for the button. Both will have stroke styles with gradient fill types. By now you should know how to play with this effect. Remember that the keyhole is to have a fill of white – or whatever background color you have, and the button is a darker red, also filled with a gradient:

And we’re done with the car alarm part. Next part is pretty easy – the key rings.

Part 3: The Rings

Start with the ellipse tool, create an oval shape (size it according to the key and the alarm). Apply layer style stroke of 1 pixel, with type gradient fill. Adjust the gradient accordingly varying colors from light grey to dark.

Duplicate the first ring twice. The duplicate rings should have a Fill (not Opacity) of 60 percent each. Adjust the angle of the gradients of each layer stroke to go in different directions. Again, its up to your judgment what looks best. You’re trying to achieve the illusion of aluminum texture with the shines.

From these three shapes – you want to duplicate them into another group. Click Ctrl – T to transform about 80 percent smaller than the first group.

And that is the final step for the rings. Next section is combining all the elements together.

Part 4: Combining Them Together

The easiest way to work with what we have so far is to rasterize the shapes into more manageable sections. Rasterizing means to flatten the shape for a different kind of editing. It is good practice to always keep your layers grouped and organized – in my case, I’ve grouped them into three sections: key, alarm and rings. To rasterize – I select one group, duplicate it and from that group I merge layers. Once its merged – the key group is going to be just a key layer, the alarm group – an alarm layer and so forth. DO NOT rasterize the original group! Its good practice to keep the vector shapes intact just in case you want to change something.

So after merging each of the groups – we should now have four layers: key, alarm and the two rings.

First rotate the key a few degrees clockwise. Put the bigger ring on top of the key layer. Using the ellipse marquee tool, select the inner section of the rings and start erasing the area where the key is supposed to be visible.

Do the same thing for the ring layer. You can use any selection tool that you’re comfortable with using: Lasso, Magic Wand – I use the pen tool because it’s more precise and have more control.

Finally, add some shadows in the places there should be shadows. I do not know of an efficient way to do this but to use the brush tool. Using the built in Photoshop shadow or glow effects apply it in the entire layer – leaving you with having to separate the layer, then erasing – this may be suitable for larger surface areas – but for our purpose, just dab a few brush spots – play with the brush types, opacity and strength, and you should have a pretty decent effect:

Do the same to the rest of the layers. You will be using a combination of rotating, erasing and painting to achieve the interlocking illusion as in a real set of keys. It is important to pay attention where the light, the shines and the shadows are supposed to be. Also, keep in mind – you may rotate your layers, but DO NOT – I repeat DO NOT resize them. Resizing rasterized layers result in extreme loss of quality. If ever you need to resize say the key image – you will have to go back to your vector layers for that. The interlocking rings, key and alarm should look something like this:

And there you have it. You’ve just created a key with car alarm entirely in Photoshop. You may download the psd file from this link. All I ask is for you leave me a nice comment below, follow me in Twitter or subscribe to my RSS Feeds.

The Home Page

The Garamond’s home page mimicks a magazine layout. This was made possible without any special wordpress queries, nor does it filter by categories. Instead, the latest post is automatically styled different. Thanks to this neat trick by Ruhani Rabin. The feature image and the thumbnails are automatically resized upon client request. Meaning, you can upload any size image (preferably wider than 540 pixels – which is the size of the container), assign it to a custom field – and voila! Images are cropped, zoomed and sharpened when once the browser hits it. The code I used is from Darren Hoyt known as TimThumb.

The Inner Pages

The Garamond is a bloggers theme. Traditional templates are intact: search, archive, category etc. I also included an authors bio at the end of each single post, as well as an author template which grabs all their articles. I went a little overboard in styling the subheadings for the post (shown below). The default font family used is of course – Garamond; although since it is not a standard font – Georgia is used as back up. The contrast between the larger text and the tiny Verdana is striking – which I felt was good.

Other Features

The two sidebars and the footer are all widget driven. Comments support Gravatars, pagination as well as multi-level threads. I’ve also added a random quote container right below the header – which requires the Stray Quotes plugin by Italyisfalling.com


You can view the demo from this link, or download directly from here. All I ask is for you leave a comment below – or follow my updates via twitter.

The Traffic Logo is done by another designer which was required to stay intact. You can download the .psd files from this link. Please feel free to comment below or follow me in Twitter.