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AppleGazette WordPress Theme

In the following weeks we’re releasing WordPress themes based on old designs of our Splashpress Media network sites. Today, it’s AppleGazette, which recently got a facelift.

The AppleGazette Theme is a black, white, and blue two-column theme and has an options page that lets you enter ad codes, RSS subscription links, and social media URLs in the banner and sidebar areas. There’s a custom menu area at the at the top and bottom of the page, and of course a widget area at the right. It’s compatible up to WordPress 3.1. View Demo »

[download id=”1″]

WordPress Tip: Enable excerpts for static pages

We’re working on a site that lists the children of a static page and wanted to display descriptions for each one. Doing a custom WP_Query is pretty straightforward in accessing those subpages, but we don’t want to display the full content via the_content(). Built-in excerpts via the_excerpt() will suffice.

Problem is, WordPress doesn’t display the excerpt metabox for pages, unlike posts. This can be solved by adding the following code to your functions.php:

[php]function businesslogs_add_excerpt_box() {
add_meta_box(‘postexcerpt’, __(‘Excerpt’), ‘post_excerpt_meta_box’, ‘page’, ‘normal’, ‘core’);
}
add_action( ‘admin_menu’, ‘businesslogs_add_excerpt_box’ );[/php]

(Remember that it’s always a good idea to prefix your custom functions with a unique string.) Now go to the Page editor screen, pull down the Screen Options panel, and check Excerpt. Et voila!

Geeks are Sexy gets even sexier

We recently helped Geeks Are Sexy splash on a fresh coat of paint on its website. There are a few new features like the featured entries at the top, while some elements were retained in the redesign, still in their familiar spots.

Behold the new Geeks Are Sexy!

Genesis Tip: Change Image Size on Attachment Pages

Genesis has a bunch of custom filters and hooks for manipulating the layout and content of your custom WordPress site, but sometimes finding the right one isn’t so easy to do. In this case, I was trying to change the default image size on attachment pages.

Turns out the answer lies not in poking around the Genesis code but WordPress itself. The prepend_attachment function has a filter that will let you modify how the attachment image—including its wrapper paragraph—is displayed. So all you have to do is add a filter that modifies the image size, like so:

add_filter('prepend_attachment', 'ag_prepend_attachment');
function ag_prepend_attachment($p) {
    return '<p class="attachment">'.wp_get_attachment_link(0, 'large', false).'</p>';
}

Drop this in your functions.php file and you’re set. Since this is a WordPress filter, this tip should also apply to other WordPress themes.

AppleGazette Refreshed

Redesigning AppleGazette was no small feat, even though the design remains familiar to its regular customers. Visually, we had to strike a balance between paying homage to Apple’s design influence and maintaining the site’s own identity. The result is a cleaner, lighter, more streamlined, more modern approach to blog design. If there ever was a site to take advantage of CSS shadows, gradients, and rounded corners, AG was certainly the place to do it!

Like what we did with ForeverGeek, browsing through image attachments was another mandatory feature for our network blog—more sites should do this.

The next challenge was in integrating advertisements and special content—not just your typical banner ads, but specially formatted user-submitted news and app reviews featured in between posts. GravityForms and custom fields helped accomplish this. Another favorite tool in our utility belt was the Cycle plugin. And needless to say, we used the Genesis framework for this one.

Visit AppleGazette and see the new design live!

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