Business Logs – Page 19

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!

Designing in the browser with the Recipe Finder Blog

The just-launched Recipe Finder blog was a quick exercise of designing within the confines of the web browser. Usually the first step is to construct wireframes and head to Photoshop (or Fireworks, or even Illustrator) but in this case, it was more efficient to do straight-up coding.

First, the blog used graphic elements from the already-running Recipe Finder main site. Second, although the layout was different, there was no need to type up markup from scratch thanks to our WordPress theme framework of choice, Genesis. Lastly, any code that needed to be typed was simply copied and modified from previous sites we’ve worked on. Finding things to reuse is key.

Come check out the new Recipe Finder blog!

Erati Joins In

We at Splashpress Media are having a re-design bash and this time Erati has been called upon, dressed in a new and exciting look. Covering news, view and reviews in the Television industry, styled with a clean look.

We worked up a plan to tie together the content for a reader on the homepage so that it looks clean, professional, and easy to read. Since TV is a visual medium, using lots of images was a priority feature.

We have used the CartoGothic Std font by Fontsite.com and implemented it using the @font-face. The logo has been overhauled and different sections have been created for content for better navigation. We have yet again trusted the Genesis Theme Framework to handle our work.

Enjoy the new design at Erati!

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