In Praise of WordPress Template Tags, Part II: The Magazine Layout

Previously, we saw how WordPress can capably handle data more like a small-scale CMS than a traditional blog, assuming the developer is willing to get creative with some Template Tags and The Loop. With that in mind, let’s move toward a more sophisticated homepage concept.

Sample scenario: a client needs your help in realizing his dodgy dream of starting an online men’s magazine in the vein of GQ or Details. His existing site already runs the standard WordPress blog format, but now he’s seeking a more ambitious, exploded-view layout to accommodate a variety of content modules and features somewhere between Nirali and Talking Points Memo.

With his love of hair gel, gossip and designer messenger bags, it’s not surprising our client’s new publication will be called Mimbo. He’s even sketched out a wireframe for the homepage (click for demo):

It’s nothing too polished yet, just a grid-based concept illustrating the main content components we’ll need to tease out of WordPress: “Lead Story”, “Last Three Features”, “News”, “Contributors” and so on. How do we tie all this together on one page? Let’s start at the top and explore each module step by step:

Logo and TaglineIn the upper corner of Mimbo‘s layout, you’ll see our branding which is really just the site title (“Mimbo”) and tagline (“by men, for men”) and can be edited from the control panel:

The functions are standard to any WordPress installation and can be added to your page like this:
```
<a href="/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a>
<?php bloginfo('description'); ?>
```
Search moduleYou probably already knew that the search bar in the upper right corner originates from a PHP-include which looks like this:
```
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/searchform.php'); ?>
```
You can always style the search bar to your liking, or create a custom search page.
Lead Story ModuleEach issue of Mimbo will feature a Lead Story module with a photo, a category title, an article title and an excerpt.
Let’s start with the photo. First find an appropriate image and resize it to 269×178. Next, upload it to the correct folder (example: /wp-content/themes/mimbo2/images/).

Now I’ll begin a new post and create a category called “Lead Story”:

After writing my post, I will scroll down to the “Custom Field” box. I’ll need to name the Key “Image” (with a capital “I”) and my Value will simply be the filename of that image:

Before saving our post, know that the the_excerpt function will automatically pull the first 55 words from our post. If you’d like to provide alternative excerpt text, just fill in the “Optional Excerpt” field:

When you’re done, save the post. Now, what PHP magic must happen to print it all to the homepage?
```
<?php query_posts('showposts=1&cat=3'); ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>">
<img src="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/wp-content/themes/mimbo2/images/<?php
// this is where the Lead Story image gets printed
$values = get_post_custom_values("Image"); echo $values[0]; ?>" alt="" id="leadpic" /></a>
<h3>
<?php
// this is where the name of the Lead Story category gets printed
single_cat_title(); ?>
</h3>
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>" class="title">
<?php the_title(); ?>
</a>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
{<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>">More&raquo;</a>}
<?php endwhile; ?>
```
In the query_posts function at the top, you’ll notice a parameter called “cat=3″. That id number will differ from user to user, depending on what number is assigned in your database. It can be viewed in your control panel under Manage->Categories:

Be sure to adjust yours accordingly.

Three FeaturesIn the lower left column, you’ll see three Feature boxes containing a photo and a title. Just like with the Lead Story, we’ll need to create a new category called “Features”, use Custom Fields to input the images, and pull it all together with Template Tags:

<?php
// this is where the Features module begins
query_posts('showposts=3&cat=4'); ?>
<h3>
<?php
// this is where the name of the Features category gets printed
single_cat_title(); ?>
</h3>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="feature">
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>">
<img src="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/wp-content/themes/mimbo2/images/<?php
// this is where the custom field prints images for each Feature
$values = get_post_custom_values("Image"); echo $values[0]; ?>" alt="" /></a><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" class="title">
<?php
// this is where title of the Feature gets printed
the_title(); ?>&raquo;</a></div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Category BlurbsIn the lower middle column, you’ll see there are categories like Music, Style and Gadgets. For each we want to pull a photo, a title and an excerpt. Instead of duplicating the same Template Tags for each category, we put the categories into an array and pull them like this:

<?php
// this is where you enter the IDs of which categories you want to display
$display_categories = array(5,6,7);
foreach ($display_categories as $category) { ??>

<?php query_posts("showposts=1&cat=$category"); ??>
<?php
// this is where you enter the IDs of which categories you want to display
$display_categories = array(5,6,7);
foreach ($display_categories as $category) { ?>

<?php query_posts("showposts=1&cat=$category"); ?>
<h3><?php
// this is where the category name gets printed
single_cat_title(); ?></h3>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<?php
// this grabs the image filename
$values = get_post_custom_values("Image");
// this checks to see if an image file exists
if (isset($values[0])) {
?>

<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>">
<img src="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/wp-content/themes/mimbo2/images/<?php $values = get_post_custom_values("Image"); echo $values[0]; ?>" alt="" /></a>
<?php } ?>
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" class="title"><?php the_title(); ?>&raquo;</a>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php } ?>

News HeadlinesAt the top of our sidebar are three headlines from the “News” category. You may have already guessed that we need a new category called “News” and another query_posts function:

<?php query_posts('showposts=3&cat=8'); ?>
<ul>
 <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
      <li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
 <?php endwhile; ?>
 </ul>

Browse ArchivesBecause the archive list can become very long over time, we will display ours in a pull down menu:

<form id="archiveform" action="">
<select name="archive_chrono" onchange="window.location =
(document.forms.archiveform.archive_chrono[document.forms.archiveform.archive_chrono.selectedIndex].value);">
<?php get_archives('monthly','','option'); ?>
</select>
</form>

Ads & Sponsors (Optional)If you wish to insert advertising, open sidebar.php and add whatever code is needed.
ContributorsLast comes our “Contributors” module which uses the wp_list_authors function to query our database for contributors, print them in a list and include an RSS link for each:
```
<ul>
 <?php wp_list_authors('exclude_admin=1&show_fullname=1&hide_empty=1&feed_image=/wp-content/themes/mimbo2/images/rss.gif'); ?>
</ul>
```
Using a few available parameters, I have opted to exclude myself (administrator) from the list, show the name of each author, hide the name of any author who has not published anything and display an RSS icon.
Single Post PagesIf you view a single post, you will see author info at the bottom of the article. That info can be edited in the control panel under Users->Your Profile.
The author’s photo uses a custom field to display the image. Note that the filename must match the author’s last name (ex: “Hoyt.jpg”):
```
<img src="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/wp-content/themes/mimbo2/images/<?php the_author_lastname(); ?>.jpg" alt="" />
```
The author’s name is called like this:
```
<?php the_author_posts_link('namefl'); ?>
```
The author’s bio is called like this:
```
<?php the_author_description(); ?>
```
The author’s email is called like this:
```
<a href="mailto:<?php the_author_email(); ?>" title="Email this author">Email this author</a>
```

That seems like a pretty good start to our magazine empire. Now it’s up to the client (himself a confirmed mimbo) to hire some talented writers and hope for the best.

Follow me on Twitter

290 Responses {+}

Jul 25
12:13 am

gathadirect
Darren,
This is a terrific series — I’ve been looking for ages for a CMS to handle this type of thing for a local project: if only I’d known sooner that the mighty WordPress could handle this type of thing.
Keep up the good work – can’t wait to see what you have coming next.
Cheers – GD
Jul 25
5:46 am

Pierro
wow – brillant.
thats why i need a own wordpressblog, because
I use at present a freeaccount on wordpress …
Jul 25
3:00 pm

Brian Gardner
Great idea – one question, don’t feeds pull the excerpt? If so, they’d be pulling the image and not the post?
Jul 25
3:51 pm

Kris Black
This is awesome. A template would come in handy for my podcast site. My only question would be if the Lead Story Blurb could also display the Podpress plugin media player for podcasting.
Jul 25
6:21 pm

Chris In Cincinnati
I’ve done a couple of “WordPress as CMS” projects for clients and the first few were a bit of a battle. They’ve gotten easier but I think this post will ratchet up my dollars to effort ratio a bit more.

Thanks!
Jul 25
6:57 pm

Lindsey
This is one of the best, easiest to read and understand WordPress template articles I’ve ever read. I’d venture to even say the best I’ve found so far. Thanks for breaking it down so easily and giving me tons of great ideas!
Jul 25
10:45 pm

Darren
Thanks for the feedback, guys.

@ Brian: WordPress feeds can show the entire post unless specified by the feedreader, in my experience, at least that’s what I’ve found with Netvibes, Bloglines and Google Reader. If I go ahead and create a working theme for the magazine layout, I’ll do some testing and see how the RSS issues pan out.

@ Kris: Far as I know, the Podpress/Flash bit appears at the bottom of full posts, but isn’t included in post excerpts or “Read More” snippets. Again, that’s something I’d be interested in testing out.
Jul 26
2:45 am

Miriam
This is an excellent description of how to use WordPress as a CMS? I use WordPress for CMS sites for clients, since it’s so flexible. But I never even thought of using it like this, and some of the things you describe here are new to me. Thanks for such an informative post!
Jul 26
5:10 am

waaah
poor wordpress. it wants to be a CMS so badly, but the admin code is so awful and static. broken dev process, old code.
i really wish someone would come with a more flexible blog-as-a-cms package and knock wordpress off.
Jul 26
7:39 am

Matt
I’d just like to add a voice saying, absolutely convert it to a theme if you’re able to and have the motivation. It’d be a brilliant addition to the WordPress world.
Jul 28
3:28 am

Chris
Hi, I’d also definitely be really glad if you could find the time to convert it to a theme (it’s pretty well just what I need for a site I’m working on), but a great article either way!

Thanks!
Jul 28
11:19 am

Darren
Hi guys,

Technically the first part of the theme is already written; it’s what I used to test a lot of the functions described in the article. The code is sloppy and full of inline CSS styles, as it was just created for testing purposes, but it worked fine. Check back in a few weeks and I’ll put together a more complete theme available for download.
Jul 29
1:41 am

youyicun
thx!
Jul 29
10:31 am

Alex Richards
So I have a question: How do you style each of those Featured Stories boxes? Based on my experience over the past hour trying to do that, it groups all three stories into one div and I can’t (because I’m slightly retarded) figure out how to get a border box around each story separately; it just puts the border and styling around the entire container of the featured stories that are being pulled from the database.

Can someone enlighten me?
Jul 30
6:59 am

hmhuunzfew
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! xapemmoodu
Aug 3
12:29 pm

Matt
Darren,

Thanks for the great info!

I for one would love to see a WP template based on the Mimbo example.

Best,
Matt
Aug 3
8:43 pm

Darren Hoyt
A ‘Mimbo’ WordPress theme is in the works. If all goes well, it might be done by Sunday or Monday, check back soon…
Aug 7
11:19 am

Brian Pate
I think this could be a great theme!
Aug 7
6:19 pm

the Traveler
hi darren,
thx for this great template – i was looking for sth like this a long long time. but i have the problem, that the more-tag is not working. if i try it in the main-lead-story, the story is always shown in the full length. how can i correct this ?

thank u in advance,

the traveler (testblog on http://t1745.foto-outlet.de/wordpress/)
Aug 13
1:51 pm

Darren Hoyt
@The Traveler:

The ‘Mimbo’ theme is now available, and the new version no longer requires the “Read More” function.
Aug 15
12:20 pm

eddy
great job on this

its awesome
Aug 24
3:35 pm

vijay
this is exactly what I was looking for. But its not really meant for a single author blog.
Aug 29
3:59 pm

Adrienne Adams
Darren,

Thanks so much for this tutorial and theme. I am right now putting together a WP install for an online literary magazine, and this looks to be just the ticket to get me started. I’ll let you know how it goes!

–Adrienne
Sep 26
7:07 pm

Benji
Im having problems using this code because it messes up with the navigation; did you used an alternative for the navigation?
Oct 1
5:13 pm

Raffel Jill
How does Kineda do his homepage like that?
Oct 2
12:38 am

StrangeAttractor
This tutorial has been super helpful — probably the best guide to constructing a flexible WordPress template that I’ve seen! Thanks so much for making it available.

I have a question that maybe you can answer. I’m constructing a site for an online magazine using WP (and I’ve relied heavily on stuff I’ve learned from your site).

The magazine is a quarterly, and we’d like to have a table of contents on the home page that ONLY shows items from the current issue.

My idea is for the editors to assign a single date to all posts from a given issue (e.g. the Spring Issue posts would all have the date April 15 2007). That way it will be easy to pull up a whole issue from the archives (in theory, anyway).

But on the home page, I want to show the LATEST issue. What I’d like to do is somehow query the posts so that it checks for the LATEST month of posts — not necessarily THIS month (there might not be any new posts this month, since it’s a quarterly) but the MOST RECENT month.

I can kind of think of how this might be done (look to see if there are posts THIS month, IF NOT then look in the month before that, etc.) but this is beyond my extremely rudimentary PHP skillz.

Any suggestions?
Oct 3
7:26 pm

Adrienne Adams
I’m working on a similar problem as StrangeAttractor–a magazine based on issue, not date. My idea is to use the_meta template tag and insert a custom field into each post. For example, every post in a particular issue has the issue number as the key and the issue title as the value.

This is as far as I’ve gotten, but the plan is to then create a query for the post-meta-key. In theory, I think I can then organize all the content based on the meta data that I’ve attached to each post.

Right now I only have the current issue up. I’m working on the archives, which will be the true test of my theory! See the site here: http://sharkreef.org/

I’ll post again once I have made some progress (I hope!)
Oct 19
12:46 pm

glucko
Thank you!! It is one of the best themes i have ever seen!
Oct 24
9:51 pm

Jesse Petersen
This is quite possibly the best theme I have found. I’m a theme hunter, and this is a real winner, followed up by good documentation.
Oct 29
12:11 pm

stew
Hello i have try to add images to Feature article, but it not work, i have change the name of my original cat to Features, but, nope i can’t show the images, please help me if you can.

Bye
Oct 31
1:59 pm

Nic Johnson
Thanks for sharing, Darren.

I’ve played with the template a little bit and it seems to me that it would be more advantageous to use category_name instead of cat in the query_posts tag. At least it seems like it would be more flexible for the content owners to setup the categories. If you use the numbering scheme, you have to set them up in the right order.

Make sense? Am I missing something here?

Thanks,
Nic
Nov 1
4:27 pm

Nivas
hi darren,
i’m using “Mimbo’ theme in my site http://www.lifeofexcellence.com.

cool stuff…..

suppose i need to change right column a bit
where in which i jus wanno display the category along with the image and a short description of the category and the link of that category must go archive of that category..

and also how to display the child categories alone at the side ,because it also shows teh parent category…….

can you help me with the same..
Nov 6
10:04 am

Chris
@Waaah (better blog-as-CMS-package) try MovableType. The templates are in straight HTML, and itll do anything you want. Two good examples of its implementation are

simplebits.com
orderedlist.com

Both made by high profile web developers. Only downside is that it uses CGI instead of PHP.
Nov 7
4:12 pm

Clay Burell
Beautiful work AND support here. I’ve just finished figuring out the “Lead Story” configuration – easy peasy :) – but need more input on the “Features” formatting. Others might have the same questions, so here goes:

What dimensions should the images have for the “Features” image?

That’s all for now. You can see our Project Global Cooling site to watch it evolve.

Thanks again for the brilliant work.
Nov 7
4:42 pm

Clay Burell
Re: my own question about image size for “Features” fields: 256 X 88 works fine. I measured your demo page.

So far this is wonderfully easy. Thanks again!
Nov 9
11:12 am

peijin
hi, i just installed mimbo on my blog…but somehow the pictures in the features (the large ones) are not showing up…have the instructions changed? I tried the uploading, optional field thing and still no picture…it’s still “Image” and the full file name ****.jpg, right?
Is there supposed to be any code for the picture in the actual post?
Nov 9
11:14 am

Dave Milam
Hey,

What do I do for my contributors pics if two contributors share the same last name?

Dave
Nov 12
5:11 am

derdude
i love it! yes, i really do :)
playing around with it on my site linked above.
theres one thing i would like to change. if only i could code php. maybe you can help out ;)
in the ‘category blurbs’ section i would like to be able to use more than one post of each category beeing arrayed. any suggestions?
thanks a lot in advance!
Nov 12
10:32 am

beotiger
Darren, and others, there is bug I have just found while displaying the authors photo , in
single.php there is such string:
/wp-content/themes/mimbo2/images/.
Apparently, it should look like this (for version 2.1 at least ;) )
/wp-content/themes/mimbo2.1/images/

P.S. Thanx a lot for such great theme.
Nov 20
9:23 am

YouON
great work! really a fantastic template i’m using for a friend site karmainstitute.it/magazine
i’ve started to work yesterday i need some time to customize it, but it’ a pleausure workin on.

thanks, alessio
Dec 2
11:12 am

Jay
Thank you! I’ve just finished the basic tweaking of our site using your template. Excellent!
Dec 3
2:09 am

Miles
I basically took this idea to an extreme this past summer to create the website for my college’s online daily paper.

You can see it here: daily.swarthmore.edu/

I’d make it a theme, except there are a ridiculously huge number of individual categories called all over the place for posts and links etc. that anyone using it would have to heavily modify it themselves. Getting it to run has required, thus far, three custom plug-ins too.
Dec 3
12:03 pm

Roger
Hi,

The custom fields dont work for me. I can see it get printed in the source code from the website, but it stops just after …..image/ so it looks like the image name is not being parsed or something!

Can you help me with this ?

Thanks
Dec 5
3:29 pm

Jean-Phi
Hello Darent,

First, many thanks for this Mimbo.

I meet problem with display items category by category. Could you check my Url and click one of them. You’ll see. It’s problem of my configuration or yhe new version of Mimbo.

Regards.
Dec 7
2:17 pm

Roscoe
Brilliant work.

For Single Post Pages, is there a way to call other data from the user profile, for instance their url…

Keep up the good work.
Dec 7
4:26 pm

Fabian
omg, thank you sooooooooo much!!!
Dec 9
11:50 am

Sergio
Hi!
I have installed mimbo wordpress theme, is great but I have a problem. When click on Browse categories I don’t see nothing, The screen is black. Can you help me, please?.

Thank you.
Dec 9
11:52 am

Sergio
Hi!
I have installed mimbo wordpress theme, is great but I have a problem. When click on Browse categories I donâ€™t see nothing, The screen is black. Can you help me, please?.
My blog is http://www.tantoportanpoco.com

Thank you.
Dec 19
2:09 pm

Andy
Oh, and did not know about it. Thanks for the information …
Dec 30
2:03 am

Brad
This is great. i’ve been trying several things to get what you’ve created. I love it.

I was thinking of the “catagory blurb” section that it would be nice to be able to change the catagories listed the same way you change Lead and Feature stories. Can you advise me the write php changes needed to basically have a “Catagory Blurb 1″ “2″ “3″. I would need to make a catagory 1, 2, 3 (numbers, so they show up first) and where they print on the page it will say (instead of just 1) it will say “1 (name of other catagory selected)” (( for instance “1 Woodworking” )).

I appreciate your help. I’m not very good at PHP, but i’m sure a question like this would be like childs play to you.
Jan 2
8:02 pm

kristarella
I knew WordPress could do this stuff. Thankyou so much for showing how!
Jan 5
12:14 pm

Kate Mag
Wow, you’re great! I like Mimbo and i learn a lot from you.
Jan 5
6:25 pm

Frank Pfabigan
your theme will be listed among our top-theme-list at http://wordpress-tutorials.de soon
Jan 10
5:16 am

Jim
Hi Darren,

Your theme is great.. but when I try to add images from url.. different website..the images is not displayed correctly..

example (I use the blog this tool from flickr to website)
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1251/1206384591_1b9037881a.jpg

single post works fine
http://www.aboutoc.com/photos-videos/talega-san-clemente-orange-county.html

but from the Categories link the image don’t show up… (just the flickr css comments)
http://www.aboutoc.com/photo-videos

any idea how i can have the images show up in the Categories page??

Thank you,

Jim
Jan 10
2:26 pm

Clara-xt
122 capital street suite 200
Jan 14
3:39 am

Henry
Catchable fatal error: Object of class stdClass could not be converted to string in /home/ikooly/public_html/blog/wp-includes/category-template.php on line 31

i got this error in sidebar when going to default post of wordpress
Jan 15
5:58 am

Kiki
That’s a great WP templates MAGAZINE. by the way I’m still confuse with your Leading Story Module said “In the query_posts function at the top, youâ€™ll notice a parameter called â€œcat=3â€³. That id number will differ from user to user, depending on what number is assigned in your database. It can be viewed in your control panel under Manage->Categories:”

Perhaps you can more detail share us about it.
Btw, thanks for your attention.

Rgds
Kiki
Jan 16
9:33 am

Goran AniÄ?iÄ‡
Here is example ;)
http://www.ictmag.info
Jan 20
2:39 pm

jasa
I think you coded the template for the sake of your demo and did not think about its ease of use and installation for your users. If not for my background in php, I’d have given up trying to make it work.

But alas, its works and nice job! :) Though like I mentioned, you might want to edit the code to make it more user friendly, easier to install and customize.

Jasa
Jan 21
2:48 am

Hilmy
WebBizPowerTools.com Loves Mimbo

It’s simply awesome! Thanks a lot Darren.

I like it the minute I see it. After a little struggle to understand how Mimbo works, I was able to customise the way I wanted it.

It’s my site’s theme now.

Keep up the great work Darren!
Jan 21
7:23 am

Binusha Perera
great site and also very impressive wordpress template. good work
Jan 27
11:41 am

Senthil Kumar
I had start working on your theme for my website http://www.gadgetsgallery.com
No words to explain my expressions….Simply superb and amazing work….
Feb 1
12:08 am

@balootisme
thanks a lot darren for this template..

i’d apply this template to my DIET PILL REVIEW BLOG.

it takes me about a day to full customize this…
Feb 1
6:57 am

gmonger
Great theme, definitely different from the typical ones I’ve seen. And thanks for coming up with an informative installation and post installation reference above. Makes my life easier.
Feb 7
6:53 pm

Jos van der Vleuten
Hi Darren,

I started today a fresh new site wich is based on your wonderfull theme.
Keep up the good work!!!

cheers,
Jos van der Vleuten
Feb 15
4:07 am

John
I have a odd problem. The link ‘Lead Story’ does not show and is replaced by the words ‘NO CATEGORIES’ . I looked through the template and all the Category ID but cannot find the problem. Thanks for the great template.
Feb 15
5:57 am

John
What i mean is that i cannot seem to get the category name printed out and with a link to the ‘Lead Story’.
Is the code below correct?

<a href=”" rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link to ”
It seems to show the ‘Lead Story’ word but does not link to the actual ‘Lead Storey’ Category.
Feb 21
3:06 pm

Shaun LePage
Darren,
Thanks for the great theme. I’ve got a question, though. I’m very unschooled in working with code, but I’m trying to learn. The author photo code I downloaded is different than what you have up above. This is what I have…

<img src=”/images/.jpg” alt=”" />

Can tell me exactly what I need to do with this? Do I replace “login” with my login name? Do I put it in the parentheses? Where do I put the jpg name? Right before “.jpg”? Sorry–probably dumb questions, but thanks for any help you can give.
Feb 25
7:05 pm

msn nickleri
thanks good template I’m now download
Feb 27
10:24 am

Adam Lehrhaupt
Darren:

Fabulous theme. We are customizing it for our new blog and I am having a spot of trouble with the author images. It seems to be similar to Shaun LePage’s issue above.

Here is the code I have:
<img src=”/images/.jpg” alt=”" />

I tried my login, lastname, firstname as the image file name. Any thoughts?

Thanks again for all the great work on this theme.

A-
Mar 5
10:32 am

Dominic
Adam Lehrhaupt: To make your author images work make sure the line is as follows (in the SINGLE POST template):

<img src=”/wp-content/themes/mimbo2/images/.jpg” alt=”" />

The author image will show up only if the author last name is the image name (must be a JPG).

If you want it to show the image with the author’s login, use this:

<img src=”/images/.jpg” alt=”" />

The lead story category title can be changed here in the INDEX template:

The include=3 is the category number. This decides the title of the category of the lead story.
Mar 5
10:34 am

Dominic
My above post lost the code for the lead story category title:

wp_list_categories(‘include=3&title_li=&style=none’); ?>

The include=3 is the category chosen for the Title Category.
Mar 5
10:36 am

Dominic
Sorry, the above post on author images lost the code too…comments do not like the php tag.

email me at

dominic.willett
at
gmail.com

I can send you the code.
Mar 8
7:57 am

upskirt
upskirt
Mar 20
2:00 pm

Nicole
The theme is awesome. However, I just added my first post and while it is available in the side bar -nothing shows up on the homepage? TheLuxMaven.com.
Mar 22
9:43 am

Blogeeks
So good! Thank for your work!
Mar 23
6:39 pm

technology
thanks very good template.
Mar 23
10:59 pm

sachinKT
thanks !!! for this great template.this is exactly what I was looking for.probably the best guide to constructing a flexible WordPress template ….
Mar 27
10:43 am

Harry
I absolutely love this theme, thank you so much for it! Great job.

Does anybody know where the excerpt for the lead story can be changed? It pulls the first 55 words from the post – where can I customize that number? To 75 for example.

Cheers
Mar 28
7:01 am

dekan
Nice theme. Very good work. I’m using it for http://semesra.mywindowsxp.info :) Thanks.
Apr 7
3:52 pm

Marcus Aurelius
Hi guys, great work!
But I actually do not get how to make author’s avatar to appear. I know the image file is supposed to have the same name as the last name of the author is but is there a need to apply some special custom field as well or no.? Please support a detailed how to for us who are a bit dumber.thanx
Apr 12
11:36 pm

Zoran
Nice tutorial. I have been using Joomla for past 4 years to build CMS but after this I will try using WordPress.
Apr 19
12:12 am

Norvell
Question will there be another breakdown of how to set things up for wordpress 2.5 or will you up date this templates?
Apr 19
3:01 pm

web development
cool! we develop online magazines too! we might use this.
Apr 23
4:23 am

Rick Lee
http://www.sofa-manufacturer.com
can youp please give advice on the above website? I do want to use this theme to replace. but I am not sure whether it is good or not.
Apr 27
8:42 am

ricland
The tweak that would allow the text and images to generate entirely from posts is what will make this really user-friendly.

Placing an image in the image file is time-consuming and doesn’t provide the formatting you get in a post.

Non-geek users won’t be able to do this.

If the process is more complicated than posting, they’ll say it’s too hard.

ricland
Jun 6
3:51 am

Seg
Thanks so much. This will pole vault my struggle :)
Jun 14
3:57 am

Josh
Hey Darren,

As a PHP’er myself, I have to commend you on how simple and elegant your solution is. Really nice work, and above all, great way to use existing tools to solve a relatively complex, and common problem: Complex content organization.

Nice work.

JZ
Jun 16
11:10 pm

Aditya Kuber
Tried to get the user photo in many ways, but finally, it worked when the username matched the filename and not the ‘last name’ as is mentioned above. Incidentally, elsewhere, you mention ‘first name’ should match… kind of confusing! But great theme and brilliant features.
Jun 19
1:34 pm

Steve
I wanted to say that this theme is a really good base for creating a magazine style wordpress CMS implementation. I will say though, that there is much to improve upon.

I have tested this fully with WP 2.5.1 and it is working all around. I will say that it would be nice to incorporate the ability to have images (the lead story, featured, and category articles) utilizing a build in plugin, or other functionality for user uploading rather than dealing with putting images into a theme folder.

Since I know PHP and WP’s inner workings, I can potentially enable something like this however, it would be nice to have a new version with this built in for WP 2.5 support.

Great theme though!
Jun 21
4:36 pm

Jack Shipley
Nice work. Do you have an overlay to your PSD file showing, roughly, the placements for your categories?

JD
Jun 22
10:48 am

Steve
Well I made some headway yesterday. I was able to incorporate a plugin that looks for an image placed in the article to be used as the “lead” article image displayed on the home page. It works, though not quite as well as i would like since there are different images being used on the entire front page. The good news though is that it can be done so you don’t have to FTP images to the /images/ directory and can use the built in media manager with WP 2.5+.
Jun 22
1:20 pm

Jack Shipley
OK. Figured it out. I’m imagination impaired!

Since I’m not a designer/programmer, one question: I’m having trouble IDing in the sytle.css how to change the color of the H tags from green to a more compatible blue. What am I missing?

I do need to upgrade to Pro, I think.

Jack
Jul 6
12:46 am

Vfanlkwq
This site is crazy :)
Jul 6
5:54 am

Juurrtxn
nice work man 10x
Jul 8
8:15 am

gpo
Very good, this is the blog theme for me…

keep up the work
Jul 9
10:05 am

Arrernoky
tests time mashine
Jul 15
6:13 pm

rhoen
I’ve been using it form the past couple of months – upgraded to WP 2.6… not a single problem. thanks, darren!
Jul 21
8:02 am

alÄ±ÅŸveriÅŸ
Ã¶nce anlayamadÄ±m bunun ne olduÄŸunu resimler gÃ¶sterilmiyordu. sonra ÅŸunu yapÄ±nca ana sayfada (index.php) sayfasÄ±nda resimli olarak kategoriler gÃ¶rÃ¼ndÃ¼. bunun iÃ§in yazÄ±yÄ± yazdÄ±ktan sonra “Ã–zel Alanlar” bÃ¶lÃ¼mÃ¼nde “Anahtar” kÄ±smÄ±na Image yazÄ±p “DeÄŸer” kÄ±smÄ±na da imaj resmini Ã¶rn:image.jpg yazÄ±yorsunuz.
Jul 26
5:28 am

Sprei
Why my site displays No categories instead of the category name itself ?
Aug 2
8:10 am

usmstan
lot of thanks for a great wordpress template..!!
Aug 4
1:32 pm

Snqkltxa
Good luck,
Aug 4
4:09 pm

Volkan
thanks. nice theme
Aug 18
2:16 am

indir
Thank you for this article.
Aug 23
2:26 pm

Tim
Thanks for the effort Darren.. it helped me alot!
Aug 29
5:20 pm

Brook (Designer)
I love the layout, but I am not able to locate where to make the above changes. can you give a set by step of where to find the panel to make these changes?
Sep 17
6:41 pm

denizli web tasarÄ±m
good css tutorials.
Oct 5
11:19 am

Renegado
Excelente la plantilla que has diseÃ±ado, pero comparto el pensamiento de
gathadirect: “This is a terrific series”. Con todo este material para aprender se nota que wordpress tiene un uso mucho mÃ¡s complejo de lo que yo pensaba. Gracias por hacer el trabajo duro.

Excellent template you’ve designed, but I share the thoughts of
gathadirect: “This is a terrific series.” With all this info to learn it shows that they use wordpress has a much more complex than I thought. Thanks for doing the hard work.
Oct 7
12:22 pm

jk
i have a question!
my sidebar has a unwanted column named “No categories” ,that i can’t discover where you have defined it !
please give a hand!
Thank you!
Oct 9
10:37 pm

massimo
Hi Darren,

thanks for your theme! I was looking for it from a very long time!!
So now I’m happy.

All is OK but I’ve got some little problems. As you can see in my home page

soundspaces.netsons.org

I can’t get to display “Lead Story” and “the Features category” category name printed. I looket at the code but I dont understand nothing… I’m pretty newbie about it.

Can you give me some advices?
I put the post here:

// this is where the Lead Story module begins query_posts('showposts=1&cat=14'); ?>
<a href="" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to "><img src="/images/" alt="" id="leadpic" /> <a href="" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to " class="title"> {<a href="" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to ">More»} <a href="" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to "><img src="/images/" alt="" /><a href="" rel="bookmark" class="title"> »

Thanks in advance
Massimo
Oct 9
10:49 pm

massimo
ok, I solved it… just I had to take a look at sticky post in the forum…
pls excuse me!

Thanks again!
Oct 14
12:36 pm

dina
why cant i get pics displayed?anywhere…either lead article either featured posts……
Oct 17
6:44 am

ichitaka
no where is written which php-file i need to edit. :(
Oct 24
8:04 am

Pat
Just installed this theme last night and found this after trying to figure a few features out. After seeing what it’s capable off I’m amazed and know this is the right theme to meet my needs :-)

Pat
Oct 24
10:54 pm

Mark
Good work bro
Dec 2
6:41 am

Chaivoot
Hi Darren,
I wanna say thank you so much,
Now when I develop my new site, I’ll be always use this theme
but it need some modification

Thx.
Dec 4
1:37 pm

Jan Verhoeff
Hi,

I had thought I was pretty good with code, but I’m lost. This is more code than I understand. Would you look at the site – I used the direct link in my website, and maybe email me about some assistance with the Category Coding. I’ve posted a couple of articles with photos, and thought I had changed the coding appropriately, obviously not. I still have a blank section.

Thanks so much for your assistance.

I love this wordpress format – and the colors are perfect for what I want to portray. I’d like to leave most of the site as is, and simply be able to add articles and information frequently for this site.

Thank you again,

Jan Verhoeff
Dec 4
8:24 pm

Reuben
Hi Darren, let me congratulate you on a very perfect job. I have a few questions though. I am about to use this theme on one of my affiliate sites and will like to ask you how I can donate some few bucks for your efforts. I appreciate a good job.

While test running the theme on my localhost (before I rock it on to my site), I found that the News category brings up the ‘No categories’ return. Please how can I remove this?
Thzanks
Dec 4
8:37 pm

Reuben
Hi Darren, its me again. I finally resolved the dilema. Again, I will like to donate for your efforts.
Dec 21
9:22 pm

Yaz
Hi there,
I’m using the present theme and the pictures inside the poste look like:
<img class=”alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-51” instead of <img class=”picleft”

How can I fix it?

Thanks in advance.
Dec 27
12:53 am

QiaQia
can i use this theme in wordpress 2.7?
Jan 6
12:31 am

amir
how do you insert the images to show up on the homepage?? i have been trying to figure this out for 2 days now. am i missing something very basic???
Jan 6
1:22 pm

Drumstick
this has been the best theme by far. very impressed.
i’m trying it on my own website atm: http://www.groovedance.com

but the right column doesn’t work at all…
here’s the code:

is_category = false;
$wp_query->is_archive = false;
$wp_query->is_home = true;
?>
<a href=”">

<a href=”" rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link to “><img src=”/images/” alt=”" />

<a href=”" rel=”bookmark” class=”title”>»

Any pointers??
Jan 6
1:26 pm

Drumstick
EDIT* = got it working now :)
i wanted only 2 categories in the right col but it seems it only works with 3.