Category Archives: New Articles

New Articles

Making It Easy for You! Feedburner Setup

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Feedburner is Google’s free service that makes having attractive RSS feeds a snap. It’s not hard to set up an account, but some of the more important services are hidden away under lots of menu tabs and sidebar menus.

The new article, “Feedburner Setup,” makes it all easy for you. It shows you in five illustrated steps how to set Feedburner up in under five minutes!

Also included is the way to set up RSS email subscriptions and why you should.

The article is catalogued in the Tips section under “Google Services Setup.”

New Articles

You’ve been heard! Color Individual Tabs on the Thesis 1.6 Nav Bar

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Many of you have requested an update of the article about coloring individual menu tabs in Thesis 1.5.1. Your wait is over!

Thesis 1.6 offers even more ways to color your menu tabs, even without the dropdown menus. You can color the unselected tabs and hover colors individually, the selected tab, and each tab’s dropdown and dropdown hover colors. Even the RSS Subscribe word can be colored.

Color Individual Tabs on the Thesis 1.6 Nav Bar shows you how to do all this with many illustrations and code examples. The tutorial is clear and easy to follow, with each type of coloring having both an image and the code showing you how it was done.

Now you can exactly match your menu with your color scheme, or color your tabs by the categories they represent as I did with ChampagneGossip, which is still under development at this moment.

See, I do listen to you! On tap are many more articles that you, the readers, have suggested!

New Articles

Toolbox Essentials – Tutorial: Browser Detection to Execute IE Hacks

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If you are a Firefox, Chrome or Mac user, you might be familiar with this scenario: Your Thesis site looks great and you are all proud. Then a friend emails you that your page is a mess in Internet Explorer. You gaze at the attached screenshot in horror. What can you do?

A new article, “Tutorial: Browser Detection to Execute IE Hacks” gives you two solutions. They will allow you to detect the Internet Explorer browser and include CSS code just for them to get them looking right. You can detect all IE browsers, or individual ones to target the problem.

Cross-browser compatibility is a big issue for developers. Clients insist on their sites looking the same in all browsers. These methods give you the tools needed to make the sites appear the same in all versions of IE, Firefox and Chrome both on the Mac and in Windows.

These tools are not always needed, but when they are, they are essential!

New Articles

Important New Article! Tutorial: Customizing Just Your Front Page, Pages or Posts Using Conditional Tags

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How many times have you wanted to customize just the Home page, or just one page, or only posts? You’ve heard about Conditional Tags but don’t have a clue how to use them!

Well, you will after reading this new article!

“Tutorial: Customizing Just Your Front Page, Pages or Posts Using Conditional Tags” provides all you need to know to be a master of Conditional Tags in your custom_functions.php file. Fully illustrated with code examples, it walks you through using Conditional Tags for the Home and Front pages, posts, and pages. It even shows you how to use CSS on selected pages!

This article will surely become one that you come back to again and again to get ideas for your customizations!

It is filed under the “Tips” section in a new grouping called “Code You Can Use.”

New Articles

Another Tip! Quickie: Executing CSS in custom_functions.php

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Sometimes we need to execute CSS within the PHP of our custom_functions.php file. This article shows you how to use the “style” statement to do so!

“Quickie: Executing CSS in custom_functions.php” is a clear and concise article on how to use the same CSS statements as you use in the custom.css file within your custom_functions.php file. It has an example that illustrates the method.

Yet another “Quickie” filed under the “Tips” section in the “Tips” grouping.

New Articles

New Series! Quickie: How to Find a Page or Post’s Number

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A frequent question in the DIYthemes forums is how to find the number of a page or post. It’s really simple, but more or less hidden in the bowels of WordPress!

“Quickie: How to Find a Page or Post’s Number” is an illustrated article showing you how to find the number in about 30 seconds! And it takes about 30 seconds to read!

This is the first of an ongoing series called “Quickies.” They will all be gathered in the “Tips” section under the grouping “Tips.”

New Articles

New Articles About In-Page or -Post Highlight Boxes and the WordPress HTML Editor

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Often you want to highlight a block of text in your post or page. Thesis provides two highlight boxes, Note and Alert, that can surround a single paragraph. The article “In-Post or -Page Highlight Boxes” shows you how to make your own colored highlight boxes that can not only highlight any amount of text you want, but can change the attributes of the text within it. Oh yes, it does show you how to use the Thesis boxes, too. This article is filed under the Tips > Posts & pages section.

Most of us start off using the WordPress visual editor. It’s reasonably WYSIWYG, and you never have to remember those codes to make things bold and stuff. Then comes the day when we have to use the HTML editor! Panic! A new article, “How and When to Use the WordPress HTML Editor,” tells you when and how to use the HTML editor, just as the title promises. No more mysteries! This is the first article in the Newbies > General Information section.

I have so many ideas for new articles, and so many half-written ones, that I don’t know what I’ll be offering you next. Let it be a surprise!

New Articles

New Articles for Oldies and Newbies: Installing WordPress & Adding a Sidebar Image

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Today’s articles are at both ends of the Thesis experience spectrum.

For people who are installing new Thesis domains or subdomains is an article entitled “Installing WordPress Using Fantastico.” Fantastico is a utility for installing software systems that is widely used by hosting companies. The article describes step-by-step with many illustrations how to use Fantastico to install the WordPress software. Even people whose hosts use different installation software can benefit from this tutorial, since the steps likely will be similar.

One of the first customization projects newbies want to undertake is to add images to the sidebar. The article “Adding a Sidebar Image” is a complete guide to setting up both non-clickable and clickable images in the sidebar. It is the first of a new series for newbies, “Simple Projects.” Other articles in the series will follow soon, including how to set up a header image, putting several images and text areas into one widget, and making colored boxes for use in posts and pages.

Articles on tap for the near future include controlling spam with the .htaccess file, moving search to your Thesis header or nav bar, and an overview of tools for developing your color scheme and using colors.

If you haven’t signed up to get our posts by RSS reader or email, now’s the time to do it! It’s free, and it’s the only way you can be notified of the frequent new articles in Thesis Theme Tools. Don’t delay… click on the RSS or email button in the sidebar right now to get started!

New Articles

New Article! WordPress: Change Editor Backups

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WordPress introduced a new “feature” in a recent revision that is well-intended. It automatically makes backups of drafts while you are editing a post or page in the WordPress editor. This is intended to allow you to go back to previous drafts. It is most useful if you write your pages and posts directly in the editor and need to backtrack from time to time.

However, if you write your posts and pages in an external program on your computer, as I do, this feature is useless.

And it’s worse than useless: It creates backup draft after draft, swelling your WordPress database enormously.

There’s a way to prevent all this, and a new article, “WordPress: Change Editor Backups” tells you how. With just two lines inserted into your “wp-config.php” file, you can either specify the number of backups to be made or eliminate them entirely.

Masters of the Universe: Take control of your WordPress editor backups!

New Articles

New Article! WordPress Plugins I Use

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I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve been asked which WordPress plugins I use on my sites, or which plugin I would recommend for a particular function! It’s a kind of shoptalk, like discussing sauces between chefs. And it’s a great area of mystery for newbies.

A new article, “WordPress Plugins I Use,” lists the plugins I use on my sites. It has a short description of why I use each, along with a link to a place where it is being used, if relevant. To finish it off, I rate each plugin according to its usefulness to a site.

Now all I have to do is to point people to the article and save my voice — or my fingers!

New Articles

Two New Articles! Rotating Header Images and Upgrading Thesis

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Today we continue to fill out our offering to you, gentle reader, with two great new articles:

“Tutorial: Rotating Header Images” is found in the Tricks > Headers section. Rotating headers were a feature of Chris Pearson’s Cutline and Neoclassical themes. And now you can have them in Thesis! This easy-to-follow guide will have you up in no time. See them in action at my Thesis Demo site.

The latest addition to the Tips section is the detailed guide, “Upgrading Thesis.” Installing a Thesis upgrade can be a terrifying prospect for those of us who are less experienced. This article is the answer! Liberally sprinkled with illustrations, it takes you step-by-step through the Thesis upgrade process.

On tap are even more articles for you, such as how to install WordPress and tools for color schemes. Don’t turn that dial!