Modifying A WordPress Theme

Have you spent a lot of time looking for a nice, simple WordPress Theme with a main content column wide enough to accommodate pasting in a VFlyer?

I did.  Without success.  So I ended up making a few simple modifications to Chris Pearson's Cutline Theme.

The end result is here:  http://www.bobtaylorproperties.com/

I was going to write some tutorials on how to make the changes, but my plate is still a bit crowded.

So, instead I zipped up my modified theme files, and anyone who wants to download them, please go right ahead.  The zip file is here:  http://www.bob-taylor.biz/Cutline_Modified4RE.zip

After you upload the theme, it will show on your available theme page as simply "Cutline" (not "Cutline 1.2" which is the un-modified version".)  Yeah, I know, I should fix that.  Soon.

Click on it to activate, then go to the Theme Editor, click on the Header file (header.php)  I've added comments surrounded with lots of !!!s to indicate where to add the URL of your own custom banner, and the URLs of your own page navigation links.  Click Update File.

Then click on the Sidebar file (sidebar.php) and type in your own personal/bio info.  Again look for the comment surrounded by lots of !!!s.  Click Update File.

Done.

If anyone needs a more detailed tutorial, stand by......!

 
Posted by Cheryl Johnson on 04/12/2008 08:27 AM   Comments (24)   ,  
Post is included in group: My other blog is
Post is included in group: WordPress Blog
Post is included in group: e-PRO Internet Technology

24 Comments on Modifying A WordPress Theme

Cheryl I will take you up on the offer. I have found the same thing with wordpress.

04/12/2008 08:38 AM by Frank Rubi Louisiana Real Estate-Homes for Sale (Specialized Real Estate Services, Inc.)

CJ -Bookmarked for later - thanks!

04/12/2008 01:45 PM by Virginia Hepp Mesquite NV REALTOR>> Mesquite NV Real Estate (Mesquite GMAC Real Estate)

Thank you for sharing I love the look of this site.

04/12/2008 03:29 PM by Miriam Bernstein, CRS, Westchester County, NY (RE/MAX Prime Properties)

Cheryl,  I've been wracking my brain with WP trying to customize the themes and with one post you've given me more clear information than the forum at WP did.   I don't know how to thank you!

04/13/2008 05:19 AM by Kris Wales-A partner for your real estate needs in Macomb County MI (RE/MAX Advantage 1, Inc.)

Kris -- Thanks!  If I can manage to catch up other stuff over the next few weeks, I might finally have a chance to do a few tutorials on customizing.  I've noticed there isn't a lot of "task-level" info around.  And all you need to know sometimes is ""Delete this and this, add that, then change X to Y "......

04/13/2008 07:20 AM by Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Cheryl- You have been posting about word-press in the e-PRO Group for awhile.  I usually feature them, but hadn't paid much attention to them until now.  Now I am looking into using this format for my outside Blog.  So, I just wanted to say thanks, because of you I can learn what I want to know :)

04/29/2008 04:29 PM by Kathy McGraw ~ Calif Broker (CELLing Realty)

Cheryl thanks for the info about Wordpress. I too have installed my own webblog on my website using Wordpress 2.0. I have installed a custom theme made available to me from my ISP Earthlink and users using Wordpress. They also helped me install my database and helped me install Wordpress. check out my webblog using Wordpress at http://www.sdwrealtyofcapecod.com/wordpress/index.php thanks

 

Cape Cod Realtor sdw1

04/29/2008 07:57 PM by Stephen D White, E-Pro, ABR Cape Cod Realtor® (Ocean Blue Realty llc)

Kathy - You're welcome.

Stephen - I didn't realize earthlink was offering that.  Very interesting.  I have a (rarely used) earthlink accout, I'll have to go check it out.  P.S.  I like your gasoline price post!!

04/29/2008 09:55 PM by Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Kathy -- P.S.  If you are this in the "looking at" stage, don't make a decision without checking out TypePad, also..... TypePad is a clear winner in the "ease of use" department.

04/30/2008 06:54 AM by Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Thanks Cheryl I have my .com with Earthlink and they include wordpress blogging with a database as part of my domain package FREE along with CGI email, Advanced Guestbooks, Hit Counters, php Bulletin Board as free tools amongst the other premium website tools as well!

 

Cape Cod Realtor SDW1

hope you dont mind that I used your pic on my techie post on my AR Rain blog?

04/30/2008 09:44 AM by Stephen D White, E-Pro, ABR Cape Cod Realtor® (Ocean Blue Realty llc)

Slightly off-topic but your blog has helped me before.

 

I just installed version 2.5.1 and after installing and trying to view any of the 3 themes I get this fatal error: Call to undefined function get_header() in/home/content/l/i/t/mywebsite/html/index.php   on line 3

 

I opened header.php in the WP 2.5.1 file and found ONLY this: this (>) sign with an underscore directly beneath it.

 

HELP

 

Can you post the code for header.php in WordPress 2.5.1 file or whichever version of WP you have?  I hope this makes the difference.  

05/01/2008 08:17 PM by Robin

Robin,  I've only updated one of my WordPress sites to 2.5...

 

Here's my own modified header.php based on the Cutline Theme

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="<?php bloginfo('html_type'); ?>; charset=<?php bloginfo('charset'); ?>" />
 
 <title><?php if (is_single() || is_page() || is_archive()) { wp_title('',true); } else { bloginfo('name'); echo(' &#8212; '); bloginfo('description'); } ?></title>
 
 <meta name="generator" content="WordPress <?php bloginfo('version'); ?>" /> <!-- leave this for stats -->
 
 <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />
 <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/custom.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
 <!--[if lte IE 7]>
 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/ie7.css" media="screen" />
 <![endif]-->
 <!--[if lte IE 6]>
 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/ie6.css" media="screen" />
 <![endif]-->
 <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> RSS Feed" href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" />
 <link rel="pingback" href="<?php bloginfo('pingback_url'); ?>" />

 <?php wp_head(); ?>
</head>

<body class="custom">

<!-- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To add your own custom header, just change the URL contained within the quote marks of the "img src" tag below to the URL of your header image.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!-->

<img src="http://www.nelanews.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/btp3.jpg">
<p><br></p>

<div id="navcontainer">
<ul id="navlist">

<li><a <?php if (is_home()) echo('class="current" '); ?>href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">Home</a></li>


<!-- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To add your own page navigation tabs, just change the URLs contained within the quote marks of the "a href" tags below to the URLs of your pages.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!-->

                <li><a href="http://www.bobtaylorproperties.com/?page_id=30">Our Websites</a></li>
                <li><a href="http://www.bobtaylorproperties.com/?page_id=31"Our Listings">Our Listings</a></li>
                <li><a href="http://www.bobtaylorproperties.com/?page_id=32">Search The MLS</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.bobtaylorproperties.com/?page_id=11">Contact Us</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.bobtaylorproperties.com/?page_id=2">About</a></li>

 

</ul>
</div>

<div id="container">

=======================

Here's the header.php file (unmodified) from the WordPress Classic theme

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" <?php language_attributes(); ?>>

<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="<?php bloginfo('html_type'); ?>; charset=<?php bloginfo('charset'); ?>" />

 <title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?><?php wp_title(); ?></title>

 <meta name="generator" content="WordPress <?php bloginfo('version'); ?>" /> <!-- leave this for stats please -->

 <style type="text/css" media="screen">
  @import url( <?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?> );
 </style>

 <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" />
 <link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="RSS .92" href="<?php bloginfo('rss_url'); ?>" />
 <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="<?php bloginfo('atom_url'); ?>" />

 <link rel="pingback" href="<?php bloginfo('pingback_url'); ?>" />
 <?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly&format=link'); ?>
 <?php //comments_popup_script(); // off by default ?>
 <?php wp_head(); ?>
</head>

<body>
<div id="rap">
<h1 id="header"><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>

<div id="content">
<!-- end header -->

 

============================

 Have you tried just re-uploading the theme?

 

05/01/2008 08:40 PM by Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Cheryl thank you for the prompt response. For some reason the Header.php file in all of the themes in WP 2.5.1 are empty with the exception of the greater than underscore characters.  I put the unmodified code you gave above and cleared the MySQL tables (thank you for that post!) but to no avail.  This has stumped me for the last 4 hours.  I will scrap everything and try again tomorrow.

The funny thing is, I don't think it was the upgrade that caused this because initially I used the Godaddy install of 2.5 and the two default themes (classic and WP default) worked but the pro theme I purchased received the Fatal error: Call to underlined function get_header() in /home/content/l/i/t/myblogacct/html/index.php  on line 3    

 I thought if I upgraded to 2.5.1 it would correct the problem, but it only made it worse, because now all of the themes have the following error.

 Should I scrap WP 2.5.1 and re-upload? 

 

Thank you so much for your help Cheryl. Really.  I had no luck on the WordPress forum and you replied right away.

 

Robin 

05/01/2008 09:24 PM by

Robin ... Your Pro theme, do you still have the original files on your computer hard drive?  Have you tried just FTPing that one original header.php file to the WordPress theme folder on your server... overwriting the bad header file?

As a test:  What about finding a completely different theme( a free one), and installing it .... Does the header.php file of the new theme still get corrupted?

05/01/2008 09:38 PM by Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Love the pics you put on your site. =o)

05/02/2008 02:31 AM by June Watson, Realtor®, NW Alabama (Real Estate Shoals)

Robin .... Another thought ...You know, the creation and sale of themes is not exactly a regulated business.  Anyone can create a WP theme, and put up a web site to sell it.  It's not like it has to be tested and approved by official WordPress inspectors.  And some people are better theme writers than others.  There could be a slight possibility that your pro theme has a few bugs, maybe ?????

05/02/2008 07:24 AM by Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Hi Cheryl,

 

I'm back in my office ready to conquer this challenge! The theme I purchased is  http://diythemes.com/thesis/ by Chris Pearson.  There is a forum for the "Thesis" theme and I don't see where anyone has had any problems to date.  I do have the original file.

2 minutes later... 

(OMGosh! I just checked the Thesis theme and that's the problem! The Header.php file is blank!) You are correct Cheryl.  So when I uploaded Thesis on my FTP it must have overwritten the header file in WP 2.5.1. 

I have a Mac and a tablet PC I work with at my office.  I downloaded Thesis theme on both OSs. The Mac shows a blank header.php and the pc is showing code in the same file.  So something went wrong with the download on the Mac.

I am super charged to tackle this now. I'll get back to you in a while and let you know how it all went. THANK YOU THANK YOU!  I'm sending oodles of positive energy your way.

Robin

05/02/2008 11:32 AM by Robin

Cheryl,

 

It was indeed the header.php file being empty on the Mac but not on the PC that was causing the problem.  I also decided to forgo upgrading because even with using the pc and a header.php well coded in the Thesis theme I couldn't get it to work.  So I will stick with the WP 2.5 and pay someone with WP experience to upgrade if need be in the future. (if you are for hire or know a trustworthy source who is...please advise)  For now I can see the theme I purchased at my blog and that's a good thing.  I'm going to hang out around here and browse for a while. Your blog is really informative.

Thank you kindly for extending your hand in kind.

 

Robin 

05/02/2008 06:00 PM by

Actually, I have no claim to being a WordPress expert.  You might contact Active Rain member Brad Carroll http://activerain.com/realestatewebdesign   ==  http://activerain.com/blogs/realestatewebdesign   I think that sort of thing is Brad's specialty.

05/02/2008 06:39 PM by Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Thank you. I'm gonna do just that.

05/02/2008 11:10 PM by Robin

Cheryl, my custom WP theme gets going back to the default WP theme in .org.

Any clue what to do or how to fix it permanently, I am tired of checking it ?  

05/03/2008 10:34 AM by Missy Caulk Ann Arbor Real Estate (Keller Williams Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Missy .... Just a totally wild guess here ... But my first thought would be your WordPress theme is just fine, but the old version of the site in stuck in your browser's cache.  Do you see the new page if you click refresh?  What about if you delete "temporary internet files"?  Like a said, a wild guess....

05/03/2008 11:05 AM by Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Bob Carney said on twitter it had something to do with the CSS too. But, no it is seen on others computers and I have never flipped back to the WP default. Yesterday, in the backend it showed it was my theme, so I went and clicked on the WP theme, then went back to my custom one and it came back. 

It got is working but I know it isn't permanent.  

05/03/2008 11:43 AM by Missy Caulk Ann Arbor Real Estate (Keller Williams Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Do you want to test Carney's CSS Theory?

FTP to your WordPress Site, drill down to wp-content/themes/classic

Find the file named styles.css, and right click on it.  Rename it styles-old.css (or something similar).

Of course, the classic theme then won't display correctly at all (unless and until you rename it back), but if it is bumping heads with the other style sheet, this should make it stop.  :-)

 

05/03/2008 12:24 PM by Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Leave a response…

Name:
Notify me of new comments:
Comment:
What does the graphic say?
 
Real Estate Brokerage: Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA
Cheryl Johnson
Highland Park, CA
More about me…
Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Office Phone: (323) 257-1080
Email Me

Random thoughts on life, art, business, stuff, and occasionally Real Estate.

Subscribe to CJ's blog by email

Enter your Email


Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz


Links

Tags (Tag Cloud)

Archives

RSS 2.0 Feed for this blog
ATOM 1.0 Feed for this blog

Find CA real estate agents and Highland Park real estate here on ActiveRain.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
© 2007 ActiveRain Corp. All Rights Reserved