Well yesterday I promised you the second half of this idea of stretching your abilities. And I have been stretching the little ones abilities to the maximum.  Poor little brat this grandpa made her so frustrated yesterday. But she really is learning to read well. I am increasingly surprised at how much more advanced the computer has made modern day children. They really do appear light years ahead of where we were at their ages. Is it a good thing? I sometimes wonder. Of course to keep up with their age group they really don’t have much choice but I think they miss a lot of the good things we had as children. The simple things, like making roads in the dirt to push our Dinkie cars along: The climbing of trees and the building of tree houses. I can remember standing for hours on the banks of a river while my Dad patiently taught me how to skip flat stones on the river surface. Where did that all go?

Well we are going to extend the custom fields again.

Being Unique

Being different and standing out from the crowd is very important. This creates an immediate impression.
WordPress now allows this because it enables you to post a class function.
Go into your functions php and insert the following code.

 
After inserting this code you are going to need to edit the single.php .  Here you need to add the following code to wrap your content. Add it to the Div section

If you are going to be using the custom field class in the CSS you would do it now.
You can also have a different color assigned to each post as a background.

Your Editorial Post

If you want to change a background image for users to use you can also apply this here.
You need to set your image width to 1200 or higher then upload it to your wp-content. Use the URL of the site as /wp-content whatever and put it in the custom field area which is called background. Now add it. Now upload tim thumb. And you will be ready.

You are now going to add some code to just below the style sheet on your theme. This you will find in your header area.

 

This should resize your image in timthumb and be available on all sizes of monitor as your background image.

Make sure that the URL that you are using is the relative and not the absolute if there are any problems. Another problem you might have is that you don’t have the permissions correctly set in the files section. Check timthumb for the correct ones.
I hope you enjoyed that little tip. It is pretty simple to do once you get the hang of it. There are several more things we can do along these lines and I look forward to sharing them with you.

Well, the little snip arrived, and all is good. She is just as charming as ever, and it will be hard to resist as she tries to wheedle me to get her way. Luckily, the weather has cleared so she is able to play to her hearts content in the garden while I sit under the oak with the laptop.  She is fascinated by the laptop as she only has the desktop and thinks the laptop is just her size. Actually, I make her sound like a little monster, but she is very good. The initial excitement of arriving by plane was all good. She was a little overtired yesterday I think. I know I didn’t sleep much the night before, and I am sure she didn’t either.  However, they arrived and are here for the week, so I will be a happy chap for the while. I must admit I do miss them when they aren’t within driving distance. However, the snips or snippets are awaiting us.

I will carry on from where I left off.

1.Most Talked About post

 Would you like to know what the mostly talked about posts on your blog were this year?  It’s a case of bringing them into view with a few snippets of code and changing the dates to bring it up to date, and there they will appear.
Wp Recipe has the code available for you. Just bring it up to date.

2. Keep Your Admin Section Private.

Matt has been kind enough to share with us how to make these vital areas safe on our blogs. If you head on over to his web site at Matt Cutts you can learn all about it.

3. Give yourself Style

Darren Hoyt has a few suggestions as to how to use some code and a download to give yourself a something different on your blog. He offers three various items you can look at.

4. Widgets

There is a way sometimes widgets are in places that we just don’t want them. Well there is a way to move or remove them without actually altering the basic template. Justin Tadlock has a few suggestions to make on his website.

5. Add Your Info Box First

You know how sometimes you just want your own info to appear first?
Well, Lam Nguyen has this little tit bit of a snippet to offer you. It’s available on WordPress Hacks.

 
6. Make Your Own Decision on What Will Show or Not

Not everything has to show. That’s the rebel in me coming out. This site has a variety of hacks and things that you can alter, and you will find many items to use at Hongkiat.

7. Spread your Words

By that I mean use a Feed burner. With some .php code in the right place, it’s possible. Jeff Starr has come up with some excellent .php code for us to use rather than having to use a plug in.
At the end of the day folks, would you rather start to learn how to do a little coding by listening to the guys who know, or would you rather stick to plug-ins which can eventually weigh your web site down until it almost so slow people leave. Get yourself a clean and lean machine.

The Chocó chip cookies were a hit with Tom, so they must be ok. I know I shouldn’t have feed him too many, but he did enjoy them. Chocolate isn’t good for either dogs or my waistline. What does it do? It makes their little hearts race.  I know they like it. So do all of us. However, then we often like things we shouldn’t have. I went and worked my couple off in the vegetable garden by getting it ready for winter and protecting various berry plants that don’t like the cold. I love my berries, although often my hands get torn to shreds when I forget to put on the gardening gloves. With just a little tender loving care and water in the summer, they give so abundantly with their fruit. Remember berries are a very good healthy fruit to eat. I just snip off one or two dozen at a time for breakfast. Now I am going to suggest you use a few snippets of code to enhance your WordPress.

1.Some suggestions for making your entrance hall changed

That is your login page. You will place it on the functions.php page. This was provided by Rami and can be found on WP Recipes.  It’s pretty simple to do it’s just a case of copy the code and insert it in the right place.

2. Are You Mobile Enabled?

More and more people are using their BlackBerries and Iphones to surf the web, and so it makes sense to make it accessible and easy for them to use your site when they come to visit. You have to add a little code to make this happened. This code was written and provided by Jeff Starr and is made available by WP Recipes.

3. Automate Your Image Sizes

When you have to make thumbnails and resize a large quantity of images this little snippet is worth its weight in gold. It automates the process. There is a slight catch to this, however, as you do have to have GD Library installed on your server. Check that it is available first although it should be if the server is php 4.3 compliant. It is available from Darren Hoyt.

4. Tags are Important

Tags are used as a means of finding photos and content on your blog. To display tags in your dropdown menu is useful. To make this easier for you this little snippet of code from WPHacks will help.

and

5. The Extra Links

You know the ones I mean they say Read more…. And take you to the right page.  Well, the php code is available. If you head on over to Cagintranet Web Design, that is where they have it available.

6. Posting to RSS Feed

RSS feed has intrigued me for some time., but with the advent of the Blackberries, etc. more and more people are getting updated on their favorite subjects all the time. If you want to make use of this feature you need to insert some code to make sure it goes out at the later time you want allow you to fix the little gremlins that might have appeared. WP Engineer has made this code available.