How to Customize Your Random Header Images

by Chris Pearson

custom

After downloading Neoclassical, one of the first things you’ll want to do is customize the random header images that now grace the top of your site’s pages. Doing this effectively requires knowledge of exactly how these things work, and with my help, you’ll be a professional image randomizer in no time.

Oh, but before we go any further, you’ll need to download and install the updated version of rotating_images.php. In order to provide you with a more robust rotator, I had to modify the original code slightly.

Background Information

The Neoclassical Theme comes with a folder named /headers that contains the 5 default images used in the rotator. These header image files all follow a simple naming convention:

header_1.jpg
header_2.jpg
header_3.jpg
header_4.jpg
header_5.jpg

On default installations, these header images are controlled by a theme file named rotating_images.php. This is a simple PHP script that randomly selects one image from the /headers folder and displays it using the appropriate HTML.

The script, which consists of two main parts, is easy to understand. First, we generate a random number based on the total number of images in our /headers folder (this number is manually controlled, and the default is 5):

<?php
   $random_image = rand(1,5);
?>

Next, we output the image associated with the random number we just generated:

<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/headers/header_<?php echo $random_image; ?>.jpg" … />

In the above code, note the occurrence of the variable $random_image. Because this value changes randomly, the filename referenced in the image declaration also changes.

Quick Customization Example

Now that you know a little bit about how the random header generator works, let’s tweak it a little bit. For this example, let’s say that we we’ve created 8 killer header images, and we’d like to replace the default images with these new ones for display on our site.

Step one is to ensure that your images follow the required naming convention—header_1.jpg, header_2.jpg, header_3.jpg, and so on. It’s also important that your image subscripts start with 1 and increase in increments of 1, because any other configuration would require additional modification of the script.

Step two is to upload those images to your /headers folder, which is located inside your base /neoclassical theme folder.

Step three is to keep in mind that the default configuration can only accommodate 5 header images. In our example, however, we’re looking to include 8 images, and in order to pull this off, we’ll need to make a very slight modification to rotating_images.php:

<?php
   $random_image = rand(1,8);
?>

In the above code, all I did was replace the default value of 5 with the number 8 (highlighted, kinda). Once you save and upload this modified version of rotating_image.php, you’ll have an image rotator that displays one of eight random images on each page of your site.

A Few Details…

The default header images are all 865px wide by 180px tall. Personally, I think this makes for a relatively unobtrusive yet visually striking crop, but your mileage may vary. Either way, I think you’ll appreciate the balance of your design the most if you keep your images that width.

If you use an image that is less than 865px wide, it will align to the left underneath the site title, leaving a visual gap of whitespace to the right of the image. In the event you simply must use such an image, I recommend leaving it aligned to the left. Despite that, I know many of you will want to tinker with a center-aligned image, and in order to do that, all you need to do is add the following declaration to your custom stylesheet, custom.css:

.custom #rotating_image img {
   margin: 0 auto;
}

Actually, while you’re at it, why not check out a right-aligned image, too:

.custom #rotating_image img {
   margin: 0 0 0 auto;
}

Now who can resist the urge to customize after that?

204 comments

1 Hawk { 11.27.07 at 10:24 pm }

Does this theme have an option for an all-black background?

2 Dave { 11.28.07 at 1:18 am }

Wicked stuff Chris. Thanks for the additional work on the headerr files. I’ll be installing the theme in the next few days (I’m just sorting through some photos for some cool header images). Thanks.

3 Chris Pearson { 11.28.07 at 2:03 am }

Hawk — No, but that’s not a bad idea, and I bet I could improve the theme a bit just by attempting to code up a high contrast version. If I come up with anything, I’ll let everyone know.

Dave — Good luck with that! When you finish up your header images, drop a line back here so we can geek out on your pics

4 Hannu { 11.28.07 at 4:33 am }

Hi,
I am allready using the first version of the Neoclassic so is the only change the rotating_images.php or should I update the whole theme?

5 Chris Pearson { 11.28.07 at 11:43 am }

Hannu — You can read about most of the changes for version 1.1 on the version release notes page, and you can actually see some of the differences just by comparing this site to your own (for instance, note the additional whitespace in comments).

6 David Taylor { 11.29.07 at 9:10 am }

Hi Chris, Your theme looks awesome.
Unfortunately I am getting error 404s for the pages I try to create (Home is fine). The problem disappears when I switch to a default theme.
My WP files are hosted on my own server in a folder in the public-html.
Any ideas.

7 Chris Pearson { 11.29.07 at 11:41 am }

David — In its default configuration, Neoclassical supports semantic URLs, as opposed to the cryptic, out-of-the-box permalink structure provided by WordPress. In the past, changing this structure required a bit of technical mumbo-jumbo-ery (yes, I have poetic license here), but with the advent of WordPress 2.3+, this is now an extremely quick and painless process.

Try following these steps, and I bet your permalinks will not only look better, but they will also work properly with Neoclassical:

In your WordPress dashboard, visit the Options tab.
Next, select Permalinks from the sub-navigation menu.
Under the “Common options” heading, you should see four buttons that correspond with the four available permalink structures for WordPress. Select Custom (the last one), and enter /%postname%/ in the text input field.
Click on one of the two Update Permalink Structure » buttons, and you’re done!

Oh, and I suppose I took it for granted, but it’s certainly worth noting that using a semantic permalink structure on your site (as I’ve suggested here) is extremely beneficial to your overall search engine optimization. It’s literally something that everyone with a WordPress site should do.

8 Brian { 11.29.07 at 8:02 pm }

Great theme. Is there a way to change the white background with .gif or .jpeg and leave the center white.

I tried to modify the background to black in the css, but the whole theme turned black. Any suggestions? Thanks.

9 Chris Pearson { 11.30.07 at 2:32 pm }

Brian — You could create a 465px-wide .gif file that is white (if that’s the color you want your center column to be), and then you could overwrite the existing bg_content.gif file that is in your /neoclassical/images folder.

My instincts say that things will probably come out looking a bit funky, but if you like the result, go with it!

10 Eric { 11.30.07 at 3:02 pm }

Hi Chris. Whenever I create a new page, it doesn’t show up on the site. I changed the permalink structure as you said to do here. Yet none of my created pages show up. Thoughts?

11 Chris Pearson { 11.30.07 at 3:17 pm }

Eric — Pages do not show up in the sidebar by default. If you’d like to have this functionality, you can simply add the Pages widget to either sidebar.

The reason why pages don’t automatically show up in the navigation section is because people often use pages in other creative ways, and it would therefore be inappropriate to list all the pages there. Also, the sheer volume of pages on some sites would make an auto-generated list of pages more of a detriment to the home page than anything else.

Finally, you can manually add links to the navigation section in the left sidebar by editing nav_menu.php.

12 Gideon { 11.30.07 at 3:42 pm }

I was coming over to ask a question and I see there’s an update! Excellent, will install it later today. The rotating header images have been working wonderfully for me, with my own custom images that I simply uploaded to the appropriate folder instead of the ones you had provided.

My question was: How do I add an “edit” link to each post that I can see on the posts or on the main page when I’m logged in? Most themes I’ve tried have it and it is very useful to edit individual posts quickly when I’m reading them and see a small error, instead of having to scroll down to Site Admin and then clicking over to manage and then the edit button.

Thanks again.

13 Eric { 11.30.07 at 6:54 pm }

Thanks Chris. However, in the “Navigation” portion, if I delete the “About” page, the link still shows up on the left. Is there any way to just get rid of the “Navigation portion and leave the “pages” portion on the left? Thanks. The theme is awesome, btw.

14 Chris Pearson { 12.02.07 at 4:31 pm }

Eric — If you delete the following lines of code in left_bar.php, you will effectively remove the navigation menu:

<li class="widget">
   <h2>Navigation</h2>
   <ul>
      <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/nav_menu.php'); ?>
   </ul>
</li>

15 Kevin Donahue { 12.03.07 at 11:48 am }

@Gideon - To add an “edit this page” link a la Kubrick, you will need to add that snippet from the Default “Single Post” template to the NeoClassical “Single Post” template.

Not sure how much/little code will show on Chris’s blog, so I’ll refer you to the Codex for the EDIT POST LINK.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/edit_post_link

16 Hannu { 12.05.07 at 4:38 am }

Any change to make translation easier?
Without really knowing anything about programming I just wonder if it would be possible to make translation of the template easier?
I have now done it twice: first to 1.0 and then to 1.1 so I start to know where the texts are…
But if there is any change to collect the texts more together in the files it would make the translation much easier.

Hannu

17 Peter { 12.07.07 at 6:32 pm }

The left-hand sidebar drops down in IE 6. Nice theme, but the drop dwon is pretty annoying.

18 Chris Pearson { 12.07.07 at 7:20 pm }

Peter — I test extensively in IE 6, and I tend to get bent out of shape when people make allegations like the one you’ve made here. On my test machine, which runs IE 6, everything is perfect. Are you talking about the theme as it is installed here, or are you talking about a version that you installed on one of your own sites?

If it’s your own site, then it’s almost a certainty that you simply had an element in the sidebar or in the content that was too wide for either column. Would you be so kind as to provide a link to this misbehaving version of the theme?

19 Peter { 12.08.07 at 12:35 am }

Hi!

It was, and is, here on this site. I have not installed your theme anywhere (yet). I’ve sent you screenshots in a PP-file by email.

Peter

20 Chris Pearson { 12.08.07 at 9:44 am }

Peter — As of now, I have not received the screenshots. Also, just to make sure that I’m not crazy, I had a couple other people check in IE 6 as well, and they said everything looked perfect.

21 Rebekah { 12.12.07 at 11:37 am }

Love the template. It’s exactly what we were looking for. It has so many great options I’m not sure how we got it for free. We’ll be launching it this week on our blog.

22 Peter { 12.12.07 at 12:23 pm }

Chris: Did you receive the screenshots? I’ve sent them to both email accounts!

Peter

23 Chris Pearson { 12.12.07 at 1:54 pm }

Peter — I still haven’t received anything. Which email accounts are you talking about?

24 Rebekah { 12.12.07 at 2:47 pm }

Chris - How do we get the categories to show up on each post?

25 Peter { 12.12.07 at 2:52 pm }

Well, I though it was two different accounts. Turns out I’ve sent it twice to ‘onebigchris@gmail.com’

Peter

26 Chris Pearson { 12.12.07 at 3:47 pm }

Peter — Ah, I never check that email account.

Anyway, I received your images, and I’m really not sure why the theme would behave that way for you. So far, I’ve had 3 users test the theme in a Windows XP environment with IE 6, an all of them have said that the site rendered perfectly.

So, that leaves me thinking that you might be running an ancient version of IE. The specific version on my test machine is 6.0.2900.2180. If I’m not mistaken, it’s a version that was released in the wake of Service Pack 2.

What version are you running?

27 Peter { 12.12.07 at 5:01 pm }

6.0.2900.2180.xp-sp2

Peter

28 Peter { 12.12.07 at 5:04 pm }

However, it is set up for the international character set - I am from Scandinavia. I don’t know if that could be an issue, but thought I’d mention it.

Peter

29 Chris Pearson { 12.12.07 at 5:10 pm }

Peter — Although I honestly don’t know for sure, my suspicion is that some other factor—like your character set, for instance—is causing the issue. I would be interested to see if changing back to the utf-8 standard fixes the problem. Do you mind to test that out?

30 Peter { 12.12.07 at 7:05 pm }

No, I don’t mind. However, it still looks the same here. Do you want me to just look here, or install it somehwere, or what?

Peter

31 Chris Pearson { 12.13.07 at 12:31 am }

Peter — Eh, I guess I really just mean change your character set to utf-8 and see if it causes this site to display differently. If nothing else, we’ll be able to rule that out as a factor in the strange behavior you’re seeing.

32 Peter { 12.13.07 at 1:19 am }

Hmm. I am using Windows XP. What do I do?

Peter

33 Chris Pearson { 12.13.07 at 1:24 am }

Peter — Oh, I see what you mean now… In IE 6, go to View → Encoding → Unicode (UTF-8).

If that value is already set, then I guess the encoding was never a problem to begin with

34 Peter { 12.13.07 at 1:33 am }

Yeah, is set to Unicode UTF-8.

Peter

35 Peter { 12.13.07 at 1:37 am }

Oh - and checked this page in Firefox now. There is looks great, even for me - So it somehow related to IE 6, and possibly Scandinavian, European or something settings, I guess?

Peter

36 Chris Pearson { 12.13.07 at 1:38 am }

Peter — I’m totally stumped. I don’t see how the same version of the same browser can render a site differently. Strange indeed.

37 Chris Pearson { 12.16.07 at 11:18 pm }

Rebekah — You’ll need to add the following code to your template files (where you want the categories to show):

<?php the_category(', ') ?>

Keep in mind that these will be styled differently (or not styled at all) depending on where you incorporate them into the theme. Unfortunately, I cannot offer further support on including category links, but if you’d like a closer look at why I think category links are a huge negative for just about any site, please check out this comment (specifically, paragraphs 4 and 5).

38 Rob { 12.18.07 at 7:59 pm }

Chris suggetion for newbie’s a quick set of instructions to take a hi-res image and get it cut down to fit in the header.

and a question, i would like to thin the right sidebar in part to make my web cam page work better, but also because most of what will be there isn’t all that important, where do i tweak width of sidebar and center bard. thanks in advance

39 Rob { 12.18.07 at 8:06 pm }

while i have your attention, i would like the header to be specific with some pages, like my cam page. is there a call i can insert on that page to refresh the header with a specific image. thx

40 Peter { 12.18.07 at 8:18 pm }

Chris: Is there anything (coding trick) you can do to firmly shore that left hand sidebar to the top? I’d really like to use your templete! You must be able to tie a knot of code to keep it in place, even in my browser!

– Regards,
Peter

41 Chris Pearson { 12.19.07 at 9:33 am }

Rob — I’m afraid that modifying sidebar widths is too intensive for coverage here. The sidebars have been designed to be of equal widths, and tightening one (while widening another column) has extremely significant CSS ramifications.

As far as the header images are concerned, you could try adding the following snippet of code to rotating_images.php, being sure to replace cam_page with the Page Slug from your actual cam page:

<?php
   if (is_page('cam_page')) { ?>
<img href="http://path/to/cam/page/img" />
<?php
   }
   else { ?>
<!– insert regular code from rotating_images.php here –>
<?php
   } ?>

42 Rob { 12.19.07 at 1:42 pm }

thx Chris for the quick response. i posted a self answer on the photo sizing problem for Newbies on comment #90 on the random rotating header post (sorry) maybe time to integrate a discussion board plug in : )

43 Chris Pearson { 12.19.07 at 3:25 pm }

Rob — I definitely need to get a forum going… I’ve never actually run a forum before, though, so I know the initial learning curve is going to require a lot of time and patience. Of course, that’s probably why I’ve put it off this long

44 Kermit Johnson { 12.19.07 at 3:36 pm }

Chris.. I love the new theme.

How do you get a “view previous post” or “see next post” type of message at the bottom of each post?

Thanks.

45 Rob { 12.19.07 at 6:46 pm }

Chris, i have seen a number of requests for folks wanting to customize column width and layout. The Firebug plug in for FireFox can really help you figure out what parts of the style sheet are manipulating what part of the page. i managed to tweak three items in custom (nice way to be able an experiment) and get a wider main column lay (for a web cam). In my right bar only version of your theme i made the following changes in custom:
grew content.inner by 50 pixels
grew left_box by 50 pixels
shrank sidebar by 50 pixels

46 Rob { 12.19.07 at 7:31 pm }

the worpress.com folks make/use
http://bbpress.org/

47 Chris Pearson { 12.20.07 at 12:45 am }

Rob — My problem is that I’m compulsively driven to design a theme for bbPress, and I know there’s going to be a bit of a learning curve and a lot of time involved there

Oh, and regarding your column widths, don’t forget that things like sidebar widget widths and also all the comment section widths must be modified accordingly… There’s are quite a few elements to adjust if you want to get everything “just right.”

48 Rob { 12.20.07 at 12:58 am }

so the spec writer in me, is whispering, next time there needs to be constants for left_bar_width, center_width, and right_bar_width; yes and there is some risk that folks will create an ugly child of your theme, but it my book the goal is to teach and see where folks go. thanks again, i will start looking poling around with FireBug and see if i can discover more elements that need adjustment.

49 Chris Pearson { 12.20.07 at 12:35 pm }

Rob — Introducing variables in the stylesheet is something that requires a great deal of reorganization. Also, the sheet would have to be served as PHP (because CSS does not support variables), which adds yet another level of complexity.

It always seems like these types of issues should be simpler than they really are to pull off, but it’s interesting food for thought nonetheless.

50 Rob { 12.20.07 at 6:45 pm }

moved discussion to email look in: onebigchris@gmail.com

51 Rob { 12.22.07 at 4:34 pm }

chris simple question today. i would like text to show up next to inserted photos, see this as an example. when i insert a photo text shows up right and below current post on my site (see the above link to my name). thanks have a great holiday hopefully some time off is in the plan

52 Steven Alm { 12.22.07 at 8:29 pm }

I simply love the Neoclassical Theme. It includes everything and presents a new image to the visitor each time she explores my site. Thanks, man!

53 Mark Hopkins { 12.23.07 at 2:02 am }

I’ve just installed your theme at http://www.mmwords.com. I think it’s perfect! I’ve been fighting with another theme for a while, and yours went up like a charm. I’ve only installed one header so far (had to tweak the randomizer to 1), but I will upload more soon.

54 Gideon { 12.23.07 at 2:25 pm }

Kevin: Thank you!

55 Anne Maybus { 12.29.07 at 12:10 am }

I love this layout but I am still having an issue with the rotating headers. I usually get the default message, and when it decides to show an image it will only accept 2 of the 5. They are all in the same format. Any ideas? I have had to set it to one image at the moment.

56 Search Engine Optimization in WordPress: Use a Semantic Permalink Structure | A blog on blogging, computers and such { 12.29.07 at 12:39 am }

[...] but here is how you can achieve this if you are using a WordPress blog (I found this advice on Chris Pearsons site, so the credit for finding it is [...]

57 Steven Alm { 12.29.07 at 1:10 pm }

Chris, I think there’s a problem with the code that places images in a post. I’ve checked out the code, which looks good, but it never seems to be called when images are placed (left, right, etc.) with the image editor. I literally have no borders. Am I confused?

58 Chris Pearson { 12.29.07 at 4:17 pm }

Rob — Neoclassical comes with built-in image classes that allow you to position and style your images professionally. A post on exactly how these classes work is forthcoming, but you can get a 90% preview by checking out how images work with the Copyblogger Theme. The two themes share identical class names for image handling, so the information contained in that tutorial will work perfectly with Neoclassical as well.

In order to have an image appear exactly like the one in your example link, you would simply need to add class="left" to your img declaration.

Anne — I just checked your server, and there is only one image in your /headers folder that follows the naming convention. As long as you haven’t modified the random image code, it will randomly select 1 of 5 images for display. If you only have 2 images that you want to rotate, you’d need to change line 3 of rotating_images.php like so:

$random_image = rand(1,2);

59 Chris Pearson { 12.29.07 at 4:21 pm }

Steven — You are using the now-deprecated align attribute on your images. Instead of align, use class, and your images will appear properly. See this article for a look at most of the image handling classes that are available with Neoclassical (yes, the link is for a different theme, but the classes listed there are also included in Neoclassical).

60 Steven Alm { 12.29.07 at 4:30 pm }

Thanks, man–I’ll look it up–but I was simply using the standard image editor within Wordpress for my posts. We all sincerely appreciate your time and efforts!

61 Chris Pearson { 12.29.07 at 4:51 pm }

Steven — Personally, I like to hand-code image references (and all in-post HTML, for that matter). Either way, if you’re using the image editor within WordPress, you can go back and edit the image reference by hand once you’ve inserted it in your post. Keep in mind that this is twice as fast, twice as easy, and twice as accurate if you are using the regular old text editor (as opposed to the Rich Visual Text Editor, which I do not recommend using even though it is the default posting environment).

62 Steven Alm { 12.29.07 at 4:59 pm }

I know, man. You’re right in this. Thanks again. Keep the faith!

63 Anne Maybus { 12.29.07 at 5:22 pm }

Thanks Chris, but as I said I had to set it to the one image. Only 2 of the 5 would show up and 90% of the time I got the random/refresh message. All my images were the same format so I can see no reason for 3 of them not to be shown.

64 Steven Alm { 12.29.07 at 5:29 pm }

One more issue, Chris. I’m using classes as the article suggests, but am now getting a huge space beneath my images. Any clues as to what’s going on?

65 Anne Maybus { 12.29.07 at 5:52 pm }

Beats me! I took it off, then re-uploaded the files and it seems to be working this time. I have even added the headers back and we seem to be on a roll! Brilliant. I am so happy that it is working now because I love this theme.

66 Steven Alm { 12.29.07 at 6:37 pm }

Sorry to be a pest. The 1.5 em spacing at the bottom is what’s messing up my posted images (which are typically not aligned with the lines of text). Is there a graceful way of override the parm you supply in the stylesheet within the code for the image itself?

67 Steven Alm { 12.29.07 at 7:21 pm }

Laughing at myself. You can safely ignore these comments, Chris. I’ve got it figured out. Cheers!

68 Chris Pearson { 12.29.07 at 7:40 pm }

Anne & Steven — Cheers to both of you for your perseverance

69 Alex Rodriguez { 12.29.07 at 9:46 pm }

Hi, I followed the suggestion and implemented the Permalink structure change using /%postname%/. However I get an error “You should update your .htaccess now”. What exactly do I need to do to my .htaccess file to make this work?

70 Alex Rodriguez { 12.30.07 at 12:52 am }

Ha, I found the problem. I did not have an .htaccess file. lol

71 Barbara { 12.30.07 at 2:39 pm }

Thanks for making this theme!

72 Chris Pearson { 12.30.07 at 3:12 pm }

Barbara — You are quite welcome. Your site is a very clever, very interesting way of documenting your home-building experience, and when all is said and done, you’re not only going to have a wonderful resource, but it will also serve as a model for others. Good stuff!

73 Alex Rodriguez { 12.31.07 at 11:22 am }

Hi Chris-

I have my site up and running and love the template. A big thank you for creating this!

I am having a small problem when viewing the site with IE 7 on Windows XP. The left and right sidebars are not displayed. I can email you a screenshot if it would help. I can email the screenshot if you would like. My site address is http://www.alexrodrigueznotebook.com/.

Any suggestions on this? I have tried to minimize the editing of the templates to avoid any problems.

Thanks again!

74 Chris Pearson { 12.31.07 at 11:53 am }

Alex — In your left sidebar, you’ve commented out the second list item, and the actual comment code itself is not written properly. Despite this, Firefox handles the code gracefully, but IE (and its various iterations) freak out and display nothing after that comment.

I recommend removing that commented line entirely, and I think your sidebars will reappear.

75 Alex Rodriguez { 12.31.07 at 11:57 am }

lol, that did it. Thanks again!

76 Craig James { 01.03.08 at 2:43 pm }

Chris,

This is a great theme, the best I’ve seen bar none. In particular I appreciate all the thought that went into the typography. I’ve looked at my site through most every browser, on monitors big and small, and no matter what the environment, it looks great.

A question for you. I am having difficulty getting a Flickr Gallery plug-in from TanTanNoodles to work correctly with this theme (See my example).

Do you have any suggestions for how to resolve this? Anything you can do to point me in the right direction would be appreciated.

Craig James

77 Alex Rodriguez { 01.04.08 at 12:11 am }

In the footer.php file what is the purpose of the following?

78 Alex Rodriguez { 01.04.08 at 12:13 am }

I guess the system will not let me enter the code but part of it is:

?php wp_footer

79 Richard { 01.04.08 at 3:37 pm }

Chris,

I noticed that you have another stylesheet called neoclassical.css as well as a few extra widgets being used on your website that aren’t part of the theme package.
I was wondering about this and wanted to know if this was intentional. There appear to be some real neat styles in the neoclassical.css stylesheet.

80 Vince Leibowitz { 01.05.08 at 3:28 pm }

I love the concept of rotating images, but for the time being, I’d like to just use one image with no rotation. How do I do that?

81 Alex Rodriguez { 01.05.08 at 3:49 pm }

Vince-

Edit your rotating_images.php file and set the “rand(1,1)”.

Alex

82 Hning { 01.08.08 at 11:40 am }

Chris, i step to review almost all of your themes. One question, the typography of neoclassical is similar with cutline 3 column, isn’t it? Anw, i’m your biggest fans, i guessed Thanks

83 Tito { 01.16.08 at 2:14 am }

Good stuff, but…. Can you tell me how to add or be able to see my “about” page?

http://www.2bhblog.com

thanks!

84 jose { 01.19.08 at 5:36 pm }

You’re the man. I appreciate this one. Definitely cleaned up my blog with this one.

85 Maurice and Boris { 01.21.08 at 12:45 am }

Hello, Chris

Thanks for the beautiful theme.
I have one question though: how can I get rid of those 2 thin vertical lines separating sidebars? I messed with stylesheet for a while, but couldn’t figure out where are they.
Any hints would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Maurice and Boris
PS: we posted trhis question on another page about 1 month ago.

86 Kirin { 01.25.08 at 7:32 pm }

Chris - great theme, and easy to adjust to everyone’s needs. One question: How do I make posts appear in specific pages that I have created instead of the default home page?

I would appreciate your answer. I’m sure others have the same question.

Thanks,

The Fit Palace

87 Richard { 01.27.08 at 7:33 pm }

Another excellent piece of work Chris - thanks again! I’m testing the theme now for a new site.

Your users may find it helpful to insert width and height attributes in the img line of code in the rotating_images.php file. Makes for better page loading.

88 David Bronstein { 01.28.08 at 11:20 pm }

Chris,
I really like the way your theme is laid-out, but I want MY picture as the top banner of bronsteinsworld.com (It’s a “personality” driven site). I’m a newbie…can I make the changes myself? or do I have to change the theme altogether? Sorry for the “technical support” questions…

89 David Bronstein { 01.28.08 at 11:24 pm }

I think I just found my answer….(I’m not real bright) I just upload my OWN images with the same names as the 5 jpgs (replacing them?)

90 Landis { 01.31.08 at 9:55 pm }

I am a novice and I have to say that you have the most beautiful theme that I have ever seen. Is it easy to integrate AdSense into the theme? Also what is the page size? I was wondering if people on dialup would have a long delay getting content?

91 John { 02.01.08 at 1:34 pm }

Is it just me or is there a bug when using an unordered list …the list items are not being bulleted? A numerically ordered list is fine.

A css fix that someone knows the solution to?

Lovely theme - using it at http://www.investmentinformer.com

92 Chris Pearson { 02.01.08 at 1:49 pm }

John — From the looks of your site, the /images folder (for Neoclassical) has not been loaded properly. Try uploading it again and see if that doesn’t solve your problem.

93 John { 02.01.08 at 5:50 pm }

Chris - good find !

No idea why /images was missing - my ftp client must have had a wobbly (is that just a UK saying?). All sorted, thank you.

94 Preston Palmer { 02.04.08 at 8:24 pm }

Chris,

Love the neoclassical theme, although I would like to make some of the functionality more like that of the Cutline 3 colum split.

Specifically:
-Adding an Archives page and link
-Creating a links menu (text only) below the rotating image (similar to the one above the image in Cutline 3 colum.)
-Make the Posted By Name a click through link same as in Cutline 3.

I am doing my best to make these changes although I am totally new to wordpress and PHP. ARGH! So, if you get a chance, take a look if you would and if you can offer any advice it would be awesome! Love your site!

95 Preston Palmer { 02.04.08 at 10:04 pm }

Chris,

As per my last comment, i was able to somewhat accomplish what i want done as a link bar on the top. Except i want the style to match, and that line to be center. For the life of me i cant get it center.

96 port orange { 02.06.08 at 10:41 am }

i have to download normal wordpress first and then load this as a theme, correct?

i currently have a site, but want to change it to wordpress and i like this theme. what is the easiest way for me to make the transition?

97 Sam Clark { 02.08.08 at 10:13 pm }

Hey Chris, Excellent theme, I love your work Question..I would like to add color to the outside areas, WHen manipulating the background it changes the whole thing, i would like to just change everything outside the sidebar area…any ideas ?

Thanks

98 Adam Kayce { 02.09.08 at 12:18 am }

Hi Chris - awesome theme; loving it.

You may have mentioned this already, but I looked through all the comments and haven’t seen it… if I want to use just one header image, how would I defeat the randomizing (and just hand-code in the call to the image?)

Thanks so much.

99 Adam Kayce { 02.09.08 at 12:26 am }

Never mind, I figured it out (thanks, though!)

In case anyone wants to do the same:
- open rotating_images.php…
- comment out the first section (in case you want to bring the rotating feature back later), and
- change “” to a number, so it reads “headers/header_1.jpg”. Then, just make sure that header_1 is the one you want to use.

100 Adam Kayce { 02.09.08 at 12:28 am }

whoops - the php code got cleaned out - well, I’m sure folks can figure it out (or, Chris may post a better version).

101 Shan { 02.11.08 at 1:27 pm }

Chris and all,
I am new to wordpress. Is there any way to change the colour of the header title (Neoclassical theme for wordpress)? I managed to change the link colours, but not the header title.

Thanks for any advice.

102 John { 02.16.08 at 5:01 am }

I am curious as to why there are no links on the bottom of single posts that point to adjacent posts. I took a look at navigation.php, and it’s coded there that previous and next post links should be visible when is_single() is true. My site doesn’t show these links, and surprisingly enough, I don’t see these links here on the demo site, either.

I placed a bit of code in sidebar.php that would spit out the words “This is home!” if is_home() was true, and these words show up on every single page. The funny thing is that the dynamic titles in the title bar of the web browser work perfectly fine. I’m quite puzzled. Any ideas or suggestions? (Eventually, I would like to get a dynamic sidebar working, which is how I found this problem with conditional tags.)

103 John { 02.16.08 at 1:30 pm }

I found the problem, which leads to another set of questions, but I don’t think any fault can be placed on you. Apparently, query_posts() messes up the conditional tags, which is strange. Also, I poked around single.php and noticed that you didn’t include navigation.php, so I added that in after I deleted the “Recent Posts” section and got my conditional tags working again.

Thanks for the great looking theme!

104 Jim Mc { 02.16.08 at 2:19 pm }

Great theme - I figured out how to create multiple sidebars - is there a way to assign different sidebars to different pages?

Thanks,

105 WP Theme: Blogline-W2-3c. — WP Tema Tester { 02.17.08 at 12:37 pm }

[...] Random Rotating Header Image function, is original developed by Chris Pearson. Please, click here for more information about how to [...]

106 Madzzoni { 02.17.08 at 3:49 pm }

Hi Chris… One more nice theme from your hand thanks… i love Cutline, but this one is even better.
I use the Random Rotating Header Image function, for my new Blogline W2 WP theme, which is heavely based on inspiration and some code from NeoClassico, but with both sidebars on the right.
Hope this is OK with U

//Madzzoni

107 Ivy { 02.18.08 at 11:26 am }

i’ve downloaded and installed the theme, it’s amazing! only problem it seems the widget page is not working, it cant save my changes… it is a problem of my blog or a theme problem? i have no problems before… thanks!

108 Peter { 02.18.08 at 1:06 pm }

I don’t know if you have the same problem - but I have had problems editing widget configurations in WordPress with Internet Explorer 6. When I switched to Firefox the problem disappeared.

109 Ivy { 02.18.08 at 1:11 pm }

@Peter To me it happens both on Firefox 2.0.0.12 and Internet Explorer 7…

110 Tara Jacobsen { 02.22.08 at 6:21 pm }

Thank you SO much for such a wonderful theme! I am going to customize my headers this weekend BUT in the meantime can you please tell me where I would put the code for google analytics in the template? I am used to html and this php thing has me going!
Thank you!!!!

111 John Cronin { 02.23.08 at 7:50 am }

@Tara

Your google analytics code goes just before /body in footer.php

Alternatively, use this plugin. I’ve used the plugin and this theme on this site, and it seems to be working fine.

112 David Chartier { 02.23.08 at 10:53 pm }

From the conversation about adjusting sidebar widths, am I right in assuming that it’s more or less impossible to widen the center content area to about 476 px? I could take even 470 px.

113 Tara Jacobsen { 02.24.08 at 8:44 am }

Dear Chris, Me again (sorry!) I am familiar with HTML but PHP is new to me. I would like to be able to edit my template so that the sidebars have additional information static on all the pages. In my editor I have left_sidebar.php but do not know how to add anything to it. In the list of editable pages there is no right sidebar file and right_sidebar.php and sidebar.php does not work in the search function. My URL is http://www.marketingartfully.com and I do LOVE this layout!
Thank you in advance for any assistance!

114 Tara Jacobsen { 02.24.08 at 8:37 pm }

@ John - thank you SO much! I am getting better at the server side files but couldn’t find out where to put it…:)

115 Rocky V { 02.25.08 at 11:07 am }

Hello Chris,

Thank you for your work and themes. As a techno/blogo-challanged person I found it easy to install and modify.

I am having 2 problems at the moment.

1. I use http://www.therockson.com for my blog. When people land on my page I get the 404 message. I have done what you said to do with the permalinks with Eric and it seemed to have no response.

2. The RSS feeds are not working and not able to find the feed to my site. Is this something I jacked up?

Thanks Chris!!!

116 Tisha Parti { 02.29.08 at 3:31 am }

Thank you Chris for Neoclassical! I am very new to blogs and I’m having the same problem as Rocky V. I get a 404 page when I hit my blog’s About link. I want it to point to my profile. I have absolutely NO idea what I’m doing, although I’m still doing it.
I changed my permalinks via your comments to Eric but still I get 404. Help! What am I doing wrong?

117 Tisha Parti { 02.29.08 at 4:07 pm }

Next day, new problem… can’t even get the editor in wordpress to work. Sigh. Did someone say this blog thing was simple? Apparently not simple enough for me…. the editor in wp won’t let me type in it. What could be the problem? I’d just edit on my own if I knew what the heck file I was editing. Same for changing permissions–what files am I to do that to?
Sign me,
Tisha -tears of a clown- Parti

118 Tisha Parti { 02.29.08 at 7:26 pm }

I figured it out! Argh! I hope it goes easier in the future! :p
Tisha

119 Kirin { 03.04.08 at 11:00 pm }

Chris, great theme as I’ve said it in an earlier post here. I’ve been using your theme for a while and it has been working great. Until recently, I have been getting complaints from readers using IE 6 and IE 5 of not being able to open my page correctly.
I’ve been reading up on this issue and nothing seems to fix the problem. My site is http://www.thefitpalace.com
I would appreciate any help.

Thanks,
Kirin

120 Chris Pearson { 03.04.08 at 11:12 pm }

Kirin — Your custom styles have “broken” the theme in Internet Explorer. I can’t be responsible for changes that users have made to the theme, so all I can do is suggest that you try re-implementing your custom styles. You’ll need to check IE at each step along the way to ensure that you aren’t ruining the layout on that browser. It’s very quirky with regard to CSS, and something that you’ve done has caused it to behave improperly.

121 J.D. { 03.05.08 at 3:26 am }

Very nice theme.

Is there a 2-column version of NEO available?

I’ve tested with several users and they like the typography, color scheme, and banner images. They told me they would prefer 2 columns over three.

122 Kirin { 03.05.08 at 12:25 pm }

Thanks Chris,
I guess I will have to do everything again to find out what’s wrong. Will let you (and everyone) know what was wrong and how to fix it in case someone else has the same problem.

Kirin

123 Ahshuwah { 03.06.08 at 9:57 pm }

Hi Chris,
I love the template!
I am trying to figure out how to use the navigation menu. I have changed the text of my menu but I don’t know how to setup the links on the nav_manu.php.

I’m sure its a dumb question but I’m new at this. Please help.

124 Lindsay { 03.07.08 at 3:47 am }

Hi Chris, I’ve installed this theme and really like it. However, this is my first time using WordPress, so I’m not sure if my problem is because of something I’m doing wrong in WordPress or something with your theme. I changed the permalinks as you suggested, but now the links don’t work. It will go to /about (for example) and say that page doesn’t exist on the server. What can I do about that?

125 Chris Pearson { 03.07.08 at 11:30 am }

Lindsay — You’ve run into the most common problem with permalink changes. Although you changed the permalink structure in the Options section of your WordPress dashboard, you have not added an .htaccess file to your server. Changing the permalinks has no effect unless you have an .htaccess file on your server.

When you actually changed the permalink structure, WordPress indicated that you needed to “change your .htaccess file now,” and it also generated a few lines of code that you need to copy and paste into an .htaccess file. For more on this topic, check out my somewhat outdated (but still totally helpful) video on the subject.

126 Monica { 03.07.08 at 1:11 pm }

Hi Chris,
Just wanted to thank you for this superb theme. I love it and it’s just perfect for my blog. sigh…finally!
I am a total newbie to blogging and have come across a couple things that I need to fix. I hope someone can help me out:
1. When I added my header logo - I lost the RSS symbol behind it.
I’m using “all in one SEO” plugin so that is why I removed the website name and tag and added it to my logo image. How can I get the RSS visable again?
2. When I use links in my posts; some come up underlined (good) and some come up highlighted (bad). What am I doing wrong?
Thanks again

127 Lindsay { 03.07.08 at 2:48 pm }

Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly Chris. I saw the “change your .htaccess file” when I made the permalink changes but didn’t scroll down and see the code, so I will give that a try. One other question, some of the themes I have tried out have a spot on the side bars that is customizable. (Most people use this as a short “About Me” section I think.) I need to put a disclaimer on all my pages. My preference would be to have it at the very bottom (as part of the footer) or on the bottom of one of the sidebars, with my third choice being on the sidebars just below the other information there. Is any of that possible with this theme?

Thanks again!

128 Tiffany { 03.09.08 at 12:32 am }

Hi Chris,
Neoclassical is really an excellent work of art that’s easy to customize, and stands up to its’ name. Thanks so much for this, it’s really a perfect fit for me!
Question:
Do you think you could help me with something that I’m not so sure what it has to do with?

Up until yesterday all of the link icons on my site showed/appeared properly. What I did yesterday was upgraded some plugins, and added a few. Afterwards the site went crazy. I deactivated the plugins and the icons still do not show properly. I am not sure if I forgot something that I did and need to undo it or what happened. Is there any advice you could give me to help me out with this issue?

Also for some reason in Firefox my links are highlighted in a red background and they should not be. In IE the links look normal with the white background it should have.

And lastly, my administration area of wordpress has my website shown inside of it on the right side? It is funky and crazy looking! Only the dashboard page that has this problem. Any advice? If you would like to take a look that would be great for me too. I am new to wordpress, and the whole bit but if you tell me what to do or how to do it, I can get it done.

That is pretty much the extent of my problems, thanks for a great theme and for any advice you can give.
Tiffany

129 Tiffany { 03.09.08 at 7:04 pm }

Hi Chris,
I am using Firefox right now and I see that this site also has a few of the links background color red. All of the comments links are in red and the Home, About, and Version Release Notes have the red background to them. When I left a comment earlier I was using IE and there were no visible problems in that browser. It might be something wrong with my browser or either the theme, I am not sure. If you will, could you look at my site, and this site in Firefox and let me know if you see the same things.
Any suggestions are good.
Thank you Chris.

130 Eric { 03.10.08 at 4:33 pm }

How can I change the font? I’m using one of your theme’s in WP.

Thanks,
Eric

131 Tiffany { 03.10.08 at 6:56 pm }

Hi Chris,
I have figured out most of my problems and wanted to let you know that you don’t have to worry about checking it out.
The day that I added some plugins, I also added the SEO Toolbar to my Firefox browser and I did not know that it was automatically turned on. When I thought about what I may have left undone that day I clicked on the SEO button and that fixed the red background color on the links that I was seeing in my browser. It also fixed my website from showing in my administration dashboard. A few of the icons on my site still do not show like the language translator buttons, and my dualfeeds icon but I think that may have something to do with the plugin, and I deactivated those.

Thanks for everything…you may disregard my messages,
Tiffany

132 johnette { 03.12.08 at 1:21 pm }

I succesfully changed my rotating header yesterday after MANY hours (im such a novice) of trying..yay!

However in the left sidebar under navigation, initially the ‘about’ link led to a 404 error page. The forums helped me correct this via the theme editor. HOWEVER, now i have 2 ‘About’ links and dont know how to get rid of one of these. http://www.givingspiritweblog.com

Also, i love the colorful headers on the pearson.com blog. Is there a way to get these for my Neoclassical theme?

Thanks in advance.

133 johnette { 03.12.08 at 1:53 pm }

UPDATE -

I fixed the ‘About’ issue. Thanks in advance.

However, i would still like info on my sidebar heading questions.

134 Marc { 03.16.08 at 4:14 pm }

Is there a way to assign links to each of the images, so that when they’re displayed you can click them and they’ll bring you to the assigned link?

135 Monica { 03.17.08 at 3:03 pm }

Hi Chris,
Monica again, loving everything!
Wondering if you could point me in the right direction:
My RSS logo is behind my header?
how can I get it back where you intended it, or on the sidebar?
Almost ready to download another theme from you.
Also need to do some customization: Are you available for hire, or should I go to elance? Thanks!

136 Hannah { 03.18.08 at 11:50 am }

I installed this theme and everything is working great except the “About” page. Is there something I need to do to make this page work?

137 German { 03.20.08 at 3:00 am }

Hi
I know this is way off topic, but why I am getting this error?
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_header() in /home/redhouse5/public_html/index.php on line 3

I added the custom.css in the neoclassical folder and still get this error.

Any idea why?

Thanks
German

138 German { 03.20.08 at 9:42 pm }

Hi Chris, how do I make the rotating images a one-static image instead?

Thanks
German

139 Lydia { 03.22.08 at 7:10 am }

Chris,

I am already using your cutline template but I wanted to
have the option of customizing my header image
so that it will “scroll” much like a slide show type effect.
I was thinking of switching to “neoclassical” to achieve
this but thought I’d check with you first.

Any help appreciated.

140 Flynn { 03.22.08 at 5:54 pm }

Chris,

I just wanted to say thank you for this excellent theme. I needed to transfer the website I run for the Durango Ultimate frisbee group to something more collaborative. Turned out WordPress was perfect and your theme was icing on the cake. Thanks dude.

If you ever find yourself in Durango, CO, come look us up for a beer.

-Flynn

141 carla { 03.23.08 at 3:58 pm }

I am very attached to my theme because I worked really hard to get my colors and header picture just right (this being my first attempt at blogging and all). But now I am unhappy that I only chose a wordpress with 2 columns and was wondering how i can turn it to three without losing all my hard work. check out my site and any advice you could give me would be really appreciated.

142 WP Theme: The Dark Site of… — WP Tema Tester { 03.25.08 at 12:57 pm }

[...] To find out “How To Customize Your Random Header Images” and other support stuff, please Go here! [...]

143 Rosa Linda { 03.26.08 at 1:36 pm }

Thank you so much for this easy to follow tutorial.

Because the program I’ve been using to create my vlog (Go Daddy’s Quick Blogcast) changed it’s settings unexpectedly I am forced to start over from scratch. Through lots of trial and error (more error than anything) I am learning WordPress. The good news is it is forcing me to learn how to build and control my own website. The bad news is it is eating up the very limited time I have to work.

Anyway, all of this to say that your NeoClassical theme is beautiful yet still simple enough for a newbie like me. When I actually was able to change the random header images, as you instructed above, I literally shouted out loud (and woke up my baby who was sleeping nearby)!

You are to be commended for your professional (yet personal) creations. A thousand thank yous!

144 Kim { 03.26.08 at 5:00 pm }

I uploaded the folder to my themes and nothing shows up when I load it…I don’t have any trouble with any other theme. Am I missing something? Thanks!

145 avi { 03.28.08 at 3:41 am }

Just installed neoclassical. At first it wouldn’t load right (sometimes over 30 seconds for anything to show up, sometimes not at all). I used firebug and saw it was attempting to load a file at same level as style.css. This file was called “custom.css” Firebug showed a 404 error for that file after trying a long time. And I looked in the original folder and no file by that name. So I went into the header in theme editor and found “custom.css” and basically just deleted it. that same line had another of same format above it and both reference the style.css. It appears to be going faster now but I don’t know if custom.css is something necessary or if what I deleted really was stray code. Anyone know?

As for how fast it runs, it’s my first time with wordpress. I haven’t added any plugins. I don’t know how much is due to my isp, how much due to theme, how much due to browser, etc.

146 Madzzoni { 03.28.08 at 4:54 am }

@AVI: The “custom.css” file is an option for your own customization. Read this intro. I use the “custom.css” function for my black customization, NeroClassical.

I don’t think the theme is a part of how fast your pages loads, - mayby you can find help in the WP documentation or check your ISP specs.

147 joseph { 03.30.08 at 10:51 am }

using your theme which is just excellent.
noticed that wordpress just upgraded to v2.5 and just wonder if the theme is ready for it before I do the upgrade.
Anyone has done it already?

148 David Chartier { 03.30.08 at 11:34 am }

@Joseph: I asked earlier in the comments and someone confirmed Neoclassical works on WP 2.5. I just set up a test installation the other day and can also confirm it works.

149 joseph { 03.30.08 at 1:20 pm }

David: That’s cool. Thank you.

150 Bret { 03.30.08 at 4:08 pm }

@Kim … I had the same issue … Safari was unzipping the skin and naming it neoclassical … I downloaded in firefox and used stuffit to unzip it and it is now titled neoclassical Folder … uploading it as wp-content/themes/neoclassical Folder (yes, a space between the words and a capital F)

151 Bret { 03.30.08 at 4:12 pm }

@Kim again: naming the folder wp-content/themes/neoclassical Folder makes it work, was the point!

152 Rasmus { 04.01.08 at 2:21 am }

When I go to the Presentation-section in the WP-admin-panel there is no screenshot of the Neoclassical-theme, but the information and name is there. Well, if I activate it anyways it gets activated BUT the blog