With the latest version of Portfolio Press I needed certain page templates to only be available if the Portfolio Post Type Plugin is installed. This is because those page templates work specifically with portfolio post types and are ineffective without the plugin.
Unfortunately there is no filter for page templates in core (though there are some patches). The PHP workarounds I’ve seen are convoluted and brittle, so I decided to tackle this instead with javascript. Continue reading
Portfolio Press has always used custom post types to display portfolio content. When the theme was released in 2010 this was a novel way to do it (custom post types had just been released in WordPress 3.0).
Post types allowed the portfolio to be styled differently, use different templates, and keep portfolio content separate from standard content. In the dark ages before WordPress 3.0, developers had only achieved this by requiring users to post in a pre-defined category or tag.
But since WordPress 3.4 we’ve had post formats like “gallery” and “image” which are now supported by most new themes. With the latest version of Portfolio Press, I wanted users to be able to choose which to use. Post formats are the new default, but users can install the Portfolio Post Type plugin and use post types instead if they choose.
To save a lot of duplication in template code and styling, I used a bit of template hijacking and a few other useful styling tricks. I doubt anyone is working on this exact same issue, but I think some of the ideas might be useful for other applications. Continue reading
Some themes and plugins use custom post types to store data for items like portfolio pieces or testimonials . This can be an issue if you want to switch to a new theme that doesn’t have support for that post type, or your plugin is no longer maintained.
Luckily, there’s a couple ways to convert custom post types to standard post types. I recommend using Post Type Switcher if you just have a couple items to switch. For converting posts in bulk, Convert Post Types is what you’ll want.
I’ve built a couple themes where I’ve needed to give users more control over how the featured image is displayed for individual posts. The obvious place to put these options are in the thumbnail metabox itself.
In this theme the default display of the thumbnails is a cropped to a square next to the title. But if the user had a large landscape image, they could choose to display it full width instead.
In Portfolio+ I use a custom post type for portfolio items and a custom taxonomy for portfolio categories. When someone views a portfolio archive page all of the portfolio featured images are displayed, and when someone goes to a portfolio category all the featured images of posts in that category are displayed.
But a common request I’ve had is for a template that displays all the portfolio categories with thumbnail images for each of the categories. This would allow someone to easily link to different sections of their overall portfolio (for instance, “Photography”, “Water Color”, “Sculpture”) rather than having them all show up in one jumble of the main portfolio archive template.
This gets a bit tricky because there is no easy way to associate an image with a taxonomy term (though Michael Field’s Taxonomy Images Plugin has made it work).
I decided the best route would be to just display all of the categories, and use the featured image from the most recent post in each category. This obviously won’t be the perfect solution for everyone (some may want to use a completely different image for the category thumbnail), but for most users I think it works well and is a dynamic way to show off new work. Continue reading
The Options Framework Plugin makes it easy to include a full featured options panel in any WordPress theme.
Although this plugin is still maintained and secure, the recommended way to add theme options for new themes is to use the Customizer.
Download the plugin and activate it on your site.
To learn how to set up the options panel in your own themes, download the Options Check theme from GitHub and use its files as a base. It’s a blueprint for how the Options Framework works with a sample option panel with every type of option you are able to use and a demo of how to display each one on the front end.
These are the options available:
There’s also “heading” to define the menu tabs, and “info” if you just want to add some additional information to the panel.
If you look in index.php of the Options Check theme, you’ll see how each option is returned. It should look something like this:
of_get_option( $id,$default );
The neat thing about this plugin is that it isn’t required for your theme to work. Each option should have a default which will be used if the plugin isn’t installed. Take a look at Portfolio Press without the plugin activated to see how it works.
There are a couple ways to let the user know that options are available if the plugin is installed: a notice on theme activation, an auto prompt on activation, notes in the documentation, etc. I’ve left this up to the theme authors to decide how to implement.
Download from WordPress Repository
Download Development Version
This plugin is not actively developed. If there’s compatibility or bug fixes needed, let me know.
If you are exporting SQL databases, this thread might be of interest to you. There’s also a fork of the theme version, where someone built this out: https://github.com/vauvarin/options-framework-theme
The Options Panel was originally based on the excellent work of Woo Themes and still uses some of their code.
A huge thanks to all the people who helped out on GitHub, including @mfields, @helgatheviking, @celtic7, @samargulies, @mattweibe, @Mamaduka and any others.
Also a big thanks to folks who made donations to pay for a third party code review: Jason Schuller, Mint Idea, Luke McDonald .
How to add a custom post type icon to your WordPress theme, including downloads to use the portfolio icon and directions for styling the admin screen.
I recently accepted a full time position with Demand Media. This is a short synopsis of the last year with WP Theming and what’s in store for the future.