ProPhoto - Premium Wordpress Theme for Professional Photographers - Single Column, big pictures - Blog Template

Dennis recently commented on a post asking how to change the comment text color on main page comments.

Here’s how:

In you WordPress admin area, go to “Design” => “Theme Editor” and select “Stylesheet (style.css)” to edit it. Scroll down to lines 121-123 which look like this:

body.home #comments {
background-color: #E3E3E3; /* bg color of mainpage commment area */
}

Add a line inside the curly braces, like so…

body.home #comments {
background-color: #E3E3E3; /* bg color of mainpage commment area */
color:#ff990; /* color of comment text */
}

…except use the six-digit color code of your choice. Click “update file” to save your changes, then view your blog (remember to force your browser to refresh) to check your work.

Jennifer sent me an email today asking how to edit the font (and I assume link) colors in the large footer area of her blog. That, combined with a conversation I had yesterday with Matt, who handles installations, kind of pointed out to me that my CSS doesn’t make it overwhelmingly clear how to make changes to this footer area. So, I’m going to make the code a bit more clear for future purchasers, and tell you all how to tinker with these colors in this write-up.

The area in question is this big footer area (technically its your sidebar, but since it’s a one-column theme, it’s more like a footer), shown below.

There are two types of text on in the footer area, and you can style them individually. We’ll start with non-link text (circled above in red) which basically is your widget headers.

If you don’t like the color that these headers are inheriting from other parts of your CSS, here’s how to change it. In your WP admin area, under “Design” (”Presentation” in WP 2.3.3 and earlier) = “Theme Editor” choose the “Stylesheet (style.css)” file to edit. Then scroll down to about lines 108-113 where you should see this chunk of code:

/* edit these to change background color and/or
padding of "sidebar" area at bottom of page */
div#sidebar_footer {
background-color: #F0F0F0; /* bg color of footer-sidebar area */
padding: 20px 0 10px 0; /* top, right, bottom, left padding */
}

Right before the closing “}” on the last line of this chunk, add the line highlighted in red so that it looks like this:

/* edit these to change background color and/or
padding of "sidebar" area at bottom of page */
div#sidebar_footer {
background-color: #F0F0F0; /* bg color of footer-sidebar area */
padding: 20px 0 10px 0; /* top, right, bottom, left padding */
color: #ff9900; /* color of non-link text in footer */
}

Except change the color code to whatever you want it to be. This will also change the color of the bullets next to the links, by the way. Save your changes by clicking “update file” and view your blog, refreshing your browser, to see you changes.

To change the colors of your links in the footer, we’re going to have to paste in some additional CSS code and then change the six-digit color codes to suit us. To do that, still in your “Stylesheet”, scroll to the very bottom, press return a few times and on a brand new line paste in the following code:

/*styles sidebar-footer links */
#sidebar_footer a:link {
text-decoration: none; /* no underlining default */
color: #3333CC; /* color of links not yet visited */
}
#sidebar_footer a:visited {
text-decoration: none; /* no underlining default */
color: #663399; /* color of links already visited */
}
#sidebar_footer a:hover {
text-decoration: underline; /* underlining as hover default */
color: #000000; /* color of links when being hovered over */
}

Then, just go back and edit the color codes for the three states of the links: normal (unvisited), visited, and hovered. You can also experiment with switching on and off underlining in the various states using either “none” or “underline” for the value of “text-decoration:”. Save your changes, check your blog, refresh your changes, and admire your work.

Related post: How to customize your footer/sidebar area

Kelly emailed me today asking how to add a signature image to her bio text area. I thought it was a good question, and something a few of you might like to know how to do, so I’m writing up the answer here.

I think the look Kelly is going for is something like what I did with Paige Elizabeth’s blog, shown here.

See the cute little signature below her bio? Pretty cool, huh?

Well, to pull this off yourself, first, create a signature image. Try to keep the file size fairly small, although the dimensions can be whatever you want. Write down the exact pixel dimensions (width and height) of the image–you’ll need them later.

Next, we’re going to upload the image to your website. Now, you could just use an FTP program or a file manager to upload your image, but for those of you who are a little bit intimidated by such things, here’s how to do it without leaving your comfy WordPress admin area.

To upload your image, just write a new post and save it as a draft. In that new post, upload your signature image and insert it, full-size, into your post, just like you were posting an image in a regular blog entry.

Once the image is inserted into your post, switch your post into “HTML” mode (”Code” in WP 2.3.3 and earlier) by clicking on the tab at the top of your posting box. You should see a bunch of code that looks like this:

<a href="http://www.myblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/picture-12333.jpg" title="picture-12333.jpg"><img src="http://www.myblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/picture-12333.jpg" alt="picture-12333.jpg" /></a>

Click and drag in that code to highlight the text in between the quotation marks right after “src=“, shown here marked in red:

<a href="http://www.myblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/picture-12333.jpg" title="picture-12333.jpg"><img src="http://www.myblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/picture-12333.jpg” alt=”picture-12333.jpg” /></a>

That’s the address of your signature image that you just uploaded. (It might look a little different, don’t worry.) Copy that text into WordPad or TextEdit for a few minutes. Save your post as a draft in case you copied wrong and need to come back and grab that code again. Once you’ve got everything working, you can delete the post entirely–I’m 98% certain the image you uploaded won’t be deleted when delete the post.

Ok, we’re getting close.

Next, in your WP Admin area, go to “Design” => “Theme Editor” and choose the file “bio.php” to edit it. Near the bottom of that file, look for the end of the last paragraph of your bio, which is marked by a close paragraph html tag that looks like this: </p>.

After that </p> tag but before the two </div> tags, paste in this line.

<img src="http://www.myblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/picture-12333.jpg" width="50" height="50" id="mysignature" />

Once you’ve pasted that in, just replace the text after “src=” with the text you copied out of your draft post when you uploaded your signature. Also, change the width and height to the dimensions you wrote down when you created the image. Click “update file” to save your changes. Then just view your blog and refresh your browser to see your work.

If you’re really particular about exactly where the signature is placed relative to your text, you can reference this image from your stylesheet and fiddle with its margins a little bit. To do that, just go to your “Theme Editor” again, and edit “Stylesheet (style.css).” Pull down to the bottom of the document, press return to add a new blank line in and paste in these lines:

#mysignature {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}

Then, just change those 0’s to different pixel amounts, and experiment by saving your changes and refreshing your browser to see changes. The four zeros represent, in order: top margin, right margin, bottom margin, left margin

A few people have asked me how to create a drop-down menu of your pages in your top navigation bar area. Here’s how:

In your WP Admin area, go to “Design” => “Theme Editor” => “topnav.php”. On a blank line in the middle (depending on where you want it to go) paste in this line of code on an empty line:

<?php wp_list_pages('orderby=name&title_li=<a href="#">Pages</a>'); ?>

Then, save your changes and, assuming you have some pages written, you should have a perfectly functioning drop-down list of your pages.

NOTE: Because you’re adding another feature to the nav area, you may run out of room and get your header bumped down covering up your bio. If this happens, maybe delete one of your nav items, like the search, or follow the directions here to squeeze it in so it fits.

Related resources:
Why is my header is covering up my bio?
How do I delete the search feature, or something else from the nav area?

A few times I’ve gotten asked about how to change the height of the Flashfader header slideshow. It’s not terribly difficult, but it’s not as easy as you might think, either.

1. Step 1: Go to “Manage” –> “Flashfader” and set the height to whatever you want it to be. Click “save.”

2. Step 2: Go to “Design” –> “Theme Editor” and choose “Stylesheet (style.css)” to edit it. Scroll down to line 268 (there’s a line marker at line 265). This chunk looks like this:

/* LINE 265 */
 
#header-masthead {
height: 250px; /*height of masthead*/
background-image: none;
}

Change the height to whatever you want it to be.

3. Step 3: Finally, you’re going to need to use an FTP program or your File Manager to edit one more file, called “flashfader.js” It’s in your “prophoto” theme folder. Open it up with WordPad or TextEdit, and you will see two places where it says ‘height=”250px” or something like that. Change the height to your desired height in both places. Save your changes and reupload the file, overwriting the one on your web server.

4. Step 4: If you’ve already uploaded images into your Flashfader management area that are not your desired height, you’ll need to delete them and reupload new ones. Also, if you uploaded images that were something other than 250px high while your settings were still set at 250px, Flashfader may have cropped them. So, if they’re still not showing up right, delete them and reupload them.

5. Step 5: Empty your browsers cache and check your work.

Helpful related resources:
Using an FTP program
Using a web-based file manager utility

Questions? Leave them in the comments instead of emailing for support so everyone can benefit from the clarification.

If you want to change the background color of just the top header area, so it looks something like this:

You can pull it off by adding one line to your stylesheet. Open up your stylesheet by going to “Design” (”Presentation” in old versions of WP) –> “Theme Editor” and selecting “Stylesheet (style.css)”. Scroll down to line 158, which looks like this:

#header {
    height: 108px; /*height of header: logo & top links - see 5 lines below*/
}

Add a line in like so and change the color code to whatever you want it to be.

#header {
    height: 108px; /*height of header: logo & top links - see 5 lines below*/
    background: #ff9900;
}

Click “update file” to save your changes, visit your blog and force your browser to refresh to see your changes.

If you want to remove your bio picture, there are two steps. In your WP Admin area, go to “Design” (”Presentation” in old versions of WordPress) –> “Theme Editor”. Then,

First, click on “bio.php” to edit that file. Look for this chunk of code and then delete it. Be careful to only delete these two lines.

Next, click on “Stylesheet (style.css)” and look for this chunk of code at line 282:

Change the second and fourth line of that chunk so it looks like this:

Click update file to save your changes, and refresh your browser to check your work.

Q: How do I add a simple border around all my images that I post?

A: Open up “Stylesheet” (style.css) from within your WP admin area, under “Design (’Presentation’ in WP 2.3 and earlier)” –> “Theme Editor.” Scroll way down near the bottom of the file, around line 511, look for this big ugly-looking chunk of code.

Add the lines shown highlighted in red. Change the number of pixels or color code specified in the first red line to customize your border.

Q: Can I customize the sidebar/footer area at the bottom of the blog? Can I add/remove “Meta” or “Pages” or “RSS” etc.? Can I remove the sidebar/footer area entirely?

A: You can customize the bottom area sidebar/footer in your WP admin area, under Design (’Presentation’ in WP 2.3 and earlier) –> Widgets. Drag and drop things into the the two sidebar areas shown to override the defaults. Click on the little buttons on the right side of the draggable chunks to see advanced options.

If you want to delete the sidebar/footer area entirely, in your Theme Editor, go through your template files (index.php, single.php, search.php, archive.php, category.php) and look for and DELETE the line of code (near the bottom) that says

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

If you ever want to put it back, just type that line in again in each template file, right ABOVE where it says

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Related Post: Customizing font and link colors in the footer/sidebar area

Q: Can I make it so that the comments are displayed as the default?

A: Yes. In your WordPress admin area, go to “Design (’Presentation’ in WP 2.3 and earlier)” –> “AWP Managment.” Then click on “comments.” Look for a checkbox that says: Have “Comments open by default on index page?” Click it on and save your changes by scrolling down and clicking save.

Then, in your “Theme Editor” open the file called “Main Index Template” (index.php). Look for these lines of code:

<?php do_action('awp_comments'); ?>
<?php do_action('awp_comments_link');?> |
<?php do_action('awp_commentform'); ?>
<?php do_action('awp_commentform_link');?>

Delete the second line and rearrange the order of the lines so it looks like this:

<?php do_action('awp_commentform_link');?>
<?php do_action('awp_comments'); ?>
<?php do_action('awp_commentform'); ?>

Save your changes.