Modifying your theme to include random header images doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact it isn’t any more complicated than adding a few lines of code to the header.php file. I’ve created themes with random header images using a number of different techniques and this is by far the simplest way ever. It may not be the most efficient technique or the most random but it is easy. Note: This really only works for headers that are square cornered. When you make a header with rounded corners, Artisteer creates two images. One is a square cornered .jpg that sits on top of a rounded... Read more
You’ve probably seen the cool peel away effect in the upper right corner on some websites and wondered how the heck they did that. It certainly caught your attention. The peel away effect is a great way to get your visitors attention and direct them to some special content or product. It’s fairly easy to implement. You can also place it just about anywhere, not just in upper corner. The directions will show implementing the peel away in an Artisteer created theme but you can put it into just about any theme or website design. Download the zip file containing the peel away script and... Read more
There are a lot of reasons visitors to your site may get the feared “404 Error” page. They made a mistake and typed in the URL wrong. Or the page was renamed or deleted. Whatever the case they end with a page that just says “Error 404 -Not Found”. Check out the default “Kubrick” themes 404 page (default 404). That surely doesn’t help your visitor. They may think there’s something wrong with your site and just move on and leave for good. Instead of just giving your visitor a confusing page with a cryptic message, offer them a solution. I’ll bet... Read more
People have asked how to add a widgetized sidebar area above an existing double (two narrow) sidebar. So here it is. This tutorial is geared toward Artisteer generated themes but the concept will work with most themes, you’ll just have to work a bit to figure out where to modify your non-Artisteer theme code. This tutorial also uses a theme that was created with and earlier version of Artisteer so some of the CSS classes may have a slightly different name but it won’t be too hard to figure out. WARNING: Make sure you make backup copies of all the files that you are going to modify.... Read more
This post has been updated to fix a couple of errors. The top Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sites recommend placing an ad after the first post on your blogs home page. This is quite effective as the visitor is less likely to get ad blindness and ignore the ad. This is very easy to do and shouldn’t take more than 10 – 15 minutes to implement. I’ll be showing how to insert the code in an Artisteer theme but the technique will work for any theme that uses the standard WordPress Loop. The first thing to do is make a backup of your index.php file just to be safe. You want to locate... Read more
This tutorial will show you how to modify your theme so that you can have a different header image depending on what page or category your viewing. There are a number of different ways to perform this task. This is pretty easy with minimal modifications to the theme. The modifications we’re going to make are for a typical Artisteer created theme, but it will work for just about any theme. Your mileage may vary. This is sort of two tutorials in one. We’re going to make a small modification to the header.php file and we’re going to write a simple function and call it in the functions.php... Read more
