Upstart Blogger WordPress Themes FAQ

Thanks for using one of my themes. I appreciate your comments and questions, which help me identify bugs and to continually improve. Looking over the comments on my themes, I see many of the same questions over and over again, so I’ve compiled some of the most common questions into this FAQ. Please read it carefully before asking for help. There’s a good chance your question will be answered below.

Note: I’m really sorry, but I simply don’t have time to answer general CSS questions unrelated to a specific problem with my themes. A good introduction to CSS can be found at HTML Dog. Or, even better, just buy The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks, and Hacks. This is by far the best CSS book for beginners who want to jump right in.

General Issues

Why are things generally wonky? Why do I get error messages? Why do I get a blank page?
Why do I get errors about “applesearch”?
Why can’t I get images, links, etc. to show up on the main page?
What happened to the [...] on the main page excerpt?
How can I add the author to the info for every post?
How do I add a list of categories, etc. to the sidebar?
How can i make the comment count for each post appear on the main page?
How do I use the archive page?
How do I disable showing ‘Popularity: n%’ on my posts?
Why do I get an error for related posts?
I’m using a plugin and it’s not working with your theme. What do I do?

Visit the downloads page.

General Issues

Why are things generally wonky? Why do I get error messages? Why do I get a blank page?
Random voodoo is usually the result of a faulty installation, conflicting plugins, or the mysterious language_attributes conundrum. Here’s how to troubleshoot miscellaneous problems:

First, make sure you’re running the latest version of WordPress.
Test your WP install by choosing one of the default themes. If that works…
Most of my themes include plugins. The download folder contains both a plugins folder and the theme folder. Make sure you’ve uploaded only the theme folder to the themes folder in your WordPress installation, not the download folder (contains both the theme and the plugins).
If you’ve modified anything, backup your modified version and try a clean install of the theme to see if it works.
If you’ve modified any of the theme files, make sure there are no extra lines at the tops or bottoms of the files.
Disable all of your plugins and reactivate them one by one, testing the theme after each activation.
Finally, if you get a blank page (or an error message like this: Fatal error: Call to undefined function: language_attributes() in[path]/wp-content/themes/ub_modicus/header.php on line 2), try replacing this line in header.php:
>

with this:

Why do I get errors about “applesearch”?
Inside the download folder of some themes is a folder called applesearch. These files style the search box to give it an Apple look. Upload the contents of the applesearch folder (not the folder itself) to the root directory of your site. If you use permalinks that include subfolders, you will need to hand code the full path to your root in applesearch.js and header.php.

For more information, see OS X style searchbox.

Why can’t I get images, links, etc. to show up on the main page?
Most of my themes use excerpts on the main page instead of complete posts. By default, the excerpt tag in WordPress doesn’t display links or images. If you want links and images to show up on the index page, you’ll have to do one of three things:

Display the full post instead of the excerpt
Actually put something with an tag in the Optional Excerpt field for the post (which is below the post field where you write the post in your WP Admin)
Or, change use a plugin like the_excerpt Reloaded, which lets you configure which tags to allow in the excerpt.

To display the full post instead of the excerpt, open index.php and find this:

< ?php the_excerpt(); ?>

And change it to this (to display the whole post):

< ?php the_content(); ?>

See the WordPress Codex (the_content) for more info.

What happened to the [...] on the main page excerpt?
You used the tag to split your post. If you’re using excerpts, you don’t need to use the “more” tag (unless you want to). If you do use it, you will lose the […], which is inserted by the excerpt tag in index.php. See Customizing the Read More.

How can I add the author to the info for every post?
Just add the author tag wherever you want the author info to appear:

< ?php the_author(); ?>

If you want a link to the author posts, use this tag:

< ?php the_author_posts_link(); ?>

How do I add a list of categories, etc. to the sidebar?
If you are using widgets, just drag the Categories widget into the sidebar. Go to Presentation > Widgets in your WP Admin.

Or, add this tag to your sidebar:

< ?php wp_list_categories(); ?>

How can i make the comment count for each post appear on the main page?
Add this tag where you want the comment count to appear:

< ?php comments_popup_link(__('0'), __('1'), __('%')); ?>

See the Codex: comments_popup_link.

How do I use the archive page?
If the theme includes an archives.php file, just create a new page in your WordPress admin named Archives and select Archives Page as the Page Template.

How do I disable showing ‘Popularity: n%’ on my posts?
For this, you need to edit the Popularity Contest plugin popularitycontest.php file. Just change this:

@define(’AKPC_SHOWPOP’, 1);

to this:

@define(’AKPC_SHOWPOP’, 0);

If you don’t want to edit the .php file, you can add this to your WordPress index.php file:

@define(’AKPC_SHOWPOP’, 0);

Why do I get an error for related posts?
If you get an error like this: WordPress database error: [Can’t find FULLTEXT index matching the column list] SELECT ID, post_title, post_content,MATCH (post_name, post_content) AGAINST [etc.], make sure you run the SQL Index Table Setup in the Plugins > Related Posts Options of your WP Admin.

I’m using a plugin and it’s not working with your theme. What do I do?
It’s unlikely that the theme would be the problem. If the instructions for the plugin don’t include modifying any template files, it should work. The plugin author would probably be more helpful that I can be.

Minim

How do I align the content in the center of the screen?
Centering the layout is easy. Just open up style.css and change this:

#container { width: 840px;}

to this:

#container {width: 840px;margin: 0 auto;}

Then you’ll need to add this to the #sidebars and #entries selectors:

text-align: left;

How can I make that header picture random?
To make the picture random you can use the Ad Rotator plugin.

How do I move the sidebars to the right?
Moving the sidebar is easy. You’ll need to edit the style.css file for Minim. Find this:

#sidebar {width: 336px; float: left;font-size: .8em;line-height: 1.4em;padding: 0 10px 25px 0;}

and change the float property to float: right;, then find this:

#entries {width: 468px;float: right;}

and change the float to float: left;.

Is there a quick fix to make the whole content area bigger?
You can give more room to the entries by increasing the width of this selector in your style.css file:

#entries {width: 468px; float: right;}

If you make the entries wider, you’ll need to add width to the container selector as well. In fact, changing only the container won’t help unless you increase the width of the entries (it will just add more space between the entries and the sidebar).

Modicus

Where do you go to edit the pink text in the post body?
The pink text is in the .entry p:first-child selector. Just open up style.css and change it to whatever you want, or delete that selector and the first paragraph will match the rest of the post.

Why doesn’t Internet Explorer like the p:first-child selector.
IE6 won’t recognize first-child at all, so the text just displays normally. It works fine in IE7 and, thankfully, IE6 is on the way out.

Why are ordered and unordered lists unstyled?
A minimalist design choice. The lists are set to list-style:none; at the top of style.php in the Normalize group, which resets all of the selectors to defaults before styling them in the rest of the file, a tip I picked up from Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design. If you want to style them, you should add a selector elsewhere in the file.

Modio

Is there a way of fixing the menu tab (“Inside ←”) so that it scrolls with the rest of the page?
Find this code in your style.css file:

#sidebar {position: fixed;

and change position: fixed; to position: absolute;.