I haven't written as many WordPress tutorials as usual lately, as I have been so busy building websites and blogs, so I thought I would take the time out to share a few WordPress codes I have developed recently for attachment page templates and specifically the image attachment page template. The attachment page template is the page that displays a single image when the images link URL is set to 'Post URL'. You can set the image's link URL when inserting a single image into a post, and also when using the gallery shortcode.

The codes in this article are mostly applicable to images inserted using the gallery shortcode as they are most useful for posts or pages that have multiple image attachments. Read more about using image and file attachments.

These template codes can be added to your WordPress theme using the attachment.php and image.php files. If these template files do not exist in your theme you can create them, or WordPress will default to using single.php or index.php to show attachments by default. (See more about template hierarchy).

If you don't want to create a seperate image.php or attachment.php template you can always edit the index.php or single.php files and wrap the attachment specific codes in the is_attachment clause like so:

if(is_attachment()){
//attachment page specific code goes here
}

These php functions are loosely based on code I found in this article: Adding text links to WordPress Gallery by Michael Fields. In this article he provides code examples of how to show previous and next thumbnail links in a WP attachment page. I also made use of this previous-next keys in array function which is infinitely useful!

My first set of functions will return text links for previous image, next image and back to gallery. The functions themselves will need to be added to your theme's functions.php file before calling them in your image.php or attachment.php files. So here we go:
Read on…

Get your hands on the new Street Fighter 2 widget. You can grab the widget code and embed it on your website, or even your myspace or facebook profile. This flash remake of the game is a very accurate copy of the arcade original featuring all the characters and bonus levels. If you just want to play the game on a website please follow this link:

Play Street Fighter online

I have recently been working on my first project on the MediaWiki platform, a football wiki site for FootballFanCast.com. The Football Fans Wiki is a wiki written from the fans perspective, with information about each team's stadium, transport info, where to eat & drink locally, songs, programmes, merchandise store, links,video clips & more.

Key features that I added as MediaWiki extensions:

• Register and login from the FFC site instead of through MediaWiki itself
• News & blog feeds on the wiki homepage

Check it out now: Fans Wiki

While working on a WordPress site recently I came up against a problem that had never occurred to me before. The client wanted each post excerpt on the homepage to include an image which when clicked would link to the main post (permalink) itself. The built in functions of wordpress when inserting an image allow you to link to either the 'File URL' (i.e. the full size version of the image) or to the 'Post URL' which is actually an attachment page in wordpress which displays the image, but does not include the text of the actual post itself. However, without either editing the html of each post (not an option for this client) or inserting the image without a link, and then adding the permalink to the image (too long winded) there was no simple way to create the image links in the way they wanted them.

My solution to this was to create a very basic hack which would allow them to use the 'Post URL' link when inserting images, but instead of linking to the attachment page, the link would automatically be updated to link to the post's permalink itself.

Here is the basic php function that you would need to insert into your theme's functions.php file:

function lose_attachment($content){
return preg_replace('/<a(.*?)href="(.*?)\/attachment\/(.*?)"/i', '<a$1href="$2"', $content);
}

add_filter('the_excerpt', 'lose_attachment',2);

This will remove the 'attachment/name-of-image-file' part from the URL making it link to the post's permalink itself.  I hope someone out there finds this useful!

I have developed a quiz game engine based on this original multi choice quiz by animike. The improvements I made to the original flash file are:

1. Removed the need for an external XML file, which makes it easier to distribute virally as a stand-alone file.
2. Added the ability to add infinite arrays of questions, so the quiz will have a different set of questions each time you play.
3. Added the potential to build arrays of questions based on statistical data, perfect for sports quizes.
4. Added the potential to plug the game into various scoreboard and in-game advertising APIs such as MochiAds.
5. Added brandable features such as a 'More Games' link and a preloader screen.

To test the quiz engine I released the first version of my football quiz, with 12 questions drawing from an array of 120 possible questions. It got mixed reviews on newgrounds.com, but seemed to do reasonably well on football / sports specific games sites thereafter. You can try out the first version of the quiz game here: Football Quiz

More recently I have released the first sponsored / branded version of the quiz called Premiership Football Quiz, which is sponsored by one of the UK's leading football websites - FootballFanCast.com. I have plans to work with the FootballFanCast team to develop other football quiz games, relating to specific teams, competitions, etc.

I am also hoping to branch out now into quizes relating to other sports, and to other subjects entirely, such as Pop Music, Movies, TV, Celebrities, Arcade games, World Geography, etc.

If you need a quiz game for your site, or wish to distribute a branded quiz game across a range of games sites please feel free to get in touch. I can quote on a per quiz basis, prices will depend on the level of branding, the number of questions, whether the questions are provided, whether you want me to distribute, etc. So there is no fixed price as such.