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…

I have been working for some months now to develop an e-commerce module for Admin76,  the CMS which is currently exclusive to 76 Creative. The e-commerce module, called Cart76, utilises many of the nice features of Admin76 such as drag n drop functionality, advanced image gallery management, etc. It is now in it's final stages of development, so if you are interested in running your self-managed site on the Admin76 platform, or if you require a self-managed online store please contact 76 Creative for more info.

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!

If you create a hyperlink to a media file that can be opened within the browser such as an mp3, mpg, jpg, pdf, etc. a single left click will open the file in the web browser instead of triggering a download. To download the file you need to right click (CTRL + click for mac) and choose 'Save File As...' from the dropdown.

If your intention is to create a link for the user to download the file rather than viewing it in their browser you can do so using a simple php script. Create a file called 'download.php' and copy in the following php:

<?php
$download_file = $_GET['file'];
$download_file_name = $_GET['name'];
$handle = fopen($download_file, "r");
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.$download_file_name);
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($download_file));
ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($download_file);
fclose($handle);
exit;
?>

You can then create your download links like so:

www.example.com/download.php?file=images/example.jpg&name=hello.jpg

The URL should include the path to the file to be downloaded, and the name you want to give the file. In the above example the file is 'images/example.jpg' but the name of the file downloaded by the user would be 'hello.jpg'

When using PHP headers it is important to note that the headers will only be executed if they are called before any text is output to the page. Any html, or php echo tags, before the headers will cause the headers to be ignored. A line break or space before the opening php tag will also prevent headers from working.

A simple 5 page site built for music composition, sound design and music searches company 'little bits of mischief'. The site is built in php / XHTML and features Flash audio and video players. It's always a pleasure for me to build simple, classic designed sites. I particularly like the red, white, blue colour scheme in this design.

Check it out: www.littlebitsofmischief.com