Wow, the time has just flown by!!! Sorry for the lack of recent code and wordpress goodness.

Firstly, I am glad to see that my WP Post Columns Plugin is still going strong!!! Although it has not been updated since 2009 it seems that it is still working (for most people at least) and the comments keep flooding in!

Many of my WordPress plugins, themes and code tutorials are now unfortunately un-supported. But they are still free, and many people add solutions and answers as well as questions in the comments. I am still working with WordPress every day, but can no longer spare the time to provide free support for free plugins and tutorials.

I have had quite a few comments from people saying that they find it hard to read white text on a black background. Some of these comments have been so strongly worded that I was unable to publish them on the site! If you really can't stand it then you could always try getting firebug addon for firefox and changing the colours however you want (yellow text on a pink background looks quite good). I probably won't be changing my theme in the near future. Also, it's probably a good idea not to get into server administration like linux / apache stuff if you don't like light text on a dark background...

Some new wordpress tutorials and goodies coming soon I promise!

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…

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!

The Transfer Tavern is a pub themed blog / site about football transfer rumours. It features two different voting systems by which readers can vote on the pluasability of each rumour, deciding whether the rumour should 'Fly or Die' and also a beer rating to decide how drunk you would have to be to believe the more outlandish rumours.

The most interesting and challenging aspect of building the site was designing and implimenting the custom voting systems. I also designed the pub style logo for the site which I am quite pleased with! If you like to keep up to date with all the latest footy rumours, or want to find out what purchases your team might be making over the summer transfer window then be sure to check it out: www.footballtransfertavern.com

The Football Journalist is a blog site aimed at people who want to become professional sports and football journalists. It features listings of sports journalism courses and jobs within the football industry.

I applied a few basic customisations to the theme, changing the background image and adding in the adsense blocks and job listings widgets. I also used a few of my favourite plugins to apply SEO to the site.

As the site is linked with FootballFanCast (one of the leading football blog and podcasting sites in the UK) I would highly recommend it for anyone who is working towards a carreer in football journalism.

Check it out: www.thefootballjournalist.com