/images/header_2.jpg "Cutline Theme for WordPress")
The default links in the Cutline header point to pages called Archives and About. In order for those links to work, you’ll have to make sure that those pages actually exist…Well wait a tick – how the heck do we do that? Fear not, because Cutline comes pre-packaged with all the answers!
Creating the Archives Page
Follow these steps, and you’ll be able to create an Archives page in no time:
- Log into your WP Administration panel and click on the Presentation link.
- Assuming you have the Cutline theme activated, you’ll notice a link in the sub-navigation menu called Cutline Options.
- On the Cutline Options page, simply check the box next to “Enable the Cutline Archives Page.”
- Click the Update Options button to create the Archives page.
- In order to ensure that your new Archives page gets published properly, you’ll need to click on the Manage link in the main navigation menu.
- Once there, click on Pages in the sub-navigation menu.
- One of your pages will contain the text “Archives” in the Title field – find that page, and then click on the Edit button for that page.
- Locate the Save » button (which resides just beneath the main text entry box), and click it. You’re done!
Creating the “About” Page
On just about every new installation of WordPress, your About page is already created for you. In the event that it’s not, however, you can follow these steps to make it happen:
- In your WordPress administration panel, click on the Write link in the navigational bar.
- Two links will appear in the sub-navigational menu – Write Post and Write Page. You’ll want to click on Write Page.
- Enter whatever you like in the Page Title and Page Content fields.
- On the right side of the page, you’ll notice a heading that is called Post Slug. Expand the heading to reveal a field, and then enter “about” in that field. Enter it exactly as shown here (without the quotes), or else your navigational link will not work!
- Click the Create New Page button, and you’re done!
Easy, huh?
Aaargh! My Links Don’t Work Yet!
Find out why and fix the problem by reading up on WordPress permalinks and how they relate to Cutline.
Chris I love the new Theme.
You have seen my blog before so you know it’s modified quite a bit from PressRow. How hard would it be to simply start using Cutline? Would my sidebar and pages transfer without problems? What other issues would I run into?
Thank You for the best themes on Wordpress.
Roy,
In order for things to run as smoothly as possible, you would basically need to duplicate the modifications that you made to PressRow within the context of the Cutline template files.
Although there are external similiarities between the two themes, they can barely be called third cousins when you consider what’s under the hood.
To be more specific, your pages would transfer over just fine, and you would only experience a problem with those if you’ve made any associated CSS modifications.
Your sidebar is a bit more difficult, but the end result will likely be much cleaner than what you have now. Basically, you would need to add your additional sidebar modules, being sure to code them up in a manner that is consistent with the Cutline sidebar markup. You’ll find that it’s cleaner and simpler than it was in PressRow.
Also, you have increased the overall width of your site (to accommodate a wider content column), and you would need to reproduce those same CSS modifications on the Cutline stylesheet. So, that would basically mean performing a Find and Replace (within the Cutline stylesheet) on the following items:
One thing to keep in mind here, too, is that header images are now handled directly in the
header.phpfile instead of in the CSS. The default header image size is 770×140 (px), and if you want to use your same images, you’ll need to change the height and width declarations on each image reference in theheader.phpfile.The headers have been named so that they can be modified easily by even the most green user, and the default names are as follows:
So, if you want to change out your images in the easiest possible manner, simply overwrite these files within the
Cutline/images/directory.Oh, and you’re welcome for the themes…It’s my pleasure!
Thank you for the quick response.
It looks like it might be a good idea to start this project on a Friday evening, to finish in time for a Monday morning post.
Again thank you.
Chris,
On the PressRow site you gave directions for adding a page and what you called Add a Menu Item. Do those directions apply to Cutline? My pages, Contact and Audio Clips did not transfer very well to Cutline. I can open them from the administrative panel and they have the Cutline theme. But I need to add them to the Cutline theme when it is live so they can be accessed by a reader.
Also one question that is driving me nuts. I tried to change the color of the post title to red like I have on Pressrow and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I could change the color of the blog title and sidebar titles but never the post title. What am I missing?
Thanks
Disregard the question on post title color. I realized I had already been to the page of course, that’s why it wasn’t changing. That was a really dumb question.
Roy,
Although it took a while, I have finally posted the “how-to” article on creating navigation links in the Cutline header.
Enjoy!
Chris,
Just wanted to let you know about a slight bug/quirk I noticed in the Cutline archives page. I noticed that the unordered list of categories was indented further than the monthly unordered list above it.
I inspected the source code of the page through my browser and noticed that an ‘extra’ unordered list was being created. That is, there was an unordered list nested within an unordered list, and this was causing the additional indentation.
I took a look at the archives.php file and noticed that there were
<ul>and</ul>tags around thelist_tags()call. Since this call generates its own unordered list with the appropriate tags, the nesting occurs.I don’t see the same problem replicated here on your demo site, so I’m not sure if this was somehow just a bug in my site, or if its been fixed here but not in the main release.
Hope this was helpful.
Just to be clear, for anyone else reading this…
Removing the
<ul>and</ul>tags aroundlist_tags()fixed the problem. The category archives list now lines up properly with the monthly archives list.Amish,
Did you change that categories call to list sub-categories, by chance?
I think my original code pulled all categories as one list, but if you’ve changed that to pull the nested categories, then that might be why you experienced inconsistent behavior.
No, I noticed the problem when using the untouched version of archives.php from the zip file I downloaded here.
The only change I made after noticing the quirky behavior was the removal of the ul and /ul tags around list_cats().
[Note: I just noticed a typo in my comments above. I referred to
list_tags()by accident, but I really meantlist_cats().]Here’s the wordpress codex for the list_cats() template tag:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/list_cats
There’s a line in there that says:
Below that, in the description of the different attributes for this tag, the codex indicates that the ‘list’ attribute is true by default. So it appears that this was causing the nesting problem for me.
I’m not sure why the same thing is not showing up here.
What version of WordPress are you running?
2.0.5
Chris,
On my site, the arhives content does not appear. I thought it was because i didn’t have alot of content yet; however, nothing is showing up still. Any suggestions?
One more question: I have a table in my latests post. When you click on the category tag, it brings up all of the posts for that tag. The post with the table in it gets organized visually like html code instead of what its supposed to. And, images do not show up at the top of the abbreviated posts when you click on a tag or search for an article. How can I fix this? Thanks
Mike,
Regarding your first question, please read this entry and then let me know if you are still having problems.
As for your second question, the archive page (which is what comes up when you click on that tag) displays excerpts, which do not receive any special formatting (paragraph tags, blockquotes, images, etc.).
However, you can override these settings by placing your content in the Optional Excerpt field when you publish your entry. You can go back and make these changes, too, when you choose to edit an existing entry.
My links work just fine. I’ve even put an inline image in the Archives page; however, I can’t get the archive content I see on your archive page to display. Thanks for the Optional Excerpt advice.
Mike,
When you inserted your archives header image into your page, you must’ve obliterated the default code. Check out your
archives.phptheme file, and make sure that it contains the tags that produce the output that you see on my archives page.I’m betting that the default code is now gone.
If this is the case, simply re-install the
archives.phpfile from a default version of Cutline.Once you have it up and running properly, then you can include your special archive image.
Chris,
All the code is there. I never touched the code in the archive.php theme file. I inserted the image on the wordpress page entry.
Mike,
In order for the Archives page to work, you cannot insert anything into the text entry field.
Chris,
I’ve followed the instructions, but the Archives page that shows up doesn’t have any content on it. Any idea what I’m doing wrong? The site (not yet public) is http://www.thedoctorjob.com/blog/
Thanks.
I’ve got the same problem as Avitable. I’m trying to use Cutline on a new WordPress install on my DreamHost account.
Could the recent upgrade to WordPress be causing this?
Avitable, Johnathon — It’s possible that your Archives page is not showing up because you’re running WordPress 2.1. However, in the event that you still cannot get the page to work properly, please follow the instructions from this comment.
The archive page displays by month and by category. How can I add a section to display by author?
Ryan — Add this chunk of code to your
archives.phpfile.wp_list_authors(’show_fullname=1′)
Thanks Chris. I added the code, but the above function does not echo anything to the page.
Note to other readers: The reference is to the archives.php you see when you FTP in your Cutline folder, not archive.php, which you can edit from the Theme editor.
Ryan — I forgot to mention; that code assumes you are running WordPress 2.1. For earlier versions of WordPress, use
list_authors(without parameters) instead ofwp_list_authors.Chris — I am running 2.1, and having no luck with any of the following:
wp_list_authors('show_fullname=1')wp_list_authors()
list_authors('show_fullname=1')
list_authors()
At this point, I have only published with one author. I don’t think that should matter though.
Ryan — Ah, I know what the problem is. By default, the
wp_list_authorsfunction does not display posts from theadmin. Check out the what the WordPress Codex has to say about this function’s parameters, and you’ll be able to figure out what you need to do.Since I’m running 2.1, I needed to use
list_authors(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE). For future readers, see the codex for this function.And Chris, very cool of you to make Cutline freely available, not to mention supporting it so well. Thanks!
Ryan — I got it to work on my test site using the
wp_list_authorsfunction. I recommend doing everything you can to get things to work with functions prefixed withwp_, because it’s clear that’s the direction WordPress is heading with future releases.Cool. Not sure what I messed up the first time I tried it, but 2.1’s
wp_list_authors('show_fullname=1&optioncount=1&exclude_admin=0')appears to be equivalent to the olderlist_authors(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE).That’s the one. I’m pretty sure
list_authorsis going to be considered “deprecated code” by the end of April, so you’re ready for the future with this new function.Using the Presentation|Cutline Options page, I ticked the Create Archive box. But no archive page was created. What am I doing wrong?
What you said about making an archive page… it didn’t work at all. And when it said to update the htaccess file, it did not provide me with a code. Suggestions? Otherwise, I love the theme!!
Hey there, Chris, great theme!
I changed my permalinks according to your instructions (I LOVE all this clear documentation btw!) and then I enabled the Cutline archives page, but it didn’t automatically create an Archives page for me. Wasn’t it supposed to?
So then I went ahead and created one (called Archives) but nothing shows up on it.
I know it’s something simple I’m overlooking, but I can’t see it and am hoping you can point me in the right direction.
Oh, and I’ve not touched any other file, except to upload one custom header_1.jpg file.
Thank you!
Hooray! I figured it out when I was installing the Sitemap page.
In your sitemap instructions you say:
I realized I hadn’t used the Page Template dropdown box for the Archives page, and when I did it, the Archives appeared.
Again, thank you for these great documentation files.
Chris,
The Archives page does not appear in my list of pages after enabling in Cutline Options.
Could you please advise?
Nevermind, Chris. I just followed the same instructions for Sitemap, and that produced the Archives page.
It appears that the automatic Enable option doesn’t write the necessary file. I also don’t know whether this is related to the 2.1.2 upgrade, since I’m just now installing Cutline after the upgrade.
I’m getting an error message when I try to access the archives, about and contact page.
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, root@foo.tld and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Fix “About” and “Archives” in Cutline 1.1 and WordPress 2.2 // May 22, 2007 at 12:43 am
[...] 1. Make sure you have pages named Archives and about listed in your Pages section. You may have to create them, and if so, see this post. [...]
Would it be possible to hack the archives page so it displays a “delicious cloud” instead of a list?
Something that came up here is that the empty Archives page should have the page template “Archives”.
About worked instantly, but I had to fiddle a bit to get Archives to work // May 28, 2007 at 10:52 pm
[...] I didn’t change the .htaccess page. Instead, I found this page on creating archives and about pages which was [...]
Hi Chris,
I have followed the steps to create the “archives page”, but when I go to “manage pages” there is no page shown named “archives”. Any ideas? Thank you.
Man, this theme is great! I figured out the archive problem
now I am just trying to figure out why the fonts on the right sidebar are so big on the first page? All other pages the fonts are the right size… any idea?
Bummer… I just discoved that the links I put into posts do not work with this theme… have to change back to old them for now
I LOVE the template, but I’m having the same problem as Tim. I’m running wordpress 2.2.2 at SeattleMomBlogs.com.
Can I delete the links to About and Archives completely? I’d rather not use them. I’m new at this – thanks!
For some reason, in page management the only page that showed up was the ‘about’ page, which I successfully got going. Is there a way to recreate the ‘archives’ info that should have been there? I can go ahead and create another knew page like the ‘about’ page but I don’t know how to get my archives in there…