Ask Support Questions

Posted January 19th, 2007 by Mike Cherim

Have a question about this theme? You can try asking here and I’ll respond as soon as I can. Or you can try the FAQs or contact me. If you just want to give feedback, please check out this feedback post.

Okay, it’s your turn.

Filed under General Info —

78 Responses to: “Ask Support Questions”

Arissa responds:
Posted: January 23rd, 2007 at 3:24 am →

all i have to say is i love this theme, it’s really very well designed and I thank you so much for sharing it. I’m gonna try and do some configurations to it (but i’m no programming genius), will let you know if there’re any kinks I come across.

Thanks again.
Arissa responds:
Posted: January 24th, 2007 at 2:09 am →

I’m trying to integrate a gallery into a page that I’ve created on my own wordpress blog. I was wondering if you have one in mind that would integrate seamlessly into beastblog theme while retaining it’s original outlook.

thank you.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 24th, 2007 at 2:53 am →

Hi Arissa. I’m not sure of any particular gallery plugin made for WordPress, but I would suggest searching for image and gallery plugins and just try them out. Some are quite involved and not very accessible I suspect but there may be a decent one that works out for you. This theme shouldn’t really have any limitations so any plugin should work, but some styling may be needed.

EDIT: I checked out your site. You should probably change the style on your form. Go to Contact Form > Styling, then select the “beastblog-v2.css” not the one you’re using (beast-blog.css). The one you’re using is for the “original” look as shown on my blog. If you do that your contact form will look a lot nice and other forms will be improved as well.
Arissa responds:
Posted: January 24th, 2007 at 2:41 pm →

hmmm~ that’s strange~ cos i don’t seem to have “beastblog-v2.css” under my list of styles.
I only have:
almost-spring.css ,beast-blog.css, blix.css, classic.css, connections.css, custom.css, default.css, green-marinee.css, ocadia.css, pool.css and seabeast.css

Maybe I’m doing something wrong. :/

I’m looking out for a gallery script that I can use, since I’m no php expert I hope I can find one soon ;D . But thank you so much for the suggestion.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 24th, 2007 at 3:03 pm →

Hello Arissa. I’m assuming you had the form already. Is this right? If so check the download files in the plugins folder that comes with it. Look in “beastblog-v2-download/beastblog-v2-plugins/wp-gbcf/wp-gbcf_themes/beastblog-v2.css” In fact, looking at the styling sort of indicates this is the case since the v1 original styles with the theme differ from that which is included with the plugin normally.
Arissa responds:
Posted: January 24th, 2007 at 4:01 pm →

*gasp* you’re right~!! everything’s in order now~! Thank you so much~!!!!

I just tried out ANIga a WP-gallery plugin. It’s really easy to use and install. But I haven’t really uploaded anything yet.

Thanks again for your speedy replies. I really really appreciate it.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 24th, 2007 at 4:17 pm →

Very cool; thanks for the update. Let me know how the gallery plugin works for you. I may work with it or recommend it if it’s decent.
John Martin responds:
Posted: January 26th, 2007 at 5:10 pm →

Hey, great theme, I’m going to use if for my wife’s science blog. But I do have an odd happening where in Flock, Firefox 2 and IE 7, the title displays on initial load but is then hidden by the leafy header. I’m curious if there is a workaround for this that I could hack.

http://mrsmartin.whitemountaintech.net
or
http://www.mrsmartin.whitemountaintech.net (if my DNS changes haven’t come thru)

Thanks!

John Martin
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 26th, 2007 at 5:57 pm →

Hello John, That’s one of the drawbacks to an image replacement technique I’m afraid, though it really shouldn’t happen at all on anything but IE6 so I’m a quite surprised you’re seeing that (and it did not manifest itself for me — using FF2.0.0.1 on Win XP2). The idea behind this type of image placement is three-fold: 1) search engine optimization; 2) accessibility of real text to screen reader and text browser users and; 3) the ability to add fancy graphical text to the masthead image for design purposes.

As far as workarounds I’ve applied everything I could to make it smooth as possible: 1) I added the hover/focus image as an embedded image positioned off-screen — if you turn of page styles you’ll see it; 2) I added a bit of JavaScript to preload the image that way as well in addition to my other preloading method; 3) I added an empty script element which is supposed to diminish the flash of unstyled content (FOUC) which is what you’re seeing.

The only other thing that could be done the further optimize that image to reduce its file size by replacing it with your own masthead image, or you can have that image optimized by running the site through SiteReportCard.com (check load times and it’ll offer you optimized images if you want, no charge), or you can modify the style sheet to show the text on top of the background and do away with the image replacement technique altogether.

Hope this helps.
Jeremy David responds:
Posted: January 27th, 2007 at 4:00 pm →

Hey there,

I was wondering how I can get the sidebar on a single post.

Cheers,
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 27th, 2007 at 5:20 pm →

Sure. You have to add the get_sidebar() and the change the widecolumn class to narrowcolumn. Do bear in mind though, other edits would be required to do the jump links for single, the id="nav" would have to be removed from the home link at the footer as it would be duped, and probably some other odds and ends. Additionally, the styling of the comments form and what not may be a little off — maybe. It’s certainly doable though.
Jeremy David responds:
Posted: January 27th, 2007 at 11:08 pm →

yeah thats what i tried before, except the sidebar appears at the bottom… I think the comment stuff spills over to far.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 12:12 am →

Hmm, it shouldn’t. Provide a link and I’ll look if you want.
David Zemens responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 9:25 am →

Mike & Jeremy,
I successfully changed the single.php page at one of my blogs using this theme by adding the call to the sidebar immediately above the widecolumn division (which had to be changed from narrowcolumn). Works fine, the sidebar is in place as designed.
David Zemens responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 9:44 am →

Like this:
<?php get_sidebar(); ?> <div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
Arissa responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 12:09 pm →

Hello Mike it’s me again (sorry for bothering you like that all the time) I’ve tried out the ANIga plugin and it worked pretty welll for me so far, my only complain is that the gallery pages do not have the sidebars as the Page templates that came with the plugins obviously do not have the gallery-index.css ,gallery-category.css and gallery-pictures.css files that are catered for the beastblog template. If I choose the “default template”, the sidedar appears but the plugin does not work anymore.

Any idea wad i should add to the existing gallery-index.css ,gallery-category.css and gallery-pictures.css so that the sidebar would appear? That would be a really big help. Thank you so much.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 12:40 pm →

@David: Thanks for that, I can’t recommend it’s adoption, though, because it’ll reverse the ordering of the page which is going to reduce its accessibility and SEO impact.

@Arissa: Being that I’m not at all familiar with the plguin I really don’t know. I’d suggest — if anything — that you use the default template and check the error logs to determine what the conflict is, but that might get involved fast. If the plugin has its own templates I’d suggest maybe trying to add <?php get_sidebar(); ?> just above <?php get_footer(); ?> in the template file and making sure it is a <div id="content" class="narrowcolumn"> near the top of the file, but, again, I’m just guessing.
Jeremy David responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 1:01 pm →

Oh thanks.

www.jpony.com
Jeremy David responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 1:21 pm →

oooh i figured it out… I had to take out that home button - it was spanning across the whole page.

Cheers,
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 1:45 pm →

Good job Jeremy. It’s valid too
Harry responds:
Posted: January 31st, 2007 at 4:42 pm →

A small question,
I use this theme for our Foundation, now I see that the search code is into the sitebar, but I don’t see it on the site themselves?
Do I something wrong or?

thanks Harry
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 31st, 2007 at 5:09 pm →

Hello Harry. I’m not sure what’s going on with that. It seems that you have no is_home() function working. I don’t see the form in the source code and it should be there on your “home.” I also noted you seem to have a second home link, but without text so it’s just an empty rectangle sized by padding alone. Did you make some sidebar mods or something?
Harry responds:
Posted: January 31st, 2007 at 5:31 pm →

No I had already a homepage, and use a plugin “static frontpage” that make the page with slug home the homepage. Of cource I can change this to your homepage to try if that is working.
Harry responds:
Posted: January 31st, 2007 at 5:45 pm →

Now is everthing gone!!!!
I have the home file in the root set to home.php and set there in my content, but its not working!!!
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 31st, 2007 at 6:12 pm →

Seems to be about the same as before. I do include a home template, but it’s not plug and play. There are other steps involved. I just provide it to give a developer a headstart when using WP as a CMS with my theme. I’d love to help, but I have no idea what’s going on. Maybe the theme isn’t compatible with that static home plugin. That said, if you’re using version 2.1 of WordPress, you should be able to make any “page” your home page. I think that’s one of the features I like. I was going to upgrade my own blogs, but I don’t have MySQL v.4x and that’s a requirement
Harry responds:
Posted: January 31st, 2007 at 6:25 pm →

I had to set it back I have, only that I don’t use the static plugin, but use the option into wordpress 2.1 themselve to set a static page to home page. Why the search is not showing up I don’t know.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 31st, 2007 at 7:19 pm →

Hmm, a few people have tested the theme in version 2.1, but it could be a bug I suppose. I wish I could install 2.1 then I could do some rigorous testing. I’m not sure how to help you at this juncture I’m afraid.
Arissa responds:
Posted: February 4th, 2007 at 5:04 pm →

The solution you provided worked completely. You’re an absolute genius. Thank you so much.
craig responds:
Posted: February 8th, 2007 at 6:53 pm →

Is there any way to get around the parsed tags that are added to the code in the rich editor? It is driving me crazy. If I open up the HTML editor and remove the tags and save it, it puts them back in. I even tried replacing the “
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 8th, 2007 at 7:25 pm →

Sure thing Craig. Go to “Users” then scroll down a bit and de-select the Visual Rich Editor, and Update your profile. Then when you go into to edit you’ll have what I consider a much better interface. You can make the changes you need and save the page. Once done, you can turn the editor back on (though I can’t personally recommend it).

I’m curious, what is it that’s being parsed?
Mark responds:
Posted: February 27th, 2007 at 6:44 am →

Thanks for a great theme, Mike.
Is it possible to customize the theme so that the full text of a post on the blog’s home page is displayed instead of each post containing a short excerpt followed by “continue reading” which, when clicked, takes the reader to a new page with the complete version of the post?
Thanks.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 27th, 2007 at 11:42 am →

Hello Mark. It is possible. What you’d have to do is edit the following in the main index template (index.php):
```
  <?php the_excerpt(); // Want full posts, use the_content() ?>
  <?php if(is_category() || is_archive() || is_home()) { ?>
  <p class="continue">Continue reading &#8220;<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a>&#8221;&nbsp;&raquo;</p>
```
This is right out of the file — note the comment. Remove the the_excerpt(); part and replace it with the_content();, then remove the “continue reading part”

That should do what you want.
Mark responds:
Posted: February 27th, 2007 at 11:54 am →

Many thanks, Mike. I’ll try that.
Regards,
Mark
Mark responds:
Posted: February 28th, 2007 at 12:03 pm →

Thanks, Mike. Your suggestion worked like a charm! I just need to tweak our site a bit now. Thanks for a wonderful theme and your kind support! It’s much appreciated.
Regards,
Mark
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 28th, 2007 at 12:39 pm →

You’re very welcome, Mark. Looking at your site I have to wonder if you didn’t want to do that to make the images show on the home page. If that is the case, you didn’t have to do that, just use the excerpt textarea as described here.
Mark responds:
Posted: February 28th, 2007 at 4:34 pm →

You’re right, Mike - that is what I was trying to achieve. Thanks for the tip. If I understand your instructions correctly, I simply put the text and image I want to post in the “Optional Excerpt” text area instead of the “Write Post” text area? Wouldn’t that involve having to change every existing post manually?
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 28th, 2007 at 6:12 pm →

Hello Mark. What I do is I write my post in the main textarea, preview it, and once it’s a draft I’m happy with, I select the portion I want as an excerpt — typically the first paragraph — including image and other markup, and I paste a copy of that in the “Optional Excerpt” textarea. This is what I regularly do on my blog so I can have images, links, and other markup in my excerpts. I don’t even bother with the  tag. I don’t know why WordPress strips the markup from the excerpts but they do so this is what I’ve been doing all along. It would involve going back to do that on old posts I’m afraid, but I feel it’s worth it because it greatly increases the control I have over what shows in the excerpts. It may be worth the trouble for you.
Mark responds:
Posted: March 1st, 2007 at 3:08 am →

Thanks for the advice, Mike.
crazychildrenangie responds:
Posted: March 4th, 2007 at 12:02 pm →

Hi Mike, I downloaded your theme with reference from Arissa’s blog. And I’m am glad that I did. After switching from blogger to wordpress, the next best thing to happen is to have a good content management loayout and blogging support. I am still exploring your theme =) I hope you would consider making the theme widget capable too in future. This will probably help scripting idiots like me . Thank you!
Mark responds:
Posted: March 4th, 2007 at 5:43 pm →

Yes, widget support would be nice.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: March 29th, 2007 at 10:16 am →

Bug Found: Thanks to a friend of mine, David Zemens, who was checking out a theme mod I did for Innerline Plumbing, an error was picked up. This one was a challenge to find and squash, but it has been found and squashed. But not yet in the download! I will update the download as soon as I can.

If you require users to be logged in before posting, an edit needs to be made to the “comments.php” file. On lines 48 and 49 you need to add a div on each line.

Look for this:
```
  <p>You must be <a href="<?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-login.php?redirect_to=<?php the_permalink(); ?>">logged in</a> to post a comment.</p>
 </div>  
 </div> 
```
If you don’t require people to be logged in to post there no real need to fix this. Again, I will update the download as soon as I can.

Thanks David.
David Zemens responds:
Posted: March 29th, 2007 at 10:31 am →

There’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others!

Seriously, though, I was glad to help out, in this small way, as a partial payback for all the help you have given me in the past year.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: March 31st, 2007 at 2:41 am →

Bug Squashed
I stomped the reported validation bug good and fixed the download
Doug Hacker responds:
Posted: July 19th, 2007 at 12:37 pm →

I’m really having trouble with the Contact form page. I find the directions hard to follow.

I installed and activated the plug-in. I created a new page called “Contact Us” and chose the appropriate template.

While the page is mostly correct I have a blank where “Required anti-spam question” is and the “Time To Send It To Me” has a blank green button below.

What am I missing?
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: July 19th, 2007 at 1:17 pm →

Can you send me a link Doug? I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.
Doug Hacker responds:
Posted: July 19th, 2007 at 1:19 pm →

Sure Mike, check it out here . . .http://www.zoomtextscripting.com/index.php/contact-us/

In the “non-WordPress” version of the plug-in there is a config file. My download from this site had no config file, is that the issue?
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: July 19th, 2007 at 2:07 pm →

Hello Doug. That’s pretty strange, the label for the anti-spam is gone and the submit button has no value. The config is built in so that’s not it. I did upgrade the theme a few days ago but didn’t touch the form stuff and the form’s been pretty stable for a while now.

The page is valid so that’s not it. Have you tried disabling some of the other plugins to see if anything like that is affecting it? Also, have you check your server’s error log to see if anything is being recorded there. Let me know if either of those things to look at yield any results. If not I guess I’d like to come over to your admin and look at the files to see what I can see.

There was one case where this one woman downloaded it, but for some reason the zip got corrupted along the way. That gave some strange stuff so I suppose that’s an option.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: July 19th, 2007 at 3:27 pm →

All fixed Doug. The form wasn’t configured yet. There is something very strange going on with your domain that you should contact your host about. I sent the details in an email to you.
James Harris responds:
Posted: August 13th, 2007 at 9:27 am →

I really enjoy your blog and the theme you have created. I spent the weekend trying to twek it in some. (I am completely new to Wordpress and definitely not a web programmer, but I am learning). It took me quite a while to figure out how to remove some of the images by making them remarks rather than commands. (wrong terminology…?) I guess I need to hire a graphics artist or you to create some appropriate images to use.

Anyways, I am trying to understand the testarea commands and inserting descriptions, META, etc… I have read your posts a few times and I am not sure I understand exactly how to do this. I see under KEY several selections:_utw_tags_ , _utw_tags_0 , _wp_attached_file , _wp_attachment_metadata , _wp_page_template . I do not see description or keywords so I assume I still have to add these and that length is the same as outlined in Configuration? So that leads me to what these other KEYS are used for? Do I need them and if not can I remove them so they don’t confuse me? Are there any other commands I should enter to take full advantage of your template?

Next, I believe I read on your site that we could use your site info page/privacy so long as we did not tamper with anything. I had one heck of a time trying to get it the same. I could not get the images to load. I kept getting blank images. I was placing the images in the wp_themes/~/images folder with the rest of the blog images. I even tried using the upload feature in the page creation area. The images would appear but I could not get them to float left, right or center and it removed the sidebars and moved the last paragraph into the sidebar area. Can you point me in the correct direction as to properly format the pages and have the images appear properly?

I realize that’s a lot and appreciate your time and efforts.

Best regards,

Jim
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: August 13th, 2007 at 10:41 am →

Hi James. To remove background images, you’d go into the style.css and remove/edit those lines. Say you wanted to remove the background image of the pre element. Example:
```
/* change this line */
 pre {
   background : #fff url(images/bb_pre.jpg) repeat;
 }

/* to this line */
 pre {
   background-color : #fff;
 }
```
Regarding the keys, description and keywords will show up on the pulldown, but only after you enter then in the database once. If they’ve never been used before they won’t be in the DB and won’t show up. As far as those other keys they are plugin associated. The keys are used for any post manipulation, some are plugin based, some are default based on setting, while other are true user keys that must be manually entered the first time around. You can’t remove the other ones so I’d just ignore them.

It’s best not to put images in the theme images folder. I’d upload then to another folder. By default in WordPress, that’d be /wp-content/uploads/ Specify this on the Options > Miscellaneous page. Once the photo is there then just link to it from the post/page, like so.
```

 <img class="right" src="/wp-content/uploads/imagename.jpg" width="200" height="150" alt="" /> This is the text
 content the image will be floated in. This is the text content the image will be floated in. This is the text
 content the image will be floated in. This is the text content the image will be floated in. This is the text
 content the image will be floated in. his is the text content the image will be floated in…
```
Hope this helps.
James Harris responds:
Posted: August 13th, 2007 at 1:27 pm →

Thanks! I appreciate your feedback.
James Harris responds:
Posted: August 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm →

Sorry, I meant to tell you what I found. When I uploaded the images on the create page screen I didn’t pay attention to the default. I was typing in as you had above but missed two folders: /wp-content/uploads/2007/08/access_img.jpg

I have the hang of it now. BTW, I checked out you other featured sites. They are very nice. The one for your daughter is nice indeed.

Jim
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: August 13th, 2007 at 3:04 pm →

Thanks Jim. Glad I could help.
Greg responds:
Posted: August 15th, 2007 at 9:28 pm →

Hi Mike,

I’m putting together another blog using this template. I’m changing almost all the colors, going through all the entries in the stylesheet. I can go through the entire sheet, but for the sake of time was wondering if you have a document identifying what changes what on the weblog page?

Thanks,
Greg
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: August 15th, 2007 at 10:42 pm →

I don’t, Greg, but if you match up the elements, IDs, and classes in the source code (View > Source), to said elements, IDs, and classes in the style sheets (style.css and handheld.css… print.css shouldn’t need editing) you should be able to figure out most of it. Another idea, if you can’t find something, find a color code (color : #669900; for example) in the style sheet, and change it to red or something (color : #cc0000; or color : red; for example) and then might be able to better pinpoint it.
Greg responds:
Posted: August 16th, 2007 at 12:30 am →

I forgot about viewing the source code itself. Thanks, will do.
Kirsten responds:
Posted: August 23rd, 2007 at 10:02 pm →

Hello again Mike!
I wrote to you ages ago to get help with some tweaking and you were both prompt and helpful. Thank you. I’m redoing things (I managed to make a mess of things by dropping wordpress for something else and them coming back) but it’s much easier this time.
To make a long story longer, I have two questions…
1) would you know if there is any way that I can make the Amazon search box that I have on the sidebar valid? I’m going to remove it because it’s giving the validator fits but I thought I’d ask first. I know this is beyond the scope of your theme so feel free to say “not sure”.
2) I have not had any php experience (yet) and am not quite sure how to adjust the config file. I keep getting parsing errors when I try and put in the copyright start date and the creative commons rights info.
Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Regards,
Kirsten
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: August 23rd, 2007 at 11:13 pm →

Hello Kirsten. 1) Yes, making the Amazon search box valid should be perfectly doable. I’m sure on one of the forums out there, maybe even the WP one, someone will help if you post the code. I don’t know why it’s in an iframe. That seems unnecessary. 2) Parsing errors? Make sure you have the variable name $variable, followed by an equal sign =, then quotes with the variable’s value in them, "value", then end the string with a semi-colon ;.

$variable = "value";

To match the config file example. And you can’t put quote marks in those but I wouldn’t see why you would be. That should help.
Gill responds:
Posted: December 30th, 2007 at 9:43 pm →

Hi Mike, slightly techie and not really theme related but somebody else might have a similar issue and it’s been driving me nuts for a couple of hours.

I have a post containing a video, no sound as such just images. I decided to set up a Longdesc for it. Then came the problem….. how? I can’t have it as a post in its own right or it appears on the main page so I figured I’d set it up as a page. Fine but it insists I have to associate it with a parent page and that sticks it in the menu.

What I need is a page that doesn’t appear anywhere that I can link to from the post. Any ideas? The only other possibilities I’ve come up with are to create an AT category and put it in there or set up a standard html page on the main site and link to it.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: December 30th, 2007 at 10:55 pm →

Hi Gill. You could just create a longdesc folder then put in text files when necessary, or create a page as you say and exclude it from the navigation menu, like this (sidebar.php):

Change this:
```
  <?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&title_li='); ?>
```
To this:
```
  <?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&exclude=39&title_li='); ?>
```
The 39 being an example of a page ID number.

The advantage of adding a “page” is it’ll show up on the site map (and 404) as it should. If you did want to keep it visible as a sub-page, that would require a fair number of CSS edits. To get an idea of what can be done, see this site, especially the tech info on this page.
Gill responds:
Posted: December 31st, 2007 at 5:15 pm →

Michael you are a scholar and a gent. Your genius and generosity know no bounds.

Just one thing….. why have you hidden the techie stuff on another site?
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: December 31st, 2007 at 6:41 pm →

Thanks Gill. I devised that for that site so I guess it seemed fitting
jinx responds:
Posted: January 9th, 2008 at 6:37 pm →

Hi Mike! I’m a WP newbie (convert from Greymatter) and am having fun poking around as I begin migrating/designing my son’s blog. I’ve installed your theme and love how flexible it is. Thank you for all the time you must spend developing and supporting.

One thing I haven’t been able to figure out: how to have “previous entry” and “next entry” links on the single posts. I’ve tried incorporating code from the WP default theme, to no avail. I just don’t have enough experience with the code. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 9th, 2008 at 7:04 pm →

Hello jinx (hijinx?): Here’s the code you’d add to the single.php file:

Previous Post
```
<?php
  previous_post_link('&laquo; %link')
?>
```
Next Post
```
<?php
  next_post_link('%link &raquo;')
?>
```
That should give you what you’re looking for.
jinx responds:
Posted: January 9th, 2008 at 7:40 pm →

Ha-Ha! You’re right! Hijinks. See also: “Jinx, you owe me a coke.”

Mike, thank you so much for your speedy reply. Your code does the trick. I did swap out ‘»’ for ‘«’ in the “next post” code but other than that, perfect. I think I was making it way more complicated than it should be.

Again, huge thanks. On to the next bit…
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 9th, 2008 at 7:57 pm →

D’oh. I wrote that too fast. Thanks for pointing that out. I made a typo and used the wrong characters in the wrong places. I’m glad you were able to decipher that and that it helped you out. I did update what I wrote for the next guy!
Jayme responds:
Posted: January 19th, 2008 at 4:52 am →

Hi Mike! I used the Beast Blog V.2 for my blog but I preferred the style and images of Version 1 so I replaced the V2 css files and images with those included in the BB Original folder.

Since the theme displays the default header image, I made a copy of the masthead image and edited it to include the name of my site and its description. I uploaded it to the images folder with the same filename bb_masthead.jpg and the bb_masthead_on.jpg.

But it doesn’t seem to have any effect because when I view my site it still shows the original header.

I would really appreciate your help.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 19th, 2008 at 10:26 am →

Hi Jayme. Maybe this is a silly question on my part, but are you checking inside pages or just your home page. If it’s the latter you’ve checked, the home page isn’t a link (it’d be a link to itself), so the hover/focus effect isn’t available of the home page. Is that it?
Jayme responds:
Posted: January 19th, 2008 at 11:32 am →

Thanks for the swift reply Mike!

I actually check all the pages and the header still displays the image with the words “Beast-blog . com Mike Cherim’s Professional and Personal Web Log.”

One weird thing is, when I go back to the file manager in my cpanel and check the modified images I uploaded in the images folder, it still shows the original image files.

So what I do is, I delete the original image files with the file names bb_masthead.jpg and bb_masthead_on.jpg. Again, I upload my modified image files with the same filenames.

But when I click the modified image files I just uploaded to view its contents, it displays again the original images that I’ve erased.

So I tried uploading my modified images with a different filename bb_masthead_jayme.jpg and bb_masthead_on_jayme.jpg

This time when I view the contents, it displays the images that I have modified.

So I erased bb_masthead.jpg and bb_masthead_on.jpg.

But when I checked my site, it still displays the default images in the header/masthead.

This might seem like a silly question too, but what part of the modifying image process am I doing wrong?
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 19th, 2008 at 11:59 am →

If you’re replacing the images in the beastblog-v2/images folder with your own you’re doing everything right so I really don’t know. If you put original style sheet in the theme folder it should just work, there’s very little mystery to it if any at all. Is this a caching issue? If you have one of those caching plugins seeing style changes is very difficult. If that is the case, go to another page that you haven’t been to in the past 24 hours and you should see the new mastheads.
Jayme responds:
Posted: January 19th, 2008 at 12:00 pm →

Hi again Mike! It’s 11:50 pm on my clock and I still can’t sleep so I tried again to figure out what to do with the header. And finally, I think I figured out something right.

What I did is I uploaded my modified image files with a different file name. I logged into my WP Admin panel and edited the header image filenames in the stylesheet.css and header.php and it worked. (Or is that what I should have done in the first place? Sheesh…it took me this long to figure it out.)

One thing though, there’s a gray line and a green L that appeared at the upper left part of the header (above the passiotive . com). Is it really supposed to be there or is there something wrong with my image or editing?
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 19th, 2008 at 12:17 pm →

The masthead needs to be 760 pixels wide. The image that’s up there now is 750.
Jayme responds:
Posted: January 19th, 2008 at 12:36 pm →

Got it! Thank you so much for all the help.
Xavi Ivars responds:
Posted: February 4th, 2008 at 5:50 pm →

Hi Mike!

First of all, thanks for your great theme!

I want to use it in my blog, but I wanted to use images from original theme. The other thing is that I wanted to change them a little bit (basically, change their colour) to adjust them to my preferences (I love orange, you can see it on my blog ). Do you think you could provide native (png) images for original images as well as you provide for the v2 ones?

Thanks a lot!
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 4th, 2008 at 7:14 pm →

Hi Xavi. Actually I plan to remove those styles from the next build altogether (makes life easier for me with updates). I don’t even have those image masters anymore. But fortunately they would be really easy to recreate since the masthead and whatnot is super simple.
Xavi Ivars responds:
Posted: February 5th, 2008 at 4:12 am →

Mike,

Oh… I’m not a great designer with drawing software. Anyway, thanks for your answer. If I get any success, I will send you my new images back, so you can use them if you want.

Just a question: do you think you will release a new build very soon? If you do, I will wait for it to make the changes.

Thanks again!
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 5th, 2008 at 9:17 am →

Hello Xavi. I suspect it’ll be months at least. Just so busy.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: March 2nd, 2008 at 7:26 pm →

Due to spam comments requiring moderation far out-numbering legitimate Support Questions, I decided to close comments on this post. If you need support, contact Mike via his contact form.

Sorry. Comments are closed.