One Way To Use Custom Fields
- Filed under: Tutorials
This is not a beginner level tutorial. If you don’t know anything about XHTML and PHP, you will get lost.
Recently, I learned how to manipulate custom fields from theundersigned.net. Today, I finally switched from excerpts to custom fields to display theme thumbnails on Wpdesigner. I’m talking about the three theme blocks in the header. Each block has an image, the theme’s name, theme author’s name and link, and the download page link.
Before making the switch
Here’s a normal theme post:
Here’s its optional excerpt information, which would be what I’d use to display a theme thumbnail block:
And here’s the source codes for displaying the excerpts.
As you can tell, each excerpt is unique. If I were to continue using excerpts to store theme information, a decision to change up the theme thumbnail block template (even a small change) would make the change a daunting task. I would have to edit every excerpt.
After the switch
To some recent theme posts, I added the following custom fields or custom field keys: Theme Name, Theme Author, Theme Author Link, Download Page, and Theme Thumbnail. The keys’ values depend on the theme’s information.
And here’s the source codes for displaying custom fields.
The Big Difference
Now, I can easily manipulate the custom field values to display the themes’ information. Also, I can easily make template changes that would affect every thumbnail block. For example, if I wanted to display the download page link before the author’s link, I would change the source codes to display the download page link first, instead of having to edit one excerpt at the time to get all the thumbnail blocks to match each other. Imagine having to edit 1000 excerpts instead of switching some source codes around. Big difference huh?
Why I switched to custom fields
Wpdesigner only display the three most recent theme posts in the header so why bother with switching to custom fields? I have to. My goal is to change up the WordPress theme category page to display only theme thumbnail blocks. That way, you’ll be able to browse through more themes per category page.
Here’s a mock-up example:
This is a really helpful tip. I’m planning to do the same thing with my works gallery. Thanks!
Well Done post, maybe the next theme goes customized with it.
Great tip, I’ve been toying around with different methods of doing the same thing with my portfolio.
Hey Craig - I check out your blog, nice Wordpress themes, subscribed!
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it’s a very good idea. you are a genius sp!
nice tut ,
can this be made in marqee style
Thank you for this! Whilst theundersigned.net does give a good intro to custom fields, it doesn’t really show how it can be applied to RL scenarios, so I find this particularly helpful!
I’ve really wanted to use custom fields but was really not sure how to organise them, so I’m going to try it this time round!
No problem, thanks for dropping by.
One of my favourite new plugins: http://rhymedcode.net/projects/custom-write-panel
As mentioned before, I’m finding your guide particularly useful when applying it to displaying customfields generated by Custom Write Panel!
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Excellent article SP. I’m going to have to give it a try :).
Thanks for sharing!
-Jonathan
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Great article. I’ve been using custom fields for a long time but you had some good tips for using them in ways I hadn’t yet considered.
One of the problems I’ve run into is that custom fields don’t show in the RSS feed. I’m using them to provide some structured content that is part of the post and should appear in the feed.
Anyone have an easy way to deal with that?
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Good tutorial, takes you “by the hand”. Really appreciated.
how to show the new post in some categories or the father cotegories? thanks
What do you mean?
Yeah i also use custom fields and would love to be able to add them to my rss feed as well.
Does anyone out there know how to accomplish this?
Thanks
Great post by the way. It helped me a bunch.
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It’s very useful!
I will try it in my own site.
thanks
Hey! great little tut but i cant seem to get it to work right…
it works but it displays 3 posts 3 times each…. probably because i dont know exactly how to insert your source code correctly…. if you have the time can you show an example of how you would stick that source code into the index page?
interesting post thx
good site dude
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