The first thing to do is gather the php code that will generate the time of the post…

the_time(’M') gets the month of the date
the_time(’j') gets the day of the date
the_time(’Y') gets the year of the date

For more info on the date code check out this

Next, I made the little icon in photoshop. You can make your own or find free icons by doing a search. I uploaded the image to my custom/images file

Next, I created a function, added the image, wrapped it in div tags, and gave it a class name…

function calendar (){ ?>
<div class="calendaricon">
<? echo ‘<img src="http://www.thesishacker.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images /calendar.png" />’; ?>
</div>
<?
}

Next, I added the date code, and gave each one a class name so I could style each one separately in my css

function calendar (){ ?>
<div class="calendaricon">
<? echo ‘<img src="http://www.thesishacker.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/calendar.png" />’; ?>
<div class="month"><? the_time(’M') ?></div>
<div class="day"><? the_time(’j') ?></div>
<div class="year"><? the_time(’Y') ?></div>
</div>

Finally, I added the whole thing with a hook…

function calendar (){ ?>
<div class="calendaricon">
<? echo ‘<img src="http://www.thesishacker.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/calendar.png" />’; ?>
<div class="month"><? the_time(’M') ?></div>
<div class="day"><? the_time(’j') ?></div>
<div class="year"><? the_time(’Y') ?></div>
</div>
<?
}
add_action(’thesis_hook_before_headline’, ‘calendar’);

Now in my custom.css I can style each part of the date stamp including the day, month, year, and the image…

.custom .calendaricon {float: right;
margin-top: -1em;}
.custom .month {text-transform: uppercase;
font-family: arial;
margin-top: -5.5em;
margin-left: 2.2em;}
.custom .day {font-family: arial;
margin-left: 2.99em;
padding-top: .3em;
padding-bottom: 2.2em;}
.custom .year {font-family: arial;
margin-left: 2.1999em;
margin-top: -2.2em;}

The first thing you want to do is assign a unique name to the drop cap class and put it in your custom.css. I named mine simply “dropcap”…

.custom .dropcap {}

Next, figure out where you want to place the drop cap and insert the following tags with the unique class name…

<span class=”dropcap”> </span>

For example, I wanted to put a drop cap at the beginning of the opening paragraph of this post..

<span class=”dropcap”> T </span>he letter “T” that begins this sentence is an example of a drop cap. This was made using the Arial font. You can make a class for the drop cap and use it over and over again on any post or page on you site. Here’s a really simple way to create your own individual drop cap.

Now in my custom.css I add some styles to the drop cap to make it look like the way I want…

.custom .dropcap {
color: blue;
float: left;
font-size: 4.8em;
margin: .3em .2em .1em 0;
}

You can pick and chose how you want your own drop cap to look with your own styles

Now you can place this in any post or page. When you’re writing or editing a post or page, make sure you’re in the html editor…

and simply apply the tags from the example above and wrap them around whatever letter you want to do it to

You can highlight anything from individual words, to sentences, to entire paragraphs. First thing you’re going to do is figure out a class name. This name will be used over and over again to put the highlight anywhere in any post or page

I named mine “my-highlight”

Add the name to your custom.css and chose a color you want for the background

.custom .my-highlight {background: #fefdaa ;}

Now, when you write a post or page and you want to insert the highlight anywhere you want make sure you’re in the html editor…

Pick where you want the highlight to start and type in this with the name you gave the class for the highlight…

<span class=”my-highlight”>

Where you want the highlight to stop just add this…

</span>

For example I want to add a highlight to this sentence you would do it like this…

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, <span class=”my-highlight”>consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt</span> ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat

Now it doesn’t matter what post or page you’re writing because you have the selector in your custom.css so all you have to do is call it with the class name you gave it.

This is cool and simple way of placing as many ads as you want on your site…

First thing is to upload your ads into the custom/images folder on your server

The ads in this example are 125 x 125 which is pretty typical

Next, create a simple function in your custom_functions.php to add the ads, put div tags for the ads, and give it a class name…

function ad(){?>
<div class="ads">
</div>
<?
}

Next, add an unordered list of the ads your going to use between the two div tags and include the path to the image. Your path may be different than the example below…

function ad(){?>
<div class="ads">
<ul >
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad1.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad2.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad3.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad4.png"></li>
</ul>
</div>
<?
}

I decided to put them right under the header so I placed them with the appropriate hook. Here’s how the entire function looks…

function ad(){?>
<div class="ads">
<ul >
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad1.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad2.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad3.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad4.png"></li>
</ul>
</div>
<?
}
add_action(’thesis_hook_after_header’,'ads’);

Next, add the class to your custom.css and include one for the unordered list of images…

.custom .ads{}
.custom .ads ul li{}

These are the properties and values I used, yours may be different…

.custom .ads{padding: 1em; width: 94em; height: 10em;}
.custom .ads ul li{display: inline; margin-right: 1em;}

This is a really simple, fast, and effective way of placing ads on your site. Remember you can add as many ads as you want. you can also place them vertically, or in the sidebar, in the footer, in the header, etc. The possibilities are endless.

What this does is it allows you to give the post your writing or editing a unique class name. Once you do this, you can give it whatever styles you want in your custom.css.

For example, let’s say I’m writing a new post and I when that post gets published I want it to have a red sidebar. No other posts on my site have a colored sidebar but I want this one to.

Knowing that I’m going to style this post different than any other post I’m going to give it a class name of “red post” so in the css class box I type in

red-post

Now, you have to figure out what you want to style and then put those selectors in the custom.css. I know that I want to make one of my sidebars red so in my custom.css I drop this code in…

.red-post #sidebar_2 {background-color: red;}

My sidebar 2 changes to red and it’s the only post on my site that has a red sidebar

You can style any selector you want on the page.

The css class is a very powerful feature and highly underused. You can literally make every single page on your site completely different from all the rest. Let your imagination do the styling. The possibilities are endless..

Try this technique…

First thing I did is made an image in photoshop. Use any graphic program you want. It’s 1050 px wide X 100 px tall. I uploaded it to my server and placed it in the custom/images folder. This is what it looks like. It’s been shrunken down to fit within this blog post….

Shadow.png:

Next, put the image onto the background by placing the following code in the custom.css file and uploading it to your server. You can move the image from left to right with the first % value. Adjust it to create your desired effect.

body.custom {background: url(images/shadow.png) repeat-y scroll 50% 0 ;}

And that’s it!

Go to Dashboard —-> Appearance —->Design Options…

Type whatever you want to display inside the white box, hit the save button

You can set it up so it just shows teasers with no feature article like this…

Go to Dashboard —-> Appearance —-> Design Options…

Pick 0 from the drop down list and get a look like the above homepage with no feature article, just teasers. Remember you can determine the number of teasers to show by checking out this tutorial

Go to Dashboard —-> Appearance —->Design Options…

Make sure that features and teasers are chosen in the dropdown menu and hit the save button…

Now this is where you have to figure out how many teasers you want to show. Go to Dashboard —-> Settings —->Reading…

With the number 3 I have in the box that gives me the look of the above homepage. For example if I chose to have 10 posts show it would look like this…

In your custom.ss file add the following code. You can put it anywhere you want but I recommend putting it at the top. Remember, once you make the change, save it, and upload the new file to your server. Always describe what you’re doing by putting your descripton between the comment tags /*  */ at the beginning shown below in green. The comments aren’t shown on your rendered page and it just makes things easier for you to remember…

/*remove border from blockquote*/
.custom blockquote { border: none ;  }