Make Magazine Shack WordPress
Theme Work
I’m probably like most of you who end up here at this post. I gave “free wordpress themes” a google and landed on the Free Theme Layouts website. Then out of all the free wordpress themes available, I chose the Magazineshack WordPress Theme. After downloading the theme, I ran into some issues in making this theme work properly with all of its functions.
So here’s a step by step of how to overcome the issues.
1. With your downloaded files, you’ll see a README.html file either in your magazine shack general file folder on your computer or directly on your hosting server.
Magazine Shack README.html file on computer in folder
Magazine Shack README.html File Directly on Server
2. You should follow the README.html file instructions accordingly and I will list them out below. Click the link or image below to download the Magazineshack WordPress Theme README PDF.
Magazineshack README.html file PDF
3. First, create a category in your blog that will contain ALL of your featured posts. For example, create a category called: “featured posts”. To keep things easy, choose “none” for the parent category.
Magazineshack WordPress Themes Featured Post Category
4. Once the category is created, identify the category id number. Simply click on “edit” of your “featured posts” category. The category ID number will be displayed at the end of your url link as ID=”#”. In this case below, the category number for my featured posts category is 19. If your featured posts category is the very first category you create, then it will most likely be ID=1. Make note of what this category # is for YOUR featured category and click cancel or save.
Magazine Shack WordPress Themes Edit Category For ID Number
5. Edit your “featured.php” file by going to Appearance / Editor and select this file. Find this line: <?php query_posts(“cat=9″); ?>. The default category number will be 9 but you need to replace this number with your “featured posts” category number. For example as above, I would change this to 19: <?php query_posts(“cat=19″); ?> for my created “featured posts” category. Then click save.
Magazineshack WordPress Themes Edit Featured.php file
6. Next, edit your “index.php” file by going to Appearance / Editor and select this file. Find this line: query_posts(“showposts=9&cat=-9&paged=$paged”); ?>. Notice the part within this line: &cat=-9. Once again, the default category number will be 9 but you need to replace this number with your “featured posts” category number. For example as above, I would change this to 19: query_posts(“showposts=9&cat=-19&paged=$paged”); ?> for my created “featured posts” category. BE SURE you include or leave the “minus” sign in front of the number. Notice above it is &cat=-(and the number). Then click save.
Magazineshack WordPress Themes Edit Index.php file
SIDE NOTE: Also in this same line of text just mentioned: query_posts(“showposts=9&cat=-9 &paged=$paged”); ?>, the: showposts=9 will designate how many posts show up on your home index page. If you mistakenly change the showposts=number to “1″, you will only have 1 post showing on the home page.
7. Now click “add new” to create a new FEATURED post. Scroll down in your admin area to below the text / copy box to “custom fields”. In the “Name” field you will enter a new name called “featured” without the quotes (ex. featured). In the value area next to the name area, you must include the full url link of the image.
Magazineshack WordPress Free Themes Custom Fields
SIDE NOTE: There are several ways to find out your image url. One way is to upload the image in your media library and then click show for that image. Left click on the thumbnail image (or control click on a mac) to view the properties of the image. Copy and paste the link into the value area. You may need to double check the link ending to see if you have a size noted such as 150×150 which seems to be the default thumbnail size in your media gallery. You will want to either remove the numbers immediately or change them to 260×180 which is the preferred “featured image” size.
8. Under categories of this post, make sure you’ve selected your “featured category” to post under. You can choose more than 1 category but you should have the “featured category” checked to have the post show up on the scroll header.
SIDE NOTE: Your featured posts will ALWAYS be shown at the top in the gray bar. When you create more than 3 posts, the arrows on the left or right will lead you to more of your posts.
Magazineshack WordPress Themes Featured Posts
So here’s what the README.html doesn’t tell you. Once you click on a featured post to view the full post, you will not see the full post. It will just show you the “excerpt” of the post with no picture and the [...] ending to your post but no clickable link.
Magazineshack WordPress Free Theme Excerpt Only
9. To fix this, you need to edit your “single.php” file by going to Appearance / Editor and select this file. Find the code: <?php the_excerpt(); ?>
Magazine Shack WordPress Theme Fix Single.php file
and replace this line with:
<?php the_content(‘<p>Read more… »</p>’); ?>
<?php link_pages(‘<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ‘, ‘</p>’, ‘number’); ?>
SIDE NOTE: When copying this text above, paste into a simple text editor like notepad on a pc and then copy and paste into your single.php file to prevent any change in the text / characters and characters above which will also prevent you from getting error messages about line 15.
Magazine Shack WordPress Theme Corrected Single.php file
Then click save. And Viola!
SIDE NOTE: Remember to “refresh” your page (PC: ctrl R, MAC: Command R) in order to view your changes if you already have your blog opened in a browser window.
Happy Blogging with the Magazine Shack WordPress Theme! If this post helped you, link to this post and show my blog some lovin’ by commenting below and share your blog!
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Thank you so much. I loved how simple and elegant this theme is but I could not figure out how to make it work. You have saved my blog from utter ugliness.
This is the easiest to understand instruction that I have ever read to do with wordpress. You should write one of those books for Dummies. I’ll be your first customer!
Why thank you Jen!
Great tutorial. I notice in the example layouts they have a little image next to each of the blog items. Do you know how to do that please? I tried adding an image to the post but I just get a gray box with ‘continue reading’. Thanks very much
Peter, As stated in the direct email, double check that you: 1.make sure the “featured” category is selected for new post. 2. make sure image is given the “featured” custom name fields (step # 7) and 3. the code has properly been replaced with no errors (step # 9).
Kim Wolfe
Thanks for the sweet guide – this really was a great help.
Just out of curiosity (as you seem to be in the know!), have you ever tried to edit the code so that the ‘featured’ bar always appears at the top of each page & post, rather than just the index page?
Of course no worries if you haven’t.
Alex
Thanks Alex. Glad this could help you!
Actually, no I haven’t thought about that but it’s is a good idea. I will see if I can get some time and explore this idea.
I’ll let you know. Thanks again,
Kim Wolfe
Awesome man, Thanks!
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?
You can quote a piece of this in your blog with a link to the full story on my website. I’m on twitter. @kimwolfeatlanta. Thanks.
Evening, for some reason I cannot get the scroller nor the text to display on the page??
I have followed the directions to the key, please help????
Here is my site:
http://www.tha-one.com/wordpress/
Suave,
Firstly, your “featured” post are only going to show up in your scroll area at the top of your homepage and not below the scroll bar. If you want your post to show up underneath the scroll bar and in the scroll bar area, then you need to mark the post to be in another category besides “featured”. For example, create “something else” category and post will just show up underneath scroll bar. Mark it in “featured” and it shows up just in the in scroll bar. Mark it to be in both “featured” and “something else” and it will show up in both places.
Secondly, the scroller is not set up to show up on your post page when you click on any of your featured post links. The scroller is only set up to show up on your homepage. For your entire post not showing up, you need to review “step 9″ of the tutorial. If you completed this step, then go back to your “single.php” page and recheck that you did this correctly. If you follow step correctly, it should work.
Let me know.
Kim Wolfe
Hi Kim,
I stumbled upon another problem and since all of your other advice was so easy to follow and helpful I was hoping you could help with this!
When I embed links in the text either by clicking “add media–URL” or the little “link” icon…the hyperlinked text shows up in my article but it is not clickable when I publish–and is not hyperlinked either?
Any suggestions on how to get links within text of a post to work? Any advice would be appreciated!! Thanks
Hi Michelle,
I know this is a stupid question, but are you “highlighting” the words you want to hyperlink – right? So another words, selecting the words that should be hyperlinked and then clicking the add media url or the little link icon?
If you are, then look at your “html” tab and see if it’s including something like this:
Your Text Hyperlinked Words
You should have something like the above in the html code for the hyperlink to work. The “Your Text Hyperlinked Words’ are the words you need to highlight when you are on the “visual” tab (which is WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get). The html code is what it makes the link actually work.
Kim Wolfe
Hi Kim,
My thanks in advance for posting your help file here. But, I tried following your instructions step-by-step but couldn’t find out why it doesn’t seem to work on my site. In case it’s relevant, I’m using the 2.9.2 engine.
Please help!
Thanks bunches,
Francis
Hi Kim,
If I get it running, could you also show me how the code would look if I have more than one featured post.
Thanks!
Francis
Francis,
I don’t really have any idea what’s going on with your theme. I just updated to 2.9.2 and I don’t seem to have any issues. There could be many factors that could make this. From previous comments, I do not know about this theme working on WP MU (multi-user). I am not running it on MU so I have no advice to give on it. You really need to check to make sure it’s all installed correctly, the paths match up to where it is installed, and that you correctly make and label the featured category to the featured carousel and to the posts. Also you have to make sure your images are linked properly in the custom fields via step # 7 – note that “featured” is case sensitive and must be lower case.
When I click on your links from home page, I get a blank page. I think your code is messed up. You need to make sure that your code is exactly to what mine is. The accidental delete or missing of just one character such as ; or > can make your website not work.
Kim Wolfe
ARG! It wasn’t that way earlier. I’m pretty stumped
Hi Kim,
I really like this theme to use here in my food blog. I like it that it shows my foodie pics on the header and actually naviate on it, but I have number of problems:
1. All posts with pictures that I added as “Featured posts” can no longer be seen on the home page.
2. I can see that the carousel header only appears on the home page and not on the single post. I tried adding it to the single post and it looks quite nice, though carousel background can’t hold it’s width which must be 990.
3. The search button doesn’t show the way it should the words “Search for” is showing up.
Much thanks if you can help me on these.
Hi AC,
Per #1, your featured posts will only show in the carousel and not below. This is how the theme is built and prevents duplicate content on your homepage. It seems that the carousel and the featured posts designation is working because you have posts showing up in there.
Per #2, the theme is not built to show the carousel header on the post. You would need to edit the theme layout to get this to work. It seems that you starting doing this.
Per #3, Did you add the words “search for” around your button? The button is “search” which is an image. If you are wanting to say “search for” you need to edit the button image that currently says “search” and replace the image with your new one.
Hope this helps.
Kim Wolfe
Hi Kim,
I’ve been trying to get pictures inline with the text, using this theme. And somehow it dosn’t work. If I change the theme to Kubrick or something similar there’s no problem.
So my question is: How did you manage to get these useful pictures included into your blogpost using the magazineschack-theme?
Regards,
Michael
Found the solution to my problem: In the single.php file I replaced:
” ”
with
“<?php the_content('Read more… »’); ?>”
Now I’m getting pictures and emoticon in all my postings
Glad you were able to figure this out Michael! Good job!
Kim Wolfe
I have a small problem. I did what you said and it worked very well for the first part but when i go to the second part where i need to change in single.php file it gives me this
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘>’ in /home/scopul/public_html/wp-content/themes/magazineshack-free/magazineshack/single.php on line 13
I tried several times but it doesn’t work. What shoul i do?
Paul,
I will email you my single.php file to compare to yours. Hopefully, you can find the string of text that is broken on yours and just copy from mine and paste into yours to correct this.
Kim Wolfe
I replased my single.php file and it work. Thank you very much Kim
I had the same problem as Paul, but I figured out what went wrong. When I was copying and pasting your code into wordpress, for some reason the characters came out a little funny. For example, the separate periods after “Read more” came out together as one ellipsis character, and the quotes came out looking different than if I had typed them. So just typing the code in myself or deleting the punctuation and retyping it fixed the problem.
Thanks for noticing this Elizabeth! When copy and pasting, some editors like to try to format the text and this seems to be what happened if your text actually changed. When copy and pasting, it’s best to copy and paste into a simple text editor like notepad on the pc to get rid of any pre-existing formatting and to keep any editors from trying to format your text – then copy and pasting into your editor or program. I’ll put a note on this part since this seems to be a recurring problem.
Thanks again for the tip Elizabeth!
Thanks for this post! Very detailed and helpful!
I am in the process of playing with this theme on a testing site to use for my recipe site. At the moment I can’t get the image to show in the “featured” posts part but I did solve the “single” problem.
I kept getting a blank page when I edited my file the way that was said in here. I eventually searched on wordpress and found this http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/the_excerpt – I then changed “excerpt” to “content” and it now shows the whole post
)
Ok got the image working now
I figured out how to add the feature/header to more then the “home page”
The only problem is then those pages eg. single (posts) only show the “featured” items. Would love it if someone could help me figure out how to fix it so the feature head thing stays without problem of bringing up the feature posts.
Glad you were able to figure this out @mem. Sometimes, it just takes some playing around with the code to make this work!