Modularity Lite returns with version 1.3, this time boasting WordPress Menus and a dynamic slideshow option to keep us excited. You can even change colours and your background image. Making it your own was never easier. Here are my notes from when I created minor amendmends for Simon’s website SoundCredit.tv.
My original article on how to style this puppy goes back to version 1.1. With each update, the code has dramatically changed and therefore needs different tweaks. If you’re running an older version of Modularity Lite, check out my instructions for Version 1.2.
Instructions Included
Your first port of call when tweaking this theme is to check out the included instructions. They can be found as handy HTML file in /wp-content/themes/modularity-lite/instructions.html. So if your website is http://www.yoursite.com, and WordPress is installed in your root directory, you can read them browsing http://www.yoursite.com/wp-content/themes/modularity-lite/instructions.html
It’s essential reading. Tells you a lot – but not everything 😉
Dynamic Slideshow
The new dynamic slideshow pulls in images from your last 5 posts and displayes them. For this to work, you’ll first have to enable the slideshow by ticking the box in Appearance – Theme Options.
I had some trouble getting images to show up, so here’s what I’ve learnt:
- Images need to be associated with posts. If you add them to a page, or if you upload them via the media uploader without associating them to a post, those images will not show up in the slideshow.
- Your slideshow is 950×425 pixels by default. If you upload images that are smaller than this, they will not show up.
To reiterate: Slideshow images MUST BE exactly 950×425 pixels or larger. Smaller images WILL NOT show up. Don’t ask me why – I’m just the messenger 😉
Slowing Down the Slideshow
Again this has slightly changed from previous versions. Those transition effects are done with something called Jquery Cycle Plugin. For our purposes, we need to have a look at the functions.php file and find this bit of code at the bottom of the file:
jQuery("#slideshow").cycle({
speed: '2500',
timeout: '500',
pause: 1
The “timeout” value is the one we want to change. Change it to 5000 and your slides will show for 5 seconds, 10000 will show them for 10 seconds, etc.
The “speed” value is responsible for the transition duration. The default looks good to me, but try 5000 for sloooower transitions, or even 1 for cuts between pictures.
Static Slideshow
I wanted to build a brochure site with static pages and didn’t need the punch out catalogs,CMS or “posts” part of the website. By default however, the slideshow only displays when you show “your latest posts” on your homepage. It disappears when you show “a static page” (you can select this under Settings – Reading).
My first idea was to only show one post on the front page and be done with it – however this will only display the image from the post shown. Images from Posts that are not shown are not incorporated into the dynamic slideshow. Bugger!
This leaves us no option but to re-write the code that used to work so well in Version 1.2. Let’s do that. First, let’s create a folder for our images:
- in the theme folder (/modularity-lite/) find the /images/ folder and create a new one called /slideshow/ – just like in the old version you’ll end up with /modularity-lite/images/slideshow
- find 5 suitable images you’d like to use for the slideshow (950 x 425px or larger)
- name them “image1.jpg”, “image2.jpg” and so forth amd upload them into the slideshow folder
Next, edit the page.php file and find where the get_header() statement is executed. Right underneath it we’ll call the slideshow images by adding this bit of code:
; ?>/images/slideshow/image1.jpg)
; ?>/images/slideshow/image2.jpg)
; ?>/images/slideshow/image3.jpg)
; ?>/images/slideshow/image4.jpg)
; ?>/images/slideshow/image5.jpg)
This will rotate our new images on each and every page – no questions asked.
If you would like to use the static slideshow on your “blog” page instead, then insert the above code in the index.php file (again underneath the get_header() statement).
Conditional Slideshow – only show it on certain Pages
Making the above principle of the Static Slideshow conditional is a tad more tricky because it requires more coding; say you have 5 static pages and you only want the slideshow to show up on one of them, that sort of thing. Here’s what you need to do:
- take the above slideshow code and put it in an empty text file
- call it “slideshow.php”
- upload it into the theme’s directory (in our case the full path is wp-content/themes/modularity-lite)
- find out which page ID you’d like the slideshow to appear on – I’ll explain how this works in a minute
Next, open your page.php file and add the following conditional statement underneath the get_header() statement. For this example, we’ll assume your page ID is 11:
This snippet will check if we’re on the right page, and if that is the case it loads the code from above via the file you’ve uploaded. If we’re on any other page it simply ignores the file and no slideshow is displayed.
To find out your page ID, go to Pages and hover your mouse over the page titles. Keep an eye on your browser status bar at the bottom – you’ll see the value change where it says “…?post=11” – that number is your page ID.
Changing the Slideshow Height
Would you like to adjust the height of the slideshow? That’ll turn it into animated headers – very swish indeed! All you need to do is take a look at the style.css file and find the following snippet (it’s towards the end):
/* Slideshow */
#slideshow {
padding: 0;
list-style: none;
margin: 0 0 3em 0;
overflow: hidden;
min-height: 425px
}
Adjust the min-hight parameter to something like 200px and your slideshow loses some height. Regardless of how tall your pictures are they will be cropped automatically (and free of charge… nice!)
Thank you Nestor, much appreciated!
You’re talking about the static slideshow, correct? If you’re using a static front page then the code needs to be placed in the single.php file. What I always do when I want to make a complex block show up is to place a simple word (like “Hello”) in the code. If that shows up where I want it then I know I’ve modofied the right file at the right place. Try that first and see if you’re getting a simple statement. Then move on to the code block.
Currently the slideshow script shows pictures in sequential order as they are numbered – making it random is sligthly more tricky. Imagine if a random generator gives out the same number twice, you’d show the same picture twice – so the routine would have to account for that. I’ll look into this…
Thanks for the quick reply!
I’ve achieved to make it work 🙂
http://www.ineditt.com
The only thing I miss at the moment is the random picture code. I’ll dive into google to look for something.
Hi Nestor,
I had a look at your site and now it makes perfect sense to me why you’d want a feature like this: having a front page which is 100% slideshow is a VERY cool idea indeed 😉 So here’s a little script that will generate a random number array for you. Place this above the slideshow code (underneath the get_header statement):
<!-- Begin slideshow --><?php
// Randomizr
$i = 1;
while ($i <= 5):
$image[$i] = rand (1,5);
$i++;
endwhile;
?>
For this example I’ll stick with five images – but this works better if you have 10 or more (because the chances of getting the same image more than once are slimmer then). If you’re working with more images, replace both 5’s with however many images you have. Next up replace the five lines of slide show code with this:
<div id="slideshow"><div><img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image<?php echo $image[1]; ?>.jpg" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></div>
<div><img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image<?php echo $image[2]; ?>.jpg" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></div>
<div><img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image<?php echo $image[3]; ?>.jpg" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></div>
<div><img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image<?php echo $image[4]; ?>.jpg" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></div>
<div><img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image<?php echo $image[5]; ?>.jpg" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></div>
</div>
Notice there are 5 lines – one for each image you want to call. They’re almost identical apart from the $image[] variable. If you’re working with 10 images, you’d repeat this line ten times and change the $image[] value accordingly.
Looking forward to seeing this in action 🙂
Hi Jay!
Thanks for the help!
That’s a very “nice” piece of code!!
I’ve implemented it in the .php file, and it works!!
At the first time, there was some problem, but I’ve seen that it was because of one plugin that I had installed. I’ve deactivated it and … you can see here the final result:
http://www.ineditt.com
The only thing is that I have, at the moment, only 5 pictures. I’ve to upload more in the following days.
Thanks again!
😀
By the way, I had to delete the sharing buttons that I had in the front page.
The buttons were from “Sharethis”.
The problem was that the page was loaded, but the slideshow was stopped, only showing the first picture, while the browser was getting some information from the “sharethis” server. This process lasts more than 10 seconds (too much!). So, at the end, I’ve decided to get rid of them.
PS: the plugin I was commenting in the previous reply is the “sliding read more”. Really cool, and really useful… but, you know. 😛