WordPress Blog Add On for Carterlake/AJAX/PHP Templates Now Available

I first talked about this project some months ago and folks expressed quite a bit of interest (see here for the original topic). When Ken True released the Carterlake/AJAX/PHP templates, Jack Ahern (stillweather.com) and I started working together to get it put in a distributable form but real life has a habit of getting in the way of our weather hobbies sometimes and it got pushed to the back burner. We have returned to the project and now are ready to release it to the Weather Display public.

In a nutshell, the project is an effort to allow users of the Carterlake/AJAX/PHP templates to install a fully integrated blog solution to their websites. We accomplished this using WordPress and a custom template that makes the WordPress installation have a consistent design and feel to match Carterlake/AJAX/PHP based websites. You can view this in action here:

If you are interested, you can view instructions and download the WordPress template here.

Please do note that Jack and I aren’t PHP coding experts on anywhere near the level of Ken and some of the other users in this forum so please bear with us as we deploy this. Thanks!

Tony

I like it…will have to check with e-rice.net to see if they allow this sort of thing on the server. If they do I may take a shot at installing. I noticed on your website it says installing the blog requires extensive knowledge of the server setup. Not sure what that means, but for those of us who do not run our own servers I am curious what information we would need to know to do a successful install.

hi Tony,
can you tell me were the file header_ajax.php comes from ?
Thanks beau

I like it...will have to check with e-rice.net to see if they allow this sort of thing on the server

That is what I use too, it works well. You just need to setup a MySQL database which e-rice allows!

Regards,

Jack

According to Alan: “Yes, WordPress works well on our servers.” :smiley:

Not extensive… I think I wrote “a good bit” but that is probably overstating it too. I will fix that. I do think for the “early adopters” there may be a hiccup or two as we work out any bugs in the installation process so I just want folks to understand that. :slight_smile: Jack got it up and running pretty easily though so I don’t think it will be that tough at all. The “hardest” part will be the installation of a MySQL database and WordPress but that can be done in just a few minutes. You can read the ‘5 minute installation’ instructions for WordPress here.

Hmmm. Unsure. Where are you seeing that?

** Edit. Okay, I see it. That may be something Jack had to modify that we didn’t account for in our instructions. Standby. **

can you tell me were the file header_ajax.php comes from ?

That is a hybrid header I use on my site which gives different header information based on the page you are on. It is much like the ajax gizmo but in a different format. It is not needed for the blog template.

Regards,

Jack

All - I have updated the zip file to fix the incorrect header file being called in the template. It now calls the standard header.php. Please re-download and overwrite. Sorry about that! :slight_smile:

Tony

Ok, thanks for the info. When I get some time I will see about setting this up. I would do it today but going to float the river this morning and then have an NFL game this afternoon. Got some guys coming over to watch it since they either don’t have satellite or a TV, or both :slight_smile: Maybe make it tomorrows project…

I am going to try it.

I do not use the site templates, even though my site looks like the current site templates, my site precedes them. … so I will have some customizing to make it work.

Let me know how it goes, Mike. Like you, I don’t use the standard templates so I actually started with the standard WordPress template and then customized it. It actually isn’t all that hard. The WordPress template system is pretty modular with just a few main pages calling the header, footer, menu, etc. I essentially took a basic page from my own site and then plugged the WordPress coding into it.

Tony

Hi Tony
On my my site i have a custom set up to
I have word prees set up how did you go about
doing your custom setup
thanks Beau

I got it working but now I am trying to fix HTML validation errors.

It really isn’t all that hard. Basically you just start with a plain page that matches the design of your existing site, then plug in the WordPress coding for various pages WordPress uses into the main section. Glancing at the coding for your site, you would insert the WP coding between the section called “

” and the section called “
”.

I would start by downloading the “default” theme from your WordPress installation. When you look at the coding you will get a feel for how it works. There are seven files that need to be modified: single.php, search.php, page.php, index.php, attachment.php, archives.php, and archive.php. In each of those, you would want to remove the coding that says <?php get_header(); ?> and <?php get_footer(); ?>. Then, either insert calls to the appropriate pages that generate the top, menu and footers for our site or just paste the coding itself. You will also most likely need to modify the various paths for links to other pages in your since you are running WordPress from a subdirectory. Lastly, you need to insert the WordPress CSS stuff into your own CSS file - I would start by just copying and pasting the stuff from our template into your CSS file and see what that gets you.

When you get those all done, upload them to a new subdirectory in the WordPress themes directory and then select it from the admin section. That is it in a nutshell. :slight_smile:

Tony

Looks good, Mike!

As for the validation… Bah! We don’t need no stinking validation! LOL

T

I have it installed and HTML validated :lol: 8) :lol:

http://www.642weather.com/weather/wxblog/

most of the html validation problems were list tags in sidebar.php
I will send it…

I have it installed and HTML validated

Awesome! I’ll replace the sidebar coding with yours.

Now… You have a weather blog, what do you have to say? I am anxiously awaiting your first post! :slight_smile:

Tony

Can’t say much now, I have to do some chores for the wife. :lol:

another validation change I made was move this style section from sidebar.php to the section of my header


<style type="text/css">
<!--
.style1 {
    font-size: 12px;
    font-weight: bold;
}
.style2 {font-size: 12px}
-->
</style>

also I will mention that the first plugin I always install on wordpress is the all-in-one-seo-pack
all-in-one-seo-pack needs no configuration. You just install and activate the plugin.

I want to fiddle a few more things for this.
I want to try to make the color themes inline with the style switcher so if I select the black theme the colors will change correctly.
If I am successful at this I will release those for others. :lol:
Edit: current download includes my changes

Theme switcher Updated today …

Version: 1.09 03-Aug-2008
added full css support for the Worpress Blog Addon
“Weather Display Blog by Tony Hake & Jack Ahern”
http://discourse.weather-watch.com/t/34342
To upgrade from vers 1.08: just replace all the css files from this zip file to your server

Download:
http://www.642weather.com/weather/scripts/css-theme-switcher.zip
A readme.txt is included, look for the instructions inside, ask any questions here.

See my blog using the theme switcher here;
http://www.642weather.com/weather/wxblog/