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Here at WeblogToolsCollection, we see quite a bit of WordPress theme releases coming through our inbox and I’ve noticed a trend. Hardly any of them include printing support. The question I’d like to have answered is why? Is adding printer support to WordPress themes too hard? Does adding this feature take up time? Or is it that this feature is barely any use to anyone?

For those wanting to add this type of support to your theme, you can install WP-Print. WP-Print picks up where most theme authors have left off by providing printing support in such a way that end users can print either articles or comments, depending on how you have configured the plugin.

In fact, doing a search on the plugin database for the keyword of “print” brought up two pages worth of search results. Another solution for you theme authors out there is called Bunny’s Print CSS. This plugin provides two files, print-css.php which is the plugin file and print.css which is the print stylesheet.

A link to the print stylesheet will be placed in your theme’s header, providing it uses the wp_head() function/hook. An admin panel is added to the Presentations menu and it will allow you to edit the stylesheet if you make print.css writeable. You probably want to edit the stylesheet provided to your liking, though it will hopefully do most of the job if your theme is sandbox-based.

This method takes most of the hard work out of creating a print.css file, even though theme authors would most likely have to modify the stylesheet to make it compatible with their theme.

For those who would like to manually create the style sheet, there is an article on the Codex entitled “Styling For Print” which covers all of the basics necessary to make a pretty, yet functional print stylesheet to include with your theme/themes.

I hope that by linking to the Codex article and bringing this issue to light, we will start to see more themes being released with built in printing support. It’s not a deal breaker for me, but I’d rather see themes that support this feature than those that don’t. My personal opinion is that, printing support is a nice finishing touch to round off any theme, and having it built in allows me and a number of other users to stop using another plugin.

Now it’s time for you to sound off. Is this a trivial issue, or is there anyone else out there that would like to see this feature in more themes?

Although the FAQ on WordPress 2.5 did an excellent job of answering a ton of frequently asked questions, users chipped in via their comments and ended up asking even more questions. This post will try to highlight a few of the questions brought up in that post and explain the answers in more detail.

Q. Is there a way to see a count on the number of comments you have total?

A. I’ve looked around for that particular detail and it has been omitted from WordPress 2.5. However, the good news is that a ticket has already been made (Ticket #6471) According to the change history, it looks like this will be one of those things that will come along with 2.6 and not WordPress 2.5.1.

Q. What happens if i don’t upgrade to WP 2.5?

A. This is open to opinion but I’ll point out the obvious. If you don’t upgrade, you are putting your blog at risk of being exploited by any known security vulnerability that may have been discovered for your version of WordPress. More specifically, if you are running 2.3.2 or earlier, you are at risk with the exception of 2.0.11 which contains all the security patches for the 2.0 branch. Also, the longer you wait to upgrade, the worst off you’ll be as the last thing anyone wants is to upgrade their blog and one week later, they have to upgrade again.

Q. Where can I find “Multi-file upload with progress bar” as described by Matt on his launching WP 2.5 post?

A. In WordPress 2.5, there is not a button specifically for uploading multiple files. After clicking on any of the ADD MEDIA buttons, click on the CHOOSE FILES TO UPLOAD BUTTON. You can select multiple files and then click on the upload button and each file you selected will then be uploaded to WordPress. You can also select a directory where all files within that directory will be uploaded.

Q. What happened to my Import Links ability?

A. It’s still there, it’s just a little more hidden. You can access the link importer by logging into your WordPress administration area and selecting WRITE - LINK - IMPORT LINKS. Note that the IMPORT LINKS will show up under the RELATED box in the right hand sidebar.

Q. Why can’t I “Save and continue editing” anymore?

A. At first, it may seem like this option doesn’t exist anymore but the SAVE button now acts the same as the old SAVE AND CONTINUE EDITING button.

Q. Some examples of code that uses the [gallery] feature of 2.5

A. WordPress 2.5 introduced something called the gallery shortcode. It looks a little something like this [gallery] The shortcode can be used in either a post or a page and displays a thumbnail set of gallery images attached to that page/post. Here are a few examples in how you could use this shortcode.

columns - specify the number of columns. The gallery will include a break tag at the end of each row, and calculate the column width as appropriate. The default value is 3. If columns is set to 0, no row breaks will be included. For example, to display a 4 column gallery:

For Example: [gallery columns="4"]

id - specify the post ID. The gallery will display images which are attached to that post. The default behaviour if no ID is specified is to display images attached to the current post. For example, to display images attached to post 123:

For Example: [gallery id="123"]

size - specify the image size to use for the thumbnail display. Valid values include “thumbnail”, “medium” and “full”. The default is “thumbnail”. For example, to display a gallery of medium sized images:

For Example: [gallery size="medium"]

Some advanced options are available:

orderby - specify the sort order used to display thumbnails. The default is “menu_order ASC, ID ASC”.

itemtag - the name of the XHTML tag used to enclose each item in the gallery. The default is “dl”.

icontag - the name of the XHTML tag used to enclose each thumbnail icon in the gallery. The default is “dt”.

captiontag - the name of the XHTML tag used to enclose each caption. The default is “dd”. For example, to change the gallery markup to use div, span and p tags:

For Example: [gallery itemtag="div" icontag="span" captiontag="p"]

Special thanks to the folks who put this information in the Codex which you can view here. (Using The Gallery Shortcode)

Q. How do I edit Widget Configuration?

A. Login to your WordPress back end and browse to DESIGN - WIDGETS. Look on the right hand side under CURRENT WIDGETS and click on the EDIT link for any widget you would like to configure the settings for.

If you have any more questions, keep them rolling in as this quite possibly might be a regular feature here at WeblogToolsCollection.com. Also, be sure to read the Codex first if you encounter any issues with WordPress as it’s the best source of documentation available.