After much looking came across this solution  – use CSS to style both the html and body divides with separate background images.

In my case I wanted a tiled background image with a  so I styled the html like this:

html { background:url(images/bg1.png) repeat; }

Wanted the other background image to appear on top of the tiled background, so I did this:

body { background:url(images/bg2.png) no-repeat top center transparent; }

Did the trick for me – give it a try the next time you have an occasion to.

Once CSS3 comes along this will be easy all you will need to do is separate each image with a comma in the body:

body { background:url(images/topbg.jpg) no-repeat, url(images/middlebg.jpg) no-repeat, url(images/bottombg.jpg) repeat }

Change the number of posts to show to suit your purpose.

<?php

$today = current_time(‘mysql’, 1);
$number = 5; // number of posts

if($recentposts = $wpdb->get_results(“SELECT ID, post_title FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = ‘publish’ AND post_modified_gmt < ‘$today’ ORDER BY post_modified_gmt DESC LIMIT $number”)):

?>

<h2><?php _e(“Recently Updated”); ?></h2>
<ul>
<?php

foreach($recentposts as $post) {

if($post->post_title == ”) $post->post_title = sprintf(__(‘Post #%s’), $post->ID);
echo ‘<li><a href=”‘.get_permalink($post->ID).’”>’.the_title().’</a></li>‘;

} ?>
</ul>

<?php endif; ?>

Put images you want to use in folder named images in your theme folder, here I called the images rotate1, 2, 3 etc but you can call them whatever you want just change accordingly. Replace page id number with the number of the specific page you want to display the corresponding image. You can find the page id number by going to your list of pages, hover over the page and look at the bottom status bar – the page number will be in the address. No reason this wouldn’t work for posts as well.

You can also change name of the div from frontimage to something else – style divide accordingly in your stylesheet and change the width of the image to fit your theme.

<div id=”frontimage”>
<?php if (is_page(’88′)) { ?>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/images/rotate1.jpg” width=”400″ alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> header image” />
<?php } elseif (is_page(‘page id number here’)) { ?>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/images/rotate2.jpg” width=”400″ alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> header image” />
<?php } elseif (is_page(‘page id number here’)) { ?>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/images/rotate3.jpg” width=”400″ alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> header image” />
<?php } elseif (is_page(‘page id number here’)) { ?>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/images/rotate4.jpg” width=”400″ alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> header image” />
<?php } elseif (is_page(‘page id number here’)) { ?>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/images/rotate5.jpg” width=”400″ alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> header image” />
<?php } elseif (is_page(‘page id number here’)) { ?>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/images/rotate6.jpg” width=”400″ alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> header image” />
<?php } elseif (is_page(‘page id number here’)) { ?>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/images/rotate7.jpg” width=”400″ alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> header image” />
<?php } elseif (is_page(‘page id number here’)) { ?>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/images/rotate8.jpg” width=”400″ alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> header image” />
<?php } elseif (is_page(‘page id number here’)) { ?>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/images/rotate9.jpg” width=”400″ alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> header image” />
<?php } else { ?>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/images/rotate<?php echo(rand(1,9)); ?>.jpg” width=”400″ alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?>” />
<?php } ?></div>

The above code will look for assigned image when displaying a specific page or post if none is assigned it will randomly rotate between all.  Place the above code into theme file where the image is located.  In my case this was the page.php file however might be the header.php or single.php file in others.

To display a custom sidebar for a post or page try this:

First create your new sidebar file, name it sidebar-yournamehere.php and upload into your theme folder.
Easiest way to do this is copy your existing sidebar.php file, make your modifications and save with your new name.

In your single.php and/or page.php template replace:

<?php get_sidebar(); ?> 

With this:

<?php $sidebar = get_post_meta($post->ID, “sidebar”, true);
get_sidebar($sidebar);
?>

The above code simply creates a new post meta field called sidebar and tells WordPress to look for a custom field called sidebar and if there is one to use the sidebar specified in that field.

Then when writing a post or page go to the custom field area, create a new custom field name it:   sidebar   then in the value field write   yournamehere   (the name of the new custom sidebar you created earlier or an existing custom sidebar you already created) – this will call the file sidebar-yournamehere.php for that post or page.

That’s it.

Note:  You don’t have to update for a theme to work – all my older themes are working just fine without the updates - but if you would like to take advantage of some or all of the new features in your theme it’s really easy to do - just pick and choose what works for you.

Additional Note:  You will need to add <? and > at the begining and end of the snippet.

Navigation Menu Editor 
Add to functions.php:

• add_theme_support( ‘menus’ );

Then add  to header.php:

• ‘menu_order’, ‘container_class’ => ‘menu-header’ ) );

Note: menu-order is the css class for the menu – style accordingly in style.css

Custom Header Management
Add to functions.php:

define( ‘HEADER_IMAGE’, ‘%s/images/logo.png’ ); // logo located in your theme folder
define( ‘HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH’, apply_filters( ”, 770 ) ); // Width
define( ‘HEADER_IMAGE_HEIGHT’, apply_filters( ”, 153 ) ); // Height
define( ‘NO_HEADER_TEXT’, true );
add_custom_image_header( ”, ‘admin_header_style’ ); // Enables the Appearance > Header
// For Styling the Admin Side
if ( ! function_exists( ‘admin_header_style’ ) ) :
function admin_header_style() {
?>

}
endif;

Add php header_image(); in header.php

Automatic Feed Links
Add to functions.php.

• add_theme_support( ‘automatic-feed-links’ );

Add Support For Post Thumbnail Images
Add to functions.php:

• add_theme_support( ‘post-thumbnails’ );

Add: php the_post_thumbnail(); to template to call the featured image.

Custom Backgrounds
Add to functions.php

• add_custom_background();

My take on it (and my opinion – just want to make that clear):

Matt Mullenweg  co-founded WordPress,  a blogging / cms platform and distributes it  under the GPL License – basically you can use and build on WordPress but if you do so and distribute it,  you must distribute under the GPL License, meaning others can then use and build on changes you have made and so on and so forth.

Chris Pearson embraced the GPL License terms to his advantage and developed a WordPress theme that he sells.   Now simply selling his theme is not a problem, no one is saying that he shouldn’t profit from work he has done but,  he sells this theme based on someone else’s work , distributed under a license that he agreed to, when it suited him, but now refuses to distribute his theme under the GPL License.   His position is: sue me.

At first glance, it seems pretty cut and dry (although I’m not a lawyer or anything like that)  - Chris Pearson is violating the GPL License he agreed to when he built a theme based on WordPress.

Matt and WordPress could sue , as Chris has suggested, but the only people who really make out in lawsuits are the lawyers – he really should man up and do the right (honorable) thing and distribute his theme under the GPL License or create / develop on a platform that doesn’t use it.

Since it appears, at least so far, that Chris is not going to do the right thing, I would suggest that the WordPress community deal with this internally and quit using or purchasing WordPress themes that are not distributed under the GPL License – loss of income and support would, more than likely, fix the problem.

Highlights (fromWordPress.org)

• WordPress and WordPress MU have merged, allowing the management of multiple sites (called Multisite) from one WordPress installation.
• New default theme “Twenty Ten” takes full advantage of the current features of WordPress.
• New Custom Menu Management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.
• Custom Header and Custom Background APIs.
• Contextual help text accessed under the Help tab of every screen in the WordPress administration.
• Ability to set the admin username and password during installation.
• Bulk updating of themes with an automatic maintenance mode during the process.
• Support for Shortlinks.
• Improved Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies including hierarchical (category-style) support. (Try the Custom Post Type UI or GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies
• Tools plugins to see the possibilities.
• A lighter admin color scheme to increase accessibility and put the focus more squarely on your content.

Biggies to me are:

Only bug I’ve found so far is the post tags is a little finicky – sometimes drops down and sometimes doesn’t but that’s nothing to worry about.

First: find your css stylesheet.  If you are using WordPress, login to your admin, click the Appearance Tab in the left column, then click on Editor, then find and click  stylesheet in the list on the right.

Toward the top of the stylesheet you should see a section called body: (should look something like this)

body {
 font-size: 12px;
 font-family: ‘Arial’, Verdana, Sans-Serif;
 background-image: #ffffff url(images/bg.jpg);
 background-color: #011329;
 color: #ffffff;
 }

Now it’s pretty easy to make some site wide quick visual changes – I’ll just start at the top and work my way down:

1.  font-size- size of content text for your site (does not effect your headline or title size’s) you can easily increase or decrease by changing the number before the px.  (for example: 14px will increase the font size while 10px will decrease the font (text))

2. font-family- this is the actual font used on your website in order of importance.  In this instance the first choice for the browser is Arial, if not available then Verdana and so on and so forth.  Simply Add a new font to the beginning of the string or change the existing names to one you prefer.  Just a note:  not all fonts are available to all users so if you choose a less popular font and your visitors do not have that font on their computer it will not display properly.  Always have a backup web safe font choice just in case. 

To test or choose a font try this site: http://www.fonttester.com/web_safe_fonts.html

3. background-image- in this example the theme is using a background image called bg.jpg located in the theme folder called images – to change it create and upload another image to your theme in the folder called images.  (You will need ftp or control panel access to do this) 

Example:  If your new image is called mybg.jpg – change bg.jpg to mybg.jpg and it’s done.  If you don’t think you’ll ever use the original bg.jpg image just name your new image the same and upload and overwrite the old image – now you don’t have to change anything and will have a new background image.

Now if you have a small image that you would like to tile - do nothing it will automatically tile the image vertically and horizontally. 

 However, if you only want it to tile horizontally or vertically or not tile at all you will need to add another condition called background-repeat just under background-image.

background-repeat: no repeat; – image will not tile
background-repeat:repeat-x; -   tile -  horizontally
background-repeat:repeat-y; -   tile - vertically

Info:  a small image tiled will load faster than 1 large background image.

4. background-color- colors are numeric this particular color is using  hexadecimal (6 digit) color codes.  To find the code for the color -  find a color chart.

here’s one: http://html-color-codes.com/

locate the color you want and the corresponding 6 digit number then change the number – it’s that simple.

5. color – this is refers to the color of the text on your site – again find the color you want and change the number

The stylesheet gives you many more options to change but by changing some of  these basic rules you can make some very dramatic and quick changes to the look of your site. 

Give it a try – it’s easy!

Note: After making changes make sure to save the changes and update your browser to see the changes.

My solution:  test sites.  I have test sites for any website that uses plugins as a means to an end.  My advice if you can’t live without a plugin test, test, test prior to just blindly updating to the newest version of WordPress or do your research and have a backup plugin ready, in case your favorite plugin doesn’t make the transition.

Another issue I’ve run across is updating a plugin and having it break the theme. 

I realize not everyone has the luxury of multiple tests sites running just to test plugins and themes so just as they suggest: backup everything prior to updating anything and be prepared.

Circa Who is a resale shop selling trendy vintage and modern furniture and needed a site that would showcase images of their vast one of a kind inventory while also reflecting the personality of the shop.  This site is a heavily customized wordpress installation based on the 960 grid system at it’s core and uses custom page templates, custom post templates and custom fields to create a visually unique, easily navigated website that represents the character of the shop and allows for quick and easy additions of new merchandise.

Have a look at the site and if you are in the area visit the shop:  Circa Who, 531 Northwood Road, West Palm Beach, Florida  33407.

If you need a website or a website re-design I’d be more than happy to hear about your project and work with you.  Contact ME