Banana Munki

A cluttered sidebar can be ugly. A good way to keep a WordPress blog looking better is a classic three column footer for your stuff. I like when blog owners show some organization sense.

I am going to show you how I added three widgetized columns to an empty footer.

1:

We are going to need the functions.php file. You can find this located in your theme folder. Path example: banana.munki.se/wp-content/themes/mytheme/functions.php. You can create this file if your theme doesn’t use one.

if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') )
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Footer widget left',
'before_widget' => '
',
'after_widget' => '

',
'before_title' => '
',
'after_title' => '

',
));
if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') )
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Footer widget middle',
'before_widget' => '
',
'after_widget' => '

',
'before_title' => '
',
'after_title' => '

',
));
if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') )
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'Footer widget right',
'before_widget' => '
',
'after_widget' => '

',
'before_title' => '
',
'after_title' => '

',
));

The code above is placed/pasted into the functions.php file. It generates information needed to create and display widgets.

2:

The following piece of code should be placed where you want the three columns to be visible, the footer. Open up your footer.php and see where to place this, usually right after div id=”footer”. The footer.php file of your template can find in your theme folder. Example path: banana.munkise/wp-content/themes/mytheme/footer.php

<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Footer widget left') ) : ?><br /> <?php endif; ?><br /> <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Footer widget middle') ) : ?><br /> <?php endif; ?><br /> <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Footer widget right') ) : ?><br /> <?php endif; ?><br />

The above code make the three column widgets appear on your WordPress blog.
Note: The br /’s rendered with the above code are automatically inserted within my blogpost and shouldn’t be added by you, you can safely (and should) erase them. I am sorry about this. :/

3:

The final step is to tell the columns how to behave. We want to display them horizontally, on a row next to eachother. We make this happen with CSS. Make note that you may just (most likely) need to adjust the width and/or margin to make fit with the theme that you are using. The following piece of CSS should go in your theme style.css file located in your theme folder. Example path: banana.munki.se/wp-content/themes/mytheme/style.css

.widget_footer {float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0; width: 300px;}

The class footer_widget was used in the first piece of code pasted into the functions.php so now we just have to use it in the style sheet to tell the columns how to behave and how to display the content of the widgets on the blog.

4:

Now you can navigate to the widget section of your WordPress installation and start organizing.

Final note:

Additionally a div clear=”both or similar may need to be inserted in the footer.php after the code to clear the float! This could depend on wheither or not your theme already have a solution.

Good luck with this. If you have any questions I’d be glad to answer them.

Happy Widgetizing!

A friend had trouble starting up his computer because it halted at the welcome screen. He had to Ctrl+Alt+Del ones to get it past. I ran Chkdsk F to fix this problem. I have found a handy guide at eguide.com how to go about running the valuble tool Chkdsk F included in Windows XP to automatically fix the problem. You can find it here (click this text). Or you can read the following text in this post.

In case of that page disapearing in the future, I copy & paste the text on to here:

A copy & paste from an article at the ehow

An extra note: I did not have to go through step 10. At mentioned in step 9, the computer adviced to run the Chkdsk at the next reboot.

I recently received an .xls file through an e-mail from a relative. It is a Microsoft Excel (spreadsheet program used for calculation, graphing, pivot tables and a macro programming) file.

I don’t have Microsoft Office installed and I don’t want it either. It appear to be a feature rich program but I have everything I need at the moment.

So how do I read the file my relative sent to me? Even though I don’t have Microsoft Office, I can still open the Excel file by downloading Microsoft’s free Excel Viewer (DL link) over at Microsoft’s Download Center. Excel Viewer handles opening, viewing and printing of Excel workbooks, even if you don’t have Microsoft Office installed.
Download Excel Viewer

I use the social web browser Flock on my own machine. Cause it’s wonderful – understatement. At times I have the need to download an swf file off a website and here is how I do that.

I don’t use any Mozilla addons or any program, I simply go to the Tools section in the browser menu and click on Page Info as seen on the image below.

Where I go to the Media page on the small page that pops up and select the swf I want to download – click on Save As and save it to the machine.

(This image is clickable and will show you the full size of the image)

Simple.