Justin Tadlock

The Features Gallery is a home page section that you choose from the page “Options Theme Settings.” The display is a constantly transitioning flash of your latest feature posts with a large image, title, and excerpt. This is done by using Smooth Gallery.

The main file for this is in /includes/features-gallery.php.

If this page doesn’t help you, then there’s a really in-depth tutorial on the forum by one of the users.

1. Setting up your posts
2. Changing the number of posts displayed
3. Changing the tag or category used
4. Using a different transition

The setup

There are a few things you’ll need to get an article in this gallery — at least two posts with images and a tag of “features.”

So, first, write your post and give it a tag of “features.”

Now, you’ll need that image. I suggest reading through the documentation for using images with the theme. It’ll help.

Here’s what the call for the image looks like in /includes/features-gallery.php:

<?php echo get_the_image(array('Feature Image','Full','Feature Full'), 'full'); ?>

Basically, this tells the theme to look for three different custom fields Keys, which are Feature Image, Full, and Feature Full (in that order). If there are no custom field images, it checks for the first image attachment for your post.

Also note that you need more than one feature article for this to work properly. The very definition of “gallery” implies more than one.

Using custom fields
To use the custom field Key of “Feature Image,” scroll down to the bottom of your “Write Post” panel in your WordPress dashboard until you see the section for “Custom Fields.” In the Key input box, add the words “Feature Image” (exactly because Keys are case-sensitive).

In the Value box, add the URL of your image, such as http://yoursite.com/wp-content/example.jpg.

Using only the media uploader (without custom fields)
If you don’t want to use custom fields, just upload your image with the media uploader. It will be automatically used (Note that the first image uploaded will be used using this method).

Changing the number of posts displayed

To change the number of posts displayed by the gallery (default is 3), open /includes/features-gallery.php. Look for this line:

$posts_wanted = 3;

So, if you wanted to display the last five posts, change it to this:

$posts_wanted = 5;

Using a different tag or category

To use a different tag or category, open /includes/features-gallery.php. Look for these lines:

$cat_name = false;
$tag_name = 'features';

To use a tag of “super-mario,” change it to this:

$cat_name = false;
$tag_name = 'super-mario';

To use a category of “Donkey Kong,” change it to this:

$cat_name = "Donkey Kong";
$tag_name = false;

If “Donkey Kong” doesn’t work, use “donkey-kong” instead.

Using a different transition between posts

To use a different transition between each feature post, look in /includes/features-gallery.php. Look for this code:

<script type="text/javascript">
	function startGallery() {
		var myGallery = new gallery($("myGallery"), {
			timed: true,
			delay: 6000,
			showArrows: true,
			showCarousel: false
		}); }
	window.onDomReady(startGallery);
</script>

In particular, we need to focus on this area:

	timed: true,
		delay: 6000,
		showArrows: true,
		showCarousel: false

To change the gallery to show a fading slide left transition, change it to this:

	timed: true,
		delay: 6000,
		defaultTransition: "fadeslideleft",
		showArrows: true,
		showCarousel: false

Here are some different values for defaultTransition:

fade
crossfade
fadebg
fadeslideleft
continuoushorizontal
continuousvertical

Try them out; play around with them.

Known issues with the beta releases

Issues with the Beta releases
There seems to be a bug with IE6 and IE7. The paragraph text or, in our case, the excerpt doesn’t display. There may be a few workarounds, but I’d rather wait to update when the gallery script is updated.