Here’s my tips for working with the very powerful theme Atahualpa.

Firstly this template is unlike most, it has your options in the WP backend Admin->Atahualpa Theme Options->here there are more than 100 options to set.  This generally does not require you to edit PHP files and FTP them to your server,  or edit CSS. This also doesn’t require Child Themes or additional template pages to create, specify and use.

To add google analytics website verification or webmaster tools verification to Atahualpa:

Admin->Atahualpa Theme Options->HTML Inserts: Header->Paste your google or ykey (yahoo key) in here.

A typical install of mine uses these CSS inserts in Admin->Add HTML/CSS Inserts:

ul.rMenu li a {width:148px; text-align:center;} /* custom menu centered */
li.cat-item {background-image: url(/wp-content/themes/atahualpa/images/bullets/Filagree_30px.gif);background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 0em;} /* custom menu icon */
h4 {margin:0.33em 0 -0.8em;} /* custom H4 */
td#middle a {color:red;} /* red links on page but only content area */
td#middle {border-left:1px ridge #FDF1CE;} /* ? */
div.widget_categories ul li a {margin-left: 19px;} /* using widget for categories as menu item – customized */
div.widget_categories ul li {margin-left: 5px; margin-bottom: 8px;} /* using widget for categories as menu item – customized */
div.widget_categories ul {margin-bottom: 35px;} /* using widget for categories as menu item – customized */
.post img.alignleft {float: left; margin: 0px 10px 5px 0;} /* atahualpa by default drops image down 10 pixels next to text, this overrides the setting in css.php for a 0px top margin site wide for left aligned image  */
.post img.alignright {float: right; margin: 0px 0 5px 10px; } /* same thing as above for right aligned image, this is from the atahualpa forum: http://forum.bytesforall.com/showthread.php?t=4416&highlight=alignleft  */
.post img.aligncenter {display: block;margin: 0px auto;} /* same thing as above for center aligned image  */

Plugins:

I am also using “Thumbnail  for Excerpts” which places the post’s first image as a thumbnail on the category, archive or other pages with post excerpts. If you do not have an image in the blog post, then you can explicitly specify one in the post excerpt.

“WP Events Calendar” doesn’t work for me with Atalhualpa, it does with other themes. It is possible this has been fixed or is a case of incompatibilities because I’ve not re-tried this on a default install.

To set the width of the top horizontal navigation menu and center it and the text menu items:
(in Atahualpa HTML/CSS Inserts)
ul.rMenu li a {width:148px; text-align:center;}

2 alternate ways to do the same thing from the Atahualpa forum:

http://forum.bytesforall.com/showthread.php?t=122

To add a background image to the horizontal menu bar, you have to set the height higher to see it from under the li items.
div#menu1 {background-image: url(/wp-content/themes/atahualpa/images/header/banner_964px.gif);}

To remove the “< Previous Post” “Next Post >” links at the top or the bottom of your post pages:
Admin->Atahualpa Theme Options->Next/Previous Navigation->Location of Next/Previous Page Navigation on MULTI Post Pages->set it to “None”
Admin->Atahualpa Theme Options->Next/Previous Navigation->Location of Next/Previous Page Navigation on SINGLE Post Pages->set it to “None”

To show different category listings and indent them as a navigation menu:
from the Atahualpa forum and the master himself…Flynn : http://forum.bytesforall.com/showthread.php?t=2373

To indent sub items set check the “Show Hierarchy” checkbox inside the Category widget

You can use the default Categories widget multiple times but it will always display all categories.

To display several instances showing different categories, install and use multiple instances of the PHP code widget, drop a few of them into the sidebar, click on their Edit links to give each one a title, such as “Party Themes”, and put this into each one

<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories(‘show_count=1&title_li=&include =3,7,22‘); ?>
</ul>

3,7,22 means display posts of categories with the ID’s 3, 7 and 22.

Put the numbers in ascending order here. Look up the ID’s of categories at WP Admin -> Posts -> Categories -> Edit -> Watch browser status bar at bottom of browser window for “…&cat_ID=XX”

If you would like to do something special on a page with code and know if it’s not a post, you can use a conditional test to find out if a page is loaded:

<?php if (!is_page()) {do this} ?>

If you cannot link to a page you added properly, plugin “page links to” will do it. Install and edit page, don’t worry about the “permalink” at the top, scroll to the bottom and create your link. In my case I needed a category page and wordpress’ “Permalink” editor strips out index.php?cat=7 links and /category/my-category links when you try to add them. (it parses out the ? and the /)

from the wordpress codex: http://codex.wordpress.org/Linking_Posts_Pages_and_Categories

There are two ways to make internal links from one content page to another in WordPress. One uses permalinks and one does not. The method that does not use permalinks works regardless of whether permalinks are enabled for your site.

Linking Without Using Permalinks

If you are not using Permalinks, how do you link to your pages, posts, and categories?

Using the numeric values found in the ID column of the Posts, Categories, and Pages Administration, you can create links as follows.

Posts

To link to a Post, find the ID of the target post on the Posts administration panel, and insert it in place of the ’123′ in this link:

<a href="index.php?p=123">Post Title</a>

Categories

To link to a Category, find the ID of the target Category on the Categories administration panel, and insert it in place of the ’7′ in this link:

<a href="index.php?cat=7">Category Title</a>

Pages

To link to a Page, find the ID of the target Page on the Pages administration panel, and insert it in place of the ’42′ in this link:

<a href="index.php?page_id=42">Page title</a>

Date-based Archives

• Year: <a href=”index.php?m=2006″>2006</a>
• Month: <a href=”index.php?m=200601″>Jan 2006</a>
• Day: <a href=”index.php?m=20060101″>Jan 1, 2006</a>

Links On External Sites

If you are providing a link to your site from outside of your site, be sure to specify a full URL to the correct location:

<a href="http://example.com/index.php?p=123">post title</a>

If you have installed WordPress to a subfolder, such as wordpress, don’t forget to add the folder to the link URL:

<a href="http://example.com/wordpress/index.php?p=123">post title</a>

Linking Using Permalinks

If you are using permalinks, you can use all of the above non-permalink techniques, which will work with permalinks enabled or not. If you have enabled permalinks, you have a few additional options for providing links that readers of your site will find a bit more user-friendly than the cryptic numbers.

The complexity of the URL depends on the complexity of your permalink configuration. If your permalink configuration (set on the Options > Permalinks Administration Panel) contains many Structure Tags, then the URL will be more difficult to construct.

Posts

For posts, replace each Structure Tag in your permalink structure with the data appropriate to a post to construct a URL for that post. For example, if the permalink structure is:

/index.php/archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

Replacing the Structure Tags with appropriate values may produce a URL that looks like this:

<a href="/index.php/archives/2005/04/22/my-sample-post/">My Sample Post</a>

To obtain an accurate URL for a post it may be easier to navigate to the post within the WordPress blog and then copy the URL from one of the blog links that WordPress generates.

Review the information at Using Permalinks for more details on constructing URLs for individual posts.

Categories

To produce a link to a Category using permalinks, obtain the Category Base value from the Options > Permalinks Administration Panel, and append the category name to the end.

For example, to link to the category “testing” when the Category Base is “/index.php/categories”, use the following link:

<a href="/index.php/categories/testing/">category link</a>

You can specify a link to a subcategory by using the subcategory directly (as above), or by specifying all parent categories before the category in the URL, like this:

<a href="/index.php/categories/parent_category/sub_category/">subcategory link</a>

Pages

Pages have a hierarchy like Categories, and can have parents. If a Page is at the root level of the hierarchy, you can specify just the Page’s “page slug” after the static part of your permalink structure:

<a href="/index.php/a-test-page">a test page</a>

Once again, the best way to verify that this is the correct URL is to navigate to the target Page on the blog and compare the URL to the one you want to use in the link.

Date-based Archives

• Year: <a href=”/index.php/archives/2006″>2006</a>
• Month: <a href=”/index.php/archives/2006/01/”>Jan 2006</a>
• Day: <a href=”/index.php/archives/2006/01/01/”>Jan 1, 2006</a>

Links on External Sites

Permalink structures should begin with a slash, meaning that they are anchored at the root of the site’s URL. You should be able to prepent the protocol and server name to any link that begins with a slash to build a successful full URL.

For example, this category link:

<a href="/index.php/categories/parent_category/sub_category/">subcategory link</a>

Becomes this category link using a full URL:

<a href="http://example.com/index.php/categories/parent_category/sub_category/">subcategory link</a>

Combining Links with Template Tags

You can customize your links in the header, footer, or sidebar to be combinations of link types. This example features links to two categories, the main index page, a post, a static page, and uses the Pages template tag.

Note carefully that the wp_list_pages() template tag generates its own List Item (LI) so it doesn’t need to be wrapped in a LI tag. This template tag is also set to list only the parent Pages and not their subPages or “children”.

<ul id="linklist">
 <li>
  <?php _e('Check It Out'); ?>
  <ul id="pageslist">
   <li>
    <a title="Home Page" href="index.php">Home</a>
   </li>
   <li>
    <a title="Blog" href="index.php?cat=7">Blog</a>
   </li>
   <li>
    <a title="Life Story" href="index.php?p=12">My Life Story</a>
   </li>
   <?php wp_list_pages('exclude=4&depth=1&sort_column=menu_order&title_li='); ?>
   <li>
    <a title="Links and Resources" href="index.php?cat=33">Links</a>
   </li>
   <li>
    <a title="Site Map" href="sitemap.php">Site Map</a>
   </li>
  </ul>
 </li>
</ul>

Using such a customized list, you can also add CSS classes to change the look of each of the links, or style the entire section. It’s up to you.

Absolute versus Relative Links

Absolute links define absolutely where to find the target of the link.
Relative links define the location of another document in relation to the current document.

Absolute Link Examples

Full URIs of the form http://example.com/wordpress/index.php are absolute links.

Absolute links can also point to your own server. When doing so, you may safely omit the http://domain.com prefix, and link to the target with a full path:

/wordpress/index.php

The leading slash means “At the very top of this domain is a directory named wordpress, and inside this directory is a file named index.php“.

A document at

http://example.com/wordpress/index.php

contains a link of the form

/wordpress/index.php

The link above, when clicked, will take the viewer to

http://example.com/wordpress/index.php

Relative Link Examples

Relative links do not start with a slash:

wordpress/index.php

The lack of a leading slash means “Inside the current directory is a sub-directory named wordpress, and inside that directory is a file named index.php“.

A document at

http://example.com/wordpress/index.php

contains a link of the form

wordpress/index.php

The link above, when clicked, will take the viewer to

http://example.com/wordpress/wordpress/index.php

Let us consider the case where in our blog where we are editing

http://example.org/blog/2009/01/04/nurds-on-the-loose

From it we can make links

1. <a href=”../01/happy-new-year”>New Years Announcement</a>
2. <a href=”../../01/01/happy-new-year”>New Years Announcement</a>
3. <a href=”../../../2009/01/01/happy-new-year”>New Year’s Announcement</a>
4. <a href=”../../../2008/12/25/merry-christmas”>Christmas Announcement</a>

Note 1, 2, and 3 are all valid to achieve the same link. However with 4 there is no shortcut, as we must “climb” all the way into the previous year.

The links are all relative and we need not hardwire in any more knowledge than is necessary, which also will help portability if one day we export the blog elsewhere. (What happens if one day we however pick a different permalink structure via the administration panels is unknown…)

However, the above assumes we are always viewing a single post. If in fact we are viewing that same post in an archive, well, then all our assumptions of where we are now are wrong! So we see that however smart relative linking looks, it has a fatal flaw and cannot be chosen!

For more information on absolute and relative links, see the WebReference Tutorial on Absolute and Relative Links.

Dynamic Linking in Templates

Whether you use permalinks or not, in templates you can link to pages or posts dynamically by referring to its unique numerical ID (seen in several pages in the admin interface) with <a href="<?php echo get_permalink(ID); ?>">This is a link</a>. (as shown in Template_Tags/get_permalink)

This is a convenient way to create page menus as you can later change page slugs without breaking links, as IDs will stay the same. However, this might increase database queries.

Dynamic page menus can also be created by utilizing Template_Tags/wp_list_pages child_of parameter or some of the many available plugins.

RSS

It seems that only fully qualified links (http:…) are guaranteed to work in all RSS reading environments…

Resources

• Editing Posts Plugins – Link Plugins

Show the last 5 posts or whatever number you specify using the following code, it loops through all of the posts.

First method I devised:

              <ul id="recent-items">

              <?php

                  $recentPosts = new WP_Query();

                  $recentPosts->query('showposts=10');

              ?>

<!--t added set the incremental counter<=? to the number of recent posts you want to see-->

              <?php $counter = 1; while ($recentPosts->have_posts() && $counter <= 10) : $recentPosts->the_post(); ?>

                  <a class="archive-content_footer" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?> - <?php the_date(); ?></a>

                  <?php // the_excerpt() ?>

                  <?php $counter++ ?>

                  <p>&nbsp;</p>

                  <hr>

              <?php endwhile; ?>

               </ul>

Second method officially shown on the wordpress codex (however the_date() didn’t work with this for some reason):

              <ul id="recent-items">

             <?php

             global $post;

             $myposts = get_posts('numberposts=5');

             foreach($myposts as $post) :

             ?>

    <div id="posttitle"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?><?php the_date('Y-m-d', '<h3>', '</h3>'); ?></a></div>

 <?php endforeach; ?>

 </ul>

Contact Form 7 – Super easy and functional contact form for website email.
Tip: You can run more than one form and customize each by creating a new one and referencing the appropriate one from the page you want the form on.

Gravity Forms – This is the hopped up version of Contact Form, it can dynamically populate your contact form, it can send your submissions to your newsletter server and more.

akismet – Stock plugin with WP, you have to create an account on wordpress.com to get an API Key then go  back to your  self hosted WP and install that key to get it to work. You can get fancy and use it to update status upon submitting a comment using AJAX.

ArtPal
Tips: Won’t work on WordPress MU (6-2009),  also had problems on Bluehost but don’t know why yet. Otherwise, I love this plugin thanks freerobby.com!

google sitemap generator – Creates sitemap.xml every time you add to your blog and submits to Tier 1 search engines.

NextGEN Gallery
Tips: Use instead of the recommended

to get started, that worked for me. Another possible bug, after installing on WP 2.8 beta 2, the gallery was working but quit for some reason. I’ll  update to WordPress 2.8 on June 10, the day the final release comes out and maybe look at this issue again.

TinyMCE Advanced
Tips: Go to Admin->Settings->TinyMCEAdvanced and drag your toolbuttons to and from the toolbar,  I allow it to not strip <br> and <p> tags added manually into the HTML editor.

SEO Title Tag

To hide a page or post from the navigation menu in WordPress do this usually in your theme’s sidebar.php or header.php if you are using pages on your menu. Note: most people are not using pages, posts are default for the navigation menu:

<ul>
<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">Home</a></li>
<?php wp_list_pages('title_li=&depth=1&exclude=8'); ?>
</ul>

Really, the key part is "&exclude=8", find the page you want to hide or unlink from the menu by clicking on it and reading the location in the URL bar up top in your browser, or inspect it in WordPress on the backend.

The number or page name (usually the "slug") is the important part. If you want to exclude more than one, use a comma.

ex: wp_list_pages('title_li=&depth=1&exclude=6,8')

If you cannot find the page_id, here’s a tip:

To find the page id instead of the slug or page name on newer WordPress installs, go to the backend, click on the pages (or posts) edit menu, hover you mouse over the page name and look at your status bar in the bottom of your browser window, it will end in a number. That number is your page_id. This page_id is a way to load that page. You can substitute it for the slug to find any page on your blog.

ie: www.myblog.com/new-page will also load with www.myblog.com/?page_id=3

from: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_pages

To hide the WordPress page title which lays over the top of your banner image:

In your /themes/style.css file:

#header h1 { display:none }

This will allow your blog title to show in the window title and as the  link in google and other seach engine results while not allowing it to overlay your new banner.

To reverse the WordPress page title, that is the blog title and the blog name:

In your Themes directory header.php

For WordPress 2.5 and up:
<title>
 <?php wp_title('--',true,'right'); ?>
 <?php bloginfo('name'); ?>
 </title>

You can make a custom page layout that is called only when the person wants to print the page or print preview it.

Note: Some WordPress themes have a print.css stylesheet already created, so look for that in the theme directory first.

You must call the print stylesheet in the case of the browser being told to print the page. Do this by adding this to the <head> of your header.php:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print"
href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/print.css" />

This is an example of a stylesheet for printing taken from the WordPress codex at:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Styling_for_Print

This example has been modified to hide Flash on the printout among other things:

--BEGINprint.css stylesheet--
/* t added created print stylesheet from scratch for this theme */
/* print style sheet is here */

@media print {
body {background:white;
     font-size:10pt;
     margin:0 }

/* t added to hide flash on printout      */
/* t added for custom flash style */
.flash{
    text-align: center;
    display: none;
}

#sidebar { display:none }
#header { height:75px }
#content{ margin-left:0;
     float:none;
     width:auto }
.demo .red { color:black;
     font-weight:bold }
#content a { font-weight:bold;
     color:#000066;
     text-decoration:underline }
#content{ margin-left:0;
     float:none;
     width:auto }
#footer, .ad { display:none }
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { page-break-after:avoid;
     page-break-inside:avoid }
h3 { margin-left:10px;
     margin-bottom:0px;
     padding-bottom:0px }
blockquote, table, pre { page-break-inside:avoid }
ul, ol, dl  { page-break-before:avoid }
img.centered { display: block;
     margin-left: auto;
     margin-right: auto; }
img.right { padding: 4px;
     margin: 0 0 2px 7px;
     display: inline; }
img.left { padding: 4px;
     margin: 0 7px 2px 0;
     display: inline; }
.right { float: right; }
.left { float: left }
img { page-break-inside:avoid;
     page-break-after:avoid; }
}
--END print.css stylesheet--

The page title on WordPress blogs is coded in the file is “page.php”. Search for the line with “<?php the_permalink() ?>” and then you can remove that link, or edit it and add some text.

To change the page title for Posts, edit the file “index.php” and search for the line with “<?php the_permalink() ?>”, then edit as desired.

To move the posts, pages, pictures, information, and settings of an existing, populated blog whether it’s on the single instance WordPress installation or WordPress MU with lots of blogs. This also applies to moving a wordpress blog from one server to another, or copying a wordpress blog:

You can use Admin->”Tools”->Export.

Then setup your new blog on your new server, Admin->”Tools”->”Import”->”Wordpress”.

This part on also applies to setting up a virgin wordpress install and converting it to a page based CMS instead of a post based website.