The thumbnail is added via Custom Field. If you log into WordPress and navigate to the Add New Post screen, you will see that there is a Custom Fields box when you scroll down a bit. The magazine style themes that I have come across allow you to enter a Custom Field Name/Value pair to associate an image to the current post which will display next to the excerpt on the blog’s front page. This usually looks something like:

This system works very well and has been adopted by many theme authors. But what happens when no image path is entered as a Custom Field? What if an invalid path is entered into the Custom Field? Well, this depends on how the theme was coded…

The first forum post that I answered was from tyankee whom had the following problem with the Monezine Theme:

…when you don’t add that custom field to the post, a black image shows up. I’d like a default image to show up…

This is rather easy to correct, lets take a look at the code which displays the thumbnail. The following was taken from lines 22 and 23 of the current version’s index.php file (this code is inside The Loop).

<?php $screen = get_post_meta($post->ID,'screen', true); ?>
<img src="<?php echo ($screen); ?>" width="160" height="100" alt=""  />

This code has three possible outcomes:

1. A valid image url will be echoed - An image will be displayed on the page.
2. An invalid image url will be echoed - No image will be displayed.
3. An empty string will be echoed - No image will be displayed.

We can improve this code by defining a default image url and adding a bit of logic:

<?php // License: GPL
$custom_field_name = 'screen';
$default_image_url = 'http://example.com/my-default-image.jpg';

$post_specific_image_url = get_post_meta( $post->ID, $custom_field_name, true );

if( !empty( $post_specific_image_url ) && $image_data = @getimagesize( $post_specific_image_url ) )
  $image_url = $post_specific_image_url;
elseif( !empty( $default_image_url ) && $image_data = @getimagesize( $default_image_url ) )
  $image_url = $default_image_url;
else
  $image_url = '';
  
if( $image_data )
  print '<img src="' . $image_url . '" width="' . $image_data[0] . '" height="' . $image_data[1] . '" alt="" />';
?>

This will only print a result if an image url is defined (either as a Custom Field or as the value of $default_image_url) and if that url points to a valid image file.

If you are using a magazine theme which utilizes this or similar functionality, feel free to use the code I posted above.

<?php
add_filter( 'login_redirect', 'mf_redirect_login' );
function mf_redirect_login( $c ) {
  return get_bloginfo( 'url' );
}
?>

100 BONES @ Breeze Block

What it is: It’s the second annual 100 Bones show at Breeze Block which features artwork that is $100.00 and under.

Why you gotta check it out: I’ll be showing 4 brand new pieces 8″ x 8″ priced from $40.00 - $100.00. Plus - there will be a grip of really cool artwork by other folks. Breeze Block is a great store + gallery that recently moved from Alberta-land to East Burnside. They have rad handmade stuff from local creative-type-people, cool art books and zines + fashionable fashion-stuff. The creatures sewn from bicycle inner-tube rubber are among my favorite things one can find here…

When it is: Friday, February 6th from 6-10pm

Breeze Block Gallery
1847 E. Burnside, Ste. C
Portland, OR
breezeblockgallery.com

Featuring: Mildred, Michael Frank, Paul Estrada, Meg Adamson, Justin Lovato, Ashley Montague, Joe Polillo and Me.

HAND CRAFTED

(curated by J. Shea)

What it is: It’s the first art show at a great little cafe on the corner of SE 39th and Lincoln ( Lincoln is halfway between Hawthorne and Division).

Why you gotta check it out: I’ll have a brand new piece in the show + there will be wicked-awesome stuff from a great selection of local talent.

When it is: Saturday, February 7th from 6-10pm

Fine Grind Art Cafe
2035 SE 39th Avenue
Portland, OR
pdxfinegrind.com

Featuring: Blaine Fontana, Bryon Schroeder, Chris Habberman, Chris Wellock, Christofer Ross, J. Shea, Jason Brown, Jesse Reno, Lesley Reppeteaux, Ryan Bubnis, Tim Karpinski, Tom Keating and Me.

Voyeur @ The Love Show

(curated by Anna Todaro)

What it is: The Voyeur show consists of pieces of eyes that stare out from the painting at the audience. The Love Show is a group showcase of works focusing on the topic of love. This year, the Voyeur Show will be a part of the Love Show… One might deduct that it will be an exhibition of lovely eyes… perhaps it will!

Why You Shouldn’t Miss This Show: This show will consist of a collection of work created by individuals who organize art shows/websites/books/projects. Plus, Voyeur will be contained within the ginormous Love Show which will have like a bazillion pieces. Not to be missed!

Opens: Friday, February 13th from 7pm - Midnight

Olympic Mills
107 SE Washington Street
Portland, OR

Featuring:

• Flora S. Bowley curator of “Thirty!” Shows
• Jason Brown curator of The Goodfoot
• Paul Fujita curator of Zeitgeist Gallery
• Chris Haberman curator of Olympic Mills and East Bank among other things
• Kaebel Hashitani curator of Sequential Art Gallery
• Ben Pink curator of Launchpad Gallery
• Kelly Rauer of Portland Art Center
• Eric Robison curator of Backspace
• Richard Schemmerer editor of pdxart
• Beth Ann Short co-founder of 100th Monkey Studio
• Jeremy Tucker curator of Rake Art Gallery
• Cathy Joy Young curator of Vino Paridiso
• Me editor of Invision series

Why is the flier spelled wrong: Hmmm… yes I did make the flier, yes there is a hideous spelling mistake on it. Now, I’m inclined to blame symmetry, or perhaps my lack of a proper education, but no… neither of these are right. I blame the fact that my sketch book lacks a spell checker. I mean come on people, this is the 21st century and all….

Create Your Front Page

Log into your Administration Panels and from the left-hand sidebar click Pages -> Add New. Enter a title and content and click the “Publish” button. Appropriate titles for this page can be “Home”, “Welcome”, “Index”, anything that you like really. For the sake of this tutorial, let’s say you called your Front page “Welcome”.

Create Your Posts Page

Just like the previous step: from the left-hand sidebar click Pages -> Add New and create a page that will serve as your site’s “Blog” page. All we really need to do here is add a title and click the “Publish” button. Appropriate titles for this page can be “News”, “Blog”, “Posts”, anything that makes sense to you. For the sake of this tutorial, let’s say you called your Posts page “blog”.

Update Your Settings

From the left-hand sidebar navigate to: Settings -> Reading. The first from element on this page is “Front Page Displays”. In a default install, the “Your Latest Posts” radio button will be checked. For our purposes, we will select “A static page”. Right below these two radio button fields, There are two dropdown boxes: “Front page” and “Posts page”. We want to select the pages that we have just created for each dropdown box. Please see the image below for clarification. Oh yeah, don’t forget to press the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page!

Check-out Your Site

Navigate to your live WordPress installation to see your changes in action. You should be able to visit http://example.com/ and see your “Front Page” and visit http://example.com/blog/ to see your “Posts Page”.

Help, It Didn’t Work For Me!!!!

Sorry ’bout that:) Lets take a look under the hood of your theme and see if there is something blocking us. Navigate to your installation’s current theme’s directory. Something like /wp-content/themes/my-current-theme/ If you see a home.php file in this directory, then the above process will not work. We will need to turn this home.php file into a Page Template, assign this new Page Template to our “Welcome” page and finally delete home.php

Creating the Page Template

This is a lot easier than it sounds, but before you begin, please back up your theme’s files!!!! First, open a new file in a text-editor and save it to your theme’s folder. I like to name all my template files with a prefix of “t-”. For this example, I would name this new file “t-homepage.php”. Next thing to do is to add a few lines at the top of this file so that WordPress will recognize it as a Page Template. Add the following text and save your document.

<?php
/*
Template Name: Custom Homepage
*/
?>

Add the Contents of home.php to Our Custom Page Template

Now we will copy all of the code from home.php and paste them into t-homepage.php under the code we just added and save your t-homepage.php. It is now time to delete home.php from our theme’s directory on our live site. We will also need to upload t-homepage.php to our server.

Why delete this file? Well, basicly when this file is present in an WordPress Theme, it will be used to create the Front Page, basically, it will override all of the steps we have taken above.

Assign the Custom Page Template to Our Front Page

From the left-hand sidebar click Pages -> Edit and select your Front Page from the list. On the right-hand sidebar, you will see a section titled “Attributes” (It’s the second box from the top) under “Template” choose the “Custom Homepage” option and click the “Update Page” button.

In Conclusion

Well, I hope that this tutorial helps you to gain better understanding of how your WordPress Blog works. Please let me know if this this was useful to you by posting a comment below! Thanks for reading!

Related Resources

• How to Create a Static Page for Your Blog
• Template Hierarchy
• You Don’t Need A Blog on Your Front Page
• How To Create A Custom WordPress Page Template
]]> http://mfields.org/2009/01/29/wordpress-how-to-create-a-seperate-page-for-your-blog-posts-while-using-a-static-homepage/feed/ http://mfields.org/2009/01/02/new-poster-for-blue-cranes/ http://mfields.org/2009/01/02/new-poster-for-blue-cranes/#comments Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:18:22 +0000 mfields http://mfields.org/?p=140 Fuck yeah! Really excited about this! First gig poster ever. I know the picture on the left is kinda small, but you can click on it to see a larger version.

A bit about the concept: The first thing that came to mind with the project was to have a large blue bird (symbolizing the Blue Cranes) feeding music to a bunch of baby birds (representing the audience). I ran this idea across Joe (Tenor Sax - Blue Cranes) and he had a different interpretation of this idea: The larger bird would symbolize Wayne Horvitz while the smaller birds would represent the Blue Cranes. He then went on to explain that the Blue Cranes perform an arrangement “Love Love Love“, one of Wayne’s compositions. A while back, someone had shown Wayne a recording of the Blue Crane’s version of the song and it was very well received. This opened up a correspondence between the two musical acts and eventually they set a date to play together in Portland. That date is Saturday, January 31st at The Goodfoot.

The Composition

The composition took on a few different forms along the way. The goal was to preserve the concept as much as possible. Sounds easy right? Well, not for me!!! This goes against everything I do when I paint. When I’m making a painting, I have no preconceived idea… I just create mess on top of mess - adding lines here and there until something emerges - kinda like a self created & administered Rorschach Test - only my paintings possess more colors and, when it really comes down to it, I have absolutely no love for psychology :).

Here are a few drawings in consecutive order. The third drawing from the left shows the actual wing used in the final design. I learned a very important lesson with this wing… Never draw on ruled paper again. EVER! The blue lines are easy enough to remove once scanned in, but the ink bleeds like you wouldn’t believe causing tedious cleanup work.



The Hat

This is the one distinguishing feature that I had to work with. A quick Google search produced a number of pictures of Wayne wearing a hat of some sort. So I had to figure out how to draw a hat. People never believe me when I tell them that I don’t know how to draw very well, no one ever listens, but here’s a bit of proof: I ended up drawing 5 hats until I got one that I liked.

Although it sounds like I’m bitching, there’s something to be said about drawing things over and over again: sometimes it produces things that you would not have thought about otherwise. Case in point: The Piano Hat. Hat drawing #2 shows me trying to add some secondary embellishment to the bottom of the hat ribbon which visually registered as piano keys. Due to the fact that Wayne is a pianist, this turned out to be a perfect fit.



The Music Staff

This part was fun… and only took two iterations to get to an acceptable state. The music is the first 6 bars to the melody of Love Love Love. You can see from the composition drawings above that this was originally supposed to be a worm, but I really couldn’t figure out how to get the notes into the shape of a worm while retaining the readability of the music, Oh well, I like this better anyways.



]]> http://mfields.org/2009/01/02/new-poster-for-blue-cranes/feed/ http://mfields.org/2008/11/07/novembers-cold-chain/ http://mfields.org/2008/11/07/novembers-cold-chain/#comments Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:20:59 +0000 mfields http://mfields.org/?p=134 Made of Wet Boots and Rain

Figured I should update my site a little more often. So, sit back, relax and enjoy the ride! Just be sure to keep your arms, legs and head inside while we’re in motion. No need to adjust your seat into the full upright and locked position though… You should be comfortable, but there’s no need for decapitation.

Shiny Black Ravens

Actually, how ’bouts shiny Blue Cranes? I know it deviates from the lyrics a bit, but whatca-gonna-do? I was hanging out over at The Goodfoot last night when I was asked to do a Gig Poster for one of their upcoming shows. Totally stoked! Not only have I wanted to make a gig poster for the longest time, but I get to make one for a rad band too. I first saw the Blue Cranes at Gallery Homeland a few months back and the show was killer. Definately worth checking out live.  I’ve already started laying out the design in my head and I got a great feeling about this one! I’ll keep you posted with updates.

On Chimney Smoked Lanes

While at the Goodfoot, it was time for a solo session of Drink and Draw. What do you get when you cross-breed a few Oly’s, a 6″x6″ piece of bristol paper and a micron pen? Just take a look to your left… you can click on it too and leave comments and stuff… You know you want to leave comments and stuff. If I had to title this drawing, it would probably be something in the neighborhood of: “bearded man with under-bite reaches for intangible treasure while his third-eyed wrapped in peacock feathers stares into the great beyond”. And this is reason #3 why this drawing will remain untitled.

November Seems Odd

This is my guitar. There are many like it but this one is mine. My guitar is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my guitar is useless. Without my guitar I am useless… well, maybe not exactly… but it’s really cool! I’m stoked to have an electric guitar again… even if it is the cheapest, rottenest, won’t go in tune at all, impossible to intonate piece of s**t on the planet. It’s still awesome! I think it’s been 6 or 7 years since I had one and now you better watch out, cuz I’m gonna rock your face off! Wait, no I’m not. Yes I am. No I’m not. Yes I am… Reader, you’d better skip to the next heading while I sort this out with myself.

You’re My Firing Squad

Forward - Like a Flower that Only Desires to Blossom. This is the title of a new book from Jesse Reno. This is the second book I’ve put together for Jesse. Forward… features 40 full-color pages, is perfect bound (this is fancy book-people terms for paperback), and will be available for mass consumption in about a week or so. Check out the online preview and pre order one today! Related side note… I’ll be making my own book soon!!! I still have to hunt down a few pieces to photograph for inclusion, I’m hoping to have it together early January. Keep your eyes peeled.

November

Last, but certainly not least: HAPPY FRICKEN BIRTHDAY!!!! That’s right folks. November is the magic month whence your humble narrator was cast into this cruel cruel word almost 28 years ago… Oh it’s not that bad, yes it is, no it’s not…. Jesus Christ! Stop arguing! It’s downright embarrassing.

]]> http://mfields.org/2008/11/07/novembers-cold-chain/feed/ http://mfields.org/2008/10/29/happy-halloween/ http://mfields.org/2008/10/29/happy-halloween/#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:00:12 +0000 mfields http://mfields.org/?p=132

Yep…
that’s right…
HALLOWEEN!!!!

]]> http://mfields.org/2008/10/29/happy-halloween/feed/ http://mfields.org/2008/09/11/wordcamp-comes-to-portland/ http://mfields.org/2008/09/11/wordcamp-comes-to-portland/#comments Fri, 12 Sep 2008 05:10:57 +0000 mfields http://mfields.org/?p=129

They’re having one of these crazy WordCamp thingies here in Portland at the end of September… September 27th to be exact. So… if you like the WordPress, and you live in or around Portland, OR… you should sign up here. It costs $10… but they promise to feed you two meals, hook you up with a t-shirt and they even add your name to this cool list of attendees. I’m usually totally against paying money just to enter a building… but the folks putting together WordCamp PDX are really hooking it up:) See ya there!

]]> http://mfields.org/2008/09/11/wordcamp-comes-to-portland/feed/ http://mfields.org/2008/07/13/art-updates-july-2008/ http://mfields.org/2008/07/13/art-updates-july-2008/#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:55:26 +0000 mfields http://mfields.org/?p=125 Invision2 Show + Release Party



This Last Thursday ( July 31st ) at The Goodfoot we will be having a release party for Invision 2 - A Collection of Visual Art from Portland + Beyond. There are a bunch of great artists in the new book and they will all have work on display. Come check it out from 5pm-2am.

Invision
Released: September 6th, 2007
Published by: Another Sky Press
Order: anothersky.org
Featuring the work of: Kendra Binney, Ryan Bodiroga, Paul Fujita, Chris Haberman, Scott Wayne Indiana, Tim Karpinski, Tom Keating, Charlie Alan Kraft, Asley Montague, Dan Ness, Jesse Reno & Keith Rosson.

Invision 2
Released: July 31st, 2008
Published by: Another Sky Press
Preorder: anothersky.org
Featuring the work of: Erik Abel, Ashley Anson, Damon Ayers, Jason Brown, Michael Fields, Justin Gorman, Jason Graham, Michael Edward McGovern, Russel Short, David Stein, Alisha Wessler & Eric Wixon.

DRAW

I have started up a new series of art shows that I will be curating (with friends) in the Portland Metro area. The first show is currently up and on display at The Life in Old Town. They have gallery hours on Fridays from 12-5 PM and Saturday from 1 - 5 PM. If your in the neighborhood during these times, you should stop by and check out the show. If there is no chance that you will be in town and still want to see the pieces - I have uploaded a few to the new DRAW site. The site is still in it’s early stages of development, but it is fully functional as is.

]]> http://mfields.org/2008/07/13/art-updates-july-2008/feed/ http://mfields.org/2008/07/08/back-online/ http://mfields.org/2008/07/08/back-online/#comments Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:29:59 +0000 mfields http://mfields.org/?p=123 After some strange-ness with my domain registrar, mfields.org is back online.
]]> http://mfields.org/2008/07/08/back-online/feed/