TITLE HEADLINE IMAGES PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS 1.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This plugin allows you to have images created automatically for your entry titles. In this way you can utilize non-standard fonts and get smoother rendering than would be possible with simple text headlines. New to this version is improved integration with the WordPress administration interface under WordPress 1.5 Strayhorn as well as genuine soft-shadows behind the text for that smooth, custom look the girls love. INSTALLATION ------------ Your best bet is to first install the WordPress Plugin Manager available at and then perform a One-Click installation from there. That's as simple as it gets. Failing that, you're welcome to download the tarball and install it by placing the tarball in your WordPress installation's wp-content directory and performing a tar xvzf headline-image.tar.gz That should get everything where it needs to go. You'll then need to visit the plugins page of the WordPress administration and activate the plugin. See, don't you wish you'd just used the Plugin Manager? YOU MUST DO THIS PART --------------------- In order to have your titles turned into images, you have to change how you get your titles! Why? Well, if I went around changing every single invocation of the title into an image you'd have images in your RSS feeds and anywhere else you call "the_title()". You don't want that. Instead, you tell me which of your titles you want to be images. You do that by editing your template -- for instance, your Main Template which generally controls how your home page will look -- and search for the following text: the_title(); Shouldn't be hard to find. Make certain that this is the one you want changed, it might appear elsewhere in the file. This is the one somewhere after the "while (have_posts()) : the_post()" stuff. You'll change this text to look like this instead: the_title('-image-'); That's it! What this does is tell the plugin "hey plugin, I want you to magically turn this into an image for me, alright?" And the plugin will, if everything is as it should be, turn it into an image for you. USING OTHER FONTS ----------------- The font I've included is the lovely Warp 1 by Alex Gollner. You can see more of his fonts at http://www.project.com/alex/fonts/index.html. However, if you'd like to use some other font you are more than welcome to do so. First, though, you need to get it on the server. So, find yourself a gorgeous TrueType font -- preferably in Windows format if you have the choice -- and stick it on your server. One of the easiest ways is to use the built-in WordPress Upload utility. You'll have to allow ttf files to be uploaded which you can change in the Miscellaneous tab of your WordPress Options, but once you do that it's literally just a few clicks to install the font. Simply click the "Upload" tab in WordPress administration, browse to your font (note that Windows is finicky with the file dialog around fonts... you'll have to right-click on your file and hit "Properties..." and copy the filename from the properties and paste it into your file name box in the "Open..." dialog) and upload it! The plugin automatically searches your configured upload directory as well as the wp-content/image-headlines directory for valid TrueType fonts and lists those in the menu. Experiment with those fonts! CONFIGURATION ------------- Following installation you'll likely want to configure the appearance of your titles. Simply go to the Options page of your WordPress installation where you'll see a new option cunningly called "Headlines". Click it. If everything has gone well with the installation you should see a collection of options and a nifty preview image of what your current settings look like. Yeah! Note that if your preview image is showing (it should be an image with "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." in red letters with a soft gray background shadow) you are good to go. You're welcome to customize it however you wish but as far as the plugin is concerned it's a happy camper. Let's talk options. * General Configuration Really if you're up and running you have nothing much to do here. This just sets what directory the plugin will use to store the images it generates. * Font and Colors As you might imagine this section will have the greatest bearing on the appearance of your titles. You'll see a menu containing the list of available fonts and entry boxes for controlling the font size and color as well as what the background looks like. Note that all colors you see on this page must be specified in HTML color format, so #123456 or #FF0000 or even the shorthand version like #CCC. Anything else will break in fantastic and undefined ways and I will not be pleased if you ask me why your images aren't showing up and it turns out that you have GREEN in the color field. You've been warned!