pilkster.com

This theme might look pretty basic… that’s because it is!

This theme has been designed to be quickly added to any WordPress site with no customisation. There is no need to alter header images because there aren’t any… like Kubrick it relies on text generated from your blogs title and description, and also from the category and post descriptions.

Adsense is integrated (3 units per page, and one linkunit ~ the maximum Google allows), and the theme also includes Adsense for search in place of the standard WordPress search function. Of course, it is easy to switch out Adsense for any other advertising program you may wish to use, the banners are standard sizes.

Some basic SEO has been carried out… the “title” and “h1″ tags contain the most relevant information… on a post page, the post title is used, on a category the category title is used etc. This should give Search Engines a better understanding of your page, and hence an improved ranking for your page. Another often overlooked advantage of correct use of tags is that your result in the SERPs will be formed correctly, so instead of your websites name (eg. pilkster.com) being used in every result, the page title (eg. SEO Adsense WordPress Theme) or category title will be used. This is a much more useful and appealing result for the searcher.

This theme is also compatible with my Amazon Plugin For WordPress.

Adsense is located in the following files; header.php (728×15 linkunit), footer.php (728×90 adunit), sidebar.php (336×280 adunit, 160×600 adunit).

Adsense for search is located in searchform.php.

The theme is intentionally basic and should be simple to build up and out from. If you use this theme as-is, or build a new theme from it, please let me know by commenting on this post.

Download SEO Adsense WordPress Theme

Farscape Vault uses the ‘akhdian’ theme, which works without modification.

Nashville Rhythm uses the ‘Leone’ theme, which works without modification.
Agile Fox uses the ‘Almost Spring’ theme which works without modification.

About Cruises uses the ‘LastRegrets’ theme which works without modification.
ZXDJ uses the Blix theme, although its not quite perfect.

Flipside Records uses the ‘Girl in Green’ theme, which requires <div class=”entry”> to be appended to the amazon/script/header.php file.

Due to popular demand from some of my pals over at DP here is the all-new super-duper Pilkster.com Amazon plugin for WordPress (example). I don’t usually release my scripts to the public, so please help me out if I haven’t packaged it right… also, you guys are beta-testing this thing. No warranty expressed or implied.

I want to give credit to the original creator of the ASM2 script which this plugin is built from – freekrai.net

I would really appreciate the following:

1. A link to pilkster.com from any site using the plugin.
2. A comment on this blog letting me know the URL of your site.

Prior to installation you will need an Amazon developer key.

Installation instructions:

1. Download the script
2. Edit /script/config.php with your information
3. Upload to the root of your site
4. Navigate to http://yoursite.com/amazon/ and check all is good
5. Ensure you have a link to pilkster.com
6. Post a comment on this blog to tell everyone how great your site is!

Known problems:

Depending on your version of WordPress you may the following php error:

Warning: extract(): First argument should be an array in /home/yoursite/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 2109

To fix:

open wp-includes/functions.php
goto to line number 2109
you will find something like

extract($wp_query->query_vars);

and change it to:

if (is_array($wp_query->query_vars)) extract($wp_query->query_vars);

Many WordPress themes will give problems in use due to the way they have been constructed. This will be covered in a seperate post. Please let me know which themes work out OK for you, and which give problems. Also, if you make a fix to a theme please send me a copy and I will share it through the site.

I use Amazon’s web services on many of my WordPress websites. Originally I was using MrRat’s excellent Amazon Product Feed (APF), a Perl/CGI script, and hand-coding the templates to match the WordPress theme for each website.

I needed a neater and more time-effective solution, so after having a look at the various available scripts I decided that a hacked up version of freekrai’s ASM2 would better suit my needs, especially as it is written in php.

The modified script isn’t a true plugin, it simply pulls in the active WordPress theme. This can lead to occasional problems if the theme hasn’t been coded correctly.

Installing the script is simple. Upload the files to your server and set a couple of values in the config file and that’s it!

Some small bug fixes to the original freekrai script have also been implemented.

WordPress sites running the Amazon plugin include:

Astral Health, (view store)

BlogMeDo, a Beatles fansite

Soul Trekker, a Star Trek fansite (view store)