Thesis and Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin (YAFPP)

There are a large number of plugins that simply don’t work with Thesis for one reason or another – particularly widgetised plugins – but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use them.

If you don’t know much about the thesis framework (no, it’s not a theme) then you’re likely to be unfamiliar with hooks. If that’s the case, it’s probably best to tune out now.

Thesis hooks allow you to run custom functions and render the output in various areas throughout your page. Hooks are a little tricky at first if you’re not familiar with PHP but it assist with fast page loads it makes customisation a breeze. I’ll be writing a lot about Thesis in coming weeks (mostly in response to countless support emails I receive).

Despite the fact that I’m an affiliate for Thesis, I don’t actively encourage people to use the framework simply because it’s beyond the limited technical comprehension of the majority of users. I’ve had this (and a couple of other) sites running on Thesis for some time and I still haven’t found the time to seriously customise. I normally recommend people get a well written free theme or a premium theme so they can concentrate on what matters most… content.

One reader noticed I have the Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin (YAFPP) installed on my thesis theme and asked how it was done (since their installation generated the same errors as mine did).

Simply put, you can call the function via a thesis hook and render the content anywhere a hook permits.

Navigate your way to wp-content/themes/thesis/custom and open up custom_functions.php for editing. Add these five lines at the end of the page. Save and close. Note that you must have the plugin installed and activated or you will simply end up with more errors as your page calls for an undefined function.

function get_featured_stuff() {
echo '


Featured Posts
';
get_featured_posts();
echo '



';
}
add_action('thesis_hook_after_sidebar_2', 'get_featured_stuff');

In my case (as I’ve done on this site), I’ve used the hook thesis_hook_after_sidebar_2 but you could use any hook to place the featured posts in an area that fits the look and feel of your site. My code will, of course, render the content at the end of sidebar number two.

If you liked this article, you may also like:

1. Thesis and the Facebook Like Plugin
2. Adding New Widget Areas in Thesis
3. WordPress Post Missed Schedule
4. Disabling and Deleting WordPress Post Revisions
5. Adsense Code within Content

Tagged as: php, thesis, Wordpress