Title: Alternate Headers
Last modified: August 18, 2016

---

# Alternate Headers

 *  [peyotebill](https://wordpress.org/support/users/peyotebill/)
 * (@peyotebill)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/)
 * I’ve hacked away at my template (Revolution News Magazine) for an online magazine
   I’m building to create a double column feature area (www.kenalu.com). The only
   easy way I could think of to do that was to build the double column into the 
   header. Took a lot of fiddling, but I made it work. But now that double column
   appears in the pages as well, and I don’t want that.
 * It seems like the easiest way would be either to create a conditional statement
   that calls the extra code only if it’s on the home page, or to call alternative
   headers on every page but the home page. Both would work well for me, I don’t
   need the other stuff that goes along with this expanded content section (a video
   and rss email subscription) so whacking it away to the simple original header
   would be fine.
 * Only problem is I don’t know where the function get_header() lives so I can modify
   it to call alternate header files or how to make the header detect that it’s 
   on the home page.
 * Any help would be greatly appreciated. I dont’ really know php or css, I’m just
   faking it, learning as I go.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)

1 [2](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/page/2/?output_format=md)
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 *  [Kafkaesqui](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kafkaesqui/)
 * (@kafkaesqui)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660566)
 * Two ways to ‘modify’ get_header() are to 1. use the internal function it relies
   on:
 * `load_template( TEMPLATEPATH . '/custom-header-name.php' )`
 * or 2. just use PHP’s include() function.
 * (`TEMPLATEPATH` is a WP constant that defines the path to the current theme directory.)
 * Detect if on the home page:
    [http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_tags#The_Main_Page](http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_tags#The_Main_Page)
 *  [billbab](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billbab/)
 * (@billbab)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660669)
 * Thanks, I think you’ve put me on a better path. I probably should learn PHP more
   before I try to do this stuff, but I guess I’m learning by doing.
    Actually, 
   while I was hoping for a response I found and tried to use a conditional with
   if (is_home()) like this:
 * <?php
    if (is_home()) { <div id=”bigfeat”> <div class=”bigfeatleft”> <div class
   =”featured3″> <?php $recent = new WP_Query(“cat=26&showposts=1”); while($recent-
   >have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?> <h2>” rel=”bookmark”><?php the_title();?
   ></h2> <?php the_content(__(‘Read the story »’));?><div style=”clear:both;”></
   div> <?php endwhile; ?> </div> </div> <div class=”bigfeatright”> <div class=”
   video”> <h2>Featured Video</h2> <object width=”425″ height=”355″><param name=”
   movie” value=”[http://www.youtube.com/v/EfLXV5Iekxc&rel=1″></param><param](http://www.youtube.com/v/EfLXV5Iekxc&rel=1″></param><param)
   name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”[http://www.youtube.com/v/EfLXV5Iekxc&rel=1&#8243](http://www.youtube.com/v/EfLXV5Iekxc&rel=1&#8243);
   type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”300″ height=”
   216″></embed></object> </div> <div class=”newsletter”> <h2>eNews & Updates</h2
   > <p>Sign up to receive the latest breaking news, as well as all of your other
   favorite headlines!</p><form id=”searchform2″ action=”[http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverify&#8221](http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverify&#8221);
   method=”post” target=”popupwindow” onsubmit=”window.open(‘[http://www.feedburner.com&#8217](http://www.feedburner.com&#8217);,‘
   popupwindow’, ‘scrollbars=yes,width=550,height=520’);return true”><p><input type
   =”text” value=”Enter your email address…” id=”s2″ onfocus=”if (this.value == ‘
   Enter your email address…’) {this.value = ”;}” onblur=”if (this.value == ”) {
   this.value = ‘Enter your email address…’;}” name=”email”/><input type=”hidden”
   value=”[http://feeds.feedburner.com/~e?ffid=1396718&#8243](http://feeds.feedburner.com/~e?ffid=1396718&#8243);
   name=”url”/><input type=”hidden” value=”eNews Subscribe” name=”title”/><input
   type=”submit” value=”GO” id=”sbutt2″ /></p></form> </div> </div> </div> } ?>
 * But that gave me a syntax error:
 * Parse error: parse error, unexpected ‘<‘ in /home/content/p/e/y/peyotebill/html/
   kenalu/wp-content/themes/revolution-magazine/header.php on line 318
 * So I looked at some other examples and realized that the HTML statements inside
   php code generally have echo statements. So I surrounded all the HTML with Echo’s,
   and got pretty much the same errors. I know you didn’t sign up to teach newbies
   PHP, but do you have any suggestions?
 *  [Adam Brown](https://wordpress.org/support/users/adamrbrown/)
 * (@adamrbrown)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660670)
 * Hard to say since you didn’t wrap your code in `backticks` before pasting it,
   but it looks like the only problem is that you didn’t close your php tag. At 
   the beginning of your code, find this:
 *     ```
       <?php
       if (is_home()) {
       <div id="bigfeat">
       ```
   
 * and change it to
 *     ```
       <?php
       if (is_home()) {
       ?>
       <div id="bigfeat">
       ```
   
 *  [billbab](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billbab/)
 * (@billbab)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660675)
 * Really? I would thing the statement would have to be inside the PHP tag to execute.
 *  [Adam Brown](https://wordpress.org/support/users/adamrbrown/)
 * (@adamrbrown)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660676)
 * `<div>` is html, not PHP, so sending it to the PHP processor causes a parse error.
 *  [billbab](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billbab/)
 * (@billbab)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660690)
 * I pretty much suspected that, I thought that was why you wrap them in echo statements
   like:
 * <?php
    if (is_home()) { echo ‘<div id=”bigfeat”>’;
 * I’ll try your suggestion though.
 *  [Adam Brown](https://wordpress.org/support/users/adamrbrown/)
 * (@adamrbrown)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660701)
 * That’s also an option, but you didn’t use echo statements either in your original
   code.
 *  [Kafkaesqui](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kafkaesqui/)
 * (@kafkaesqui)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660704)
 * PHP 101…
 * This:
 *     ```
       <?php if (is_home()) { ?>
       <div id="bigfeat">
       <?php } ?>
       ```
   
 * Is much the same as:
 *     ```
       <?php
       if (is_home()) {
       echo '<div id="bigfeat">';
       } ?>
       ```
   
 * For the PHP interpreter, anything that falls within the if statement (i.e. between‘{‘
   and ‘}’) is processed. But since it lies outside the <php ?> tags, the interpreter
   assumes it’s just output.
 *  [billbab](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billbab/)
 * (@billbab)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660705)
 * Tried the change you suggested, got: Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in/
   home/content/p/e/y/peyotebill/html/kenalu/wp-content/themes/revolution-magazine/
   header.php on line 91
 * There are only 90 lines in header.php so I assume it’s looking at the next line
   of home.php after the function is called, no idea where it’s finding a ‘$’
 *  [Kafkaesqui](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kafkaesqui/)
 * (@kafkaesqui)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660706)
 * Paste up your header.php template here
 * [http://wordpress.pastebin.com/](http://wordpress.pastebin.com/)
 * And link back with the url provided for it.
 *  [billbab](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billbab/)
 * (@billbab)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660707)
 * Hey, it works, how cool is that. Somehow my formatting got hosed a little, but
   I’ll find that problem.
 * I hadn’t enclosed the final curly bracket in a PHP statement as:
    <?php } ?>
 *  Thanks so much for putting up with my 101 question.
 * One last question. why would one elect to use the
    echo ‘<div id=”bigfeat”>’;
   approach? It seems to be the common way to stuff html inside php
 *  [billbab](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billbab/)
 * (@billbab)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660708)
 * Oh, and is there a book you recommend. I’m reading a number of online PHP and
   CSS references, but most seem to talk only about syntax. I dug into the W3C tutorials
   a lot before I asked the question and looked at a lot of sample code in the WordPress
   documentation. Didn’t really get close.
 * The W3C examples seem particularly unhelpful and kind of ugly.
 *  [billbab](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billbab/)
 * (@billbab)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660709)
 * Here’s the pastebin url
    [http://wordpress.pastebin.com/m40b03b6e](http://wordpress.pastebin.com/m40b03b6e)
 *  [Kafkaesqui](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kafkaesqui/)
 * (@kafkaesqui)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660710)
 * “_why would one elect to use the echo ‘<div id=”bigfeat”>’; approach?_“
 * In most cases it’s up to the inidividual coder, though of course how the code
   is implemented can sometimes dictate the need.
 * Around here we tend to minimalize the use of echo or printf or whatnot, to keep
   the code portions as readable as possible to anyone not so well versed in PHP
   or programming in general. We don’t support a blogging tool meant only for programmers.`;)`
 *  [Kafkaesqui](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kafkaesqui/)
 * (@kafkaesqui)
 * [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/#post-660711)
 * Sorry, can’t recommend a good tutorial book or online ref. I think the last ‘
   learning’ text I picked up was for Perl 4. `:p`
 * I’m sure others here can recommend a few.
 * Digging through the WordPress Lessons can provide you tidbits from a WordPress
   perspective:
 * [http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons](http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons)
 * Perhaps it’s time for a “PHP for the WordPress user” doc…

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)

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The topic ‘Alternate Headers’ is closed to new replies.

 * 16 replies
 * 4 participants
 * Last reply from: [Adam Brown](https://wordpress.org/support/users/adamrbrown/)
 * Last activity: [18 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/alternate-headers/page/2/#post-660727)
 * Status: not resolved

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