SimonJ

Ok, here are my suggestion.

I now only use wordpress Mu and I work as a web magazine director, just to say that I spend my whole days in the wordpress kitchen for years now… 🙂

[1] I totaly add my vote for the domain mapping feature for blogs.

[2] One thing I always wanted to have in wordpress Mu is a kind of “default settings interface” where you can adjust ALL the default settings for new blogs. By all I mean “all”, i.e. Media sizes, permalinks structure, etc.

[3] On the same topic, I always wanted to have an “update all blogs settings interface” where I can change all the settings for every blogs. Or better : a “check list” form where I can choose wich blog to update. Here again, by “all”, I mean All…

[4] Custom fields… I would like to have all the fields on the edit post screen once they are created, not in a drop down list… Or better, an option to choose if a custom field should always be visible outside the dropdown list.

I often use custom fields for differents information about an article that we always use (photo credit for instance)…

Or even better! A way to make some custom fields updated when we update post with no need to press the update custom field button itself.

And in my crazyest dreams, I would like to choose if a custom field should only be visible for the admin, and not for the authors!

[5] A “search all blogs” feature in wordpress itself, not in a plugin.

[6] A possibility to merge all the blogs, or some choosen blogs in a common RSS feed.

[7] Another attribute for blogs, not just “public”, “adult” and “spam”… I would like to have some kind of “club select”, for some featured blogs.

[8] Not so urgent in my point of view, but I think it will be important in a near future : A multi-database feature supported by auttomatic and the wordpress team.

===

Thats it. Keep on the good work. We choosed wordpress 5 years ago and I’m sure now we made the best possible choice for our web magazine.

@+

S.

Ok, so If you upload manually your thumbs in a thumb folder via ftp, then, go for the custom field solution :

<?php
$my_thumb = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'your_thumb_cutsom_field', true);
if ($my_thumb == '') {
echo '';
}
else {
echo  '<img src="'.your_thumb_cutsom_field.'" alt="" />';
}
?>

This code will look if there is a value in the custom field “your-thumb_custom_field”. If so, it will outbut the value in a “img src=…” html tag. If no it will output nothing.

So, in your_custom_field, you enter the name of the image file as a value when you write a post : thumb_image.jpg

Then, use this code within the loop to display all thumbs from a given category :

<?php query_posts('cat=XX'); ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php
$my_thumb = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'your_thumb_cutsom_field', true);
if ($my_thumb == '') {
echo '';
}
else {
echo  '<img src="'.your_thumb_cutsom_field.'" alt="" />';
}
?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

—

If you do it manually, there is another possibility : to name your image/thumbs with the post-slug of the post and then output the slug in an img tag… This way, you don’t even need a custom field and it keeps your database light… I use it a lot, tell me so if you’re interested in such a function.

S.

Hum. From what I can tell, the content of this sidebar is defined by the widget section of your admin panel.

And it seems to me, if you look in your index.php, that everything after :

<div class="clear"></div>
</div>
<!-- /Content -->

Is in footer.php…

(look in your html source… and compare with your index.php file…)

But… The footer of this theme is encoded. Is the second sidebar defined there? Could be possible…

I STRONGLY DISCOURAGE you to use this theme. DO NO USE themes with encoded footer.

Find another real free theme.

S.