Forum

I'm tearing my hair out!
Unbelievably poor documentation. I'm trying to place this code:
?php dynamic_content_gallery();
in my home.php to start-up this plugins display on my home page. In the configuration documentation, it says:
"…the answer is simple – place the code in an appropriate place in home.php."

I'm using Genesis plus a child theme, which does have a home.php file. It's a short enough code, but the above line assumes that we non-coders know where "an appropriate place" in the code is. Since the documentation doesn't actually tell us what that appropriate place might look like, I have tried placing it in 6 or 7 different spots at random. None have worked to display it, and all break the code of my home page with a parsing error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '<' in /home/stuart2/public_html/wp-content/themes/lifestyle/home.php

C'mon guys, lots of us aren't coders, you can't just sat "an appropriate place," that's lame. Tell me exactly where to put this please. Thank You

Thanks for responding Ade.

I am using Lifestyle 2.0

I got the DCG to display on my home page by placing it here:

http://screencast.com/t/1K2mHM1mMk

<?php
remove_action( 'genesis_loop', 'genesis_do_loop' );
add_action( 'genesis_loop', 'lifestyle_home_loop_helper' );
/**
* Add widget support for homepage. If no widgets active, display the default loop.
*
*/
function lifestyle_home_loop_helper() {
dynamic_content_gallery();
if ( is_active_sidebar( 'home' ) || is_active_sidebar( 'home-left' ) || is_active_sidebar( 'home-right' ) ) {

if ( is_active_sidebar( 'home-left' ) ) {
echo '

';

It kept giving me syntax errors for the "<" symbols and the ?php, so as you will notice, I had to truncate those things off and just enter dynamic_content_gallery();, then it worked.

Even though the DCG is displaying properly, my lack of coding knowledge and the fact that I had to alter your original coded so much, makes me worried that the code in my home.php isn't "clean" and possibly bad for SEO.
So now that you know my these is Lifestyle 2.0, perhaps you can tell me if there's anywhere in the home.php which is more correct placement, and where I can enter your entire line of code, not a chopped-off version.

Thanks for your time.

Thanks very much Ade

"It kept giving me syntax errors for the "<" symbols and the ?php…"

"Yes, it would do so because the php opening tag is already present a little higher up the page. If you are already within PHP tags, you don't add the PHP tags again."

See, now that's the kind of thing us non-coders simply wouldn't know. Personally, I think tons of Wordpress users don't know much CSS or .php code…that's one of the main reasons Wordpress and plugins were invented in the first place…so non-coders could quickly put up very professional looking blogs.

Knowing that, I would suggest that, in the place where you say "…the answer is simple – place the code in an appropriate place in home.php.", you add, "If you don't know about php tags or aren't sure where to put this line, here's some examples (show examples) or here's a link to a .php tutorial (show link) or ask me on the forum."

We're just Wordpress bloggers trying to fancy up our sites with a cool plugin. When you say "Just place this code in your home.php" without more guidance, I think you assume too much…just my two cents

But you do give tons of documentation and I appreciate your time responding to me about this. Thanks

I actually did try to drag the DCG Widget into my widgets. Obviously, I didn't want to drag it into one of the sidebar widgets, and in many themes there are no widget dropdowns for the body content area, just sidebar widgets.

But in Genesis>Lifestyle, there are 3 widget areas that relate to the body area of the page – Home, Home Left and Home Right. I tried dropping the DCG widget in each one…and everytime, even though the DCG displayed properly under my header, it also wiped out all the content and post excerpts that had been on the home page, leaving just blank white-space there. Those things were displaying fine on the page prior to dragging the DCG widget into place, and as far as I know, I didn't do anything weird to my body content area code to cause any conflict.

So I had to try the .php code. I'm glad I "stumbled" into the perfect truncation of your code line and the perfect placement of it . But even though I agree with your assessment that erecting a Wordpress blog is not always code-less work, and therefore it's good for even code-o-phobes to learn some basic CSS and php, you still could put a little more guidance in your code-placement instructions than just "– place the code in an appropriate place in home.php." I think my suggestions above are simple to add to your documentation and will be helpful to a lot of people…don't you want to be more helpful and clear if you can be ?? OR do you just want to argue about how much code we should all know before we venture into basic blog creation and plug-in adds.

Keep in mind there are many, many themes these days, already complete with slider carousels and other design-enhancing plugins, that have so many option tabs right there in the wp-admin dashboard (even TwentyTen/Weaver has this,) you can build a very beautiful and flashy site without ever going into the CSS or php. More & more people are getting used to this type of theme & dashboard interface, so it's likely you will keep running into bloggers who just never learned much code and need more than "just drop this in an appropriate place in your code." Have a little compassion for us and make it clearer…or don't…it's your call.