Comment on SEO Silo Theme by SEO Dave.

SEO Silo Structure You’ve completely misunderstood how Stallion Responsive works (how WordPress Themes work).

To simplify the main Stallion output what we see in a browser) is controlled by the php files.

header.php is the header part of the page
content (different PHP file for each section)
sidebar.php the sidebars
footer.php the footer

The content parts are built using different files based on what section of the site is loaded.

single.php is WordPress posts main content
page.php is WordPress pages main content
categories.php are the main content of categories
tags.php for Tags

You get the idea, there’s more templates (php files) for different sections, this is how pretty much all WordPress themes work. If you want to take full advantage of WordPress templates there’s loads of tutorials about it.

When this WordPress post is loaded it’s made by using the following files header.php, sidebar.php, footer.php and single.php. Go to a category and these files are used header.php, sidebar.php, footer.php and category.php.

I’m simplifying, there’s a lot more PHP files used, but you get the idea, this is a template system and it builds the HTML you see when viewing source.

Header
Content (the PHP file used is based on the section)
Sidebars
Footer

Doesn’t matter which of the 12 layouts you choose under “Stallion Theme” >> “Layout Options” or which of the 40 colour schemes you choose under “Stallion Theme” >> “Colour Options” the HTML code we see is always the same.

How the browser renders the HTML layout, where bits are located on the page (the layout), colours for fonts etc… are set by three CSS files a layout-**.css file, a style-**.css file (for the colours) and a mobile.css file (latter for changing things in smaller mobile devices) these are all in the folder /colors/.

With most themes you just get style.css which does it all, by having so many CSS files you have more control over the output.

When you choose one of the 12 layouts under “Stallion Theme” >> “Layout Options” it chooses a specific CSS layout file (only one), the HTML or the PHP files used isn’t changed it’s always the same header, content, sidebar, footer PHP files. Same for choosing a colour scheme, there’s 40 CSS files with different CSS rules to generate different colours.

So the only thing that changes are the CSS files. One layout, one colour and the mobile.css file.

So layout option “#3 Main Content 660 left sidebar 310” (which chooses the “layout-310l.css” file to load) has got nothing at all to do with the page-front-03.php template file which is a custom Page template for creating an interesting output.

As mentioned above the HTML for a WordPress post (like this one) is built using these files.

header.php
single.php
sidebar.php
footer.php

single.php can be replaced by any of the custom page templates I’ve created or what you could create.

If you choose on the Edit Post page (edit a post) the “Post Template” >> “Front 3 – Page Content and 6 Popular Posts”. Stallion will use these PHP files to build the HTML.

header.php
page-front-03.php
sidebar.php
footer.php

If you look inside page-front-03.php the other three PHP files are referenced (loaded) there. Look for these three lines of code:

Load header.php

<?php get_header(); ?>

Load sidebar.php

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

Load footer.php

<?php get_footer(); ?>

The template file page-front-03.php includes code so 6 popular posts are loaded below main content. It’s an interesting output for a possible home page for some websites.

If you like that output, but want to alter it you can either copy page-front-03.php into the child theme folder and edit to add/remove code or copy to the child theme and rename to create a completely new template.

Rename to page-front-03-custom.php for example (call it anything you like .php)

Edit in a text editor and change the line

Template Name: Front 3 - Page Content and 6 Popular Posts

to something like

Template Name: Front 3 - Page Content and 6 Popular Posts Custom

And you’ll still have the original “Front 3 – Page Content and 6 Popular Posts” template and a new one called “Front 3 – Page Content and 6 Popular Posts Custom” which has identical features.

Now you can modify page-front-03-custom.php to add remove features.

If you know what you are doing you can built templates that don’t use all these:

header.php
content
sidebar.php
footer.php

The page-sales.php template for example only loads

page-sales.php

What I did was add the header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php code directly into page-sales.php so I could modify it.

When you understand the WordPress template system you can also make different versions of header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php. For Stallion SEO Super Comments output the templates used are

header-2.php
single-2.php
sidebar.php
footer.php

I made a copy of header.php, renamed to header-2.php. Made a copy of single.php and renamed to single-2.php.

I modified single-2.php to work with the Stallion SEO Super Comments features and near the top of single-2.php used this code to load header-2.php instead of header.php:

<?php get_header(2); ?>

In single.php you’ll find header.php is loaded using

<?php get_header(); ?>

If you want to build custom templates you can. but it’s not something I can’t tell you how to do.

It’s too complicated for example to explain how you could create header-3.php and make it so header-3.php loads different features than header.php including a completely different header: if you know what you are doing can build anything you like.

To use these advanced features you’ll either need to learn PHP and the WordPress templating system or find yourself a WordPress expert who can do it for you (I don’t have any recommendations).

The easy solution to this is install a second copy of WordPress in a sub-directory and use it for the members section like at.

## www.general-election-2010.co.uk
## www.general-election-2010.co.uk/uk-party-political-news/

Two WordPress installs, second install grabs RSS feed data related to politics.

David