Use WordPress Themes and Functions on Other PHP Pages

Free Favicon

WordPress is a great content management system but there are still times when you either just want to add a page to your website that is not a part of WordPress or when perhaps you just want to give make sure all the pages on your website whether they are in WordPress or not all have the same look and feel. Thankfully WordPress has made it easy to make WordPress functions available on other PHP pages.

I recently wanted to redo Free Favicon and make sure the blog and the website all had a new fresh look. I had a theme in mind for the blog and want to make sure the rest of the pages had the same theme and look.

The first step is to include the WordPress wp-load.php file. This is the key to using WordPress functions, like loading theme files, outside of WordPress. For Free Favicon I simply added the code to load the wp-load.php file in the header template that the site was already using by adding a line similar to the following:

include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/path to your wordpress install/wp-load.php');

Once wp-load.php was included you can access all of the WordPress functions so I could call the header and footer functions from the theme and have the site themed using the same WordPress theme the blog was using.

//call the theme header
get_header();

//call the theme footer
get_footer();

The only problem I ran into after getting the pages themed with the WordPress theme was how to change the title of the PHP pages with the new header. The original PHP pages had a section at the top of each of them that defined the title for the page. I just ran the WordPress filter wp_title and assigned the defined page titles from the PHP pages to be displayed using the WordPress theme.

function assignpagetitle() {
  global $documenttitle;
  return $documenttitle;
}
add_filter('wp_title', 'assignpagetitle');

Overall it was a pretty painless upgrade to Free Favicon, and a very easy way to make sure the whole site had a consistent look and feel. There are still some pages I left without the new theme and eventually I will probably getting around to fixing them as well.

3 Easy Tools to Name the Theme

A common question from people as they are searching for a theme for their WordPress website is what theme is ____ website using? If you know HTML/CSS it is pretty easy to look at the code and determine what the theme is and where that website got it from. If you don’t know HTML/CSS here are three easy tools that you can use online to quickly discover more about that theme.

WordPress Theme Detector

WordPress Theme Detector
Enter the URL of the WordPress website you want to find out more about the theme and this website will give you the details about the theme and occasionally some details about additional plugins on the website. The details for the plugins was not always 100% accurate but the theme detection on the sites I tried was always pretty good.

What WordPress Theme Is That

What WordPress Theme Is That
Similar to the WordPress Theme Detector above visit the site, enter URL of a WordPress website and get the theme details. Pretty much the same type of details are returned.

Theme Sniffer

Theme Sniffer
This is a little different from the other two. It is a Chrome extension that you can install and get the theme details for WordPress and Joomla based websites. Pretty handy if you are looking up themes all the time and don’t want to visit another site to do it. Just click the button in Chrome and the information is returned.

Now you know how to look up what theme websites are using without having to learn HTML/CSS. Makes it easy if you come across a theme that you really like and would like to download or buy as well.

WordPress Paradise Themes

It is possible that you landed here at WordPress Paradise looking for one of the WordPress Themes called Paradise. Makes sense really the domain name WPParadise.com is a great name for a WordPress theme. If you are looking for one of the WordPress themes called Paradise here are three possible themes that you might actually be looking for.

Paradise Premium WP Theme

Paradise ThemeForestThis theme available over at ThemeForest is a nice looking theme. Offers 16 different color combinations and a long list of features. Along with the long list of features the theme is only $40.00 and with your purchase you get the theme, 5 PSD files, all background images used in the live preview, detailed documentation and support in the support forum. Perhaps that theme will take you to WordPress paradise.

Paradise One Page Portfolio Theme

Paradise DX ThemesThis theme is not your usual WordPress theme. It is designed as a one page portfolio theme and has some nice effects. It is built using Twitter Bootstrap and looks good on both desktop and mobile devices. It will also only cost you $25.00 to purchase so it is affordable. Definately a theme to take a look. The one page website theme is really popular right now and this makes it easy to manage one using WordPress.

Paradise by WPJuices

Paradise WPJuicesThis theme called Paradise by WPJuices is the only free theme I could find titles Paradise. It is available in the WordPress themes directory and is a clean and minimalistic theme. It uses superfish menu effects, built-in pagination for post pages and has an elegant layout. If you are looking for a nice free theme it might fit your needs.


Taking your WordPress powered website to paradise does not require a theme titled paradise but if one of these themes fits your needs and works for you take advantage of one of them. The ThemeForest and DX Themes themes have more features and at their price are not going to break your bank account compared to some of the more expensive theme clubs that are available. One of the beautiful things about WordPress is how easy it is to theme your content and change your theme. This ability to easy and quickly change the look and presentation of WordPress content has helped to make WordPress the fantastic content management system that it is.

Traffica WordPress Theme

InkThemes has released the Traffic theme and it is a beautiful theme perfect for businesses and personal websites of all sizes. It is available as a free theme from the WordPress Theme repository as well as an upgraded theme directly from InkThemes. The screenshot below is the upgraded version but even the free version offers some nice features like being fully responsive so it looks good on all sizes of devices and offering eight different theme color combinations. If you purchase the upgraded version you will get support, video documentation, theme documentation and 12 color combinations to choose from. Worth taking a look at this theme from InkThemes.

Traffica WordPress Theme Interior Niche

Theme Features

  • Simple and easy to use.
  • Completely responsive.
  • Compatible with all latest browsers and latest version of WordPress.
  • You can display a maximum of six images in the slider.
  • A column feature section to present explicit feature idea or display cool professional images.
  • Blog posts image section that will consecutively display the thumbnail images of the blogs.
  • About Us section to give an overview of the company.
  • Various styling options with multiple colors.
  • Facebook like box plugin showing the popularity of your website.
  • Miscellaneous social icon integration.
  • The theme has four template i.e., Blog page, Full Width page, Contact page and Default template.
  • Service section to define various services on your website.
  • Fully widgetized sidebar.
  • Fully customized footer widgetized area.
  • Well maintained typography which exhibiting each and every element marvelously and effectively.
  • Provides separate testimonial section to display your customer’s opinion about your services.

Demo | Download

5 Favorite Free Responsive Themes

I get a lot of questions from new clients that are new to WordPress about what theme to choose. For those clients that have limited budgets it is always an interesting discussion because creating a custom theme for WordPress is a rather time consuming and therefore more expensive proposal. While I am always happy to create a custom theme for a client many just starting out just need a basic website and one of the free themes from the WordPress community is all they need to get started. For those people that jsut need a free theme to get started I always recommend that they look at a responsive theme first. That way they get not only a nice looking WordPress website for computers but also a nicer mobile and tablet experience for those visitors that primarily browse the web on their smartphones and tablets.

If you are looking for a free responsive theme for WordPress these are my top 10 favorites. With a little work you can find a nice theme that will help you get your latest WordPress project off the ground quickly.

Responsive

responsiveAs the name suggests this is a responsive theme and it offers lots of choices for a website or blog to display your content. It is regularly updated and easy for users of all levels. This is often one of the first free responsive themes I suggest people take a look at. While the image makes it look like you need a custom home page you can set it up to not use the custom home page. The colors are also very easy to change and make the theme your own.


Max Magazine

MaxIf you are looking for more of a magazine look then Max Magazine is a great responsive theme to take a look at. It has a beautiful jQuery slider, carousel posts, and can feature up to four categories on homepage. Certainly more suited to a business or news type site, although a personal site could easily use this theme as well.


Landscape

landscapeIf you are a photographer and want to show off your photos this is a great theme to do that with. Beautiful large images that you can set using featured images or insert images into posts. It is a nice clean theme that really helps show off your images. The amateur photographer clients I have worked with love it.


Scherzo

scherzoI was actually running this on my personal blog for a little while. Nice and clean, easy to read and works great no matter what device you are on. Probably best for a personal blog but could also be good for businesses. The options to have a full size page with no sidebar is great for showing off some larger photos as well.


Book Lite

book-liteAnother great personal blog theme that puts your content up front and center. It looks great on all sizes of devices and has some great typography that makes it easy to read. The image and gallery posts also look great in this theme.


There you have it, my five favorite responsive themes to get you started on your next WordPress project. If you have a favorite free responsive theme feel free to leave a comment or sign up and post in the appropriate forum and let us all know.