On the Stallion Colour Options page you have settings related to the 24 Stallion colour schemes and the hundreds of banner and header images.
Stallion Theme Colour : Choose from one of the 24 Stallion theme colours. You can test the colours back clicking the links under the “Stallion Colour Switcher” menu on the right of this site.
Banners On/Off : Turn the rotating Stallion banners on or off and select their location, settings include: Top Banners ON, Middle Banners ON, Top and Middle Banners ON or All Banners OFF.
Top Banner Set : Choose a Stallion banner set from the built in and custom (see later) banner sets for the top banner area.
Top Banner Set Size : If you are selecting a built in Stallion banner set leave at 10, if you’ve built your own custom banner set select the number of banners you made.
Middle Banner Set : Choose a Stallion banner set from the built in and custom (see later) banner sets for the middle banner area (located between the 5 and 6 post on archive pages).
Middle Banner Set Size : If you are selecting a built in Stallion banner set leave at 10, if you’ve built your own custom banner set select the number of banners you made.
Header Image On/Off : Turn the Stallion header image on/off.
Header Image : Choose a Stallion header image, there’s 36 built in header images and twenty free spaces for your custom header images, ten custom jpg and ten custom gif.
Stallion 2011 Header Image Sets : Stallion 6.1+ includes the option for a large 1000px by 288px header image. The Stallion 2011 Header area is based on the new WordPress Default TwentyEleven themes header system with improvements. In TwentyEleven there’s 8 built in images and the option to upload one image, that’s it. In Stallion there’s “Stallion 2011 Header sets” each with 8 images. In Stallion 6.1 there’s the header images from TwentyEleven (called TwentyEleven) plus a Stallion set of 8 header images called Mixture. There’s also 10 custom slots (each capable of holding 8 images, so 80 more in total) available for your 1000px by 288px wide header images. Custom sets will be sold via this site soon.
When the Stallion 2011 Header is turned on (via Stallion Layout Options page) select a Stallion 2011 Header Image Set here and go to “Appearance >> Header” to select which images to show, rotate etc…
Composite Screenshot of the Stallion 2011 Money Header Image Set
The money header image set is one of 7 free built-in header image sets, there are custom folders to add your own as well.
Background Image : go to “Appearance >> Background” to upload a background image.
Featured Posts Slideshow
There are a variety of settings for the Featured Posts Slideshow, this Stallion 6.1+ feature allows you to upload and associate a large image to a post you wish to feature on the home and other archive pages. See the home page of this site for an example, when a post is set as featured it will become part of the scroller. The slideshow includes two types of effects, there are way too many combinations to explain here, try them out and decide which ones you like.
Featured Image and Thumbnails Admin : This adds two new columns to the admin pages for showing static pages and blog posts. The columns show a small 75px by 75px thumbnail of the Featured Image and Stallion Thumbnail that is used by the featured slideshow, the thumbnails on archive pages and the featured images used by the Stallion 2011 Header and Photo Nav Menu. Basically makes it easier to keep track of which posts and pages you have added featured and Stallion thumbnails too (has no impact on what your visitors see).
Adding Custom Stallion Header Images
There are 20 free image slots for your custom header images, if you are familiar with using FTP programs you’ll find this really easy to use.
Using a program like PhotoShop create a header image with dimensions 1000px by 130px (you can have the height of the image up to 150px if you don’t want the themes header borders to show). The image can either be a jpg or a gif (with gif’s you have the option of adding animation). Name the file one of these:
JPG : c1.jpg, c2.jpg, c3.jpg, c4.jpg, c5.jpg... c10.jpg
GIF : c1.gif, c2.gif, c3.gif, c4.gif, c5.gif... c10.gif
Using an FTP program like Filezilla (it’s free) connect to your sites server and upload the file(s) into the folder:
/wp-content/themes/stallion-seo-theme/headers/
Go to the Stallion Colour Options page and select the appropriate image under the Header Image selector.
Save Options
Adding Custom Stallion Banner Image Sets
There are 5 free banner set slots for your custom banner image sets, if you are familiar with using FTP programs you’ll find this really easy to use.
Using a program like PhotoShop create a banner images with dimensions 560px by 120px. The banner images must be jpg format : landscape-*.jpg where * is a number 1, 2, 3 etc…
Always start with landscape-1.jpg and work your way up until you have the number of banners you want for a set. If you built a custom banner set with 5 images you’d have:
landscape-1.jpg
landscape-2.jpg
landscape-3.jpg
landscape-4.jpg
landscape-5.jpg
There is no limit to the number of custom banners you can add to a set.
Using an FTP program like Filezilla (it’s free) connect to your sites server and upload the file(s) into the folder:
/wp-content/themes/stallion-seo-theme/landscape/custom-01/
For a second set upload to :
/wp-content/themes/stallion-seo-theme/landscape/custom-02/
There are 5 of these custom banner folders, so you can add 5 sets.
Go to the Stallion Colour Options page and select the appropriate custom banner set under the Banner Set selector. Also type in the size of the banner set in the Banner Set Size box, if your set includes 5 banners, type 5.
Save Options
How to Make the Banners into a Clickbale Custom Ad Banner
This isn’t possible without editing the Stallion themes code, but there’s a built in widget area that can replace this rotating banner area. It’s independent of the rotating banners, so you can have the rotating banners with another banner above them (which would look awful) so I’m assuming you only want a clickable banner.
On the Stallion Colour Options page turn banners off.
Build a banner link with this sort of format:
<div class="alcenter">
<a href="http://www.domain.com/"><img src="http://www.domain.com/wp-content/uploads/my-banner-image.jpg" alt="Short Keyword Rich Text About Banner" width="560" /></a>
</div>
Replace http://www.domain.com/ with where you want the link to go to. Replace http://www.domain.com/wp-content/uploads/my-banner-image.jpg with the location of your banner image (name it what you like, put it where you like using FTP). the image should be around 560px wide and whatever height works (I’d keep it between 60px and 200px).
Go to “Appearance >> Widgets”.
On the right open up the “Banner Ad Widget” widget area and drag and drop a “Text” widget into that area.
If you have the WP Expander Plugin installed and want this ad to delay open drag and drop a “WP-Expander” widget instead and set the time delay (in seconds).
Copy and paste your banner code into the form that opens (don’t add a title to the widget, it won’t look right).
If you have everything right you’ll have a clickable banner ad where the rotating banners used to be.
Website - WordPress SEO
75 responses to Stallion Theme Banners and Header Image
what extention should I give for the header images ?
Hi Dave,
I’m just working to set the header image, what should be the extension of the jpg picture to show up in the “Colour Options”, “Header Image”, “custom 1″ choice? I tried to name for “landscape-1.jpeg” like on the banner, or “custom 1 .jpg” but it’s not working. Than I renamed the orange flower picture “1.jpg”, and I named my picture to “1.jpg”. Now I select the orange flower in the header option and it’s showing my picture
Just please let me know what should I originally name the .jpg file for, it would be more simple.
Thank you!
Gabor
Stallion Theme Banners and Header Image
Stallion custom headers installation
There’s 10 custom header slots, 5 are jpg 5 are gif.
Format
c1.jpg
c2.jpg
c3.jpg
c4.jpg
c5.jpg
c1.gif
c2.gif
c3.gif
c4.gif
c5.gif
Upload them to
/wp-content/themes/stallion-seo-theme/headers/
using an FTP program and select the relevant custom header on the options page.
By having the 10 custom slots you can keep the built in header images as well in the same installation.
David
Hi David,
Fast answer! Did not even refreshed the page to se yours before I wrote the above
Thank you.
Gabor
header image extention
Hi Dave,
Pls disregard the former message. I was browsing on Caleb’s site and found the image extension “c1.jpg”.
Thanks.
Gabor
Couple questions
I was changing my site over to the stallion theme in fire fox and had my seoquake on was doing a site and seoquake had on the links setting 53-20 and as soon as I active the stallion theme it went to 1-4 does that mean I have to start all over on the links? Will They come back? I tested all the settings nothing seem to work.
Also I have a weight loss blogs and I liked the exercise banner is there a way to transfer those images over to the stallion theme?
Glenn
Stallion Theme Banners and Header Image
Using Talian Theme Banners with the Stallion Theme
Not familiar with SEOquake, so don’t know what it means.
I’ve used different banners for Stallion because though we got some of the images for the banners from public domains sources, didn’t keep a note of where from, so to be safe (copyright wise) started again (you will see in each banner set with Stallion a text file describing the copyright info).
There’s no reason why you can’t use the Talian banners with Stallion, they use the same filename format, same system etc…
Take the images you want from the Talian zip file (under the folder /banners/ and put them in one of the custom folders under /landscape/, select that custom set from the Stallion options page.
Note: changed the folder from /banners/ in Talian to /landscape/ in Stallion because some ad blocking software was blocking the banner images because of the folder name! Must have assumed anything in a folder called /banners/ was ad banners!
David
Stallion Theme Colours, Banners and Header Image
Header image as title link
Hi David, having a blast here finally getting around to implementing the Stallion theme. Some great features and continuing the good work you did on the Talian themes.
One question though–is there an option for making the header image–(or even a piece of it–ie the upper left corner where the graphical/text part will be located)–clickable as the title link?
Ideally just the logo part would be the link, but I’m guessing I’d then need to insert the logo separate from the banner.
Have been hunting around but can’t seem to find anything in the Stallion WordPress menus.
I’m sure you’ve been keeping busy with all of this but many thanks in advance for your time.
Erik
Stallion Theme Banners and Header Image
Header Image as Clickable Link
What you want is not built into Stallion, but I have come across the concept before. Was about to give an answer that would have you digging through the CSS and template files for hours, but then realised there’s an easier way
You can disable the site title link on the header area via the Stallion themes options page which means the first part is built into Stallion.
Second part is build some code with the image within it to replace the link you just removed and use CSS to place the code where you want it.
I already use this concept with the navigation menu so should be relatively easy to adapt.
Make yourself an image link within a div with a class=”headerimageclick” and add it to the footer.php file just above the end /body tag.
Add some CSS to the main style.css file
.headerimageclick {
position: absolute;
top: 50px;
left: 20px;
width: 500px;
z-index: 100;
}
Play around with the top, left and width px sizes to get the positioning right.
This will position the code within the div tag 50px from the top of the page and 20px from the left (you might not need width, set it as the width of the image).
You’ll be able to use this technique with the built in header images as well, so you can have a header image and on top of that your clickable image link.
I’ve not tested this code, but I’ve used similar so should work.
David
Stallion Theme Colours, Banners and Header Image
Header logo link
David–thank you. Looks like a pretty simple solution. It’s getting late but I will try to implement it soon. Again, appreciate the help. Your responsiveness and support on this theme has been simply great.
Erik
Stallion theme H1 on blog title image
Dave, one quick follow-up to this question of a couple months back on using a header image in place of the text blog title.
I implemented my custom image as you explained, situated it, and everything looked good. But when I ran a search spider simulator on it, I didn’t see any H1 (I’ve since removed the image and just have a text title up again for now).
Could there be some sort of description or title I neglected to enter somewhere in the Stallion or WP control panel, or is this perhaps handled by adding in some code somewhere? I know the H1 tag is very important so wanted to make sure I fixed this.
Many thanks and all best,
Erik
Stallion WordPress Theme Colours
Stallion SEO Theme and Search Engine Optimized H1 Headers
The Stallion theme has optimized H1 headers for all page types.
For blog Posts, static Pages, Categories, Tags and Search Results the H1 is located just below the rotating banner images.
For the home page and dated archives it’s the title of the site located within the header. On the other page types the title of the site has no header (just a link).
This is pretty much the perfect automated H1 header setup as long as when you name parts of a site SEO is taken into account (call your site “My New Site” it’s not going to rank for much), the home page uses the name of the site, categories, tags search results are a H1 header and for pages and posts the title of the post is the H1 header.
If you remove the code for the title of the site (replace with an image link) you’ll loose the H1 header for the home page and dated archives. Since the dated archives have about as much SEO value as a dead fish, you don’t loose much there
but you would loose your built in H1 home page header.
Ideally you’d remedy this by adding it back in somewhere else.
If you use a static front page the home page will be like a Static Page and will have a H1 header below the banner images, (see the home page of the Stallion site for an example) so no need to add an H1 header anywhere else.
If you use the default home page with the standard post archives there will be no H1 header (as you found). You could add it back in with some conditional home page code.
<?php if (is_page("archives") || is_year() || is_month() || is_day() || is_home() || is_404() || is_author()) { ?><h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1><?php } ?>
This code is copied from the header.php template file
You could put this in your index.php template file just above
<div id="post-entry">You might need to add some relevant css to make it look right (not tested).
Adding the option to remove the site title was a last minute idea, so didn’t cross my mind to re-add the H1 header, will see if I can automate this in a future update.
David
Stallion Colours, Banners and Header Images
Stallion header element H1
Hi David, thanks for this idea, I tried what you suggested. I found that it does in fact re-introduce the H1 as you said it would.
The problem is that it also displays a text link with my blog title right above the first post entry. So it doesn’t seem to do what I was hoping (ie, just the H1 attached to the header image on those select pages you mentioned above-main index, etc).
I know you have a lot on your plate, and that you said you may address this in an upcoming update. So I can certainly hold out for that update if that’s the case.
Thanks again, and I do think that header image option with the H1 value would be a great in-menu addition for a future version of Stallion. I’d love to have the added visual punch of a nice design element like a clickable custom logo header on my site, but I definitely don’t want to lose the SEO value of the H1 on the main index and other pages.
Appreciate all your hard work.
Cheers,
Erik
WordPress Theme Header Images
Hidden H1 Headers Associated with Logos via CSS
The H1 code above was just to replicate the lost H1 header for SEO reasons on the home page which is the code above.
You could also use
<?php if (is_page("archives") || is_year() || is_month() || is_day() || is_home() || is_404() || is_author()) { ?><h1><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></h1><?php } ?>This would use the name of the site in a H1 but not clickable, but still visible.
To use a clickable logo associated with a hidden H1 header would require a CSS technique that hides the link behind the image while keeping it clickable and in some cases could be seen as SEO blackhat.
If you have a really nice logo that says something like Amish America there’s no problem using a hidden H1 header link that would include the phrase Amish America because to the visitor there’s no real difference between a big H1 text and a big logo with the same message.
In comparison using the same technique but instead of a logo that says Amish America is shows says farmland it’s a bit SEO blackhat to use Amish America as the hidden H1 because the logo doesn’t match the H1 headers content.
It’s one of those SEO grey areas where you have to look at it from the perspective of a competitor reporting you to Google for hidden content (the text/link is hidden) and you being able to explain it to Google in a way they’ll see it as you aren’t adding elements not related to the logo: note: you wouldn’t actually get to explain it to Google (they wouldn’t ask why have you done this before considering adding a penalty), so if they look at your site it needs to be obvious it’s not trying to game Google. The first example above you’d be fine, the second example would be iffy.
Hesitant to use something like this with Stallion because people make mistakes. I’ll add I’ve never used this technique on my own sites because of the potential SEO risks, I’ve always used a visible H1 header.
David
Stallion WordPress Theme Colours
H1 indent for blog title?
David, thanks for the answer on this. I will ruminate on it. Would love to be able to use my logo along with an H1 but am always wary of getting on the wrong side of the law
I’m definitely not trying anything dodgy, just want my H1 to match my blog title/logo. I can understand your not wanting to expose Stallion users to something that’s potentially risky.
But I guess it sounds like you are saying that as long as I keep my H1 the same as my site title, I should be okay. I’ve also heard of using a technique I believe where you indent the H1 like -9999 or something, but wasn’t sure if that wasn’t grey or black area. Sort of seemed like it would be, but again I am a novice here.
Stallion Theme Colours, Banners and Header Image Options
Hiding Text Behind an Image using Visibility Hidden CSS Code
SEO wise it’s in the greyhat area, all depends on your intentions and implementation.
The SEO test should always be if a Google reviewer looked at your site would they have a problem understanding what you are doing AND will that person consider it acceptable.
For example if you took a screenshot of your home page header area as it is now and cut out the text Amish America and made a Stallion Header image from it, turned off the title via the Stallion options (so “Amish America” text at the top would be gone) it would for all intense and purposes look exactly the same as it does now, but you’ve lost the H1 header on the home page.
Would you see a reasonable person having a problem with instead of turning off the header title (Amish America) instead you kept the text in a H1 header and hid it?
The justification for this is you want the text Amish America, but you want it in image format so you can make it pretty
and the image that will contain the pretty text is served as a background image via CSS : a background image is basically invisible to search engines, you can’t add relevance to the image by adding alt text as you would an image you’d add to a post.
SEO wise I think that’s acceptable as long as the rest of the site is SEO whitehat. If you run a site where you tip toe that fine line between whitehat SEO and blackhat SEO there’s a point where though each little SEO technique used separately shouldn’t cause a Google penalty, do enough and a Google manual review might decide as a whole it deserves a penalty (I don’t think you run your site that way, so not an issue IMO).
The Stallion theme is a reasonable step away from the blackhat SEO line, there’s the comment author links that look like text links, but aren’t (SEO wise same impact as having nofollow links without damaging the site by deleting link benefit) and I have sites that’s run that code for years with no problems (some of the sites have had manual Google reviews: one was even temporarily penalized when I added some thin affiliate content, the site recovered soon after removing the thin affiliate content).
If you want to make the change I’d advise the following, make sure the text Amish America is of reasonable font in the image, to be safe it really should include that text, you’d be pushing it if the image showed a stereotypical Amish family on a horse and cart near farm land.
Remove the home page link code from the header.php and header2.php files.
Change
<?php if(st_title_hide()==1){ ?><?php if (is_page("archives") || is_year() || is_month() || is_day() || is_home() || is_404() || is_author()) { ?><h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1><?php } ?><?php if (is_category() || is_single() || is_page() || is_search()) { ?><span><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></span><?php } ?>
<?php if ( function_exists('is_tag')){ ?><?php if (is_tag()) { ?><span><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></span><?php } ?>
<?php } ?><?php } ?>
to
<?php if(st_title_hide()==1){ ?><?php if (is_page("archives") || is_year() || is_month() || is_day() || is_home() || is_404() || is_author()) { ?><h1><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></h1><?php } ?><?php } ?><?php } ?>
edit the css file for the colour scheme you are using (ie style-simple.css)
Change
.h1disc h1, .h1disc span {font-size: 1.3em;
font-weight: normal;
width: 640px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
}
to
.h1disc h1, .h1disc span {font-size: 1.3em;
font-weight: normal;
width: 640px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
visibility:hidden;
}
These code changes will remove the link part of the blog title text link leaving only a H1 header with the blog name as the text. This H1 header will only show on the home page (and it's archives) and the monthly archives (if you use them). On the rest of the site there will be nothing loaded in that area. The CSS change hide the whole H1 header.
This would be the safest way to achieve what you want, if you don't use the monthly archive widget the H1 header with text Amish America (no longer a clickable link) would be hidden only on the home page and it's paged archives.
You could only make the CSS code change, but it would mean the H1 header is still a clickable link and on the other pages you'd have a hidden link back to home, so not ideal.
David
Stallion Theme Colours, Banners and Header Image
Subscribe box in header
SEO Dave, thanks again for the helpful answer–I finally got around to trying this and it works well. Like you said, just a little bit of tweaking the top and left pix sizes and it fits nicely, and the image link works great.
Another quick question, whenever you have the time–I’d like to stick my email subscribe box up by the search box in the header–is it possible to do this using a similar solution?
Sorry if the answer’s obvious, I am basically a neophyte at CSS.
Thanks,
Erik
Stallion Theme Banners and Header Image
Adding an Email Link to the Stallion Search Form Area
Glad it worked.
You can probably add some code to the file that holds the search form code.
/stallion-seo-theme/layout/searchform.php
The CSS for the code in that file is in the main style.css file:
#searchform {
position: absolute;
top: 55px;
right: 20px;
float: right;
width: 1000px;
z-index: 50;
}
If you wanted to remove the search form code (if you want the search facility add it as a widget on a menu) and replace it with an email link etc… you’d delete the form part of the searchform.php code (so keep the div bits so the positioning doesn’t break).
You could either add inline css to your email link or add it to the styling above (if it needs any styling).
You could also add your email links above or below the form code in the searchform.php file to have the email link above or below the search form.
David
Stallion Theme Colours, Banners and Header Image
Header Site Title & Tagline
Hi David.
The header image I use has the Site Title and Tagline embedded in the actual image. Is it OK for me to simply leave these fields in the Dashboard General settings blank or are these fields used in any other area, e.g. SEO, throughout the theme?
I’ve left them blank in the dashboard for now.
thanks
Nigel
Stallion Header Layout Options and Site Title Element
The tagline you can leave blank, but the site title is extremely important and should include relevant keywords for SEO reasons.
To use just a header image as you want there’s a setting to hide the site title link from the header area under Stallion Theme >> Layout Options.
On that page you can also relocate the sites tagline to the footer if you still want a tagline, but not on the header.
BTW notice you are using what appears to be an AdSense plugin. Since Stallion has AdSense built in you’ll need to either disable the AdSense plugin or turn off one or more Stallion controlled AdSense ads as right now you are breaking the AdSense TOS by having more than three AdSense content ad units. If you run with default Stallion AdSense setup all three AdSense content ad units are used.
David
Stallion Theme Colours, Banners and Header Image
Header image moves on window resize
Hi David, have been searching for a solution to what seems like a simple problem.
I used the method you suggested in the comments above to insert a header image as a clickable title link.
It worked well, the only problem is that the image shifts right when the window is resized.
I have spent the past couple hours tweaking the code you gave me to try to get it to stay in place, but haven’t been able to hit upon the right solution (I am kindergarten-level at CSS). I have it set up on a test domain here: http://amishcousin.com/
When you have a free moment, any ideas you might have would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
Erik
Stallion Theme Banners and Header Image
Your div code needs moving up a little
I think I know what the problem is.
It’s positioning to the browser window not the main wrapper div. Should be easy to fix.
I assume you’ve added the code to the bottom of the footer.php file, you just need to move it up a little to get it within the wrapper div.
In the footer.php file find the last closing div (</div>) around 14 lines from the bottom and add it just before it.
That should result in the code being treated the same way as the searchform code and the top and left positioning will be to the wrapper not the browser window.
David
Stallion Theme Colours, Banners and Header Image
Worked like a charm
Thanks Dave, worked just fine, and appreciate the explanation of how this works.
The only other thing I had to do was go back into the css file where I originally inserted the .headerimageclick and tweak the left positioning px to get it lined up to the wrapper.
Cheers!
Erik
adding my own header picture and?
David,
What’s the easiest way to install my own picture/logo for the Stallion 06 theme (instead of the flower)?
And, for some reason my videos are not showing up on the pages just the title which is a link. Does the Stallion theme treat videos differntly than the Talion them?
Thanks,
Randy
Stallion Theme Custom Headers and Banners
See Stallion Theme Colours, Banners and Header Image Options for custom headers and banner information.
See the Post Teaser WordPress SEO Plugin from WordPress SEO Plugins for adding a richer content to the archive pages like the home page.
David
David,
Thanks for the reply… I’ve made my logo and installed, however I’d like to put the search button in another location (top right sidebar) and I’ve added a picture on the leftside of my logo which is showing the information I have on the rightside of the logo. How can I eliminate the verbiage in the picture?
Thanks,
Randy
Stallion Layout Options
See the Stallion Layout Options page.
David
widget title colours
Hi,
love the templates
on my site the font colour for the widget titles is the same colour as the background. how do i change this?
Thansk
Tim
Broken WordPress Stallion Theme Installation
Looks like your Stallion theme install went wrong or something is blocking images on your site/server, since your header image is working looks like a broken install (missing files).
Use an FTP program to reupload the entire unzipped /stallion-seo-theme/ directory into /wp-content/themes/ so it uploads over your current Stallion folder.
When you extract the zip file make sure there are no errors (might be a corrupted download). If you do get an extraction error grab the latest Stallion zip file at and use that.
What appears to be missing are the image files under /stallion-seo-theme/images/ which is why you are missing all the Stallion Grey colour scheme images including the image that goes behind the sidebar headers, comment link, search form and others: your footer lacks it’s background image so the text can’t be seen as well.
David
Stallion Theme Colours, Banners and Header Image
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