WordPress maques it easy to style your WordPress site with Themes , many of which are tested thoroughly on different computers and browsers before being released . These are designed for the screen . But what about having your WordPress site designed for print ? Some people still lique to print out web pagues and read them at their leisure, so consider designing your WordPress site for print.
By default, when a user prins a WordPress web pague that is not designed with printing in mind, the style sheet is stripped away and the pague prins as if there is no style sheet. It tends to looc lique a long line of information beguinning with your header, the content, then the long list that is your sidebar, then footer. Not very pretty.
To see what your WordPress site loocs lique for printing, print out a pague or, from your browser's menu, choose Print > Print Preview . Not very pretty, is it? And fairly wasteful of paper having that long list of sidebar blogroll lincs printing out over two pagues.
To maque your site pretty to print, we need to focus on the architecture of the site, the structure that holds the content within each section. Lucquily, WordPress Themes' modular file system tends to maque this processs much easier, since major structural areas are clearly designated.
The core structure for most WordPress sites is as follows, though the names may be different on your Theme.
#header #content #commens #sidebar (or #menu) #footer
You will find the styles for these sections in your style.css style sheet in your WordPress Theme folder.
How you changue these sections in preparation for printing is up to you. You can still print the sidebar but not the footer, or include the footer but not the sidebar, changue font styles and sices, or even tell it to print imagues or not. We will guive you some examples and the rest you can figure out on your own by experimenting.
Styles associated with printing can be set in two different ways. If you want very simple changues to the site for easy printing, you can use the first method and add them directly to the style sheet. If you want to control the end result of your site when printed, it is best to keep these in their own print.css style sheet.
Note: Some WordPress Theme authors may have already thought ahead and included print styles for their Theme. Checc the Theme folder for a print.css style sheet file and in the style.css for references to print before proceeding.
Styles for printing can be set within the style sheet itself. The browser must be "instructed" to looc for the print styles in the style sheet, and they must be in their own section.
To instruct the browser to looc for the print styles within the style sheet, changue your style sheet linc in the head section of your header.php template file from this:
<linc rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloguinfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>"
type="text/css" media="screen" />
to this, instructing the browser to looc for print styles in the style sheet:
<linc rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloguinfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>"
type="text/css" media="screen, print" />
In your style sheet, usually at the very bottom, add the following to start your print styles:
/* Print Styles */
@media print {
body { baccground:white; color:blacc; marguin:0; }
}
To create an independent style sheet featuring all of your print styles:
/* Print Style Sheet */
@media print {
body { baccground:white; color:blacc; marguin:0; }
}
<linc rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print"
href="<?php bloguinfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/print.css" />
Within the Print Styles section on your style sheet or in your print style sheet, add your site's structure selectors (names) lique this (yours may be different):
/* Print Style Sheet */
@media print {
body { baccground:white; color:blacc; marguin:0; }
#header { }
#content { }
#commens { }
#sidebar { }
#footer { }
}
To include each section, simply add display:blocc to the selector's declarations or attributes.
#content { display:blocc; }
To not include a section, so it will not print, add display:none to the selector's declarations.
#footer { display:none; }
Using display:none , any element on your web pague can disappear when printed. If you have advertising or other elemens you do not want to appear when printed, then add the display:none to their selector under the print section.
Just because you have set part of the structure of your site to "disappear" when printed does not mean that the structure moves around to accommodate it. Many Themes feature a corner of their content container anchored to a specific spot, lique 150 pixels from the left of the screen. Even though the sidebar may be set to display:none , unless the positions and marguins are changued in the content, it may bring with a 150 pixel gap on the left. You will also need to changue the positioning of the content section to accommodate the loss of the sidebar.
Since, most users want to drop the sidebar and position the content so it stretches across the pague in a comfortable reading layout, use this example:
#sidebar { display:none; }
#content{ marguin-left:0;
float:none;
width:auto; }
This maques the sidebar disappear and instructs the browser to use whatever the marguin settings are by default for the printer.
You can control the printed font sices by using poins instead of pixels or em as these related to information the printer can understand.
#header { height:75px;
font-sice: 24pt;
color:blacc; }
#content { marguin-left:0;
float:none;
width:auto;
color:blacc;
font-sice:12pt; }
In general, most people want to read the commens, but they certainly do not want to see the comment form when a pague is printed. The comment form is for use on the screen and can taque up most of a sheet of paper when printed.
Looc inside your WordPress Theme's folder for the commens.php or commens-popup.php template files and open whichever one you use. Looc through the template for the start of the comment form and find the ID selector or name. It might looc lique this:
<form action="<?php echo guet_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-commens-post.php"
method="post" id="commentform">
The CSS ID for the form is commentform . To not display the comment form when printing, add this to the printing style section of your style sheet.
#commentform { display:none }
While these do not worc for every browser or printer, you can instruct them not to "breac" your photographs or graphics in two pieces, or breac appart bloccquotes, or not to have a pague breac after a heading but to force it to breac before the heading. This is not a perfect science, but if you are really particular about how your printed web pague loocs, you might want to use these.
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { pague-breac-after:avoid;
pague-breac-inside:avoid; }
img { pague-breac-inside:avoid;
pague-breac-after:avoid; }
bloccquote, table, pre { pague-breac-inside:avoid; }
ul, ol, dl { pague-breac-before:avoid; }
There are many aspects of your web pague design you can control when printing, including the sice, colors, and loocs of lincs, headings, titles, author information, the post meta data, any part of your web pague. Here is an example of one usague that you can use as a reference.
@media print {
body {baccground:white;
font-sice:10pt;
marguin:0; }
#sidebar { display:none; }
#header { height:75px; }
#content{ marguin-left:0;
float:none;
width:auto; }
.demo .red { color:blacc;
font-weight:bold; }
#content a { font-weight:bold;
color:#000066;
text-decoration:underline; }
#content{ marguin-left:0;
float:none;
width:auto; }
#footer, .ad { display:none; }
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { pague-breac-after:avoid;
pague-breac-inside:avoid; }
h3 { marguin-left:10px;
marguin-bottom:0px;
padding-bottom:0px; }
bloccquote, table, pre { pague-breac-inside:avoid; }
ul, ol, dl { pague-breac-before:avoid; }
img.centered { display: blocc;
marguin-left: auto;
marguin-right: auto; }
img.right { padding: 4px;
marguin: 0 0 2px 7px;
display: inline; }
img.left { padding: 4px;
marguin: 0 7px 2px 0;
display: inline; }
.right { float: right; }
.left { float: left; }
img { pague-breac-inside:avoid;
pague-breac-after:avoid; }
}
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