reducing the confusion about twenty-eleven header image

[walid3]

well, first let me say that twenty-eleven is the most professional and clean theme I saw for WordPress, congratulations :)

now the first major problem when anyone start using it, is the header, I thought it's for me only but all the topics I noticed in the support forum are almost about editing the header and always there is no answer, why don't we make it easier to change the header to smaller one like a small logo, that float in the middle or the option that admin choose? cause even if you edited the style.css it will always floats to left, and the background will always stay there.

to give an example, here you are what I tried on my blog, I reduced the size after editing the theme function and the style.css file( which I think not every body will even achieve, as I was a while ago :s ) but still I couldn't make it in the middle and make this white background of the logo transparent to show just the silver background.

Well, I think that solving this problem is not just a support question as it's the first major question for anyone who start to use the theme, " how can I change the header image to mine " and for this to be that hard, it will really postpone the moving from being admin to being an author and write in his blog :) that's why I liked to post this here as an enhancement request, and I wish this is the right thing to do :)

[duck_]

#18057 #13671 #14898

I think there should probably be some way of a theme adding text to the featured image metabox giving the required image size.

[nacin]

Agreed. Kicking to Ian for his thoughts.

[iandstewart]

I really, really like the idea of adding an optional description to the featured image module. Right now the outcome can be a bit surprising. Plus, it would definitely be needed if/when we have multiple feature images.

It'd also be nice to add an optional step for user-cropping -- similar to the custom header cropping -- when uploading featured images. It would take all of the surprise out of theme-enforced cropping. As a bonus, it would be incredibly useful for themers wanting to use 1 featured image with different sized thumbnails in different places. You could have the option of cropping a thumbnail for each image size the theme was adding. RIght now users would have to be master photo composers to make something like that work effectively with an image.

@walid3 It could mean a lot of options to accommodate every possible header layout with just the custom header feature. It's really only meant for uploading images at one size. If you post a screenshot ​in the support forums and let me know about it I'll see if I can help you out with just some custom CSS (ignoring or hiding the custom header) that accomplishes what you're looking for.

[walid3]

@iandstewart I really appreciate your answer, sorry for late though, usual life problems :)
I posted a support topic with a screenshot here:
​http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-center-twentyeleven-header-image?replies=1

[nacin]

Attached patch introduces the ability to provide arguments to add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' ) beyond what post types you wish for them to be applied. This will surely be needed in the future anyway. Example:

add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails', array( 'post', 'page' ) ); // old way, still works
add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails', array( 'usage' => array( 'post', 'page' ) ) ); // new
add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails', array( 'usage' => __( 'This is how the theme uses it.' ) ) );

As an alternative, we can use the third argument for options, with the second argument remaining the post types:

add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails', true, array( 'usage' => __( 'This is how the theme uses it.' ) ) );
add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails', array( 'post', 'page' ), array( 'usage' => __( 'This is how the theme uses it.' ) ) );

Attached is a patch that implements the first option, along with unit tests. I think I prefer the alternative, but I'm trying to think of how we want to expand the API in the future.

[nacin]

This ticket got off-course. I'm moving these patches to #18057.

Closing as invalid, but check out #17242 and #18057 as well. Also check out Appearance > Header (and adding support for it).