Eric Mann

Can you create a phpinfo page and link that to this post so we can see what’s currently configured? Just create a page called phpinfo.php which contains the following line:

<?php phpinfo() ?>

And upload it to your site via FTP. This will tell us a little about how your server is configured and whether or not cURL is enabled.

@thistleridge To be perfectly honest, I can’t figure out what’s going on behind the scenes without actually looking at it … send me an email at eric [at] eamann [dot] com so we can talk offline.

It shows the flash of blue because the background color for the header element is set to blue. It will display blue there until the image loads.

To eliminate elements from the sidebar go to Appearance >> Widgets to drag and drop or edit what widgets display. You’re likely using the default set of sidebar widgets … but if you replace these with the widgets you want to use you can eliminate the meta box.

The problem I see is with how you’re using $counter. You start by defining $counter=0. Then immediately increment by 1 inside the loop. This should start you off with a class of “fl” for your first element … but you never reset the counter and keep incrementing by 1 in each loop. So, if you loop through 5 posts, $counter should be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and your class should be fl, fr, fr, fr, fr respectively.

I use a similar system on my site to alternate classes … here’s a snipped from my own loop (maybe it will help)

<?php
$i=1;
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();
	$i++;
	$class = ($i&1) ? 'odd-' : 'even-';
	?>
	<div class="<?php echo $class; ?>olderpost">
	<h3 class="storytitle"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
	<div class="content">
		<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
	</div>
	</div><!-- /olderpost -->
<?php	endwhile;
endif;
?>