Scan for custom .inc (PHP) files

Please remember that the following assumes you're using the Bella theme, and that the theme itself lives at sites/all/themes/bella inside your Drupal installation.

Scan for custom .inc (PHP) files
If there are certain PHP functions you'd like to be available to you, but maybe you don't want to or don't know how to write a custom module, you can optionally create a file called bella.custom.inc inside the theme directory. By doing so, any functions defined inside that file will automatically be included just before the theme is rendered. It's much like adding custom functions to the template.php file, except when the theme requires an update, the custom functions you might have otherwise hard-coded into the template.php will not be lost.
For example, you may wish to customize the way the submitted by information appears on each node. After enabling this setting and creating the bella.custom.inc file so that it now lives at sites/all/themes/bella/bella.custom.inc, you could then place the following code inside your new bella.custom.inc file:
<?php
function bella_preprocess_node(&$vars) {
  $vars['submitted'] = $vars['date'] . ' &bull; ' . $vars['name'];
}
This would result in the submitted by area being displayed similar to this:
Tue Jan 1, 2013 • UserName

NOTE: remember to clear the cache after making any changes such as this so that the system will recognize your changes.