Hi,

After the major update of SimplyBlack last week I have updated theme again.

Unfortunately several changes that have been added lately may break your child theme and/or custom CSS. But to make this theme better, this is not something that can be avoided.

For users with a child theme:

• Extra container for main content area
• Have updated files header and footer

For users with custom CSS:

• Changed class postmetadata into post-metadata
• Changed class postmetadata-bottom into post-metadata-bottom
• Changed class readmore into read-more

For all users:

• Changes are made in the stylesheet (CSS)
• If website doesn’t look as expected after theme update, clear your (browser) cache and reload the page

In a previous version I have added the great flexbox layout method to the header section, but reverted this again. Although flexbox is great, this theme was developed before flexbox became the number one layout method. To be consistent only floats are being used throughout stylesheet. That’s why flexbox is removed again.

Rest assured, no more major updates in the (near) future!

Need help? Please open a topic in support forum.

Guido

Hi,

Yes, another update after almost 2 years!

In last update of Simplyblack I have included new settings in the Customizer:

• Display or hide site title and tagline
• Display header image at homepage only or throughout your website
• Display featured image on the single post page
• Set length of the post summary
• Change label of the Read More button and Mobile Menu button

For users with a child theme:

• Because of the new settings in the Customizer you may not even need a child theme anymore
• Files header, single and single-full: updated to include new settings from above
• File footer: removed whitespace and such

For users with custom CSS:

• Changes are made in the stylesheet (CSS)
• Most changes in the mobile stylesheet (to make website look better in small screen)

For all users:

• Changes are made in the stylesheet (CSS)
• If website doesn’t look as expected after theme update, clear your (browser) cache and reload the page

Need help? Please open a topic in support forum.

Guido

Hi,

For users with a SimplyBlack child theme or custom CSS. I have added/changed several CSS classes.

File functions:
Changed class widgettitle into widget-title widgettitle.
Old class widgettitle will be removed in the future.

File header:
Added class="site-title" to the logo H1.

File content-list:
Changed class entry-content into entry-content post-content.

Files single and single-full:
Changed classes post-title-single entry-title into entry-title post-title.
Changed class entry-content into entry-content post-content.

Files page and page-full:
Changed class entry-content-page into page-content.

You may have to update your child theme and/or your custom CSS.

Guido

Hi,

In last theme update I’ve removed Google font (Open Sans) because of the GDPR. SimplyBlack now uses system font Verdana instead.

You can easily add your own font with one of the plugins that are available for this, such as the Fonts Plugin.

Guido

Hi @guido
I tried to minimally change the menu font padding and weight, but only the padding was successfully modified.

So my question is how do I change the inherited menu font-weight without changing or interfering with anything else?

.nav-head ul li a {
    display: block;
    padding: 8px 0;
    background: none;
    color: #ccc;
    text-decoration: none;
    font-weight: 400;
}

Thanks in advance

<div class=”postmetadata”>
Posted on <time class=”updated” datetime=”2021-01-07T12:00:21+00:00″>2021-01-07</time> |
By <span class=”author vcard”>Шгéп</span> </div>

Hi,

For users with a SimplyBlack child theme:

Sometimes you cannot avoid updating template files. This time I have updated files header and footer.

File header: added code for new feature in Customizer (logo width). And added ID to several mobile menu elements.
File footer: added code for new feature in Customizer (add content to footer).

Those changes might have broken some of your customizations, I’m sorry for that. If you want help to fix it again please open a topic in support forum.

Guido

I want to override the inherited font-style of Ubuntu Light 300 to Ubuntu Regular 400.
What is the best way to code that, or will you code it?
How you are safe,
Thank you

Hi,

About the recent SimplyBlack theme update:

Main reason for last update is to improve accessibility and better support for screen readers.

Because of this I had to change the CSS of main navigation. Mainly the CSS of submenu and mobile menu.

Those changes might have broken some of your CSS customizations, I’m sorry for that. If you want help to fix it again please open a topic in support forum.

For users with a child theme, I have updated file header. Added a skip-to-content link and changed the div with class “mobile-nav-toggle” into a button.

Guido

I contacted the plugin author Markus Wiesenhofer (@markusfroehlich) about customizing the displayed title of the sticky post. He says in his response that your theme is where the format of the title comes from.

I have parsed through the WordPress main theme editor and cannot find what causes the sticky post title to be First word capital and second word lower case.

I need a way to change the current >Featured post< to >Featured Post<.

Can you suggest what to do?

Thank you

Hi Guido,

I am currently staging a page for my local dog club. I am very happy with the theme so far. But I would like to get rid of the black boxes in the nav menu on the left.
Finally I would like to replace these boxes with a small picture of a paw.

After spending a lot of time on google how to deactivate these boxes and not finding anything helpful, I don’t know what to do anymore.

Please tell me if it is possible and if so how.

Thank you in advance
rgds
Harri

Are you interested in discussing the creation a custom theme based on SimplyBlack?

I used SFTP into the site and switched WP_DEBUG to true and got the following. I assume that some aspect of the SimplyBlack theme is corrupted or accidentally deleted. Is it possible to edit the site, upload the files to restore it to operation?

Warning: require_once(/srv/data/web/vhosts/raithold.org/htdocs/wp-admin/includes/class-custom-image-header.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /srv/data/web/vhosts/raithold.org/htdocs/wp-includes/theme.php on line 2635

Fatal Error: require_once(): Failed opening required ‘/srv/data/web/vhosts/raithold.org/htdocs/wp-admin/includes/class-custom-image-header.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/share/php:/srv/data/web/includes’) in /srv/data/web/vhosts/raithold.org/htdocs/wp-includes/theme.php on line 2635

There has been a critical error on your website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.

Hello. I originally posted this question (copied below) over a year ago but never got around to implementing the solution. I just tried it today but could not locate the file content-postmeta anywhere in the WordPress directory. There have been several big WordPress updates since I originally asked this question: has the name of this file been changed? Please advise which file I need to look at, and also can you please confirm that the solution below would still work?

Thanks

ORIGINAL QUESTION
Hi, with reference to the original question, I’d like to remove the text ‘No Comments’ from the metadata using a rule that stops this displaying if there are no comments. If there are comments, I’d still like it to display (i.e. if there is a comment, it will say ‘1 Comment’ as normal). Basically, I don’t want to advertise the fact that there are no comments!

I’ve been experimenting with variations on this basic rule:

if ( comments_open() ) {
if ( $num_comments == 0 ) {
$comments = __(‘No Comments’);
}

…but I can’t get it to work. I keep breaking it. My php Fu is not strong ??

ORIGINAL ANSWER
Theme Author Guido

(@guido07111975)

1 year, 7 months ago

Hi,

Guess this will work (not tested yet), open file content-postmeta and look for:

<?php comments_popup_link( __( ‘No comments’, ‘simplyblack’ ), __( ‘1 comment’, ‘simplyblack’ ), __( ‘% comments’, ‘simplyblack’ ) ); ?>

Just remove the “No comments” text:

<?php comments_popup_link( __( ”, ‘simplyblack’ ), __( ‘1 comment’, ‘simplyblack’ ), __( ‘% comments’, ‘simplyblack’ ) ); ?>

Guido

Hello

I would like to increase the space between a left or right aligned image and the text wrapped around it.

The text is too close to the edge of the image.

I’ve tried several different rules, but nothing is working.

Hi Guido,

Under the menu item ‘TV & Movie Reviews’ the submenu text appears black. When hovered, the background changes to gray but I cannot get the text to change to white. It remains black. I’ve tried various rules and am starting to wonder if there’s something in the parent theme that’s blocking me.

To be clear, I want the submenu text to change to white when hovered.

Thanks!

Hi,

Is Simply Black compatible with the new Gutenberg editor?

Cheers

Hi,

About the recent SimplyBlack theme updates:

The last couple of months there where several theme updates to improve the quality of this theme. Lately there where many (minor) CSS changes regarding the width and floating of div elements.

When a div element contains floated child elements this div can collapse. In the past I resolved this collapsing by adding width and floating to this div, but using a so called clearfix is best practice. So that’s why I’ve removed the width and floating and added a clearfix instead.

Besides this I’ve restyled the mobile menu.

Those changes might have break some of your CSS customizations, I’m sorry for that. If you want help to fix it again please open a thread in support forum.

I’m not planning new theme updates anytime soon..

Guido

Hi. I would like to change the location in which the site title is displayed when in responsive view. This change would only affect mobile devices.

If you view the following link in responsive mode at 320 x 480, you can see the site title in a huge font right at the top.
Link: https://michaelvictorbowman.com/

I would like to change it to resemble the layout seen on this site,
Link: https://dennisetaylor.org/
when viewed in responsive mode at the same resolution. This layout seems more efficient for use on mobile devices, with the site title in the menu bar and the menu moved over to the left.

Is it possible to do this with CSS? If so, could you tell me where to start? I’ve examined the second site but can’t figure out how I’d make these changes (assuming they’re possible).

Cheers

Hi. When viewing the site in responsive mode at resolution 320 x 480 I see a large gap (white space) between the bottom of the header image and the primary navigation bar.

I presume I can use CSS to close this gap, but how?

Cheers

Hi!

How can I add comments to page.php? The code <?php comments_template(); ?> is inside but nothing happend. I wrote a test comment an nothing happend

https://hoerspielbaer.de/bibi-und-tina/

Hi,

This month I will update SimplyBlack theme, and add a fully new mobile navigation (navigation in mobile screen).

This means I will replace the (jquery) select menu with a dropdown (jquery) toggle menu.

If you’re using a child theme that contains file “header.php”, you should update this file after updating theme. Otherwise the new dropdown toggle menu won’t work. I have added some extra lines of code regarding the new menu in this file.

Guido

Hi,

For those who have customized SimplyBlack theme:

The last couple of months there where several theme updates to improve the quality of this theme. I have made lots of changes in many files. Please also check previous posts in this theme-forum. Lately there where many (small) CSS changes regarding margin, padding, float, clear, etc. To solve issues such as margin collapsing. Those changes might have break some of your customizations, I’m sorry for that.

Guido

Hi. I’m new to coding and am learning as I go. I’ve created a child theme of Simply Black. I’d like to modify the postmetadata displayed in both post excerpts and single page views, but I’ve been unable to do it using CSS.

Can you tell me how to make the following changes?

On the post excerpt I would like to disable the postmetadata so that it isn’t displayed. This would mean removing the black border and infill of div.postmetadata as well.

On single page view I’d like the following format:
‘Posted on MONTH DAY, YEAR in CATEGORY’

This is a single author site, so doesn’t need the author name. Also, I don’t want to display information about comments.

When I tried making these changes the ‘By’ was still there, and when I tried removing the ‘No comments’ class it removed the date as well!

Thanks for your help!

• This topic was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by MRanson.

Hi, how do I remove the email and website fields from the comments area?

Please note that I don’t know anything about coding so you’ll have to give me step by step instructions.

Hi,
I put the translation files in wp-content/themes/simplyblack/languages /.
-Once wp-themes-simplyblack-fr.mo, wp-themes-simplyblack-fr.po
-Once simplyblack-fr.mo, simplyblack-fr.po
-Once Fr-fr.po, Fr-fr.mo

nothing, issue still in English

Then I put in wp-content/languages/themes /.
– wp-themes-simplyblack-fr.mo, wp-themes-simplyblack-fr.po

still nothing, theme still in English, why?

Hallo Guido,

mir gef?llt dein Template sehr gut.
Danke erstmal dafür.

Leider gef?llt mir aber das Menü nicht.
Was kann ich denn da tun?

Die Kunden sind sicher genervt, wenn Sie den Fat-Finger-Effekt beim Select bzw Pulldown Menü bekommen.

VG

Hi,

In upcoming theme update I have improved the heading structure because of SEO.

This might have consequences in case of modifications you’ve made.

New structure is:

• Site title = h1 (not changed)
• Tagline = h2
• Page title = h1
• Single post title = h1
• Post title link = h2
• Widget title = h3

Guido

Hi,

Thank you for using one of my themes. I’m trying to check this forum once every week.

You can also reach me via my website, but only in case of emergencies.

Enjoy,

Guido

I am using the latest version of the theme (1.6) and WordPress 3.8.1. Links in the blog page don’t work. If I click on the post, the links were perfectly fine. You can see at:

https://www.mjl-tech.org

The third test blog post has a working link. I’ve tried swapping out to the default theme, and it works perfectly fine.

Thanks!