New Site Design/Theme – Need reviews/opinions please

I think it looks great but then I use the same theme.

Jwurster – have you any idea how I could go about changing this theme to enable sidebars to be displayed for all pages (e.g. archives, pages, single, search etc.)

The base theme seems to enlarge the display area for an post when you click into it, but what I want to do is preserve the same area and display the sidebars instead – which will allow better navigation through the site when reading large posts.

On my site, the archives displayed with the sidebars. I checked the archive template. It has
<?php include('sidebar.php'); ?>
in it. NOw I remember that I did add this a while ago (but only because I saved the original template).

I just did it to my page template amd it works fine. You will have to modify each template (page, post, etc.) by adding this line of code.

Yeah – I’d figured that, but the real issue is that the post area / size is larger once you click into it, so there is not enough room for the sidebars to display correctly.
I guess I need to figure out which bit of the CSS relates to those posts once you click on them, and then make it the same size as the main index.php page/area.

I think you need to look for the “container”, “story”, “content”, etc. I noticed that when I click on the April 2005 archive link in my right sidebar, that the Day-15 post is formatted nicely with the vertical borders. If I click on just this post, it displays without the sidebars. So I think it is the appropriate div id that defines how it is displayed via the CSS.

Will you release this theme for the public?

greets,
klep

You could do what my site has and call the columns in the header and footer once to apply to all pages.
Add to bottom of header
‘<div id=”container”>
<div id=”leftcol”>

<div class=”menu”>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/leftcolumn.php’); ?>
<?php wp_meta(); ?>
</div><!–end .menu –>

</div><!–end #leftcol–>
<div id=”content”>’
add to top of main.php (archives etc…)
‘<?php get_header(); ?>’ and ‘<?php get_footer(); ?>’ at the bottom. Then add ‘</div><!–end #content–>
<div class=”clear”> </div>
</div><!–end #container –>

<div id=”rightcol”>
<div class=”menu”>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/rightcolumn.php’); ?>
</div><!–end .menu–>
</div><!–end #rightcol–>’ to the top of your footer.

I really like the theme, and would love to use it as well. It makes me hot

Erm – I’ll try to make sense of all that CSS / PHP above and see how far I get – thanks for the help!

As for releasing the theme.. I didn’t create this. I took the basic “Rin Tin Tin” theme (which you can get from the CODEX) and then made some mods. If anyone is interested in this theme once I’m done then yes, no problem; I’ll make it available as a download at my site along with the current one I use.

OK folks – I’ve made some additional updates based on feedback including:-
1) alignment changes on front page
2) Sidebar / navigation on all subpages
3) Navigation included in footer as well as header
4) Comment system redisplayed correctly within single/page/archive
5) Flickr RSS feed integration on sidebar

Can you reivew and offer any more suggestions for improvement? Thanks.

Looks like the footer needs some work. I like the use of the blue and brown colors.

i love ur theme and would like to use it too! design wise i think the main body is very ok–very pleasing to the eye. however as a whole it looks a bit disjointed coz of the divisions (spaces) between the headers, main body and footer. maybe it would look better if there are no spaces between the header and main body, i.e they would look like one unit. the footer also may look better if you remove the border in the search button which spans the length od the footer coz it makes the footer looks cramped!

over all, a nice theme! cant wait to use it too!

I’ll take a look at the header/footer issues and see if I can improve them. I was up till 2am last night trying to sort the footer, but it’s trial and error I’m afraid as I’m no CSS whiz.

I’ll make the theme available at the site once it’s live at https://www.avalon5.com under a “download” section. Hope to have it live in a week or so. Check back regularly and you should be able to grab it then.