indigotwilight

And a final note: sponsored or not, encrypted ot not – this is NOT your theme, regardless of the renaming. The copyright applies even for the bad guys ??

I agree… which is why I wanted to contact the creator of the loved theme to 1. ask his/her permisson to use the style sheet as a basic template to build something of my own and 2. so I could say “Theme Forest by Twilight, based on Loved by Mozspot”…
Being still new to WordPress I thought I’d first learn more by building a theme using an existing one as a template. It’s still a trial run for me. With this current phase, I don’t intend to make it publically donwloadable purely because the stylesheet still has some elements that were not my own work. My next attempt will be purely my own, and not based upon another as I’ve gotten used to the div ID’s and class structure now. ?? … and yes, I’m still quite a novice when it comes to CSS and php but not entirely new to it. Some of my projects at university have required me to program in C++ and Java. The language of php doesn’t seem too dissimilar.

As a writer of novels, I can fully appreciate artistic integrity; be it stories, paintings, wordpress themes or whatever… From my point of view I want to concentrate on the content (ie the writing) rather than spending hours building new themes… but then again, having a theme that is truely your own is really worth the while.
When it comes down to it, when I eventually do build a theme that is uniquely mine, I want people to use it as a template to build their own. If I can help them learn CSS and php the same way I’m doing so at the moment, then that’s got to be a good thing, right?

Twilight

I had similar problems. Being quite new to WordPress, I thought I’d search for a theme closest to the layout I had in mind, and work on customising that one.
After a little searching, I came across a theme called ‘Loved’ on Mozspot. It was nice and simple, and I could easily navigate and understand the stylesheet.
My problem arose when I wanted to change the footer. I opened the file to see lots of encrypted crap and another folder called ‘scopbin’ which contained a php file of similar construct. At first I thought this was the same with all wordpress themes (being new to it) and so wanted to find the maker of the Loved theme to ask how I go about changing the footer code.
Thankfully though, I had the sense to look at the footer coding of some other themes and realised this coding style was not the norm.
Having XAMPP on my desktop helped. I ran the theme and wordpress there to try things out… At first I imported a new footer.php from another theme as a test. The result: No sidebar. The site just crashed.

So… I thought “This sucks!” I spent two days getting the layout, images, sidebar, and even incorporated a double border for what? For nothing. I was just unlucky in my selection of an existing theme to work from.

Next I tried to import the css file, together with the images, into a copy of the default theme which I renamed ‘Forest’ (I’d decided to call my theme Forest)
Then I imported over sidebar.php and index.php. Added an extra div tag in index.php and single.php to call up the second background, editied footer.php and it worked!

My problem now is that not everything is going as smooth as it should, perhaps, have done. But at least I’m slowly ironing out the creases. Next time I’m going to build a theme and stylesheet from scratch.

Twilight

Thanks… ??

OK… Can you give me any hints for a better solution?

Twilight

Thanks Moshu, well spotted… ?? There seems to be a lot of problems associated with trying to incorporate multiple backgrounds.
To compensate (temporarily) I’ve added an extra div to call up the second background in single.php
This has also given me an idea for a possible solution. If I write more div classes and ID’s in the style sheet, I should be able to call these in single.php and archives, and hence widen the post text area, etc. However, when I tried another version of #content (which I called #contentpost) with a wider area (650px instead of 490px in the homepage, together with a 20px padding.) the change seemed to have no effect.

This is giving me a lot to think about. A simple idea is turning into quite a challenge.

Looks like it’s back to the XAMPP drawing board.

I’d also like to design a theme that has two columns either side, with the posts down the middle. That’ll be the next project I think. ??

Twilight

Thanks for the feedback. ?? Although I have a new blogg up and running, this currently uses an existing theme as a temporary measure. (https://www.Lowenva.net) I’m using the Blogg more of as an online journal and diary, with links to my other sites in the Bloggroll.

I’m building a new theme using a seperate desktop version of WordPress installed via XAMPP. I’m also running test versions of SMF and Tiny Portal as well. Ultimately, I want to get these systems to ‘talk’ to each other across different databases so recent posts on the forums could be listed in the WordPress Blogg, etc. I know there are some mods and plugins developed for this already, but most seem to deal with integrated membership, rather than exchanging articles… My idea is for a forum to email the title and first few lines of a new post so it can be read by WordPress’ ‘Blogg by email’ function.

As far as the current topic issue goes: I’m still experimenting with different style sheets and layouts. I’m attempting a ‘multitheme’ structure, where pages, articles, the homepage and posts have slightly different themes attached to them (this can either be in widgets not showing for certain pages, alternative backgrounds, and/or layouts) I tend to learn programming just by trying things out. Using XAMPP has the benefit that if I end up making the blogg or forum unusable, I can always just reload a new one.

Once I’ve got it right, then I’ll of course FTP my new design into Lowenva for all to see and comment upon. Though, this may take some time. ??

Twilight

Yeyness with whipped cream and strewdleberries. I’ve sussed it. ??
Install the plugin ‘Postie’ which has a lot of added features. Set the cron job in MySQL to the URI given when you run postie. And sure enough you will be sliding down rainbows into a lake of raspberry jelly before you can say ‘fairy dust’ …

Twilight

I’d be interested in this too. I guess the answer may lie in building a seperate style sheet (style.css) without the sidebar and widgets. It’d be nice to be able to have a ‘stylesheet menu’ option in admin so you can choose the ‘theme’ of individual pages.

That’s OK… no worries. I’ve just checked the post on Cool Green theme using IE7 and the problem appears to have been solved. ??
Explorer 6 is a pain. The damn thing can’t even resolve the transparancies on .png properly! In time what I’ll probably do is configure a css specially for old versions of internet explorer (v6 and below).

Twilight

OK… I’ll give that a try. In the meantime, I’ve just switched to a theme that is known to be compatible with version 2.2, and the problem does not occur there. This will give me time to address the issue with Cool Green, and then go on to develop my own theme on a desktop version later. (Once I’ve gotten used to the coding structure)

The comments problem I eventually pinned down to an issue with the permalinks. Restoring to the default permalink structure allowed for comments to appear, and new ones to be added. Is this a bug in 2.2? Perhaps I should start up a new thread for discussing this problem, unless the permalink thing hasn’t been addressed already, that is. ??

Now I just have to get the blogg by email thing sorted, and Lowenva.net will be up and running.

Twilight

Thanks… I tried that and it didn’t work. I still have the same problem of text only appearing after highlighting, but partly vanishing when scrolling down and back up again.
Interestingly enough, I just viewed the site with the default theme and this problem doesn’t happen. I wonder if it’s a browser compatibility problem with the Cool Green Theme itself.

I’ve also noticed the comments don’t show in either the cool green theme, or the default. There’s also no link for visitors to post comments despite setting the blogg for this in the admin panel. Clicking on ‘comment’ as linked from the post just displays the home-page. Selecting individual catagories also just displays the home-page too.

Twilight

Yeah sure,

https://www.lowenva.net

I’ve only just installed WordPress over the last few days.
Also, I’m using IE6, not 7 as previously mentioned. I forgot the university hasn’t updated their browser software… lol I won’t know if the same problem occurs on IE7 until I go home in a couple of hours.

I did check the css files but couldn’t find anything. I’ll take another look. ??

Twilight

ps. the original wordpress post after installing appears fine. I’ve even messed around with the text, changed font colours, etc, and don’t get the same problem.
Another theme – midnight sky 100 had sidebar issues. (Again with the text appearing transparent until highlighting)

In both cases, the text sometimes appears and disappears when I scroll down the page and back up again.

Thanks for that. I’m still navigating my way round the functions and coding of the blogg, as I intend to design my own theme too.
Changing the URL values in admin > options worked as you suggested. ??

Twilight