ElegantBlue 1.1: Bug Fixes
Hey Guys! After a little research and some elbow grease, I figured out how to fix the trackback and comment number bug. Click Here to download ElegantBlue 1.1 or Click Here to download the ElegantBlue upgrade package, then just upload the files in the package to your themes/ElegantBlue directory and overwrite the old files.
If you want to update the theme yourself because of the custom mods you have done, here are the steps … Download the upgrade package, but only upload the functions.php file to your server. Then, you’ll need to edit the following files (with line numbers):
- index.php (line 41)
- archive.php (line 40)
- search.php (line 17)
- single.php (line 13)
Replace the following line …
<strong>Posted by <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></strong> on <?php the_time('F j, Y'); ?> | <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>#comments">Comments (<?php mw_comments('count'); ?>)</a> | <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>#trackbacks">Trackbacks (<?php mw_trackbacks('count'); ?>)</a>
with this line:
<strong>Posted by <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></strong> on <?php the_time('F j, Y'); ?> | <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>#comments">Comments (<?php comments_only_number('0', '1', '%'); ?>)</a> | <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>#trackbacks">Trackbacks (<?php echo trackpings('count'); ?>)</a>
And that’s it! Feel free to upgrade yourself, but be forewarned … because you are editing theme source files, you should be very careful. I cannot offer support for any damage you do while editing the source code. I HIGHLY recommend upgrading your theme by either reinstalling version 1.1 or using the upgrade package.
IE Double Margin Bug
OK, I’ve just seen it plague too many designs and WordPress themes to ignore it anymore. I was completely oblivious to it when I started developing themes, and if you look at some of them, you’ll be able to tell it.
It’s … the dreaded IE Double Margin Bug!!!
The Problem
I’ll break it down … basically, on any floated item (for me, that would be the 3 main sections of a site, Content, Left sidebar, Right sidebar), no matter what margin you give the div, IE6 (maybe 7?) doubles that number. So if you have a left sidebar, floated left, along with a middle content section, also floated left, and finally a right sidebar, again … floated left, and you give them each a left and right margin of 10 pixels, IE will make it 20 pixels instead.
This comes as a HUGE problem when you have a fixed width layout, because too much margin on your floated columns will break your layout, causing a sidebar to fall down below the other columns.
A Solution
PageRank, Technorati, and Free WordPress Themes
OK, first of all I want to preface this by saying that I have never, and will never try to game any ranking system. OOO — take that back, I did include sponsored links in some of my first free WordPress themes, but other than that, I’ve never tried to game a ranking engine. AND, I would never recommend you doing so either.
However, one of the very fortunate side effects of releasing free WordPress themes is that you get a killer amount of backlinks for your trouble.
And to be honest, I don’t really mind recognizing, and leveraging that fact to my benefit.
Always include two links in the footer
That’s right, as of right now, there is no blowback for including a link to the support page of the theme, along with your name as the author. This means Continue Reading…
Any Good WordPress Podcasts?
Over the last week or so, since buying my new iPod Nano, I’ve been resubscribing to all my old favorite podcasts … for research of course :-)
But I’ve been severely disappointed in the underwhelming number of WordPress podcasts … that is … podcasts that discuss WordPress topics, WordPress themes, etc.
Yes, I have subscribed to the Official WordPress podcast … that’s a given (is it actually “official”?). But, with all due respect, it’s not very entertaining … unless of course Lorelle is on :-)
I did a search in iTunes for WordPress and it returned quite a few results, but other than the official podcast, none have been updated in a VERY long time.
Could it be that there’s a market for an entertaining WordPress podcast?
ElegantBlue Theme Released!
After days of work, and a couple of major and minor setbacks, I’m proud to announce my best, most feature-rich theme yet!
ElegantBlue was initially developed for my personal/religious blog, NathanRice.org, and after several requests to release the theme for public consumption, I began working on editing the theme for public release a little over a week ago.
It is a 2/3 column, option packed, wide content column, widgetized theme ready to use out of the box with no coding experience necessary. That’s right, there are several options that will help you customize this theme without ever touching a line of code!
