Am I an Idiot?

  • Hi everyone,

    I have been trying to upload a theme which will work on my wordpress site. Its 2.5.1 and every theme I upload looks fine, until I select it to use it as my theme on the blog. The downloading and ftp of the actual theme runs smoothly, but when I come to use it, the theme looks incomplete and different. Rubbish actually.

    I’ve used all sorts of themes from all sorts of sites. I contacted one guy who owned a theme site, and showed him a screen shot of what my results were, and talking him through what I was doing. He was totally confused and had no idea what was going on. I was grateful for his help, but he was stumped.

    I know the themes I am using are 2.5.1 compatible, but they are not working for love nor money. Does anyone know of what I could be doing wrong, or could anyone offer any helpful suggestions. Its preventing me from getting my business and websites up and running and this time, and that is HUGELY frustrating as I am sure you can appreciate.

    If I haven’t been clear in this post, I apologise, if you need clarification on anything, I am more than happy to oblige. Thanks for your time, and I hope some one out there can help a techno-moron such as myself.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 21 total)

  • a link does wonders… we can see for ourselves the issues you face, and with development tools embedded in firefox we can often cut right to the heart of it.. but that link is crucial ??

    Thread Starter makingcontent

    (@makingcontent)

    Lol, thank you drewactual. I am an idiot.

    Here is the link:

    https://makemycontent.com

    Thread Starter makingcontent

    (@makingcontent)

    I should mention that on the page at the moment is a template called “Techmania” that I found on a website giving free wordpress themes. They have been super helpful, and their themes are 2.5.1 compatible. But they have never seen anything like what is happening on my site currently.

    From your code:
    ‘<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”https://makemycontent.com/wp-content/themes/techmania/images/style.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />’

    Is your stylesheet in this place?

    Do you need this (also from your code)?

    <style type=”text/css” media=”screen”>
    #page { background: url(“https://makemycontent.com/wp-content/themes/techmania/images/images/kubrickbgwide.jpg&#8221;) repeat-y top; border: none; }
    </style>

    right after <div id=”page”> put in <div id=”wrap”> and that will clean you up some… the wrap contains everything on your page, and condenses it to recognizable format.. this will happen in your header.php of your theme directory.. realize though, since you are opening a new div, you will have to go to your footer.php and add a new </div>…

    one other thing:

    Stop using MS Word for writing posts and copy+paste into the blog… MS assigns style values to it’s contents which follow it when you C&P.. if you must use word, save your work (after proofing) as a rtf (rich text format) or txt, close it, open it with notepad and THEN copy and paste it..

    Thread Starter makingcontent

    (@makingcontent)

    Right, forgive me here, new to the code thing.

    No more writing in MS Word though, duly noted.

    Do I add the code you mention drewactual in the header.php and the footer.php?

    Thanks for the quick help and responses guys.

    yeah man… open the new div right under <div id=”page”>, it will look like:

    <div id=”page”>
    <div id=”wrap”>

    then go to your footer.php and add a new div close, right before </html>, add </div>.

    see what happens.

    Thread Starter makingcontent

    (@makingcontent)

    Okay, will give that a go now, cheers.

    Thread Starter makingcontent

    (@makingcontent)

    Sorry, I can’t find header, or footer.php, I only have the page template and main index template. And all I can see that comes remotely close to what you are talking about is the following

    <div id=”main”>

    Sorry, I am totally new at this, and seem to be missing what you are saying.

    in your theme directory, there will be a series of php files that control your layout…

    find the one that starts has <head> in it…
    scroll down until you find </head>…
    right after that is <body> and then <div id=”page”>
    you will want to put <div id=”wrap> right after it.

    then find the php file that ends with </html>,
    right before </html> you will want to add </div>.

    Different themes use different named files to do the same thing.. it can often confuse folks like us who are not familiar with the structure of that particular theme.

    Here we go:

    404.php 16-Jun-2008 15:32 1k
    archive.php 16-Jun-2008 15:32 2k
    comments.php 16-Jun-2008 15:32 4k
    footer.php 16-Jun-2008 15:32 1k
    functions.php 16-Jun-2008 15:32 1k
    header.php 16-Jun-2008 15:32 1k

    Those are the files in the directory /themes/techmania

    Thread Starter makingcontent

    (@makingcontent)

    Hi again.

    Thanks for everything drewactual, I haven’t found the code you’re talking about, and I am messaging the theme designer. Thanks for all your help. You’re a saint. If I can repay you please let me know. I may resort to paying some one to do this for me eventually.

    (Oh and this post has confirmed, I am in fact an idiot).

    ??

    you aren’t an idiot… you are just new to this stuff. we can give it another shot though if you like…

    do this:

    open your theme directory. In it you should have at least three or four files. I don’t know the names of these, but the names should tell me which one does what…

    list them for me here. I don’t need the one that ends with .css, but there should be at least two others…. what are they?

    Drew, I just posted them!

    There is a footer.php and a header.php (but no index.php?) and they should appear in the “design”, “theme manager” (ehm, the name of the tab slipped my mind) part of the admin section.

    Guys, I’ve got this feeling that there’s something else going on here and I’m not sure what.

    There are a couple of themes in this directory. None of them have an index.php or a style.css (or I can’t see them for some reason). I can look inside the folders of some of the themes, but not all and in all cases the next folder (usually “images”) gives me this error:
    Fatal error: Call to undefined function get_header() in /home/amac08/public_html/wp-content/themes/blocked-10/index.php on line 1
    Even the default and classic themes don’t work.

    Couldn’t this be a bad WP installation instead of a theme-issue?

    Thank you Makingcontent, now I feel like an idiot too. Haha.

    [Edit], oh, rereat Evita’s reply. That is strange, but I don’t know why a new theme would have the same behaviour.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 21 total)
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