Blog Theme with view to release

LiverpoolLad, I want to commend you for the way you’ve responded, especially in your last post. The average person would have taken this whole thread personally and gotten their feelings hurt. But you’ve shown professionalism, and that’s a critical character trait. And to keep my comment on the subject, I am pleased to see you strive for validation with your theme. Keep up the good work!

Cheers Resiny, you won’t see the blood red nightmare any more. The sidebar pattern is just a small image repeated in the ul css but yes, it would better just plain white or grey.

I was looking to stretch the sidebars to the bottom of the page but am unclear as to how to do so. Thats a major issue come to think of it. I’ll try the image repeat in the sidebars, only other way would to have some background image in the content or body match the two sidebars if you know what I mean.

alright, to get the sidebars repeating down, you’d get an image 760 pixels wide, with a white background and with a grey patch on each side the width of the sidebars, then you set the the rap background like so:

background: url(images/imagelocation.gif) repeat-y;

and it will go all the way down the page, and it’ll look dandy.

Random example would be DarrenBarefoot.com. You can see his background image here

Resiny, I’ve done that and it works like a charm after twiddling a bit getting the image right in photoshop, its tiny in file size also as you only need to make it a few pixels high.

I’ve dropped all the red and gone for good old black and white and dropped the banner also. I could leave instructions for people to do a banner, even a sliced one, which I suppose only a few would actually do.

I like this one better

Link is https://www.kirkbytimes.co.uk/wordpress7/

(Link given to save people scrolling up again)

Thanks Jonlandrum, I’m just trying to keep the forums good natured and hoping to learn a few things. Theme is still xhtml and css verified, though I’ll need to check all the various pages to make sure that all the Css is valid across the blog or website.

One bit of red remains there, somehow the drop down theme gets a 2px red border in Firefox, and I’ve got red buttons on the calendar, but they are photoshop specials, and I’ll put the original buttons back.

looks extremely cluttered.

Cluttered?

Its gone from over 100 images (with the slices) to just one image, and is almost a minimal sort of theme now.

Bear in mind that a website theme with three columns and fitting onto a 800 resolution screen will look a little cluttered but the question is simply whether the user can quickly work out what buttons to press to read whatever they like the look of, I think it is on the way there.

I’m thinking of ditching the calendar because it is a killer for trying to attain the a standard or aaa standard for disability complience, something which I’m interested in. WordPress, out of the box, untouched, might well hit standard or level a – the only question is whether wordpress can be read without a css file – I’ve played around and it seems you can read a wordpress blog with no css. If WordPress can get level a then it ought to have a little link and WordPress could make a play of having that feather in the cap.

Holy crap. It’s almost to the point now where I think it looks really good. I’d make that huge bar between each post a lot thinner. Like about 3 pixels instead of 20. I’d also left align the sidebars instead of center, and make all the sidebar links the same. Other than that, I can honestly say it’s looking pretty good. Well done

I might as well give both sidebars the same width also, or maybe give the main middle section 30 pixels extra.

I’d like to incorporate the top navigation menu into icons with rollover effects using css.

You can have one rollover image to cover all the seperate icons or images – or do 9 different divs for 9 different images. I want to add the meta links up top alongside the normal WP standard links so that you have those links neatly lined up in a row at the top of the page above your blog name and the description. It makes more sense as you generally have to scroll down to hit your user name and password, or test the coding out.

By the way, Origami will become the new standard to aspire to, that fluid width works great with WordPress and it covers 780 to 1200px. I admit the top menu I plan is inspired by that layout and the phpbb forums. I’d love to get a peek at that Origami theme as it uses some great techniques which I’m keen on learning.

It looks like you can beta the theme. I’m highly interested in this. I hadn’t heard of it before; good find LiverpoolLad.
https://www.leevigraham.com/2006/05/04/now-running-the-beta-wordpress-20-theme-release-of-origami/

Someone else found that theme and I just found the link to the authors website.

I wish I could do as well as Origami but I’m at the basics of php.

Anyhow, I’ve restyled the theme I’m doing to the point were you can barely see the original.

The only images now are the little wordpress logo divider and the background repeat y image for the main content. Thats a loss of 50 to 80 images, as I had slices.

There are still a good few things I need to test out, but not one bit of red remains. What I’ll do is fill up the blog with some text and a few images to test it out and do a few lists and blockquotes and use up any html mark up that any user can get to. You never know with Css whether some 2px border will crash the entire site until you view each scenario that could be called up. In WordPress you have a few html elements which are called up in the php and so you need to plod on with that.

I’ll also test out a few common widgets (no adverts) and will include a list of those that are verified working in WordPress 2.02.

Liverpool,

I’m coming in late on this and I just checked it and I think it’s great. I’m using IE and it looks and works fine. The one I’m looking at is black and white, so I imagine it used to be red and then you changed it.

It’s very logically and functionally laid out. That’s the way I like it.

I figured it had to be good coming from someone from the Beatles’ town.

Good luck and keep up the good work.

Thanks DomFontana, the theme has altered a lot from its original.

The one up now is just plain black and white, with a little discreet wordpress logo in between posts.

I’m hoping to release a simple 3 column blog/website that could easily be customised for little community groups and so on. I’m also trying to comply with disability issues by at least having all the text easy to read and have organised the css to group each main divs elements with comments for anything that might help, and some sort of instructions text file. And also a sample image, which some themes have left out.

As a nice add on offer, I’ve located a free ico file format maker, and offer a small psd file so you can maybe add one or two initials on a colour background and have your own favicon and smart desktop shortcut to your blog or website.

I’ll tidy it up for IE and FF and opera, but I have no Mac (a shame I know) so will have to await mac users view of the situation.

Looks pretty good. I’d still probably change some stuff if I were to use it as a three column theme, but it’s good enough to release. Just one thing, take the background colors off of the top navigation.

Nice work, and like somebody else said, I respect the fact that you took all the critique so well

Criticism is the mother of invention in many ways.

I’m still working away on this theme, but my servers on 1&1 have been moody today, never had issues there really. It is bit pricey, but usually stable.

If you can get through, I’m working through the html mark ups, and trying to tidy up a few things. It will take a few weeks I guess to have it fair and square but I’ll beta it myself.

Hi, Liverpool.

Are you going to charge for theme or will it be free? When you’re finished with it, I think I’d like to use it for my Blog.