Posts Tagged ‘wordpress’

Darwin WordPress Theme 0.1.3

Monday, August 4th, 2008

Not long has passed since the last release, I know, however there were a number of little tweaks that needed to be disseminated to the public before too many people downloaded the old one.

The good old chaps down at WordPress Themes rejected my update at first, saying that there was a problem with the theme, that the sidebar disappeared on single page view. I replied, assuring them that this was a feature, not a bug 🙂 (same functionality as the default WordPress theme, interestingly enough)

But anyway, the latest Darwin Theme is available now to download directly from WordPress Extend. Vote high stars for it if you like it.

Newly developed features:

  1. Changes in colours of links and text
  2. Font and typography changes
  3. Corrected theme URI in the stylesheet
  4. Merged updates to WordPress default Kubrick theme with Darwin code
  5. Footer changes in wording and style
  6. Added query count and page load timer to footer

I’m currently trying to work out how to upload the source to Google Code so that others can come in on the development. This will happen in due time.

Darwin Theme Evolution 0.1.2 Alpha

Monday, July 28th, 2008

It has been a while between drinks, but here is the next revision of the Darwin Theme for WordPress. The evolution continues. The WordPress website has opened up its new themes section, so the new version should be available there once it is approved.

For those who can’t wait that long, here it is for download here:

Darwin Theme 0.1.2 download

To install, simply unzip the file and upload the folder to your WordPress themes directory. For a preview of the theme, just browse around this site 🙂 (note: you may notice some differences being worked on for the next version).

Favourable mutation log:

  1. Made the title lighter and closer to the top.
  2. Took away the grey footer that was breaking the page sometimes. Replaced it with a groovy dotted line and changed the text colours around a bit.
  3. Changed header 3 size in archive and category page to match the normal posts because it looked strange.
  4. Changed the browser title bar display to show the page name first and then the blog name on single posts and archive pages.
  5. Changed attribution in the footer to link to the Darwin theme category.
  6. Made the <body> background colour white as it showed up during loading sometimes.
  7. Moved the <?php wp_footer(); ?> inside the footer div so that the little smiley face they use with wp-stats wouldn’t break the page layout.
  8. Cleaned up css a little from the mess that was the Kubrick css.

Enjoy! Subversion repository should be coming soon so that you can add your own code to the theme and stay up to date with nightly builds.

Gravatars are Groovy

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Good to see some regular comment coming in to this relatively new blog, but…

Check out the comments to this article (or leave one if you are the first one) and you will see that next to the comment will be a groovy little image. This will more than likely be of a grey anonymous head at the moment, but it doesn’t have to be this way…

WordPress now comes with Gravatar support built in. So head on over, sign up, and upload your pic and use your avatar associated with your email address on loads of different websites around the web.

Here is my current gravatar pulled from the Gravatar site (probably due for a change soon maybe):

phocks avatar

You’ll also be able to grab the URI for a direct link to your image, which can be handy at times. It will look something like this:

http://en.gravatar.com/avatar/0b194e4cae0828e21142af8506696cc6?s=80&r=any

Anyway, it’s late and I have no idea why I’m blogging this. Till next time.

The Evolution of the WordPress Species, Version 2.5

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Seems I had WordPress 2.5 final already last night, but just didn’t know it yet. It was simply masquerading as a late revision of release candidate 3. This morning when the news came through the usual update channels to my awareness, I immediately went to upgrade from the subversion repository. I found that the only file that was updated to be one wp-includes/version.php which seems to just tell WordPress what version number it is running.

Actually now that I look at it, mine now says “2.6-bleeding”. I guess that’s what comes of this whole subversion beta testing thing, not ever really getting to try the release versions for very long. Probably in essence, it is like always running a broken, un(der)tested version. It is like a fleet of horses and carriages, with the newly designed carriages up at the front. Sometimes their new fandangled modifications will result in a wheel falling off, and as such, the rest of the fleet would probably not adopt that new modification.

You can obviously draw parallels between software development and the evolutionary process, especially with open source development, with each application being a separate species that slowly adapts over time. There is no one single designer, and indeed it would be impossible virtually for any single person to design and code something so complex as the WordPress base code. But with so many contributors building upon and changing the design to better suit its environment, the species plods along on its evolving path.

The audacity to speak only in the singular when referring to any creation so complex astonishes me.

First Update for Darwin Theme

Friday, March 28th, 2008

After a few days use and rigorous testing down in the lab and out in the wild blue yonder of the interwebs, this new species of WordPress theme we call “Darwin” has undergone the first tiny changes in its evolutionary and ever-marching journey towards a more perfect suitability to its environment.

A number of small alterations in genetic php code seem enough to warrant a revision release. These include:

  1. Colours and wording in the footer
  2. Footer css styling issues in ie7
  3. Altered styles for code and blockquotes
  4. Wide borders for images in posts, making 500 pixel images line up perfectly with text
  5. Comment box now lines up correctly
  6. Header moves in to meet text while viewing single page, and h2 text now aligns left
  7. “Archive” text removed from single pages in the browser title bar
  8. Reduced height on list elements
  9. Other seemingly imperceivable changes

This post also serves as an excuse to use the Abduction! Firefox plugin, which allows full page exports straight from your browser.

View Screenshot | Download version 0.1.1 | Or Test Run Right Here 🙂

Install as per usual, as per the last Darwin post. And as before, feel free to use and modify at will, with or without credit under the GPL. Shout back any favourable modifications you may stumble upon.

Feeding the Masses

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Taking a break from the Grant McLennan Memorial Fellowship application that is slowly coming together, in between intended gatherings of The Strange Attractors, the occasional wanderings online, and Cieon, wonderful house mate coming home and persuading me into watching the Liv Tyler film Heavy, I stay on course, this ship just set for sail, across the wide Atlantic.

This blog, now syndicating through FeedBurner and newly launched, is on the watchtower lookout for subscribers, subscribers to the blog feed. As we are utilising the latest trunk of WordPress, the bleeding edges of 2.5 RC2, of course certain plugins such as FeedSmith seem not to work. So in this post, along with testing the default display of code in a post, we will see quite an inelegant, and rather simple, hacky way of making sure all your WordPress feed references redirect to your blog’s FeedBurner feed.

Update: ok, so it turns out that FeedSmith was working all along. I was just misjudging its functionality. Seems it redirects after clickthroughs to the feed and doesn’t actually physically change the link. I’ll keep this here for reference anyway.

Just one simple edit in the general-template.php seemed to do the trick. Should be self-evident from the following diff output, monospaced and styled with the use of <code></code> tags. I may customise some css for for the next Darwin theme release. Seems quite good as it it though, clean and simple.

Index: wp-includes/general-template.php
===================================================================
--- wp-includes/general-template.php (revision 7524)
+++ wp-includes/general-template.php (working copy)
@@ -92,7 +92,8 @@
$output = get_feed_link('rss');
break;
case 'rss2_url':
- $output = get_feed_link('rss2');
+ //$output = get_feed_link('rss2');
+ $output = 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/phocks';
break;
case 'atom_url':
$output = get_feed_link('atom');

Ok, so now there should be no subscriber left behind. Already FeedBurner is reporting 22 subscribers, which must be some kind of miscount or something as I only just put this in place a little while ago. I have no quarrels with bandwagon jumpers however.

Is that rain I hear out my bedroom window? A welcome sign, though weeping heavens, if they persist in their sombre state, may present a challenge to my Thursday morning stroll, a new beginning to the working man’s blues, plaguing so many.

Over The Train Lines
The Albion Old Mill in the midst of deconstruction, from the crossing over the train lines

Always on the lookout for an opportunity of creation to feed the masses, even if that means the photographing of destruction.

Introducing Darwin

Monday, March 24th, 2008

I was searching for a very minimalistic theme, with a certain understated simple elegance, a theme that met with web standards, had widget support, and was easily customisable. Growing tiresome of wading through the sea of WordPress themes, looking for one that I could be truly happy with using, I decided it was high time I developed a theme of my own.

So here it is, entitled “Darwin” after the grandfather of evolution theory, good old Charlie. Still in very early alpha stages, the Darwin theme is based very heavily on the default Kubrick theme that comes with WordPress. I originally tried to develop the theme from scratch, without much luck, and also began to develop it as a K2 style, but found that I was stifled by the limited flexibility.

Features List

  1. Very minimalist design, fast loading
  2. Support for WordPress Widgets
  3. Web standards compliant, valid XHTML and CSS
  4. Wider content pane, suitable for displaying flickr 500px photos
  5. Free to use and modify, no sponsored links
  6. Lots of other cool stuff

Screenshot | Download version 0.1 alpha, released under GPL

Installation Instructions

  1. Unzip the folder and upload to your wp-content/themes/ directory
  2. Go to the themes viewer in your WordPress admin and click on the one that says “Darwin”
  3. Enjoy!

I’m releasing Darwin into the wild using the General Public Licence to encourage others to use and work on evolving the theme over time. The GPL basically states that you can use the code, change and modify it — you don’t even have to link back to me if you don’t want to, although it would be appreciated — as long as you keep all derived versions or modifications under the same licence.

Through various tiny mutations, Darwin will adapt over time. Please let me know any genetic code changes you might make, so I can include them in the next release. I’m phocks at gmail.