Theme Revisions
More for my own benefit than anything else, I want to list the revisions I’ve made to my blog theme over the past couple evenings. Feel free to ignore this post entirely.
When I switched to WordPress back in the Fall, I was extremely grateful to find that someone had updated the “Rubric” theme I had been using in B2Evolution for WordPress 1.5. When I upgraded again to WordPress 2–maybe even before then–I began to notice that my theme was different than all the other themes. It lacked a number of files: specifically, header.php, footer.php, arc-con.php, page.php, sidebar.php, searchform.php, 404.php.
After doing a little reading, I learned that a theme should properly have all of these files, each one to be called by a “get” PHP function in the main index.php file. My theme included the sidebar, footer, header, and assorted other elements in the index.php itself.
So beginning two nights ago, I began breaking down my index.php file into its component parts. I used another theme as a guide as to what files my theme should have, and what they should contain.
Once finished, I also did some editing of the content of each file. Now that I had a footer.php file, I could put stuff in it. I added a disclaimer and a sitemeter. I removed the calander from the sidebar, seeing it as extraneous. I adjusted the positioning of my sidebar to make it even with the content box.
I created an archive page. I hope to make it a little more dynamic using one of the archive plugins I’ve seen on other sites.
I added code to my index.php file to include a link for “previous entries” and “next entries” at the bottom of each page, and at the bottom of search results. The lack of these links was a major flaw in the original design, allowing people only to see the first ten posts in any search list.
I’ve just about given up on finding a theme I like better than this one, and I am going to content myself with making it work the way I want it to. So thank you Hadley Wickham and Tom Raftery, wherever you are. I feel like I’ve been able to indirectly learn a lot about PHP from both of you, and in the bargain I’ve made this theme uniquely mine.
Matthew, you are welcome – glad my quick and dirty hack of Hadley’s theme was useful to you.
One modification I would respectfully make to you is to move the Search Bob to the top of the sidebar. I think it is one of the most useful of the navigation tools and so should be at the top.
Other than that, lovely job on the redesign. Well done.
Tom.
I’d like to get the same things for my own blog.
I didn’t get the job at Villanova U, but I’m cool about it and glad the wait is over.
Also, I have a problem with when making comments that the cursor goes off the space where you can see what you are printing and so it’s easy to make mistakes. Any ideas on how to deal with that?
dlw
I think you’re right about the search bar; I’ll move it to the top of the sidebar the first chance I get.
D.,is that what you want, as well? It’s easily done. I’ll take a look at your theme when I have a moment.
Hey, you have a previous entries thing at the bottom now! Happy day.
Nice!
Good to see a little tinkering will give you exactly what you want.
Hey, I’ve taken to updating and maintaining the Rubric theme for 2.0. However, just now I came across this entry. So, the question is, are you sharing your modifications? And is your version widget-compatible?
Peace,
Step
No, I’ve not made my theme publicly available. What I did was pretty simple–nothing so extensive as making it compatible with WP 2.0. I just broke the theme into separate PHP files for the sidebar, footer, etc. Added some links in the header. That’s it.
Ok. I’m trying to get the sidebar to look like it does on your page, so I was hoping you had already figured it out.
I’m working on getting the 2.0-friendly version on WP’s theme site, and I’m hosting it on my site.
The links in the header is a good idea – one of my goals is to have a nice way to do pages in the theme. Right now they’re just widgetized, which is better than nothing…