Banner image and fluid width
Thinking about the banner. This theme is fluid width. That shouldn’t really matter with a banner that’s a solid colour.
What I’d need to do is use the banner at a fixed pixel width and then ensure the page background where the banner would appear is the same colour.
The banner I want to use, though, isn’t a solid colour, as this image shows.
That’s a screenshot of my main blog as it currently looks which I intend to upgrade to WordPress 2.2.1 and then replace the K2 theme it uses with something else.
This SpotLight theme is the most promising candidate right now.
On with the testing.
Ordered and unordered
I’m writing these test posts with the version 1.0 beta of Windows Live Writer. Works perfectly with WordPress 2.2.1.
How does a numbered list look?
- Here’s the first one
- Another one
- And let’s do one more
What about a bulleted list?
- Well, here’s one bullet
- Followed by another
- And this is the final one
Now publish…
[Edit] Not sure I like the appearance of the bullets. The arrows are graphics so not too difficult to change. Too much space between the paragraph before the first bullet and the one after the last bullet. I’m sure I can change that in the style sheet.
SpotLight theme looks promising
The first of a couple of test posts with this theme, SpotLight 1.3.
I like the overall look of this one. A pleasing design, nice layout, good use of white space. It doesn’t look too difficult to customize a little, eg, change the colour for links, add a banner image, etc.
Looks are good but does the theme provide the functionality I want?
Let’s find out.
It’s been a while…
Just upgraded to WP 2.2. DreamHost’s 1-click install. So easy.
Now using Brian Gardner’s Silhouette theme. Nice and clean.
With 2.2, I definitely want to upgrade the main blog. As my earlier procrastinating posts here show, it’s the theme that’s holding me back. But I need to just do it. No more K2.
Can I make the switch very soon, I wonder…
Upgraded to WP 2.1.2
Following the warning about WordPress 2.1.1 on Friday, I’ve just upgraded this blog to version 2.1.2.
After backing up the database (and the complete WP installation just in case), I used Dreamhost’s 1-click install to do the upgrade. Very simple and very straightforward.
From when I clicked the ‘go’ button to receiving the auto-email saying all ok, the automated procedure took no longer than ten minutes.
A lot of trust, of course, that the auto-install process works seamlessly. Plus having a blog that doesn’t have any major customizations of the core WordPress files.
Definitely the easiest way to upgrade your blog.
Will I apply that upgrade method to my main blog? Maybe.
Elegant Tarski
I’ve just installed Tarski, described as “an elegant, flexible WordPress theme.”
Definitely elegant.
Potential candidate for my main blog. Let’s play a while.
Testing plugins
Part of the prep for upgrading my main blog is to check out the various plugins I have running on that site. While I’m confident most will run under WP 2.1.1, now’s the time (and the place) to be sure beforehand.
A couple of updates I’ve installed here - latest versions of Sidebar Modules (1.0.7i3) and WP-Backup (2.0.1).
As I’ll be intermittently trying things out here in prep for the main-blog upgrade this weekend, some things here may or may not work correctly during this week. One other thing, too, is trying out some style ideas with K2. That will undoubtedly produce some odd appearances and functionality.
Bear with me…
K2 perseverance…
Well, let’s give K2 one more shot.
I’ve just upgraded WordPress to the latest version 2.1 and K2 to version 0.9.1 RC1. Both upgrades went smoothly with no issues, thanks to Dreamhost’s one-click install/upgrade service for WP and Steve Lam’s K2 upgrade guide.
The thing is, I really like K2 notwithstanding my constant frustration with trying to figure out how to do things.
So one more go at understanding K2 to see if I can use this latest version on my main blog when I upgrade that to WP 2.1.
Enough with K2
I’ve upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.0.7. WP 2.1 is just around the corner - and the current release of K2 is not compatible with WP 2.1.
So enough with K2 experimentation. Trying to figure out simple things like date/time display config on posts is wasting time anyway.
Back to the Cutline theme for the moment.
Trying to figure out K2
Still thinking about what do do with the design of my main blog. Keep K2? Find another theme? Leave things as they are?
I’m inclined to stick with K2, notwithstanding my frustration in trying to get some help to figure out how to do certain things. If I do stick with it, I want to install the latest version 0.9.1.
I’m now trying to figure out what to edit in theloop.php so that each post includes the time as well as the date.
I’m no expert at PHP editing, and it looks as though some major changes in the PHP code have been implemented in the development of K2 0.9.1 compared to K2 r167b which is the version still running on the main blog.
For instance, with 0.9.1, the code to display the text “Published by neville December 24th, 2006 in WordPress and Themes” that you see in the previous post is this:
<?php /* Date & Author */ printf( __('Published %1$s %2$s','k2_domain'), ( $multiple_users ? sprintf(__('by %s','k2_domain'), '<span class="vcard author"><a href="' . get_author_link(0, $authordata->ID, $authordata->user_nicename) .'" class="url fn">' . get_the_author() . '</a></span>') : ('') ), '<abbr class="published" title="'. get_the_time('Y-m-d\TH:i:sO') . '">' . ( function_exists('time_since') ? sprintf(__('%s ago','k2_domain'), time_since(abs(strtotime($post->post_date_gmt
. " GMT")), time())) : get_the_time(__('F jS, Y','k2_domain')) ) . '</abbr>' ); ?>
At least, I think it’s in there somewhere.
I can see that the code for displaying the time is there. What that does is show the time if you hover your mouse over the date. Sort of cool, I suppose, but I don’t want that.
What I do want is to actually display the time in a post, just as it currently does with r167b on my main blog.
But I cannot see where to make that happen.
Not only that, the syntax looks entirely different in 0.9.1’s theloop.php compares to r167b’s.
Here’s the code in the r167b theloop.php that takes care of displaying the date (and, with my customization, the time) in a published post:
Posted <?php /* If there is more than one author, show author's name */ $count_users = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $wpdb->usermeta WHERE `meta_key` = '" . $table_prefix . "user_level' AND `meta_value` > 1"); if ($count_users > 1) { ?> by <?php the_author_posts_link(); } ?> on <?php the_time('F j, Y'); ?> at <?php the_time('G:i'); ?> UK time
Doesn’t seem to bear any relation to the code in the 0.9.1 theloop.php, does it?
This is a pretty fundamental thing for me and it’s a big headache just trying to figure it out on my own.
I’ll persevere a little, but if this is indicative of what the new K2 version will be like, then this theme’s not for me.