Spartacus / Manage Styles plugin

[williamts99]

When you are managing your styles it gives you the option to install the style if it is not installed already. On the other hand, it doesn't give you the option to remove it from your webserver if you don't want it located on the drive anymore. It would be nice to have an option so you don't have to FTP or SSH into the server to remove the extra styles.

Also would it be possible to have the preview images link to a larger screen shot of the style?

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

We also don't have a functionality to delete unused plugins. I strongly disbelief in offering this removal function via PHP and instead really suggest to do that via FTP, because it's much safer. It also makes sure that different authors don't (accidentaly) delete themes even though they have no FTP access to your site?

Also would it be possible to have the preview images link to a larger screen shot of the style?

The problem is that the screenshots are supplied by template authors - and they don'T supply large screenshots. So we would need somebody who'd make large screenshots of all the themes we have available...or someone to create an automatism to do that....

Best regards,
Garvin

[williamts99]

I wasn't thinking of different users being able to accidentally delete themes. That makes sense then that it would be best to keep it out of the php code. I guess it would be ok if there was access control to that feature.

As far as the screenshots, of course it would be best to be able to automatically create the screenshots, but I would be willing to do larger screenshots for all of the themes. From what I have seen, png seems to provide the best look/size for screenshots, would that be acceptable or would another format be better? What size and naming convention would be optimal. As far as automating it, I am not a programmer, but I am sure that there is a guide out there somewhere that could help. If anyone knows which way to lead me in the right direction, I would be willing to give it a shot.

[robi-bobi]

Also would it be possible to have the preview images link to a larger screen shot of the style?

The problem is that the screenshots are supplied by template authors

yes, this is definitely a reasonable request. I know that authors provide info, but maybe s9y should point somewhere that following things are recommended in it:
small preview (already there)
big preview
list of features (description)
demo url

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Wow, large screenshots would be awesome!

I would suggest to use "preview_fullsize.jpg" as the filename. I suggest to use JPG, because its compression is better for larger size images; PNG images tend to be quite large in higher resolutions.

As for the size, how about 800x600 pixels, that should be sufficient?

Robi-bobi, as for a list of features, having that would also be very nice, yes. A demo URL might be hard to add, because authors often change their URLs and then this info would be unusable...

Best regards,
Garvin

[robi-bobi]

hm
maybe supersized could have one blog with just a test entries and 'change template' plugin (can not recall the real name) - the one which allows visitors to change it from dropdown

it will be permanent and will hold all templates

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

hm
maybe supersized could have one blog with just a test entries and 'change template' plugin (can not recall the real name) - the one which allows visitors to change it from dropdown

it will be permanent and will hold all templates

You mean themes.s9y.org?

Regards,
Garvin

[robi-bobi]

one suggestion then
add one BIG link to this page from the manage styles page in s9y admin

edit:
here, too

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Problem is that this page does not hold a recent list of templates, I think. Need to talk with jannis about how to automate that

Regards,
Garvin

[williamts99]

Well if you want to check them out, I put them in the directories so that it would be easy to just decompress them to the right spot. I still have to send them through some imagemagick goodness then they should be good but I wanted to get your opinion before I downsize them.

I have all of them except brownpaper and roundededges as they failed when downloading them.

Here is the link, http://williamts99.com/s9y_themes_scree ... png.tar.gz

Best Regards,
Williamts99

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Great, thanks for the effort. The screenshots are great - do you think you could convert them to JPG, downsized to 800x600? Then they'd take up less space.

Would there maybe be an easy way to strip the firefox header/scrollbars/footer inside the screenshots? I'm not that good at automating imagemagick, but sine at least footer+header always take up identical X pixels of the screenshot, it could be done maybe?

Many thanks,
Garvin

[williamts99]

That pack was just the original pictures right from the browser with no editing. I have to play around with imagemagick some more to figure all of that out. Unless someone else knows imagemagick well and knows how to trim a specific amount off of each side of the picture, then resize, and convert to jpg all recursively through the directories, then please post it up If wanted/needed we could redo the thumbnails too.

Unless someone knows imagemagick really well and knows the code off the top of their head, otherwise I will work on it tonight after the kids go to sleep.

As far as automating the process, I would bet that someone who knows python could use the source code/idea behind browsershots.org with imagemagick to create screenshots automatically. Might even be able to use their 'render farm' to do the shots.

Is there a way to force the use of a specific template by using a URL variable like ?theme=newspaper or something along those lines? If that is possible, I could see a simple script that would ...
1. Grab directory names from the theme directory
2. Submit test site with variable to browsershots.org or on your own server.
3. Collect screen shots from browsershots.org after a certain amount of time
4. Imagemagick trims the screenshot, converts, etc and saves to specified directory.

Best Regards,
Williamts99

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Yes, if you install the templatechooser event plugin, you can call your blog's index.php?user_template=kubrick etc.

The idea with browsershots.org is a good one...if I have time this weekend I will also try to hae a look!

Regards,
Garvin

[williamts99]

Ok, well I figured out imagemagick, and came up with a plan and implemented it with the following commands

Code: Select all

find . -type d -exec mogrify -verbose -monitor -crop +0+50 +repage -crop -15+0 +repage -crop +0-25 +repage -resize 800x600 -quality 70 -format jpg */*.png \;

Then removed the png files with

Code: Select all

rm */*.png

Here are the Finished Screenshots

The only problem with the first command is that it runs in perpetuity, anyone know how to automatically stop it when it is finished(other then ctrl+c)? I am sure that it has to do with the implementation of the find command but not sure how to fix it.

Of course it would be just as easy to create new thumbs for each, but you didn't say if you wanted them or not.

Best Regards,
Williamts99

[judebert]

find should finish when it's done checking all the directories. It sometimes gets stuck in infinite loops with links; try adding -nofollow to the options.