Dolbex.com

Here you can post your custom-made, pimped up Serendipity installations, show off what you have achieved and tweaked
dolbex
Regular
Posts: 22
Joined: Fri Aug 18, 2006 9:17 pm

Dolbex.com

Post by dolbex »

Alright, after this morning I am "complete" with the work on my blog. It's kinda a hobby to mess with things so I'm sure it'll be a constant work in progress. Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think:

http://www.dolbex.com
judebert
Regular
Posts: 2478
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2005 6:57 am
Location: Orlando, FL
Contact:

Post by judebert »

Very nice template. The bottom bar is especially interesting. Nice color scheme, beautiful integration, subtle but apparent credit logos at the bottom.

Definitely a credit to the Serendipity community!
Judebert
---
Website | Wishlist | PayPal
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

Post by carl_galloway »

I agree, very nice design. I never thought a single page as the startpage would work very well but I'm impressed.
yellowled
Regular
Posts: 7111
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:46 am
Location: Eutin, Germany
Contact:

Post by yellowled »

Well, well. Very nice. Seems like we found another graphics artist, which always comes in handy if us mere mortals need some help with Gimp, Photoshop and the likes ... :wink:
dolbex
Regular
Posts: 22
Joined: Fri Aug 18, 2006 9:17 pm

Post by dolbex »

YellowLed wrote:Well, well. Very nice. Seems like we found another graphics artist, which always comes in handy if us mere mortals need some help with Gimp, Photoshop and the likes ... :wink:
Haha, well, thank you all for you great comments. Of course if anybody here needed any help with templates I am always available.

Definitely thanks to garvin for such a great environment. (Promise, I will be donating soon!)
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

Post by carl_galloway »

Oh yeah, if you donated a template to the community it would be awesome. We need more designers, especially of your calibre, welcome aboard.
akb
Regular
Posts: 35
Joined: Tue Aug 22, 2006 6:43 pm
Contact:

Post by akb »

its really a nice one... grats to this nice work :-)

@need of designers: well, theres a special point i would like to mention. we especially need designers that style templates that do not _always_ use the standard layout. in fact i have not seen any s9y templates yet that use an alternative layout like this ones that use a greater footer instead (!) of a sidebar or something like that. if you look at the wordpress scene theres many people that like to try out other layout ideas than the standard content+sidebar thingy... but with s9y theres nothing, although s9ys templating solution is definitely able to do all the things you want. so why arent there any templates that do not look like "uh, that blog must be s9y driven"? for example it seems to me that almost no template designer makes use of placing plugins outside the sidebar places and so on. really strange huh?
mattsches
Regular
Posts: 440
Joined: Sat Nov 05, 2005 9:35 pm
Location: Wiesbaden, Germany
Contact:

Post by mattsches »

You're 100% right, akb, that's exactly what I've been thinking over the last weeks when I was reading the announcements in the templates forum.

One doesn't create a new template by just by replacing the header image and changing some colors. I mean, most of the time the designs are great visually, but they're simply not templates. These customizations should be posted to showcase, imho.

Carl and some others do a great and very creative job in implementing or porting new layouts (e.g. the excellent Hemingway port), so there is progress. But what about one-column layouts (maybe in combination with some AJAX hide/unhide effects for the sidebar content)? Or has anyone thought of porting one of the new flexible multi-column layouts (YAML, Yahoo! Grids) to S9Y?

I'm not a designer, but I know my XHTML, and if I had the time (which, unfortunately, I don't) I would tackle a completely fresh template from scratch anyhow. And I would share it, of course. Because I want a new design for my blog, but there aren't hardly any original layouts to build upon. :) [/rant]

- Mattsches
yellowled
Regular
Posts: 7111
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:46 am
Location: Eutin, Germany
Contact:

Post by yellowled »

mattsches wrote:One doesn't create a new template by just by replacing the header image and changing some colors.
True. That's basically a colorset, but that is a term which will be introduced with the upcoming release of v1.1.

But there is more to a template than just the layout, graphics and color. It's very little things like changing the way the date is displayed or changing the "Comments (0)" line to "No comments yet", looking for flexible, fluid layouts and so on. But this kind of stuff just doesn't get the same attention as fancy header graphics.
mattsches wrote:Carl and some others do a great and very creative job in implementing or porting new layouts (e.g. the excellent Hemingway port), so there is progress.
Unfortunately, the latest templates featuring new layouts haven't been commited to spartacus, the primary display, yet, probably because Garvin is getting some well-deserved vacation. But, yes, there are some "unusual" layouts. (Although akb does have a point: Most of them are wp ports ...)
mattsches wrote:Or has anyone thought of porting one of the new flexible multi-column layouts (YAML, Yahoo! Grids) to S9Y?
I have given YAML a look, but not really found the time to dive into its code. Unfortunately YAML is documented in German only (as far as I can see), so a lot of our template guys won't be able to read that doc stuff.
d_cee
Regular
Posts: 603
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2006 6:32 pm
Location: UK
Contact:

Post by d_cee »

Hi there

my two-pennorth for what it's worth. All of us who design templates for Serendipity are doing the best we can to give Serendipity users a wide choice of themes and templates. Compared to Wordpress, the community of Serendipity designers (and users) is very small, so progress tends to be a little slower. Some of us are just designers with limited code experience and some of us are coders with limited design experience. As the community grows so will the pool of designers and coders - then the pace of template evolution and development will accelerate.

Carl has done some great work recently with his latest port from WP - and Costa has also integrated some new features into his latest theme. Lordcoffee has made some excellent contributions, in particular the translucency theme he has recently shown. I released a new theme myself yesterday that doesn't follow the standard layout - and although it's nothing groundbreaking, it has been restyled by another user already and released as a new 'theme'. As yellowled says it should really have been released as a new colourset or variation on the original theme.

My own point of view when working on a new theme is always to try to include something new or different. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not. However I think that if I include one new feature that somebody else then includes in their new design I'm doing what I set out to do - and that's improve the Serendipity experience for it's users.

Dave
Last edited by d_cee on Fri Sep 29, 2006 8:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
azel
Regular
Posts: 265
Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2005 4:28 am
Contact:

Post by azel »

Now that is a great-looking template. I hope you'll think about possibly releasing it!
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

Post by carl_galloway »

@akb

Thanks for your thoughts, at least you've identified some specific things you would like to see in upcoming templates and that kind of contribution is really needed. Thanks.

At the moment, those of us who provide templates are not professional web developers. For me this is my hobby, I'm passionate about it and I read up on design all the time, but without the flair that the naturally gifted have I will never be able to produce a new template like you see appearing for WP, and this is why I have ported so many designs.

Others raise the point about s9y being a small community. Compared to WP we just don't have the numbers (and remember that WP is featured in fantastico). A few of us regularly promote Serendipity in other areas, I have personally become a thorn in the side of some of the biggest name WP designers by constantly mentioning s9y in their blog comments, and by actively encouraging some big name bloggers to use s9y. Unfortunately all of this takes time but my impression is that by March-June 2007 Serendipity will hit the million user mark and then we will start to see some of the professionals contribute a few templates because they will want the exposure and traffic that it generates.

I'm really happy with the increased number of template designers that have started to appear, for the longest time it seemed like Dave and myself were the only people releasing templates, happily those days seem to be well and truly over. I would love to see a dolbex template available to download, and if you feel like you have an idea for a template, why not post it in the themes forum and I'm sure one of us will take a serious look at it.
yellowled
Regular
Posts: 7111
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:46 am
Location: Eutin, Germany
Contact:

Post by yellowled »

d_cee wrote:Some of us are just designers with limited code experience and some of us are coders with limited design experience.
I think there is a third group. I don't consider myself a coder - I'm just beginning to learn PHP, and I'm probably months or years away from being able to contribute in that area. I'm not a designer either - I'm completely lost in Gimp. I do, however, know some XHTML, some CSS, and after reading a lot and bugging Carl with annoying questions, I even know some Smarty.

I think these groups tend to produce different kinds of template. People like me try to do what I call the 'little things'. That means creating templates which produce 'nice' (i.e. valid) XHTML output and stuff like that. Designers tend to do templates with great graphics, but often - in my humble opinion -, well, unsightly code output. Coders tend to really push the borders and take advantage of new s9y features.

It could be worth a shot to combine these various talents into group efforts. If you're a coder, get together with a XHTML expert and a graphics wizard and do templates together. We could probably even set up a specific forum in here, sort of a 'contact forum' (please don't look for potential spouses in that :wink:)

Now, don't get me wrong - I know that this can be hard or frustrating, especially if you're working with somebody who actually lives in a different time zone. I've done something like this with Carl, and although it was a pleasure, it can also be confusing to keep track of the various changes and files involved. Something like subversion, git or cvs might help a lot at that particular end.
d_cee wrote:As yellowled says it should really have been released as a new colourset or variation on the original theme.
I really think the terminology in that area is confusing, especially for people who are new to s9y or s9y tempates. What's the difference between a template and a theme? I think we use both terms synonymous, although a template should mean the actual .tpl files and a theme the actual stylesheets and graphics.

On the other hand we have 1.1 and it's great theme configurator coming up, which introduces colorsets. Maybe those colorsets should be called themes, since most of them don't focus on colors alone anyway. Just a thought.
d_cee
Regular
Posts: 603
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2006 6:32 pm
Location: UK
Contact:

Post by d_cee »

yellowled
It could be worth a shot to combine these various talents into group efforts. If you're a coder, get together with a XHTML expert and a graphics wizard and do templates together. We could probably even set up a specific forum in here, sort of a 'contact forum'
This sounds like a really good idea - provided there are enough people interested in doing it
yellowled
I really think the terminology in that area is confusing
I agree and I think your "a template should mean the actual .tpl files and a theme the actual stylesheets and graphics" sounds about right to me

Dave
akb
Regular
Posts: 35
Joined: Tue Aug 22, 2006 6:43 pm
Contact:

Post by akb »

thank you guys for talking that way about the things i mentioned. i really was afraid someone could take this as a flame or something, but since it was really not my intention to flame, i am glad to see you taking the critics in a positive way :-)

well, i know theres one big thing i should tell myself every time i talk about such things: everyone who does critics should take a look at what he could do himself about it. so i will do my best to release something at my own, to show "good will" ;) as some of you could have already noticed, i am using a self written template on my own blog, that adopted the design of the upcoming blogsystem "swell", but does much more after some hours of work. for example i tried to implement some alternative ideas (see my critics) withing my logo. i dont have my search and feedlist in the sidebar but implemented with simple javascript into my logo/main nav bar. i'd be pleased if you could take a look at it, to get an idea of my basic thoughts i mentioned above.

i know this doesnt break great things or something, but its a - imho - nice little breakout apart from this "everythings in the sidebar" thing.

and yes, you're surely right by saying its a really young community. i have to admit i didnt really take notice about the progress within s9y's community, because i didnt use the forums for quite a long time more than asking little questions about some technical things, but now that i learn a bit about the state, i am proud to take part in this :-) maybe i can do my own little steps to improve it too. as you mentioned by releasing one or more templates or even with my template editor plugin, if it finally achieves the quality standards.

so here are my best wishes to this great young community, as we can all see it has chosen the right way on the walk of fame, he he :-)
Locked