Connections theme available to download

Skinning and designing Serendipity (CSS, HTML, Smarty)
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

Connections theme available to download

Post by carl_galloway »

Hi all,

I have ported the Connections theme from Wordpress to Serendipity and it is now available to download from www.carlgalloway.com

Use the theme switcher if you would like to see what it looks like. Please also visit the original author's website, some of the other customisations of this theme really show how well designed it is.

Cheers
Carl
judebert
Regular
Posts: 2478
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2005 6:57 am
Location: Orlando, FL
Contact:

Post by judebert »

Very minimalist.

The content links overflow the header in my browser (FF 1.06 Linux).
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

minimalist?

Post by carl_galloway »

Hi judebert,

It shouldn't be minimalist, I've experienced severe problems with firefox not refreshing when the theme switcher has been used, did you try a shift-refresh? I remember reading another post about the theme switcher and firefox not playing nicely.

To minimise this problem for the next week or so, I've made the Connections theme my default theme at

themes.carlgalloway.com

Cheers
Carl
judebert
Regular
Posts: 2478
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2005 6:57 am
Location: Orlando, FL
Contact:

Post by judebert »

Woah! That's MUCH less minimalist.

Not that there's anything wrong with minimalist. :wink:

The links no longer overflow the header; they look fine. I like the muted colors very much (or perhaps that's just my LCD monitor making its contrast issues known again).

In any case, very cool.
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

whew, at least it wasn't something I did wrong

Post by carl_galloway »

Hey Judebert,

Thanks for rechecking the site. Another Serendipity user has told me that the extended pages have a small valign fault in Opera browser. I'm going to try and fix that but will take a couple of days because of Xmas shopping,and I because I need to download Opera etc. If anyone else can point me in the right direction I'll happily repost the zip file with the Opera fix.

Cheers
Carl
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

Opera fix for Connections theme

Post by carl_galloway »

Ok, I've fixed the Opera problem, and can I just say I hate cross-browser incompatibility - looks great in one browser, try it in another, fix problem for other, looks great in other, problem starts in first browser, fix problem in first browser, another problem appears in third browser :evil:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Slowly sinking into peaceful mode... also had a bizarre problem 'INCLUDE_ERROR' appear on my site which shocked the hell out of me when I saw it. Luckily there was a another post on these forums about how to fix it, but how did it start? Everything was working fine, has some miscreant been trying to hack my site? Does it have anything to do with playing around with plugins or default themes etc? If anyone can tell me how to avoid this problem in the future I would be very appreciative.

Cheers
Carl
garvinhicking
Core Developer
Posts: 30022
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2003 9:45 pm
Location: Cologne, Germany
Contact:

Re: Opera fix for Connections theme

Post by garvinhicking »

Can you tell how you fixed that problem, so that I can upload a fix to our theme repository?

About the INCLUDE_ERROR: That usually only happens if file permissions of serendipity_config_local.inc.php are wrong, or if you configred a wrong "serendipityPath" setting in your configuration? Do you know when that problem occured?

Best regards,
Garvin
# Garvin Hicking (s9y Developer)
# Did I help you? Consider making me happy: http://wishes.garv.in/
# or use my PayPal account "paypal {at} supergarv (dot) de"
# My "other" hobby: http://flickr.garv.in/
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

fix for connections

Post by carl_galloway »

Garvin,

I'm not sure why this fix works, and I haven't seen it in any other themes, so might have just been sloppiness on my part, but basically Opera has a problem with vertical alignment on some sites where it automatically aligns the content pane to middle if the sidebar is longer. Even though I hard coded a 'valign="top"' into the <td> for both the content and sidebar in index.tpl. Firefox and IE6 correctly handle this, but for Opera I also needed to put the same into the containing <tr>

This workaround doesn't make sense, but it works! I rezipped the Connections theme and posted back to my blog so anyone who downloads the current version will have the fix as well.

The INCLUDE_ERROR thing, when I first uploaded the second blog, the themes.carlgalloway.com it had the wrong path and I couldn't get it to work, but its on a different database even though they're on the same host account. The only other thing that I've done recently is add the Extended properties for entries plugin, but that wouldn't change the local config file would it?

Cheers
Carl
garvinhicking
Core Developer
Posts: 30022
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2003 9:45 pm
Location: Cologne, Germany
Contact:

Re: fix for connections

Post by garvinhicking »

Hi Carl!

Great, I've just updated the theme in the repository.

How did you fix your include_error thing? Was the serendipity_config_local.inc.php file missing, or was a path setting wrong?

Regards,
Garvin
# Garvin Hicking (s9y Developer)
# Did I help you? Consider making me happy: http://wishes.garv.in/
# or use my PayPal account "paypal {at} supergarv (dot) de"
# My "other" hobby: http://flickr.garv.in/
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

Post by carl_galloway »

Garvin,

The permissions on serendipity_config_local.inc.php had been changed, I had to allow group and others to read the file again (0744), I hope that is correct.

Cheers
Carl
garvinhicking
Core Developer
Posts: 30022
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2003 9:45 pm
Location: Cologne, Germany
Contact:

Post by garvinhicking »

Actually, that depends on your server and the umask of your system!

By default, Serendipity sets that file to be only readable by the owner, which is usually the PHP process. If you change the ownership (like by editing the file via FTP or some other SSH tool) [accidently], then the file cannot be read by s9y anymore. It seems that this might have happened?

Serendipity tries to re-create the file whenever you change special configuration values, so it might have very well been a change in ownership/permissions that could've caused this prtoblem...

Regards,
Garvin
# Garvin Hicking (s9y Developer)
# Did I help you? Consider making me happy: http://wishes.garv.in/
# or use my PayPal account "paypal {at} supergarv (dot) de"
# My "other" hobby: http://flickr.garv.in/
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

that makes sense

Post by carl_galloway »

Garvin that makes sense, I'm using filezilla [which I haven't used before] as my ftp client and its possible I may have done something weird. I'll keep an eye on it.

Carl
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

by the way

Post by carl_galloway »

By the way, are there any requests for more themes. I'm really enjoying myself, I think I'm getting better at understanding the styles used by Serendipity, Smarty seems really powerful so I reckon I could give anything a go now.

Currently working on a new theme, exclusively for Serendipity, based on tribal art from the Sotho tribe of Southern Africa, but will be 3-4 weeks before I'm ready to let anyone see it.
garvinhicking
Core Developer
Posts: 30022
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2003 9:45 pm
Location: Cologne, Germany
Contact:

Re: by the way

Post by garvinhicking »

Wow, Carl, that's great. If that's fine for you, I could post an announcement on blog.s9y.org and our mailinglist to post here in this thread for theme requests?

Best regards,
Garvin
# Garvin Hicking (s9y Developer)
# Did I help you? Consider making me happy: http://wishes.garv.in/
# or use my PayPal account "paypal {at} supergarv (dot) de"
# My "other" hobby: http://flickr.garv.in/
carl_galloway
Regular
Posts: 1331
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:43 pm
Location: Andalucia, Spain
Contact:

gulp...

Post by carl_galloway »

I hope I don't live to regret that, but yeah go ahead. I think its time Serendipity started to catch up on WP with the number of themes available.

By the way, I intend making some small mods to some of the themes listed on my themes site to make them work better. Some seem incomplete, and perhaps missing some styles that would just finish them off [like select dropdowns throwing out the whole design]

Carl
Post Reply