Few days back, I informed you that I Want to Change My Blog Theme. I had also asked for suggestions. Lot of loyal readers had given their suggestions. I was happy to see the response. From that day onwards, I was on the look out for a new theme.

As i was hunting down for a theme, I went through a lot of sites. But, I finally decided to go for Imagination Theme from CSS Jockey.

Big thanks to Shankar Bakshi ’s post where i came to know about Imagination Free Theme.

Its a beautiful and stylish theme. Its free and has got lot of settings that can be set from Dashboard.

Free Imagination Theme Features

1. Plug & Play – No Programming Knowledge Required
2. Comes with 9 preloaded Color Schemes
3. Customize the Interface to make it unique
4. Built-In Twitter, Flickr and Entrecard Widgets
5. Built-In Feedburner RSS Integration
6. Widgets Ready & Plugins Compatible
7. W3C Valid & Cross-Browser Compatible
8. Fully Documented Admin Options
9. Compatible with WordPress MU (Multi-User)
10. Standalone processing without interfering with default WordPress tables
11. All this and lot more, absolutely Free!

After downloding the theme, it took me two full days of tweaking to CSS and migrate some of the things that i was using in old theme and wanted to use in this theme as well.

Imagination Theme with 9 Color Schemes

Ambient Wave – Imagination Theme

Cold Flames – Imagination Theme

Copper Dust – Imagination Theme

Cosmic – Imagination Theme

Freshness – Imagination Theme (current theme)

Elegant – Imagination Theme

Granite – Imagination Theme

Imperial Blue – Imagination Theme

Light Paper – Imagination Theme

I liked Freshness style – Imagination Theme. Hope you also liked it.

I would like you to give some feedback or suggestions. I have ensured that i got all the old features that i liked into this New Theme. There might be some features that are not updated. Do let me know if anything is not working or up to date.

The theme doesn’t support Threaded Comments, But i wouldn’t worry as i have already enabled Threaded Comments to my Previous Theme. I will use How to implement Threaded Comments in Wordpress Themes post to make Imagination Theme a Threaded Comments!

Download Imagination Theme

Technorati Tags: Blog Related, Wordpress, Wordpress theme, Imagination theme, Imagination

Guys, This blog has been dressed up with two themes before. CopyBlogger Theme with Three Columns from the inception of this blog way back in December 2007 to May 2008 (6 months) and WP Premium Theme(current one) From May 2008 to till Date.

I have done lots of tinkering to this theme from Increasing the Sidebar Width, CSS Changes, Implementing Rounded Boxes in Sidebar and lots of other stuff. I am now looking for a new look. I am now bored of this old look

I would like you all readers/bloggers to pour in with your suggestions on Themes that i should try.

The new Wordpress theme should have following features

1. SEO supported
2. Two sidebars on right side
3. Should fit 125X125 3 ads on the sidebar at the top
4. Each sidebar should be 160px minimum
5. Adsense support with HIGH CTR
6. Other stuff…

I hope you guys can refer me Nice Impressive Free Theme/Premium Theme which is a bit cheap.

Hope to see lot of suggestions.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, wordpress theme, themes, blogger

In Wordpress 2.7 Features, a new feature – Threaded Comments is introduced.

The problem is that most of the wordpress bloggers are facing is that their theme doesn’t support Threaded or Nested Comments.

To check whether Threaded Comments is supported by your current theme or not, Follow the below steps:

1. Upgrade Wordpress is to 2.7 version, if not yet upgraded.
2. Login to Wordpress admin and go to Settings -> Discussion
3. Check on “Enable threaded (nested) comments ‘n’ levels deep”.
4. Click Save changes to enable Threaded Comments.
5. View any post of your blog that contains few comments.

If you see a Reply link after each comment like shown below, then your Wordpress Theme supports Threaded Comments otherwise it doesn’t support:

You will see reply links for every individual comment

My current theme doesn’t support it. I have made some changes to comments.php and style.css to support Threaded Comments. But, the changes are not yet live on my blog. I have done whole testing on my Local PC and the screenshot is taken from there. I need to do little bit of tinkering in CSS. By the way, if you are new to CSS then Learn CSS by reading this Book. Download It Free!

Continue reading this post, To implement Threaded Comments feature in your Wordpress theme
Before you proceed further, please make a backup of comments.php, functions.php and style.css

If you want your theme to be backward compatible (compatible with Wordpress 2.7 and older versions), then do the following:

You can skip the below steps, if you just want your theme to be compatible with Wordpress 2.7

1. Copy comments.php with a new name legacy.comments.php. This legacy.comments.php will be used, if your wordpress is older version and comments.php will be used for Wordpress 2.7.
2. Copy the below code and paste in Themes functions.php file

<?php
add_filter( 'comments_template', 'legacy_comments' );
function legacy_comments( $file ) {
	if ( !function_exists('wp_list_comments') )
		$file = TEMPLATEPATH . '/legacy.comments.php';
	return $file;
}
?>

3. Above code will check whether wp_list_comments function exists or not. If exists, it will cleverly use comments.php (which will contain Comment Threading feature) otherwise it will use legacy.comments.php which is original comments.php code that came with the theme.

JavaScript Comment Functionality

To allow full JavaScript functionality with the comment features in WordPress 2.7, the following changes must be made to header.php.

To support the new JavaScript functionality with comment threading, add the following in the header.php immediately before the call to wp_head():

if ( is_singular() ) wp_enqueue_script( 'comment-reply' );

Now replace the below code in your comments.php file

<div id="comments-wrap">
<?php // Do not delete these lines
	if (!empty($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']) && 'comments.php' == basename($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']))
		die ('Please do not load this page directly. Thanks!');

	if ( post_password_required() ) { ?>
		<p class="nocomments">This post is password protected. Enter the password to view comments.</p>
	<?php
		return;
	}
?>

<!-- You can start editing here. -->
<?php // Begin Comments & Trackbacks ?>
<?php if ( have_comments() ) : ?>
<h6 id="comments-wrap"><?php comments_number('No Comments', 'One Comments', '% Comments' );?> to &#8220;<?php the_title(); ?>&#8221;</h6>
	<div class="navigation">
		<div class="alignleft"><?php previous_comments_link() ?></div>
		<div class="alignright"><?php next_comments_link() ?></div>
	</div>
<ol class="commentlist">
	<?php wp_list_comments(); ?>
</ol>
	<div class="navigation">
		<div class="alignleft"><?php previous_comments_link() ?></div>
		<div class="alignright"><?php next_comments_link() ?></div>
</div>
<?php // End Comments ?>

 <?php else : // this is displayed if there are no comments so far ?>

	<?php if ('open' == $post->comment_status) : ?>
		<!-- If comments are open, but there are no comments. -->

	 <?php else : // comments are closed ?>
		<!-- If comments are closed. -->
		<p><?php _e('Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.'); ?></p>

	<?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

<?php if ('open' == $post->comment_status) : ?>

<div id="respond">

<h4 class="postcomment"><?php comment_form_title( 'Leave a Reply', 'Leave a Reply to %s' ); ?></h4>

<div class="cancel-comment-reply">
	<small><?php cancel_comment_reply_link(); ?></small>
</div>

<?php if ( get_option('comment_registration') && !$user_ID ) : ?>
<p>You must be <a href="<?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-login.php?redirect_to=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink()); ?>">logged in</a> to post a comment.</p>

<?php else : ?>

<form action="<?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform">

	<?php if ( $user_ID ) : ?>

<p>Logged in as <a href="<?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-admin/profile.php"><?php echo $user_identity; ?></a>. <a href="<?php echo wp_logout_url(get_permalink()); ?>" title="Log out of this account">Log out &raquo;</a></p>

	<?php else : ?>

	<p>
	<input type="text" name="author" id="author" class="textarea" value="<?php echo $comment_author; ?>" size="28" tabindex="1" />
	<label for="author"><?php _e('Name'); ?></label> <?php if ($req) _e('(required)'); ?>
	</p>

	<p>
	<input type="text" name="email" id="email" value="<?php echo $comment_author_email; ?>" size="28" tabindex="2" class="textarea" />
	<label for="email"><?php _e('E-mail'); ?></label> <?php if ($req) _e('(required)'); ?>
	</p>

	<p>
	<input type="text" name="url" id="url" value="<?php echo $comment_author_url; ?>" size="28" tabindex="3" class="textarea" />
	<label for="url"><?php _e('<acronym title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</acronym>'); ?></label>
	</p>

	<?php endif; ?>

	<p>
	<label for="comment"><?php _e('Your Comment'); ?></label>
	<br />
	<textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="60" rows="10" tabindex="4" class="textarea"></textarea>
	</p>

	<p>
	<input name="submit" id="submit" type="submit" tabindex="5" value="<?php _e('submit'); ?>" class="Cbutton" />
	<?php comment_id_fields(); ?>
	</p>
	<?php do_action('comment_form', $post->ID); ?>
</form>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>
<?php else : // Comments are closed ?>
<p><?php _e('Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.'); ?></p>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>

Most of the changes are done. If everything is done properly, you should be seeing Comment Threading appearing on the post. But, with the new code for comments in place, you need to style the comments area on the WordPress Theme with more design integration than previously.

Below is the snippet of CSS Styling that i added to current Theme’s style.css, you can refer this for your understanding and style it according to your Themes look:

.alt {margin: 0;padding: 10px;}
#comments ol {list-style-type: none;line-height: 18px;margin-top: 0px;margin-right: 0px;margin-bottom: 0px;margin-left: 0px;padding-top: 0px;padding-right: 0px;padding-bottom: 10px;padding-left: 5px;}
#comments ul li {list-style-type: none;list-style-image: none;list-style-position: outside;margin-top: 0px;margin-right: 0px;margin-bottom: 0px;margin-left: 5px;padding-top: 5px;padding-right: 0px;padding-bottom: 0px;padding-left: 0pt;}
.commentlist {padding: 0;text-align: justify;}
.commentlist li {margin: 15px 0 10px;padding: 5px 5px 10px 5px;list-style: none;}
.commentlist li ul li { margin-right: -5px;margin-left: 10px;list-style: none;}
.commentlist li li {background:none;border:none;list-style:none;margin:3px 0 3px 20px;padding:3px 0;}
.commentlist li .avatar {border:1px solid #ccc;margin:15px 8px 6px 0;float: right;padding:2px;width:45px;height:45px;}
.commentlist cite, .commentlist cite a {font-weight: bold;font-style: normal;font-size: 1.1em;}
.commentlist p {font-weight: normal;line-height: 1.5em;text-transform: none; margin: 10px 5px 10px 0;}
#commentform p {font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif;}
.commentmetadata {font-weight: normal; margin: 0;display: block; color: #ca5433;}
.commentmetadata a, .commentmetadata a:visited {color: #fa7703;}
.commentmetadata a:hover{ color: #333333;}
.children { padding: 0; }
.thread-alt {background-color: #f8f8f8;}
.thread-even {background-color: white;}
.depth-1 {border: 1px solid #ddd;}
.even, .alt {border-left: 1px solid #ddd;}

If you don’t follow any part of the above post or want any clarification. Please leave a comment. I would be happy to respond.

Any suggestions to improve this post are also welcome. I will change this post to make it more clear.

Hope you have implemented Comment Threading on your Wordpress Theme!!

You want to give a new look to your wordpress blog.

What do you usually do?

• Search for Wordpress Themes. After finding a correct one of your choice and then change the theme.

OR

• Try changing the current Theme itself.

After that you may start making some changes or tweaking the theme. But, because of that changes, your blog may break and your blog visitors may see a buggy blog.

To avoid the above scenario, You can use “Admin Theme Preview” Wordpress plugin.

Before you read the rest of the post. I would like to thank Michael, this is the link were i discovered this plugin.

How does this plugin help you?

The Admin Theme Preview (ATP) plugin for WordPress allows for the preview of any currently installed theme without affecting the “live” blog theme viewable to site visitors. Useful for development and testing of new and existing WordPress themes.

After you install the plugin, there will a new menu called “Theme Preview” under your WordPress Administration->Design menu. There you will see all available themes that you have on your WordPress themes folder.

Now, click on the theme and you will see your blog with that theme. Only you (the admin) can see the selected theme. Your blog visitors will continue viewing the blog with the current theme. By this way you are making your site available and you (the admin) can continue modifying the theme and keep testing.

Admin Theme Preview plugin for WordPress is a MUST if you are still in the process of choosing the right theme and tweaking your current theme heavily.

NOTE : If you are using WP-SuperCache plugin, you better disable the plugin and try doing the above

I used the same plugin, when i changed my theme. you can check this post

From yesterday, you might have noticed that the look of my site has changed.

From December 2007, this site was on CopyBlogger Theme. I was bored of the same look and i am sure regular visitors were also bored.

Now this site is WP-Premium Theme which is developed by R. Bhavesh.

He is very kind to provide Premium Theme for free, Thanks to him.

You can also download the theme from here and start using this theme on your wordpress site/blog.

This theme comes with three different colors, switching between colors is easy (requires only one change is css file).

Check the Demo here.

You can make out some differences between the demo and this site. Changing this theme to add some features was not that easy. I had to first understand and tinker with CSS and theme code to add the features on the theme that were missing in the original theme.

I hope you all like this theme. If you are switching to this theme and need some help to change some things. just leave a comment.

Please leave a comment.

Would appreciate if you give your feedback.

NOTE : As i have tested this new theme only on IE 6 and firefox, if you find anything wrong, please let me know.

I started this blog on Nov 30th, 2007. Initially, I wanted to use CopyBlogger Wordpress theme created by Chris Pearson. I liked this theme very much and wanted to use it but i didn’t because it has only one sidebar. Then i found one more theme called Cutline theme with three columns which is also created by Chris Pearson and has the same features as the former one. This theme is now maintained by Tubetorial. If you like the Cutline theme that i was using earlier, you can download from here.

There are two themes for Cutline 3-column:

• Cutline 3-Column Right (view demo)
• Cutline 3-Column Split (view demo )

Check below, Previous Theme and Current theme (CopyBlogger WordPress Theme with Three Columns).

Yesterday, i was searching for CopyBlogger Wordpress theme with 2 sidebars. The good thing was i found one.

Open Source Candy modified the theme to have 3 columns and they are offering this 3 column version to anyone who wants it. Check it out—they’re using a color-changed and tweaked version of it themselves.

Download the Copyblogger 3 Column Theme

They have used a color-changed and tweaked version. But, i wanted the original CopyBlogger theme with 2 sidebars.

I downloaded both the themes Download the Copyblogger theme and Copyblogger OS Candy version theme

I did diff for each and every common file from both the themes to find out how to make the original CopyBlogger theme with 2 sidebars.

I did it You can see it here. I have original version of CopyBlogger Theme with three columns.

Credit to Chris Pearson for this wonderful theme and Open Source Candy who made my job easier

Here are just a few highlights of the new Copyblogger theme:

• Clean markup that has been meticulously optimized for maximum SEO performance
• Em-based sizing, so the layout scales beautifully and maintains aspect ratios even when text is resized
• Typography set to a very strict grid which produces a clean vertical harmony between the main content and the sidebar content as you scroll down the page
• Killer comments
• Widget ready
• Totally customizable color schemes via the use of custom.css, a special stylesheet that you can tweak without fear of messing up anything on the theme!

More Chris Pearson Themes

Technorati Tags: blogging, wordpress, themes