Simply put I have been lazy lately. I know this isn’t the best way to sell my self but a little bit of honesty hasn’t hurt anyone (or has it? ). So without further ado I here by present you Commune Child Theme based on Thematic!
As far as I know it’s the first magazine like Thematic child theme released for free!
Is it a bird, is it a plane?
Hardly! Just a Thematic Child Theme with a twist!
There are many reasons why you should consider using the “Commune child theme” :
- It’s green
- It’s a Thematic Child Theme – this being said it has all the features Thematic has including fully widget-ized with widget areas above and below the content—and even in-between.
- Lets you upload your own logo / banner image through an admin panel
- Easy to add images to posts without having to use custom fields or without the need to crop your images!
- Easy to add default images to posts in certain categories - So if you don’t add an image to a certain post it will display the image assigned to the category it’s in!
- It was designed to work with the Tabbed Widget Plugin and WP-PageNavi plugin (update – Tabbed widgets doesn’t currently work with Wordpress 2.8)
- The main menu displays all your categories and subcategories
- Tested and works on all modern browsers: Firefox 3, IE7, Safari, Google Chrome
A small guide
There are basically three things to explain: adding your own logo, the Tabbed Widget and adding images to posts!
Adding your own logo
Commune features an Options page that allows you to upload your own logo or banner image. You need to go to the Wordpress admin panel and under “Apperance -> Child Theme Options”.
This is how the interface looks like:
Child Theme Options Page - You now have the posibility to upload your header image from Wordpress
The Tabbed Widget – update: it currently doesn’t work with Wordpress 2.8
To use the functionality of the Tabbed Widget Plugin you first need to download and install it!
Once that’s out of the way select Appearance –> Tabbed Widgets. The interface gives you the possibility to create 8 Tabbed Widget areas, but in out case we’ll use just one. In Tabbed Widget No. 1 select the widgets you want displayed. For the demo of the child theme Commune I used:
- Recent Posts
- Recent Comments
- Tag Clouds
- Search
Make sure you give a title to each individual widget or your users will only see 4 tabs.
Other settings you need to take into consideration are:
- deselect show title (it’s deselected by default)
- select Style as: tabs
I’ve also uploaded an image with the settings for the Tabbed Widget Nr.1.
The next and last step is to head over to Appearance -> Widgets. Select the Primary Aside Widget, click Show and add Tabbed Widget 1 to it and save changes. After this you should have your Tabbed Widget displayed on the front-end of your blog in all it’s glory!
Category and post images
Another key element of this theme is the way pictures are used and displayed. For this the Easy Peasy Images code by Andrew Rickmann was integrated into the theme code.
What this does is to get a list of all the images attached to a post. It then finds the first image with a sort order of 0 and displays it. By default all images have a sort order of zero unless you choose to reorder them. If you don’t make any changes then it will find the first image. If you reorder them using drag and drop the first image in the list will have an order of 1 and you would need to change it to 0.
Default images by category
The theme will add a list of categories to the Media -> Library so that you can assign images to one or more categories. If the function doesn’t find a post attachment with a sort order of 0 then it will default to the image attached to the category the post is in. Note: it will use the first category image it finds.
For more information on the usage you can see a video-tutorial over at Andrew Rickmann’s web-site, www.wp-fun.co.uk
As always if you have any questions or if you find bugs please let me know! I appreciate every input!
219 Comments
Christi:
Great theme, thanks! My current frustration is that I’d like to disable the yellow boxes that come up when the mouse hovers on the category menu below the blog logo. My categories go two and three levels deep, and the yellow hover boxes block the rest of the menu when they are hovered. I’d also like to see what it would look like if the level 2 and 3 menu lines were always displayed instead of just displayed when their parent is hovered. (For an example of permanent layered menus, look at http://www.latimes.com)
How can I turn off or disable the yellow hover boxes?
Thanks for your help!
Got the hover problem solved in an interesting way … if the category description is set to be three spaces, then the title hover doesn’t show up… feature or bug?
Still thinking about the category child menus, although haven’t figured out how to make them permanently visible.
Template upload says template is broken and missing stylesheet
Have you uploaded Thematic?
So if I want to use a modified Commune, I should make a “grandchild” theme? Or better to update the Commune files directly? Great work though. I can’t wait to try it out. Also, your site has almost singlehandedly taught me how to use thematic!
Just modify Commune. I don’t think it will work to have GrandChild themes
!
I’m loving Commune so far, except for one thing: I really really want a more configurable drop down menu system to go in the white menu are under the blog title. I’m playing around with WP Spry Menu but have had no luck so far — it just overwrites a lot of the theme and doesn’t end up looking right or in the right place. How can I integrate it gracefully? Failing that, is there a “Commune Pro” I can buy with a snazzy menu that’s easy to configure?
Is it easy to strip out the easy peasy? I don’t need it. Thanks.
Hmmm… delete index.php and category.php from the Commune child theme and see if that works
All that did was make the category image the same size as the embedded one, when it used to be thumbnail before I deleted the pages. But there are still two images. I’d show you but it is a local install.
Clarification: The reason I wanted to strip it out is I am getting double images, the one I embed and the category one. Even though I am not assigning a category to the image. Weird, huh?
so far so good… commune is far easier to edit that to create a new child theme off of thematic b/c you have everything so well labeled. just curious, is there a video plugin that works well w/ commune.. ie to have thumbnails for the video serve as the associated plugin for a post?
I downloaded, unzipped and transferred the them into the correct folder etc. but I’m having problems getting it to work. This is where all the files are /wp-content/themes/commune. When I log into WordPress I see previews for all my other themes except for Commune. I thought maybe it had something to do with it being a child theme so tried to activate it. It then messed up my WordPress. Had to remove then reinstall WordPress. Uploaded other child themes from other developers (gallery theme) and those work. So, uploaded Byty child them and it has the same problem. Any recommendations?
I’ve tested both Commune and Byty themes and they are working perfectly. Not sure what could be the problem with your install. I never heard of your entire Wordpress installation to crash because these child themes.
When did you get the last time the Thematic framework? I’m asking because two days ago Themeshaper was hacked and if you downloaded the Thematic theme then you unfortunately got a hacked version of it that I’m not sure what it’s intended to do. You can read more from here: http://themeshaper.com/themeshapercom-hacked/
Maybe that is the problem b/c I tried to activate Thematic by itself and had the same problem. I’ll download it and try again, then let you know if it works.
Tried it again and same problem. This is the error I’m getting. Warning: require_once(/home/coopero1/public_html/coopertakeson.com/wp-content/themes/thematic/library/extensions/theme-options.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/coopero1/public_html/coopertakeson.com/wp-content/themes/thematic/functions.php on line 35
The libary/extensions directory does not exist in the thematic download. This is definately a Thematic problem (not your child themes). Any thoughts? I’m going to go post in the Thematic forums as well to see if anyone has an answer.
It was so simple yet so easy to overlook. My IZarc wasn’t unzipping everything. So, there were directories missing when I’d transfer it to the server. Everything is working now. Thanks.
hey all- just a heads up that themeshaper was recently hacked. here is ian’s post:
http://themeshaper.com/themeshapercom-hacked/
so if you recently installed thematic from the themeshaper site you could have gotten a hacked version. be sure to use the version in the wordpress repository.
Hi,
Quite nice theme.
I have a problem though … i don’t really like fixed width themes (maybe my resolution has to do with it. it’s a large one) so the question is can it be made fluid with fixed right column only (something like 170px sounds reasonable).
Theoretically yes. But there are a lot of changes to be done and I’m not really sure where to start
.
hello, i wonder, in what folder and where, commune store the files of media library? thanks
it was where i thought was the updates
/httpdocs/wp-content/uploads/……..
Hi Gournis. Please put all support questions in the new cozmoslabs forums.
Hi there,
does Commune run with WP 2.9?
Thanks
Joahcim
To be honest I haven’t tried it but I don’t see why it shouldn’t.
yes, it works fine
Hello,
I want to add a child theme to thematic. I downloaded the commune folder to my desktop. Can anyone please tell me the next step.
first go there :http://www.cozmoslabs.com/forums
where you will find a lot of useful stuff
then follow these steps:
-Go to wordpress admin panel
-then go to appearse= add new theme=then instal THEMATIC theme.( there http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/thematic)
-then AFTER thematic instalation intstal commune.
-fin
This looks like an awesome theme and am very much looking forward to getting to use it. I tried installing it, but wordpress is saying that the “Template is missing.”
I’ve uploaded all of the files to the server. I also even tried uploading the zip to the server and extracting it there to make sure everything was there.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
Tom
try to follow the directios above. but first instal thematic
THEMATIC = try this keywords : google = thematic wordpress theme download
I have a problem installing this theme. It wont show up in my available themes folder in wordpress, actually the other child theme I tried from this site (street) also would not show up. I can get other child themes for thematic to work fine in this install, it is only the two from this site.
I am running it on a development server(XAMPP). No idea why that would effect it, but possibly? that or its the latest version of wordpress is breaking it somehow
Just to clarify, I have copied it into the correct folder, just as I have with other child themes, but this and street theme will not work. I have tried to isolate the issue by removing one by one the files and folders until just the style.css file is left, but nothing. I will check with some more of your themes since you might want to know if new users cannot use these.
it looks great by the way, which is why Im keen to try it out
Hi. I’ve downloaded both Commune and Street and they appear in my Wordpress test server backend. What you’re experiencing is the possibility that you don’t have Thematic installed as well.
Do you get any kind of error?
great fast response.
I got it to at least register in the themes list, on preview it returns 3 error’s at lines 3598, 3601 and 3604 of wordpress’s internal functions at wp-includes/functions.php all of which are part of the function get_file_data and contain a reference to variable $fp .
Thematic is definitely installed.
I am starting to think its a problem with my development server. I have previously onl used them under windows, and this is the first install under ubuntu I have done, It might have to do with the way permissions are granted or something.
Do you have any experience running a development server under ubuntu?
It could be an issue with your development server. I have little experience with setting up an ubuntu LAMP server. I do most of my development directly online. This way I don’t have to manage my own server.
wow, nice theme.
i’m gonna try it.
Easy Peasy seems pretty buggy…I can’t get it to display images if they are too wide…even if I shrink them down.
Any suggestions? I think replacing it with TomThumb would probably be a better option.
Easy Peasy uses wordpress default functionality, more exactly the automatic generation of thumbnail images when you upload them to your media library.
When it was launched for me it was the best solution. With WP 2.9 we now have access to the post thumbnail functionality and that improves things quite a lot.
As for updating it I don’t know when I might get around doing it.
That’s really good theme
i enjoy this color good works !
thanks
Hi, great work, great (child-)theme. I hope I’m right here. Evaluating Commune I have a problem with the podcasting plugin from http://podcastingplugin.com. It works with many different templates, but with Commune the podcast feed is not found. Any recommendations? Thanks in advance.
THX for helping in the forum http://www.cozmoslabs.com/forums/
Hi, when I add activate this theme it adds the image to all my posts. This is creating duplicate images inside my posts. How can I prevent double images?
Don’t insert the first image inside the post!
Cristian, we have over 500 hundred posts with a first image already inside them. It would take way too much time to fix the images for each post.
We would like to keep the old way images are displayed inside the post.
Is that possible (or an easy fix)?
Of course. Just delete single.php file inside Commune!
Thanks Cristian. I really appreciate your timely response. I will give that a try. One other issue…
We have up to 2-4 rows of sub-categories listed in the drop down and the dark background only shows under the first row. Its way to much to chose from and the background is not wrapping under everything. Example “Hotels by state” will have 50 sub-categories.
Can I get the top navigation to only display the top level categories? Omitting the subcategory drop down. Along with this I will need to find a way to list subcategories on the category page.(Getting the background to wrap under everything is an option if the subcategories list is too technical.)
Any direction helps. Thematic is new to me. Thanks.
10 Trackbacks
[...] Commune Magazine child theme per Thematic Framework per WordPress. [...]
[...] updated Commune Child Theme to version 0.2. This is just a bug fix release, most of them css [...]
[...] Commune is another great Thematic child theme, designed by Cozmoslabs. It features a magazine-style layout. [...]
[...] next one, Commune, I think is particularly [...]
[...] Otra posibilidad es el instalar child themes ya preparados, en la misma página de thematic teneis algunos. Tiene de bueno que puedes ir pillando de aqui y de allá para que tu blog sea más personalizado. Uno de los child que más me ha gustado ha sido Commune. [...]
[...] Demo | Pagina de lansare [...]
[...] Commune [...]
[...] 3: Commune Commune Wordpress Theme [...]
[...] Commune » [...]
[...] Commune Child Theme ( Превью | Скачать ) [...]