Looking for a perfect WordPress Theme? well.. there isn't one. In a quest to find an all-out WordPress theme, I've come across very few themes that are (not perfect but) close to "having 'em all". Mostly the case is - themes with great designs lack an optimized code structure and those that do have good structure have somewhat loose or incomplete designs that leave us wanting more.
A WordPress theme with thorough coding and Design that is close to "having 'em all" while still leaving room for cutomizability was the main goal here.
Behind the Scenes
All the WordPress bloggers out there, by using a well coded theme and writing well structured blog posts that are accessible and standards compliant, you make the web a better place. And for that you are rewarded with search engines indexing your posts more accurately and that results in a better visibility in web searches.
PrimePress has been developed taking all these things into consideration and features a strong code architecture that is valid, simple and efficient with maximum internal SEO. It is high on accessibility and features a rich semantic markup achieved by implementing microformats.
What you See
A killer architecture isn't worth much without a good design. You wouldn't even be here if you weren't looking for a good one. Well... In this case, painful attention to details & obsessive tweaking have resulted in a final overall design that is pleasing & well-balanced while still being content centric. Every care has been taken not to leave any element un-styled.
We all heard the mantra "Content is King". As trite as it may sound, it still holds true. And one aspect that can solely make the content come across loud and clear is... good Typography. More often than not typography takes a backseat in many design projects and doesn't get the attention it deserves. With each element styled with uttermost care, typography in PrimePress has been setup to follow a certain rhythm so as to enhance the screen readability to its best.
How can I upload this theme to our webpage?
[...] PrimePress | Download [...]
@Patricia
I’m currently working on the tutorials & instructions and they will be up soon. Until then… the basic instructions on WordPress Codex work well to get PrimePress up and running.
Hi Ravi,
Thank you for this fantastic theme. I am using this on a site that I am currently building and it rocks.
Could you help me with one small thing. How can I make the comments link bold and red?
I want to see, “10 comments” in bold and in red color, but in the same postition as before. What do I have to edit/add?
Thanks again.
@IndiaAsks
Thanks a lot for your interest in the theme.
The class for coments link in the byline is
.comments-linkpaste this bit of code into your custom.css file and alter it to your liking.
.custom a.comments-link { font-weight: bold; color: #ff0000; }Hi Ravi,
That was much simpler than I expected. Thanks for the help and thanks for making a theme that looks so good and is so easy to modify
great theme, I’m planning to use the theme,
thanks a lot, do we have to leave the author in the footer or can it go in comments in the code or in a credits page, I mean I don’t know under what license are you giving away this great theme
thanks again
Ravi-
First off I would like to thank you for putting all the long hours into this theme for people like me that do not share your brain power on this type of thing. I have been playing with it and have four questions.
1. The header images, where can I change these? It sounds like in the custom css. Is this correct? I’m thinking it might be just as easy to replace the current ones with custom.
2. The tag line for the blog gets covered up by the links up top if I have more than three words. How would I move the blog title and tag line up a little?
3. On the links by the blog title up top, they are currently categories. Can these be changed to links outside the blog?
4. Where is you donate button? You should be getting something out of it
I know you are working on instructions and if these will be covered I can wait until you release them. Thanks again for all the hard work, you rock!
@William
Thanks William,
I’d be much happier if you keep the credit links intact. It’s just a little something I expect in return. something to motivate me… to do more…
its up to you to make me happy.
@Vince
Thank u vince. happy to help.
1. Theme has been updated to version 1.2 & it should be up soon. From v1.2 and on, all you have to do is to upload the images to the ‘headers’ folder inside the ‘primepress’ directory. you don’t have to edit any theme files or rename your images, all images in ‘headers’ folder will automatically be read & displayed.
2. paste this code into your custom.css, change the 30px value to your requirement.
body.custom .description { padding-bottom: 30px; }3. It can be done. you’d have to edit the template file
main-menu.php- open it up in your WordPress theme editor and add the link at the end, wrapped in <li></li>above example links to wordpress.org. don’t forget these changes whenever you update the theme.
4. Haven’t really thought about it yet. I’m a little flattered right now
Hi Ravi,
You should also be including a nice favicon too. That is the only thing that is missing
Thanks for the help Ravi. I wwill give the links a shot when I get hoke later this week! Just an FYI, I did update the header image and have gotten many compliments n the theme. Thanks again!
I’m using your theme on my blog! (wepushthebuttons.info). But when I add the RSS Feed widget, it can’t find the feed at: http://wepushthebuttons.info/snk/?feed=rss2
which is a live, active feed. The RSS widget has worked with every theme…except this one. Anyone else having this issue? ; ;
Ignore my comment above. I am an idiot.
I put the title in the URL box and the URL in the title box. Took me 30 minutes to realize that.
Great work on the theme…it really is snazzy looking! I prefer the content in the middle, with sidebars on either, well, side, because double-sidebars tend to get cluttered very quickly. This is not so with your theme…it really is slick.
Put up that donate button. =P
Hi there,
I would like to make new sidebars that load with each main page template.
I have created e.g. sidebarhistory.php
I have created a new page template page-history.php and changed the call to get the sidebar to:
When I try to load the new page - I receive the following error message: Fatal error: Call to undefined function get_sidebarhistory() in
Any ideas how to solve this problem?
Any help gratefully received - thanks
sorry i missed putting some info in the last post! - the call to get the new sidebar is:
@IndiaAsks,
thanx for the suggestion. I’ll make and include one in the next release.
@Vince,
glad to help Vince.
@Michael,
thanks michael & it happens all the time.
@scubafish
call the sidebar like this in your
page-history.phpI love this theme; thanks for putting it out.
I have one question, however. I’d like to move the comment link to the bottom of the post next to the categories so that it is right there when someone finishes reading the post. How do I do this?
Thanks.
I was looking for a new theme to replace the one I’d been using, which had always seemed a bit cluttered. PrimePress really fit the bill. With a few customizations, I’ve got it doing pretty much everything I want and need. Thanks so much.
@Mark
Thank you very much Mark.
@Wes Kenney
Thank you Wes,
moving the comment link requires editing a template file. Open the
index.phpto edit, find and cut this line (line no.16).<?php comments_popup_link('No comments yet', '1 comment', '% comments', 'comments-link', 'Comments are off for this post'); ?>about 10 lines down, find and paste it after
entry-categories(line no.26) This is how your code should look like after pasting it.<p class="entry-meta"><span class="entry-categories"><?php _e('Posted in: '); ?><?php the_category(', '); ?>.</span> <?php comments_popup_link('No comments yet', '1 comment', '% comments', 'comments-link', 'Comments are off for this post'); ?><br />in case you want the comments link on a new line, paste it after the <br /> tag. don’t forget to preserve these changes whenever you update the theme.
That did the trick; thanks. And thanks again for the theme. I really like it.
Hi Ravi,
First of all, thank you so much for the great theme. It’s a pleasure to look at and really serves the content, which I love.
I’m pretty new to this WordPress thing and extremely new to dealing with any kind of code, and I’m wondering how difficult it would be to change the color of all the links — i.e., the post titles and all the information under them, subscribe to feed, recent post links, categories links, calendar dates, tags, etc.
I guess when you get down to it, I’m curious about changing the color of pretty much everything. Am I correct in thinking I’ll find the definition of each item in the stylesheet, and then can add a modifier that follows the format of the information you provided above (how to change the comment link color) in the custom sheet?
Thanks so much for your help, and your patience with my ignorance in this stuff.
Aha. I see that you have, in fact, answered my question already, with the very next post. My bad.
Thanks again!
Thanks for the Theme - I looks great.
I have a problem assigning the ‘Home’ page, though. How do I assign content to it?
@Wes Kenney
you’re most welcome Wes.
@Carolyn Norton
really glad you like it Carolyn.
@Matt
Thanks Matt. In PrimePress, your blog posts are the home page content.
Ravi:
I love this theme, and you’ve made it so easy to customize. I’m re-building my wife’s entire real estate website and it looks so good!
When I use the sitemap page (and one or two others others I’ve created) the page jumps to the right when it loads from another page(about 10px?). That doesn’t happen with any of the other pages in the template. Simple fix, I’m sure. Any guidance?
Thanks,
Thanks Dana. Can you give me a link to that page so i can check it out.
Ravi: Simple (stupid) error. I’m using FF and the sitemap page was long enough to required scroll bars. Page jumped 17px or so to the left when the scroll bars were displayed. I never noticed the bars (!) I just noticed the shift. It was driving me nuts until…
I’ll send the link when the site goes public. Hope I make you proud!
Thanks,
Ravi,
I was struggling with Chris Pearson’s themes and decided to go look for something better and found your theme! Much better and much easier to use!
A couple of questions, though:
How would I change the background of the content area of the blog? I changed the background of the web page to a warm tan color (instead of the dark gray that you selected), but I’d like to change the background of the content area to a very pale tan/yellow - black and white is a tad harsh.
This, from a blogging newbie, will probably be seen as stupid: I made my “Links” category favorite websites — is there a way to create a new category for favorite blogs?
Thanks for a great theme and do post that “donate” link!
@Dana
Dana, I’m already happy - you chose this theme.
@Jeff
Now, I’m really flattered. Thanks you very much Jeff, really glad you like it.
paste this in your
custom.cssand type in the color of your choice.body.custom #container { background: #efe7c2;}The sidebar widgets have a cream-ish background by default. In case you wanna change or remove the color, here’s how you target them.
body.custom .widget { background: none;}Sure… In your WordPress admin panel, go to Manage > Link Categories
scroll down and you’ll find a section titled Add Category. type in the new category name ‘favorite blogs’ and click the “Add Category” button. Now, just select this category whenever you add the relevent links.
Ravi,
Beautiful! Just beautiful - worked like a charm. As the Beatles sang, “gettin’ better all the time” ….
Thanks!!
Ravi,
Love your Theme! I implemented a few changes, like the ones listed here, and got a look & feel that’s very professional.
Check out my site!
This site is so easy to work with and I can’t believe you provide it for FREE!
Do put up a donation button.
I’ve worked with several free and a few paid themes, but none were as easy to customize as this.
Thanks again,
Jeff M.
Ravi,
For other raw beginners out there — when adding categories, they don’t appear on your site until you add some links to them! WordPress Codex was very muddy on this topic and I just kept plugging along until I discovered this. I hope this helps other newbies!
Last question - I promise! What would I add to custom.css to change the color of the Category fonts, as well as the tab for “Home”, the “Search Box” and the “Subscribe to Feed” box? With a cream content background, the default gray looks a little out of place!
I’m going to recommend this theme to anyone who asks - as Jeff M. said, I’ve not seen any that are easier to customize than this. I particularly love the fact that you can have more than 5 rotating images. Nicely done!
Thanks so much!
Are any special tweaks needed to get the theme to deploy properly in M Internet Explorer. It looks fine in Firefox, but my site’s sidebars have gone walkabout in IE and even the main column is truncated two posts short of the end.
@Jeff
Thanks again Jeff.
here’s the code for the the “search” and “feed” box
body.custom #pp-search { background-color: #BFAF83;} body.custom #pp-feed { background-color: #BFAF83;}Styling the links is a bit trickier compared to the rest of the elements. Here’s how you target the top level menu tabs.
body.custom ul.menu li a { background-color: #BFAF83;} body.custom ul.menu li a:hover { background-color: #FFC45F;} body.custom ul.menu li.current_page_item a, ul.menu li.current_page_item a:hover { background-color: #ffffff;}1st is for color of all the tabs.
2nd one for the color when hovered.
3rd is for the current page you are on.
code to change the category font color in the posts:
body.custom .entry-categories a { color: #AF730A;}I’ve chosen some random colors in the above code samples. change them according to your color scheme.
@Jeff M.
great work Jeff! and thank you. If you can - try the codes above to change the menu tab colors to go with your scheme. It’ll look even more professional.
@Sperwer
This is not a problem with the theme. This kind of thing usually happens if you paste the content from Ms Office (Ms Word) and the like. Instead, find and use the “paste from word” option in you WordPress post editor.
Thanks for the tip Ravi. I’ve gone back and deleted the entries I had made cutting and pasting straight from Wordpress and. following your suggestion, reentered them using the paste from Word function in the Wordpress editor. That cleaned up some funky typeface appearance probelmw in the Firefox rendition of the blog, but still didn’t solve the IE problem, which persists. ANy other thoughts?
Ravi, great theme and am still tweaking and adding widgets, for some reason I cannot get the feed to work. Getting error messages and I want to use the feedburner widget but it cannot access any feed.
Sure I am missing something simple.
If I click on feed icon I get the following message:
XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity
Location: http://slightlymordant.com/blog/feed/
Line Number 2, Column 1:
^
Hi Ravi, among the various theme provided, I choose yours because I like the rotating banner. I understand your theme is structured to display 2 columns and I wonder if it is possible to squeeze both into 1 column? Thanks for the theme.
Hi Ravi,
By the time you get finished answering all these questions, you’ll have your “tweaking” guide already written!
I wasn’t clear in my post about Category colors - I was referring to the category titles in the 2 sidebars — i.e., ARCHIVES, RECENT COMMENTS, and so on. You can take a look at what I’ve achieved so far!
Thanks so much for the help!
Jeff
Does anyone know how to adjust the amount of each post that is shown on the blog pages?
i.e. As of now, my entire posts are shown on the pages. I would like adjust it so only the first paragraph or two shows before they click on the [...] link.
My RSS issue seems to have been from blank lines in plugins, specifically Yahoo plugins, everything seems to be working.
@Sperwer
I guess ‘paste from word’ option didn’t work here. Ms Office’s tags are still hangin around in 4 of your posts. these are the posts that aren’t working in IE and they all have Ms office’s internal tags in them - the-korean-sideshow, the-iron-game, once-more-unto-the-breach, hello-boys-im-baaaaacck. you have to find another way (to get rid of these) of re-posting them - like cutting and pasting them onto a txt file and pasting them back again.
@Mik
Thanks Mik. glad you’ve sorted it out. I’ve had quite a few issues myself when I was hosted on yahoo some time back.
@Tanaka
Thanks Tanaka. But there’s no simple & efficient way to do that right now. I was planning on making it an option in a future version.
@Jeff
… I really need to put up a tweaking guide, that’d make things a lot more easier for me and the users.
great jeff! looking neat…
here’s code to change the color of the widget titles.
body.custom .widget h2 { color:#8F6800;}@Matt
Use the more tag found in the WordPress post editor or you can use an excerpts plugin for more control.
Matt,
If, perchance, you are using a MacIntosh, do yourself a favor and buy MarsEdit. It makes using WordPress so, so much easier. What you want to do is do-able in MarsEdit - there is an option to write a portion as a “body” and then more as “extended”. I don’t know of an equivalent Windows program, but there must be one out there. Try Googling “off-line blog editor”. These programs enable you to escape the clutches of the WordPress admin panel and do everything off-line. When you are ready, you click on the “Publish” button and the post, with pictures and embedded URLs, appears on your blog. Very, very nice! Highly recommended. And no, I have no connection to MarsEdit other than as a very satisfied user.
Thank you, Ravi, for providing such a wonderful place to learn about modifying your theme. You still haven’t put up that “donate” button!!
Thanks!
Jeff
Thanks Ravi. Guess I’ll reinvent the wheel
. Anyway, great theme!
@Jeff
. I want to put up the donate button when the web host starts complaining.
Thank u Jeff for helping out the other users. I can’t ask for more right now
Oh and WLW is a good choice if anybody’s looking for an offline blog editor for Windows.
@Sperwer
Hi Sperwer, I’ve recreated your situation on my experimental blog. The txt file routine solved the issue. Cutting & pasting the content of each post onto a .txt file stripped all the tags. The only problem when pasting the content back was, the paragraph formatting was also lost - which btw can be done in just a couple mins more.
Hi Ravi,
veeery cool theme! Problem: I am a newbee having to jumpstart my site quite quickly - would you assist me in customizing? IF so, what would/could be the deal?
Please send message to my em!
Cheers
Frank
Hi, I am experiencing a weird problem with primepress and I am hoping you might be able to help me solve it? basically the sidebars are appearing UNDERNEATH the main column instead of to the right of it. I have tried tweaking just about every setting back and forth and the problem seems to be intermittent and random, right when I think it is fixed and the sidebars are appearing at the side, I come back to the site a short time later and they have dropped all the way to the bottom of the page. Please take a look at the site and if you could email me with any possible solution I would very much appreciate it. Many Thanks Simon
http://www.manuwire.com
Hi Ravi,
Wonderful theme! I’m relatively new to WordPress and after stumbling through several other things, I’m finding yours easiest to work with. A couple of questions….
I already have my site name included in the image I uploaded to the header, so I’m wondering how to remove the Blog Title and Tagline from the top of the site, while retaining some white space between the top of the browser window and the gray tabs on the right.
Also, I’m having trouble getting the plugin WP-Email to function with PrimePress. I’ve uploaded the plugin and it appears in my admin area, but does not appear on the site. Any suggestions? I’m just looking for a simple, clean way for readers to e-mail a post. I’d like to find a similar button to put below each post on the home page for comments as well. Any suggestions would be great.
Lastly, is it possible to readjust the columns so that there is one column on either side of the main bar instead of both columns being to the right?
Thanks much,
Michelle
@Simon Harris
right now, I see the theme showing up as it’s supposed to. I’m guessing you’ve got it working. I’ll check again later and mail you if I see a problem. Thanks.
@Michelle
Thank you Michelle,
Changing the color of any text to that of it’s background is not advisable. Instead, add this code to your
custom.cssto turn off the site-title and tag-line without losing the white space.body.custom #branding { visibility: hidden; }The plugin WP-EMail needs you to edit the theme files. For some reason, I couldn’t get it to work even after doing as told (might have to spend more time). I’d suggest using the ShareThis plugin which is much easier to setup and customize.
Getting the sidebars on either side needs some considerable changes to the current setup, not just to the stylesheet but also in the theme template files as well. There’s no easy way right now, but I’m planning to do it in a future release.
Hi Ravi,
I love your theme. However, I can’t seen to get Platinum SEO Pack to work. I can use it with other themes but not this one. I also can’t seem to get the custom fields to work. Is there something missing that I might have erroneously removed? I’m using WP 2.6.
Lexi
Ravi,
Thanks so much for all the info. Your suggestion worked perfectly for getting rid of the blog title and tagline.
Also, for anyone who’s interested, I figured out how to get WP-Email working. Just go into index. php and look for:
Add Anywhere Below It:
<?php if(function_exists('wp_email')) { email_link(); } ?>