I am working on version 2 now with subpage support.
It is only limited by your ability to add the functions you need
What do you need it to do? I will help if you give me an idea of what you are looking for.
Ainslie,
love the template, btw! one of the most fluid themes ive seen and very fast loading.
there are some things i can see myself wanting to develop inside the template, as well as a few other questions i have, and who better to ask than the author!
1. not sure how easy it is to change the sidebar widths without throwing the whole theme into disarray? is it simply changing one line of CSS or is there more involved? i think my employer and i would like to employ one sidebar with a little ‘extra-wide’ functionality – if it’s as simple as changing ‘sidebarleft’ to more pixels wide then great!
2. in the content column, if an image of say 1000 pixels width is inserted, does that push the whole template to ‘leftsidebar-padding-1000pixels-padding-rightsidebar’ wide? now don’t think i’m saying this is bad, this is actually what we want. we want our authors to be able to throw up 800w images w/o having to worry about resizing or using thumbnails. and want to make sure the whole theme will ‘flex’ to the width of whatever is thrown inside of it.
3. and then my main concern, which is why i started this thread: for subpages, we were thinking of something like in the WP admin interface, how the main navigation is blue with black text, but if you click on anything with multiple sub-menus, like ‘Options’ or ‘Presentation’, etc., you get that third row of black with white text, with the active page like a tab of white with black text. this is really how we think and how most of our audience would easily follow this navigation for pages and sub-pages, with all the other navigatable links to be thrown into the sidebars.
we’ll probably only start off with about 8 authors, but within two years we’ll be upwards of 30 because of the nature of our company, we’re a non-profit engaged with the arts community.
looking forward to version2, reallly great work by the way. cheers!
nick_normal
Ok here goes, sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
1. There is a little more than just changing the sidebar width as you also have to adjust the margins of the content.
2. Anything that is too wide will just have it’s overflow hidden. Remember that this is a fluid design and will shrink/stretch for different resolutions. 800px wide will be fine on some screens but too big on others.
3. The sub-page menu you describe would be nice but as yet I am not sure how to make it work beyond 1 level of sub-pages. I’ll see what I can do.
I am working on version 2 now but can’t give you an answer as to when it will be ready. I am working on it between other things as I get inspiration. Hopefully you have a lot of patience!
ainslie,
thanks for the response! yes i have lots of patience! i would presume your template to be upgradeable too, or at least with documentation on anything that might need tweaking post-updgrade.
yes, i too thought over the weekend about the more-than-1 sub-pages dilemma. i’ve seen in other themes the sub-pages show up in a side column. but sometimes it’s not visually obvious the sub-pages are related to the page the user has navigated into, so i thought a solution to this would be a simple CSS hack: a thin colored stripe that goes under the main navigation (pages) and connects to left or right side column, which then goes vertically down the side column, same colour as the thin stripe, with all levels of sub-pages there. could be pretty effective i think, and if the colours are all relative i think it would be a logical navigation structure.
thanks for your insights.
cheers
nick_normal
Sub-pages in the sidebar are quite easy to implement with a plugin but if you have a horizontal menu then it seems logical to also do the sub-pages the same way as many sites do. Though I have not seen a WordPress theme do it yet. Has anybody seem one that does?
I don’t think it will be to difficult to have 1 level of sub-pages pop up in a bar below the parent pages using a modified plugin, but beyond that I think it may get tricky. Of course 1 level of sub-pages would be better than no sub-pages.
I need to do some more research as I think I have seen something about css popup menus that may fit the bill. If the first level of sub-pages pop up in a bar below the parents and then any further levels pop-up when they are hovered on š It must be possible – I just need to get my head round it! It may take me a while.
I have just added simple sub-page navigation to my sidebar on http://webgazette.co.uk it works but there is no current page highlighting at the moment.
This could of course be made horizontal with css and moved up under the page menu. I am just going to have to try and see how it looks and what happens when there are sub-sub-pages.
i’m using a modded version myself…
I have added a basic horizontal sub-page menu to my site and would value some feed back.
http://webgazette.co.uk – look for the themes pages.
TIA
As an amusing note: I had to force my cache to clear as first I saw an uordered list (cached CSS from my visit yesterday I suppose). Lol.
However, after the cache clear I must say that I really really like how you did those sub menus!
I like them too Ainslie.. =) Just I was trying to figure out how to do that, while hovering over them, (the top nav buttons) kinda like they have at the http://www.macromedia.com/ website..
Scroll over say the contact button and then subs would drop down horizontally below it..
I’d love to implement that into A08r lol.. Just not sure how to with the menu setup though…
spencerp
spencerp, well the macromedia website uses… Flash! for their navigation!
obviously there are different ways to do this, but in a way that is natively familiar to a WP user (say a newbie) might be the challenge.
here’s a sub-menu that i reckon is completely driven by css:
http://nymag.com/news/index.html
scroll through the main nav, watch below, defnite IE hacks are needed here though.
and here:
http://roulette.org/
however their system somehow uses JavaScript because when JS is disabled the subnav doesn’t work.
i think there are two options here: having the theme with sub-pages only 1 level deep, which is specified in documentation/readme ‘Sub-pages will list only one level deep’ or attempt to get the extended sublevels to show via rollover… A List Apart has some examples of this. i had bookmarks… somewhere.
anyhow nice thread going here. nice to see some development spurring along.
cheers
nick_normal
Thanks so much for those links nicknormal.. =) Yeah, I knew they used flash for their menus from before, just used it as a quick example.. =)
I just could have sworn that I had seen a WP theme using that menu type.. but maybe I’m wrong..mmm.. Either way, I’ll have to check them links out you gave me.. =)
I was kind of throwing that question to Ainslie/ or anyone really.. but Ainslie was the one that helped me get those menus working with the following code for it:
<?php if (is_page()) { $highlight = "page_item"; } else {$highlight = "page_item current_page_item"; } ?>
<li class="<?php echo $highlight; ?>"><a href="<?php echo get_settings('home'); ?>">Home</a></li>
<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li='); ?>
But I’d guess that would be either impossible or semi impossible to implement that style/type of menu into that, and prolly just have to use DHTML, javascript or something of that nature I guess.. :/ I’m not sure, because I’m not really a “professional” at this stuff lmao!!
But I love to tinker with stuff and is willing to learn, and I do try to do things.. but like I said above here, I’ll take a gander at those links and see what I can do.. =)
spencerp
p.s. Even though I like some javascript, most ppl might not have it enabled..which will/would suck then.. =(
Almost have to have it open by default for the subs to display..but however, that would be messy when having 5 links at top with 5 links per sub lol!!
Could do it the way this haizeak_v4 theme was done I guess..
By those link types, are you meaning just the look from macromedia? Wuhan/Wuhan Autumn are by Meng’s on words drawn from the look of the m’media site….
By those link types, are you meaning just the look from macromedia? Wuhan/Wuhan Autumn are by Meng’s on words drawn from the look of the m’media site….
Well, basically I guess..but more of a drop down script that macromedia uses for the subs for each “main” top nav link.. =) Example like here: http://wuhan.authenticasian.com/autumn/
If scrolling over link 1 or link 2 and so on.. While over the link 1, would drop down the sub links of that link 1.. I think that would be a cool thing to implement into a WP theme.. =)
I was thinking about it the past few days, but keep getting bugged on MSN and Yahoo lmao..can never get to anything.. (Not picking on anyone specific monkeyKING!) but anyways.. I’d love to try and get this working lol..
spencerp
[cough](And checking GamerZ’s poll and rate plugins for him, because he’s getting javascript errors, and he’s trying to fix em..LOL!)[/cough]
Um. Yes dear…. Meng IS “authenticasian.com”….
