Subtle 0.4 - Working with Widgets


So here’s how the conversation more or less went down with John…

John: Dude, the site has a PR7! What the heck?
Chris: Really? No way. Wow… it does. Too bad it got hacked. I had to pull the thing down.
John: You’ve GOT to get something up there.
Chris: Ya… you’re probably right.

So a couple of weeks later - and more prodding from John - not only is the site up again, but I’m releasing Subtle for WordPress 0.4 which now works with WordPress 2.3+. That’s right, I’ve finally caved and rewritten the widget code to conform to the wonky but ubiquitous widgets platform, which ended up making relaunching the site way easier. Go figure.

In addition to the widgets update, I’ve also cleaned up the archives / search results headers so that they let you know what you’re looking at when browsing through categories or date-based archives. Obvious? Yep. Should have put that in there years ago.

So if you’re still using Subtle for WordPress or are interested in trying it out again, now’s the time to grab a copy and start playing with it. Remember, Subtle has some cool features like Theme Styles and author pages - all features you won’t see in any other themes for WordPress right now. If you find bugs, feel free to e-mail me or post comments on the blog.

EDIT (08/02/20 9:23AM): I’ve updated the footer chicklet that links to Glued Ideas Blog to link directly to the page here. Additionally, I’ve added the Glued theme style to base install and made it the default theme style. Default and Subvert are still part of the package, but they were feeling a little dated. Then again, so is Glued. Maybe it’s time for a new theme.

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February 19th, 2008
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
dandyman
Posted on:
February 20, 2008 at 6:25 am

Thank you Chris, I’ve missed Subtle very much.

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
BeemerMonkey
Posted on:
February 20, 2008 at 5:13 pm

“Subtle has some cool features like Theme Styles and author pages”

What do those two things mean? :)

I’m looking to develop a new blog and I need a solid starting point and I like the overall feel of your theme. Nice work.

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
Christopher Frazier
Posted on:
February 20, 2008 at 5:24 pm

@BeemerMonkey: Subtle is built to be more of a theme framework rather than something set in stone. Theme Styles are a way to use the base code (Subtle Core) to build a full theme without having to monkey around with a lot of PHP. I wrote about it here.

Author pages are what you get when you click on the post author’s name. The idea is to allow people to get to know the writers on your blog if you’ve got a few of them. The author page pulls information from the user profile, so an author doesn’t need to have full admin privileges to edit the information on their page.

Hope that helps!

Comment Number:
4
Written by:
Onno
Posted on:
February 22, 2008 at 2:29 am

I really liked your Wordpress theme when I first came across it. Only recently I noticed the updated version. Good work! Right now, though, I’m playing around with it for my blog, and I’ve noticed that the second Widget-column on the right only works in Firefox. In IE 7 it’s displayed as one single long column, with an empty space beside it. Any idea what’s causing this?

Comment Number:
5
Written by:
John
Posted on:
February 22, 2008 at 6:03 am

Thanks for making Subtle. I thinks it is one of the best themes out there. I am very glad Subtle is being actively developed again.

One tiny request from my part: is it possible to include tag information in the ‘Information and Links’ in the single post template in future subtle versions? Thanx!

Comment Number:
6
Written by:
Christopher Frazier
Posted on:
February 22, 2008 at 7:42 am

@Onno: I’d need to look at your site, but I think it’s actually a case of where what you’re sticking into the column is too big. If you drop an image or similar object in the column and it’s too large, the column expands in IE, meaning it doesn’t fit in the right-hand sidebar anymore and shoves down to fit. See if you can get it working by tweaking the size of your content.

For 0.41 I may add some CSS that will clip oversized content. It’s more a hack than a fix, though. The fix is making sure your content works with the theme.

@John: I wouldn’t say it’s being actively developed… just not ignored. :) And yes, tags will be coming in 0.41.

Comment Number:
7
Written by:
Shawn Young
Posted on:
February 24, 2008 at 7:31 pm

Chris, thanks for updating this impressive theme! I’m using it for our studio’s website - there seems to be a problem with using Slimbox and viewing with IE6… Subtle makes the Slimbox go to the top of the page and does not dim out the background. I’ve switched to Lightbox but Lightbox does not handle long titles very vell. We really like Slimbox better - any chance there can be a fix with Subtle to work better with Slimbox??? Thank you so much! Subtle/Subvet kicks butt!
~Mahalo!

Comment Number:
8
Written by:
nina aoki
Posted on:
February 24, 2008 at 9:52 pm

Great to see you back!

Comment Number:
9
Written by:
nina aoki
Posted on:
February 26, 2008 at 12:38 am

Hi Chris,

I had just sent you an email about some display issues with the default setting of subtle. For some reason I’m finding that the graphics & headers don’t display in Firefox, but are fine in IE. Any ideas?

My email also had another request that I’d love to get your answer on.

Thanks much,

nina

Comment Number:
10
Written by:
Christopher Frazier
Posted on:
February 26, 2008 at 8:12 am

@Shawn - I’ve never used Slimbox, so I’ll grab a copy and see how it works. I wonder if I’m using the same DIV ids as Slimbox.

@Nina - Check your inbox.

Comment Number:
11
Written by:
Matt Chandler
Posted on:
March 26, 2008 at 6:21 am

I love your theme. I’m trying to help a group put a site together, and I have a quick question: I want to put a list of all pages (not posts) in a section in the sidebar of each appropriate page.

Basically, I have static pages, and I have posts. Two sections of static pages have multiple children. I found the code to do this, but I’m having trouble figuring out where to put it.

Sorry for the stupidity, I’m a total Wordpress noob. Here’s the site in question:

http://www.communitycarefund.org/blog/

Comment Number:
12
Written by:
Shawn Young
Posted on:
March 30, 2008 at 12:38 pm

Hey Chris… lovin’ Glued! Any chance of getting a .psd like the deault theme style?
Mahalo nui loa,
~shawn

Comment Number:
13
Written by:
Martin
Posted on:
April 17, 2008 at 8:09 am

Hi,

Thanks for updating this awsome theme.

I noticed I”m still getting that odd intermitent issue with the big white space appearing beneath the footer and I wondered if there was a fix for it. I tried to find the forums but Im not sure theyre still here?..

Many Thanks

Martin