The Cloisters

The spam around here is really starting to increase and the spam blocker is picking it up (which is GOOD!) but unfortunately I’ve caught some legitimate comments and questions in there also (which is NOT GOOD!). I try to go through all the spam and let the good comments through but do occasionally miss some.

So I’m posting this to say that if you have a legitimate question or comment on one of the themes and you don’t see it show up it’s not because I don’t want to hear from you, it’s just a mixup. Try using the contact form to get your question to me instead.

Hi Guys,

I get many requests for help (both here on the site and in emails) with my themes and I do my best to answer them all, but with a full time job and other life issues to deal with I can’t always get to them in a timely manner so I’m asking you for a little help. Here are a few things you can do before requesting support:

1. Read through the comments in your particular themes thread or even the other theme’s threads. Your question may have already been answered.

2. If your layout is broken and you are using plugins, look to them first. Try deactivating them to see if the issue goes away. If it does then reactivate them one by one to see which one is causing the conflict. And if it is a plugin causing the problem, check with the plugin’s author…I know nothing about plugins.

3. If you recently downloaded the theme and it’s messed up, it could be that the download was corrupt. Try re-downloading and reinstalling.

4. Check on the Codex and the WP forums, many times a problem isn’t with the theme but with the theme not doing what you want due to WP limitations.

5. This is very important…always include a link to your site. If I can’t see what’s going on I can’t help. If your site is not yet public and you don’t want to include the link in the comments you can always email it to me.

Doing these things first could save us all a lot of time and help make things go more smoothly.

Thanks,
Mina

May I present the newest offering…

It’s a Multi Column (1 sidebar, 2 main content colums, 2 right hand sections and 3 footer sections all widgetized) fixed width theme loosely inspired by the art galleries of Soho New York and is perfect for a showcase/portfolio or scrapbook type site. It features an author info page and gravatars along with Custom Archives, Sitemap, Blog Post and full width No Sidebars page templates. Tested in Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE6 and IE7. Compatible up to Wordpress 2.7 and is XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.1 valid right out of the box.

Demo & Download

SETUP INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Go into Admin >> Appearances >> Editor >> index.php and find these lines (there are 2 sets – 1 for the left colum and 1 for the right column):

php query_posts(‘cat=1&showposts=3′);
php $posts = get_posts(‘category=1&numberposts=3&offset=0′);

Change the category ID number (in 2 places) to the category you want to display. You can also change the number of posts that are shown (also in 2 places) although for asthetics 3 in the left column and 2 in the right column is recommended.

2. To change the headings of the main content columns go into Admin >> Appearances >> Editor >> index.php and find this line (2 places) and change the text between the < h3>< /h3> tags:
< div class="title">< h3>HEADING< /h3>< /div>

3. To have the images show up in the left hand content column you’ll need to install the Get The Image plugin created by Justin Tadlock. You can download it here: Get The Image.

So there was a bug in the State Of Mind theme that caused the menu bar to go all off kilter. The cause was an issue with the different way that navigation is handled between wp 2.6 and wp 2.7. The good news is that it’s fixed and an updated version is, as of today now available for download from the Theme Directory. So if you have the old version (1.1) and you’re having this problem, download the new version (1.2) for the fix.

I’ve come across a few sites out there that are offering a couple of my themes for download. I would advise that you download any of my themes ONLY from the official Wordpress Theme Directory accessible either by clicking the link here or following the links in my theme’s posts at this site. Some (no not all) of those unofficial sites are adding malicious code and/or sponsored links to the themes and that is not something I want to be associated with.

So yeah, we’ve got a new look here. It was time and I figured that since I spend a lot of time making themes for other people’s site I may as well make on just for this site. I’ll probably do a little tinkering here and there because I’m never satisfied. As of this time I don’t have any plans to release this publicly but I might just do that sometime in the future. Let me know what you think!