The Cloisters

Cloistered Theme

Mina — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 23:46:31 +0000

Our newest theme works either as a stand-alone or a framework and is HEAVILY based on the new WordPress default theme Twenty Ten by the WordPress Team. I’m using it as a great base for the child themes The Cloisters will be implementing.

This theme is two-columns, fixed-width, custom-header, custom-background, threaded-comments, sticky-post, microformats. Featuring a Full-Width No Sidebars page template. There is an options page for setting the background color and header image. It comes with 9 custom header images (all photos were taken by me!) to choose from or you can upload your own and the footer has 4 widgetized sections for more content. Tested in Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE6, IE7 and IE8. It is HTML 5 Transitional and CSS 2.1 valid out of the box.

Right now it’s currently only compatible with WordPress 3.0 and I’m not sure when or if it will be made backwards compatible.

The next step will be publishing child themes to go along with this…stay tuned!

Cloistered Framework (5)
Demo Coming Soon

3.0 and the future of The Cloisters

Mina — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:05:36 +0000

So the site is now running on the new WordPress 3.0 and a new look. I’ve got a new theme just about ready to be released and with it we’re moving in a new direction. The new theme is based on WP’s new default theme Twenty Ten and will serve as a framework for child themes. You can see it in action here with a child theme made specifically for The Cloisters. I feel moving to child themes will give me and you guys more options and flexibility.

Anyway, stay tuned in the next few days to learn more about it!

Upgrading WordPress

Mina — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 04:32:36 +0000

With yesterday’s release of WordPress 3.0 I wanted to talk about upgrading. I can only really tell you what I do for upgrades and what you choose to do is up to you. I personally install all my blogs in subdirectories mainly because it makes upgrading easier for me.

Now normally for small upgrades that are usually just security fixes I’ll do the automatic upgrade (after ALWAYS backing up) that is part of WP, but when it comes to major version changes (1.x to 2.x and now 2.9.2 to 3.0) or when there are new functions added I’ll do a clean install just to kind of start new. This is where the subdirectories come in handy. I can get the new blog up and running and testing out themes and plugins to make sure everything is working as it should be without any downtime. Install the new blog, import my backup to get all my content in place, activate my themes and plugins and put it through it’s paces until I’m satisfied that all is well. Then simply make the new blog live and you’re good to go!

There is a great article on basic security for setting up your blog from Weblog Tools Collection that I recommend everyone read.

So that is my suggestion, mainly to folks who are new to WordPress so they can maybe avoid a disaster.

WordPress 3.0

Mina — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 13:52:42 +0000

Yesterday WordPress released the beta of the new 3.0 version so of course I had to download it to see. I’m not going to go into the new features and all in depth, mainly since it’s still in beta and also because I’m most concerned about how my themes will work with it.

I quickly ran all my themes through it to see if there would be any problems using them on the new version and so far haven’t seen any issues. Of course they may be some glitches with some of the new features that will be included in the new 3.0 but the upshot is that if you are using any of my themes you should be okay if you upgrade (which I strongly suggest you wait until the official version of 3.0 is released). So as it stands I won’t be doing much upgrading of the themes unless something major presents itself.

If you are using a lot of plugins you may wind up with issues there so that’s something to look into before you upgrade.

Parchment Draft Theme

Mina — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:43:58 +0000

A very basic 2 column fixed-width theme in reminiscent of old parchment paper. Featuring an Author Info page and gravatars along with Custom Archives, Sitemap and Full-Width No Sidebars page templates. Tested in Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE6 and IE7. Compatible up to WordPress 2.8 and is XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.1 valid out of the box.

Download
Demo Coming Soon

Daily Minefield Theme

Mina — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:47:36 +0000

Multi-column fixed-width theme in brown, black and a touch of green includes 4 widgetized footer sections. Featuring an Author Info page and gravatars along with Custom Archives, Sitemap and Full-Width No Sidebars page templates. There is an options page for setting the text in the Info Text Box. Space for ads or miscellaneous images included as well as rotating logo images. Tested in Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE6 and IE7. Compatible up to WordPress 2.8 and is XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.1 valid out of the box.

LOGO IMAGES:
The theme comes with the rotating logo images function enabled. To use this feature simply upload your desired images to the images/logo directory and the code will do the rest. To diable this function and just use one static logo image go into Admin >> Appearances >> Editor >> style.css, comment out the line for ROTATING LOGO IMAGE and uncomment the line for STATIC LOGO IMAGE as shown below:

/*****ROTATING LOGO IMAGE*****/
/* .logo { background: url(images/logo/rotate.php) no-repeat; margin: 10px; padding: 0; width: 465px; height: 225px; border: 5px groove #666b18; } */

/*****STATIC LOGO IMAGE*****/
.logo { background: url(images/logo.jpg) no-repeat; margin: 10px; padding: 0; width: 465px; height: 225px; border: 5px groove #666b18; }

The location of the STATIC LOGO image is the wp-contents/themes/Daily_Minefield/images folder so you can add your own.

Download
Demo Coming Soon

Where to download my themes

Mina — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:00:26 +0000

Due to some quirks at the Official WordPress Theme Directory not all of my themes will be submitted there. Some (mostly new ones) will be available for download from my account at 4shared.com and all the old themes (up to Quietly Simple) are still at the Theme Directory.

I would advise you to ONLY download from the link you’ll find on either this site or the link on our support forums. That is to ensure that you get a clean copy without sponsored/spam links or any other nasty stuff that some people add to themes before they redistribute them.

Just Grey Theme

Mina — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:34:27 +0000

Another new theme from the Snapp Happy Collection…it’s a 3-column flexible-width theme in gray and blue. Featuring an Author Info page and gravatars along with Custom Archives, Sitemap and Full-Width No Sidebars page templates. There is an options page for setting the text in the Info Text Box. Tested in Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE6 and IE7. Compatible up to WordPress 2.8 and is XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.1 valid out of the box.

I liked it so much that I modified for this site!

Just Grey (519)
Demo Coming Soon

New Support Forums

Mina — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:33:47 +0000

Okay folks, we’ve got a new support forum here to make things easier for everyone with all questions & answers in one central location. Not to mention that I’ll be better able to keep track of who needs help. I’ve closed the comments on the posts and also request that you don’t email support questions to me. Some valid comments have been getting sent to the spam folder and I find that I’m missing some people’s requests. Hopefully this will clear that up.

You can find the forum here and there is also a link in the top navigation bar.

So please post theme related issues only to the forum as I will no longer be answering support request emails.

I appreciate your cooperation with this change.

Helpful links

Mina — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:06:17 +0000

I added a couple more links to the “Educational Links” section here at the site from HTML Dog. They cover the basics of html and css are give you a good idea of how things work. Check them out – CSS Beginner Tutorial and HTML Beginner Tutorial.