Cutline Theme for WordPress

With two versions of Cutline now out, people have been wondering which theme I will be supporting. Will I be continuing to work on the super popular Cutline 1.1 or its newer brother, Cutline 2.0? Well, the answer is “both”! At least for now.

I will continue to develop and support the original Cutline platform, and hope to bring out a newer release before the next version of WordPress in January. As for Cutline 2.0, you can expect to see a 2.1 release hopefully by February, with many new updates. As for continuing to support the first generation of Cutline, that all depends on you and its continued popularity. If you all get sick of it, I will focus my attention on the newer version. But if you all continue to enjoy it, I will continue to work on developing it, fixing it, tweaking it, and making it what you want it to be.

I have many ideas on how I want things to continue, especially in making it easier for you, the users, to easily modify and adapt the theme. I hope you will stick with me, give me a helping hand, and we can really revitalize the Cutline community.

So, I have been looking at setting aside some serious time for Cutline, and so what I need from all of you is to comment on this post what your major problems, issues, and shortcomings with the theme currently are. I don’t want CSS nitpicks, though if you have the solution for any CSS problems, please let me know. I’d love to make this more of a community project, as I am not the greatest mind in WordPress themes, but I do know WordPress fairly well.

So if you have a major issue, please let me know. I will be working from the blog, and as such your comments. We will be shutting down the forum, and you can always direct any Cutline problems my way via david [at] splashpress.com.

For those of you that have been worried about Cutline’s support, you need not worry any longer. Splashpress Media has tasked me to take over support of Cutline.

My name is David Peralty, and you might know me as the writer on Blogging Pro, and I used to be the co-host of the WordPress podcast. I have bent WordPress to my will numerous times, created many WordPress themes, and hopefully, I will be able to answer any and all questions you might have. You will notice some changes around here over the coming days, as I orient myself, and start cleaning things up.

I will be jumping in on the forum soon, to answer questions, as well as continuing to develop the Cutline theme.

Thanks again to everyone for their continued support, and I look forward to working with you all.

Although Cutline shines through its usage of Whitespace, many times one wants to add a background to a theme. Adding a background to Cutline is one of the easier things to do when it comes to modding, all you have to do is wrap the complete content container in a new div.

You need to edit your header.php and the footer.php for this and add the new container and background to the stylesheet of your theme.
Lets look at the recently released Cutline 1.1 Blue how you can add your favorite background.

Cutline 1.1 Blue has a gradient image as background, completed with the background color.

It has taken some time, but as announced, a new Cutline Mod.

And this is not just a mod, but a totally differently looking Cutline, showcasing the power of CSS… and some more.

As I wrote when I announced the new release, this Cutline remake is dedicated to some of the best designers online. Obviously Chris Pearson, creator of Cutline, naturally also Brian Gardner, who managed Cutline earlier on and then my all time favorite, the person who taught me everything about grid design, Khoi Vinh (yes it was straight love, when I discovered Subtraction years ago!). And last but not least, I added some touches too.

What is new in Cutline v2.0?

First of all, the new Cutline comes with integrated Microformats.

And things get better!
There are 2 different releases! One for WordPress 2.1+ and there is a Cutline 2.0 for the soon to be released WordPress 2.3! With tags implementation!
Those of you who only want to upgrade to WP2.3, when released, but don’t want to use the new tag features in WP2.3, can use the WordPress 2.1+ version.

Improved Usability!

Years long have I cursed entries with many comments. It has happened more than once that I wanted to comment on an entry, but after reading lots of comments I wanted to react on comments and had forgotten what I originally wanted to respond. Enough of that!

Revolutionary change!

Cutline v2.0 has the comment form immediately UNDER the entry. Now you can comment immediately after having read the post, without having to scroll through tons of comments first!
OK, OK… maybe not all that revolutionary at all… but I thought ‘Let’s be original!’.

I already hear the smart thinkers under you. What if I want to read the comments and then reply???

Fear not… even that has been thought of.

At the bottom of every single page you find now a new bottom navigation with links to the top of the entry, the comment form and also next/previous and the front page of your blog. If now you want to read all the comments and THEN respond, with one click (on ‘respond’) you are brought to the comment form.
From the main page, you can jump to both the comment form (Respond link in the post-meta side-block) and the comments (No Comments/1 Comment / % Comments - under the Tags line) directly.
But, due to the bottom navigation, the next/previous post navigation above the entry is no more.

New sidebar!

Cutline has a new sidebar. But I’ll immediately start with the bad news. Certain widgets are known to break the formatting. This Cutline mod was entirely focused on WP’s template tags flexibility, using specific settings for sidebar blocks. Sadly widgets don’t always offer this flexibility without hacking the code.

What’s new/different in the sidebar?

First off, the flickrRSS sidebar block has moved to the top and is optimized for 3/6/9/aso square images. Use <li> and </li> to have the optimal display. All these settings can be made in the flickrRSS control panel under Options. If you want to prevent slow loading times for the flickr thumbnails, use the caching options of the FlickrRSS plugin.

Cutline v2.0 now comes with built-in support for Brian’s Latest Comments plugin.

Both flickrRSS and Brian’s Latest Comments are optional and will not be displayed if you don’t use the plugins.

All the categories are now shown in the sidebar. In the WP2.3 version, you’ll find your Top25 tags listed, not as a cluttered cloud, but as a list.

Further features

Of course all the classic Cutline features have been conserved in this remake.

• Great SEO
• Random header images Cutline style
• Great image handling

Furthermore, Cutline 2.0 has been gridified.

Longest theme release post?

Did I manage it?

One more thing

Cutline 2.0 is available… NOW!
Go play with our demo.

• Download Cutline 2.0 for WP 2.1 and above
• Download Cutline 2.0 for WP 2.3

As requested in the forums, a small tutorial on how to use different backgrounds for separate categories in Cutline. Using separate templates for each category is rather simple, you only need some additional lines of code.
If you apply this structure, there are no limitations. You could even use a totally different design for every category, with different header, sidebar and font and many more. No limitations are set.

The only thing needed to do so is a conditional tag, and of course Wordpress has the appropriate template tag for this:

(in_category())

Using this condition and a classic if, elseif php call we can change everything we want for the categories we want. Just the post CSS or even the complete design. If you want to feature a complety different design based on pages, use combined conditional tags to define if your new design.

The background images (colored closing tags) and background color for several categories I used on my former blog are easy to achieve.

Open in your theme folder the file index.php or if your theme uses a separate file for the loop, theloop.php and look for following line

This is the regular entry template and here we will have to change the code a little and insert the conditional tags for the categories we want to alter.

As you could see in the link above, I used a different background for several categories, but there are no limits for this principle.

You can easily use a total new template page for every category, in which case you have to make new template files and call them as in the following screenshot.

And obviously you can even call a totally different CSS for every category, or for specific pages. All based on the conditional WP tags.

Now you only need to make the changes to your CSS anymore. In the next screenshot you see a small example of how to achieve this, just like I did at my former blog

Finally the day has come and the Cutline Theme Support Forums have been created!

Head over to the forums with your questions and problems. Let’s show everyone what a great community has been created by Chris and every Cutline user.

Obviously the forums still are empty, but I’m sure that will change fast!

As promised some aids, if you’re experiencing problems with your Cutline installation, both 2 or 3 column version. Most problems returning in the comments have already been addressed by Chris in older entries, but let’s recap the most common questions in the comments.

My Archives Don’t Work

This problem has been addressed by Chris in 2 different entries.

1. Creating About And Archives Pages.
To make sure your archives work, you’ll first have to make sure you have an archives page. Creating this page is simple. Follow these steps (Copy&Paste from Chris’s entry)

1. Log into your WP Administration panel and click on the Presentation link.
2. Assuming you have the Cutline theme activated, you’ll notice a link in the sub-navigation menu called Cutline Options.
3. On the Cutline Options page, simply check the box next to “Enable the Cutline Archives Page.”
4. Click the Update Options button to create the Archives page.
5. In order to ensure that your new Archives page gets published properly, you’ll need to click on the Manage link in the main navigation menu.
6. Once there, click on Pages in the sub-navigation menu.
7. One of your pages will contain the text “Archives” in the Title field - find that page, and then click on the Edit button for that page.
8. Locate the Save » button (which resides just beneath the main text entry box), and click it. You’re done!

If you don’t see a page titled Archives in your page manager, write a new page, called Archives, chose the Archives template for this page and use archives as post slug Template and Post Slug can be found in the sidebar of your admin panel).

2. Why My About And Archives Link Don’t Work
If you click both the About and Archives link, and none of them works, although you have created both pages, make sure that you use the permalinks structure for your WP blog. Chris explains everything in this entry.

The Sitemap Doesn’t Work

If you click in the footer the link to the sitemap and this leads you to a 404 page, you might not have created a Sitemap for your site yet. Again create/write a new page. Call this page Sitemap and use as template Sitemap. The post slug should be sitemap too, exactly as we did with the archives page.

Change The Header Navigation Links To Display Your Pages

If you want to change the standard Cutline header navigation links (Front Page, Archives, About) in to a horizontal list of your pages, replace the line 35 - 36 in header.php

<li><a <?php if (is_archive() || is_page('archives')) echo('class="current" '); ?>href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/archives/">archives</a></li>

<li><a <?php if (is_page('about')) echo('class="current" '); ?>href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/about/">about</a></li>

with

<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li='); ?>¹

So far Cutline Problems, Question & Answers Round 1, more to come over the next days.
And yes, I’ll install forums for the community too.

¹This will display links to all first level pages, not to subpages.

This is nothing more than a sneak preview, sneak preview because so far there are only official themes, mods for Cutline. But times are about to change. Starting today.

Let me present you our newest feature for Cutline: Cutline Theme Mods

When Brian created the Cutline Showcase we made a first step towards our communtiy, but today we bring this to a new level!

From now on every Cutliner can submit her/his own modification of Cutline for release and selected mods will be featured here on the Cutline homepage!

Of course, this would be totally irrelevant without a new Cutline Mod release, so watch this page for the featured Cutline Blue Modification to be released over the next days! Fully documented.

All downloads soon will be re-released with implemented Microformats.

Seeing someone leave a project is always a sad thing to watch, especially when a talented person like Brian Gardner leaves a community. But Cutline and its thriving community will live on and I am glad to announce that from now on I’ll help you with your questions.

The next days will be devoted to catch up with the questions asked in diverse comments. Keep your eyes on this site for entries addressing those problems, starting next week.

In September a new Cutline mod will be released, honoring some of the greatest actual web designers.

But Cutline would never have been Cutline without you! All of you have helped Cutline to grow to one of the most vibrant WordPress theme communities around. Tell us in the comments what you would like to see here in the future, how you would like to see evolve Cutline and its community!