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Connections Reloaded

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Overview
Features
Downloads
Donations
Installing
Demo
Changelog
Questions & Known Bugs
Related Posts

Overview

This is version 1.5 of the ‘Connections Reloaded’ theme.

As the name suggests, Connections Reloaded is a complete reload of the highly popular and extremely beautiful Connections theme by Patricia Müller.

Some of the things I changed about the original theme are:

  • Made a single sidebar file for all the pages. It uses WP’s conditional tags to load the uncommon parts of the sidebar. Also added feeds, and miscellaneous stuff. See Variable Sidebar Content.
  • Also modified the header and footer templates so as to remove the redundancy across the Main, Page, Archive, Post, Search etc. templates. So, in the future if you want to change anything in the header or footer, you need to update a single file and not all.
  • Added the 404 template to catch 404 errors. (I wish WordPress incorporated the other errors as well!)
  • Modified the CSS file to add what was needed for my plugins and also added a whole set of settings to make the Live Calendar melt into the rest of the site. If Live Calendar is not installed, then the default WP Calendar is displayed
  • Created Archives and Links template for my Archives and Links page obviously, as in Spirit. Deleted the date.php which is the date template used when a date is queried
  • Also created another template I called Pages with Comments. I felt the need to let my visitors comment on my plugins and hacks, while preventing them from commenting on other pages like the About and Rules pages. I couldn’t use the normal Pages template mainly because it didn’t display the comments form. Also, didn’t want to add the comments form to it, as then it would display across all the pages, which is what I didn’t desire. So, that is where the Pages with Comments template came into the picture. Now for pages where I would like to enable commenting, I use the above template. :)
  • Updated the Comments template, so that the comments form is only displayed for Single Post and Pages with Templates pages.
  • Added the code for a favicon.ico in the Header. Please make sure you create and upload a favicon.ico in your blog root or comment out the code in the header.php file.
  • Modified the footer to add Wordpress statistics.
  • Have added five new classes to style.css, viz. alignleft, alignright, center, left and right. The first three are aligns, the last two are floats.

Features

  • Though the DOCTYPE is XHTML 1.0 Transitional, it perfectly XHTML 1.1 compatible.
  • Perfectly compatible with WordPress 1.5, 2.0.x and 2.1-alpha.
  • Support for WordPress Widgets.
  • It makes optimum use of the various features offered by WordPress
  • Single sidebar, footer and header file are used , thus ensuring ease of use and sitewide modification by editting as little files as possible.

Downloads

Donations

I spend a good deal of time developing, maintaining and hosting this site and the theme. If you like the theme and find it useful and would like to donate something for my work please do click the Paypal Donate button below. The payment is secure. The amount hasn’t been filled in so you can enter whatever amount you choose to donate. Thank you :)

Installing

  • Unzip the contents of the zip.
  • Copy the whole folder into your wordpress’s wp-content/themes/ folder. You will get a folder connections-reloaded.
  • Go to the Presentation area of your WordPress Admin and Select the ‘Connections Reloaded’
  • Create the following pages in wp-admin: About, Archives, Links, Contact. For Archives and Links please choose the Archive and Links template respectively. Ensure that you have permalinks turned on, or modify the header links to reflect the modified pages.

Demo

ChangeLog:

  • 1.5
    • Complete code rewrite
    • Complete support for WordPress 1.5, 2.0 and 2.1-alpha
    • Support for WordPress Widgets
    • Archives, Links and "Pages with Comments" Page Templates have been improved
    • Trackbacks and Comments now displayed seperately.
    • Title tag rewritten to take care of 404 error pages and search results pages
    • 404 and search pages improved
    • All displayed text now written with _e. This is one more step towards internationalization
    • Though the DOCTYPE is set to be XHTML 1.0 Transistional, the code is XHTML 1.1 compatible for those who prefer it.
    • Improved the footer.
    • Display of the calendar has been improved
    • Have added five new classes to style.css, viz. alignleft, alignright, center, left and right. The first three are aligns, the last two are floats.
  • 1.2.2
    • Fixed a bug that caused comments on password protected posts to remain hidden even after entering the password. File modified: comments.php
    • Replaced Google Reader with Add to Google button under Subscriptions. File Modified: sidebar.php
    • Removed code of a plugin from index.php. It wouldn’t cause your site to break, but it wasn’t required.
    • Removed all target="_blank" attributes from the code files.
    • Footer text modified. File Modified: footer.php
    • Removed Firefox button from the sidebar.
  • 1.2.1
    • Added a button for Google Reader (thanks to Lorelle)
    • Fixed a validation problem. Theme is once again valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional
    • The zip file also includes screenshot.png. This is a screenshot of the theme and will be displayed in the Presentation section of WordPress v1.6
    • Minor CSS improvements
  • 1.2
    • I have added Links and Pages to the sidebar. Links displays only on the homepage while Pages displays all throughout. Currently only top level pages are displayed. You will need to edit the sidebar.php to display daughter level.
    • Version info is not added to the footer. Easy for keeping track.
    • Display of nested categories in the sidebar has been fixed
    • Have added buttons under subscription for Feedster, Spurl, Furl, Newsburst, Rojo and Pluck. If anyone knows the button for adding to Google Reader, please let me know.
    • All images used by the theme are now included in it, especially those used in the sidebar.
  • 1.1
    • Now Connections Reloaded installs in a the folder conections-reloaded
    • Miscellaneous bug fixes
  • 1.0 - Release

Known bugs

If you know of any bugs or have any questions then please post the same in the support forum..

Related Posts

All old comments have now been archived. You can read the old comments here.

31 Responses to “ Connections Reloaded ”

Comments:

  1. Gravatar eduo Says:
    April 10th, 2006 at 6:24 am

    Fantastic. I’ll get it and start taking a look at it, as I’ve modified mine a lot. Most should go right in, but I have to get familiarised with the current instance.

    I see there is no mention of the header to accommodate those with random headers. I’ll check how it currently is. In a comment of a previous post I posted the changes I made to make the header a single JPG without a frame and the frame done in CSS (which makes it easy to drop new images for the random header).

    Also, for all those using plug-ins that require special CSS styles. Try the Quick’n dirty CSS plugin, it lets you define a global all.css file in the “themes” directory whose styles are applied to any theme you use. That’s a perfect place to place theme-independent styles you may need:

    http://wp-plugins.net/plugin/fixedstylesheet/

    For the random header I’m using, er, random header:
    http://www.martinet.nl/wp-site/random-header-plugin

    Congratulations again.

    Eduo

  2. Gravatar Ajay Says:
    April 10th, 2006 at 6:30 am

    Hi Eduo,

    Thanks.

    Quite a bit has changed.
    I haven’t yet implemented the random header or without the frame. (probably in the next release).

    You don’t really need a plugin for a random header, the way I am thinking of implementing it requires a little CSS editing.

  3. Gravatar eduo Says:
    April 10th, 2006 at 1:00 pm

    Ajay:

    I know. I originally had it made in CSS with PHP. I liked the Random Header option because it, again, allows for compatibility with other themes should it ever be needed (I don’t know why I prefer this, as every theme has its own size for the header, but still…)

    I tried loading it up and it looks perfect, I didn’t get any errors or anything and just was missing most of the extras I had (which I had under conditionals all around). I like what you did with the sidebar, which is something I had done already but forgot to comment it here in the past. Unifying it.

    I can’t see the widgets part, though. I’m not sure if I’m not looking in the right places or if it may not appear if the WP installation is in spanish.

  4. Gravatar Ajay Says:
    April 10th, 2006 at 3:25 pm

    Great to know everything works fine. I did a thorough testing on all three versions of WP, but sometimes things can slip by.

    Regarding the Widgets, you will need to get hold of the widgets plugin.

    Have a few widgets I plan to release, maybe when I can get some spare time on my hands.

  5. Gravatar ed bacchus Says:
    April 10th, 2006 at 11:46 pm

    Love the theme and will upload new version this evening. Can someone help with trying to change the image that is in the header? I am having a new header image and logo desinged and need to know how to put inth the theme.

  6. Gravatar Ajay Says:
    April 10th, 2006 at 11:51 pm

    Get the Connections Reloaded Header from above.

  7. Gravatar Thierry Says:
    April 11th, 2006 at 4:29 pm

    Ajay, that theme of yours is gorgious.

    In order to translate it in french, I internationalized it this way :
    - change every occurrence of _e() and __() to add a 2nd argument ‘connections-reloaded’
    - modify header.php to add ‘load_theme_textdomain(’connections-reloaded’)’
    - create a fr_FR.po file to include every string passed to _e() and translate these, and placed the fr_FR.mo generated by poEdit in the theme directory
    - add a few _e() and __() here and there where needed.

    This version is available on my site, if you want to merge the modifications so everyone can easily add a language to this beautiful theme of yours.

    Thanks again, Ajay.

    Thierry

  8. Gravatar Ajay Says:
    April 11th, 2006 at 11:33 pm

    Thanks Thierry,

    This is something that I have been wanting to do quite a while.

    Will I need an en_EN.mo?

    Very new to internationalization, but am going to get to work on this :)

  9. Gravatar Thierry Says:
    April 12th, 2006 at 3:41 am

    No, you won’t need an en_EN.mo as english is the default language :) But now, your theme users can make a language file for any language they want :)

    PS: I forgot one localization in comments.php, if you downloaded the zip file, make sure you get my latest version.

    Thanks again for that beautiful theme you created. It was a pleasure to translate it.

  10. Gravatar Ajay Says:
    April 12th, 2006 at 6:37 am

    Got hold of the new file.

    Thanks for doing my work ;)

    Am going to see if I can generate the .mo file and all myself using poEdit.

    Have a few more modifications planned, so hoping those work out. Will try to get the international community to translate the theme into other languages.

  11. Gravatar arifsanchez Says:
    April 14th, 2006 at 10:35 pm

    Swexxy Layout. Clean and simple though. Keep update , i’ll revisited.

  12. Gravatar BB Says:
    April 17th, 2006 at 11:46 am

    Nice theme! You put a lot of thought into it. Thanks for mentioning my
    Spirit     theme. Keep up the great work!

  13. Gravatar Ajay Says:
    April 17th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

    Hi BB,

    I was using Spirit at first on the blog before the move to Connections. Took the best of Spirit and put it into Connections for the first version.

    Ofcourse a lot has changed since then…

  14. Gravatar Roger Says:
    April 18th, 2006 at 4:11 am

    Just one question: ever ever think in 2006, somewhere on the line, to make a 3 columns version of your template?

    Gee! This Ajax preview thing ..I feel like somebody is watching everything I am writing!

    By the way, a contribution to help you to transform your nice template in a 3 columns is on my mind!

    Thanks

  15. Gravatar Ajay Says:
    April 18th, 2006 at 6:19 am

    Yes Roger, sometime soon.

  16. Gravatar Michael Says:
    May 18th, 2006 at 10:56 pm

    The Installing instructions say to “Create the following pages: About, Archives, Links, Contact in wp-admin to ensure you don’t get 404 errors. For Archives and Links please choose the Archive and Links template respectively.”

    I created pages for these, but the links still don;t work? For example, I’m supposed to make an “About” Page in the WordPress GUI, right? Or am I supposed to literally “create a fpage” under the “wp-admin” directory via FTP? If so, what’s the fiull name: about.html? I’m not sure how making those pages makes the headewr links work? I’m using the default links, not Permalinks - is that the issue? I think the “Installing” instructions could use some clarification. Thanks!!

  17. Gravatar Ajay Says:
    May 18th, 2006 at 11:12 pm

    Thanks for the suggestion Michael.
    Instructions have been updated.

  18. Gravatar Jay Says:
    June 9th, 2006 at 6:41 am

    Hi Ajay,

    firstly, love your work! Fantastic job on reloaded!

    One thing I’ve noticed is with your comments, the name and date are to the side of blockquote.gif, with my install the date is partially obscured by blockquote.gif. Any ideas?

    Cheers and keep up the good work!


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