WordPress Theme
Note: I’ve setup a new blog just for my theme, Basic Simplicity. I’ll also be blogging about blogging over there.
Michael Janzen
my two cents
Follow Me
My Active Projects
from Tiny House Design
- Lightweight Tiny House Concept
- Who’s Next Entry – Video Tour
- Tiny Yellow House – Episode 1
- Vote Now! – Free Green Who’s Next Competition
- Simple Solar Homesteading
- Who’s Next Entry – Version 3 (Final)
- The Hickshaw by Derek Diedricksen
- Tiny House Cluster Under Glass
- Who’s Next Entry – Version 2
- Who’s Next Entry – Version 1
from Nine Tiny Feet
- Responding to a comment from a reader
- Updated Design – Mini Cabin
- A Flying Wedge – Extreme 9 Square Foot House
- Another Way To Do 9 Square Feet
- Ah-HA! Don’t Frame It – Build Panels
- Nine TIny Feet Plans
- Google SketchUp 3D Drawings
- Nine Tiny Feet Section Drawings
- Nine Tiny Feet Plan Revision
- Found Two Free Trailers
from My Bookmark Blog
- Food Storage Preparation
- Electric All-Terrain Vehicles
- Grow Coffee Plants at Home
- Foraging Guide
- Chicken Tractor Instructable
- Clickstand Alcohol Camp Stove
- Solar Cooker Plans
- Granberg Chainsaw Lumber Mill
- SurvivaBall – Sarcastic Joke or Scarey Prediction… you decide
- Sustainable Swift Industries – more than Handmade Bike Bags
Michael,
This is a great theme, and I’ve already used it at: http://www.thistleholidays.com/
I’m about to use it for our own web services site. I really like the idea of the widgets at the bottom and side, and especially the idea of home page only widgets. I want to use a static page as the home page, but I found that the home page only widgets did not appear.
I looked at your code in index.php and I changed: is_home()
to
is_front_page
so that chunk now looks like:
does that make sense?
Cheers,
Noel
Of course the comment filter stopped the php, but I’m sure you know what I mean. Also,that should read:
is_front_page()
and it works fine!
Great thinking Noel. I’ll make that switch in the next version.
Hi Michael,
I switched to your theme yesterday and like it a lot (and also your views on the world).
I can’t get my text to wrap around the photos. I’ve tried changing the size of the “medium” and “large” photos in media. I tried changing the align=”alignright” and I tried removing the photo and adding it again but the photo automatically goes left above or below text.
[caption id="attachment_12" align="alignright" width="157" caption="Always seeing your needs"][/caption]
Any thoughts? Thanks!
Thanks Sherry.
When you insert the image using the wordpress interface are you choosing align: left?
Hi Michael,
No, I’m choosing align right. I just tried it again but it aligns left and the type won’t wrap.
I’ll try again when I return tonight.
Thanks again,
Sherry
I did some investigation and right-align seems to work too. I actually left the working example on my homepage (the elephant post) for you to see.
Be sure to put your cursor at the top of paragraph you want to insert a right (or left) aligned image. It may seem logical to put it elsewhere but the image needs to be above the content in the html for it to float to the right or left of that same content.
I hope that helps.
-Michael
Thanks for investigating, Michael. There must be something overriding it on my end. My source code from the WP interface looks slightly different from your source code. I’ll try resizing the photos and see if that helps.
Sherry
Hi Michael,
As I am currently working on an online project I looked through a ton of themes. And as you explained what the reason was to come up with a complete own one, I was already a bit frustrated before coming across yours! Thank you so much for sharing your work and making it available to the rest of us – I very much appreciate it!
If I had one wish for a new version it was to have dedicated settings to customize the header (upload of images or referring to own media, alignment of smaller images, alt-tags, background colour etc.).
Anyhow your theme is by far the most easy to customize that I came across – without having the need of deeper HTML/CSS/or else knowledge.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks Horst… I’ll ad those ideas to the master list for improvements. THanks!
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your easy to use theme. I have a question though… I would like to add a background image to the body and I just can’t make it happen. I’ve adjusted your css, uploaded the image as a gif and jpg (to try both) to the theme images file, put in the right code (I think?):
body {
font-family: Arial, Verdana, sens-serif;
font-size: 100%;
line-height: 1.125em;
background-image: url(‘images/damask.jpg’);
background-repeat: repeat;
}
Anyway, I thought I would check to find out if there is something overriding this somewhere else as no matter what I do the background remains white.
Thanks again, I love the simplicity of the site.
Hi Hillary,
Have you tried adding that CSS to the Custom CSS field? Feel free to send me a URL to your website and I’ll take a look but I suspect it’s the background settings on the “Edit Basic Simplicity” page overwriting your CSS (if it’s put in the style.css file directly. The Custom CSS field places CSS code below the system generated code from the admin form and is the last CSS code applied to the page.
If that doesn’t work definitely send me a link and I’ll take a peek.
Thanks!
Michael
We would like to either move the comments link to the end of the posts and/or make it bolder or possibly a different font.
Reason is we feel it is too obscure in the header area and may be not intuitive for users to look there for a comments link.
Otherwise enjoying using Basic Simplicity
Hi Mark,
Just move this line of code in the index.php file to the spot you want, add a class and then style it in the Custom CSS field.
line of code:
class added:
Custom CSS:
.commentslink {font-weight: bold; font-size: 120%;}
Michael,
Thanks for the quick and helpful reply.
I cannot see how do we add an RSS.
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark,
I suggest using a text widget in the top right of the main sidebar. You can see an example of this at http://www.tinyhousedesign.com
Michael,
thanks for the lovely template and for your help using it. For a peek: http://www.frauenrechte-rheinmain.de
Kind regards from Frankfurt,
Mariam
Hey Michael,
Great Theme, but I have been having a hard time putting in the Google Adsense Code. Where is the best place to put this.
Thanks.
Hi Vince,
Use the ‘text widget’ and paste your adsense code into it. The main reason I made so many widget regions was to serve up ads and other content effectively. The top of the sidebar is the best spot, at least on my blogs. Look at http://www.tinyhousedesign.com/ for the most optiimized layout.
The double column ad unit (two vertical ads, 160×600 and 120×600) lower in the sidebar works great! It’s simply a hand coded table with two cells pasted into a text widget.
Another trick (so to speak) is to put a image only 300×250 above a text only 300×250. Both ad units get similar traffic as long as you don’t have two text only and two image only together. It seems when you mix it up the ads are more likely to avoid ‘ad blindness’ improving their effectiveness.
Good Luck!
Hey Michael,
I tried pasting the code in the ‘text widget’ but nothing shows up. It just has a big empty space. Any suggestions?
Vince
The only thing that comes to mind is that adsense is not delivering ads or a caching plugin is turned on. To see if the javascript adsense code is getting saved and displayed view page source and scroll down to the sidebar and have a look.
Hey Michael,
I was finally able to drop in the code.
But, I have one more question: Is there anyway to move the “add comment” from just below the title of the post, to the end of the post.
Thanks
Hi Vince,
Yes it’s not hard to do. Just go to Appearance > Editor and then select the index.php file on the right.
Look for this line of code:
<div><?php comments_popup_link(‘Add a Comment’, ‘1 Comment’, ‘% Comments’, ‘commentslink’); ?></div>
Then move it down to just before where it says:
</div><!–end the_content–>
Hi Michael –
This is such a great theme — I just love it.
However, I am having the toughest time getting text to wrap around my images. I’ve tried everything I can think of — but nothing works.
I wonder if you were ever able to help Sherry with her issue and if so what was the fix?
Thanks,
Judi
oops — if you’re looking at my blog, the problem is on the About Us page.
Thanks,
Hi Judi,
When you insert the image selecting aligh right/left should allow the text to wrap.
-Michael
Love the theme but would like to increase the font size of the Title in the header. What do I need to edit?
Let me rephrase that… I’ve found #header in the css which increases the size of the full title but I would like to get something like
Title part Atitle part b
in other words BIG FONT…little font
thoughts?
Hi DLS,
If you add some CSS to the ‘Custom CSS’ field on the ‘Edit Basic Simplicity’ page you can change the font size in the header. For example:
#header h1 { font-size: 20px; }
#header .description { font-size: 14px; font-weight:bold;}
To change the color of the text you need to do something slightly different because the blog title is linked:
#header h1 a { font-size: 20px; color:#000000; }
Does that make sense?
I like you theme!
Trying to get it set up with my friend’s business logo for the header…It needs to be wider for it all to fit, seems like that should be an easy fix, right? Any hints? I don’t know that much about CSS.
Andrew
Well, I managed to get that fixed to some degree, but is there a way to center the img now. I tried putting “center” instead of “left no-repeat” at the header code are but it didn’t seem to work. Thanks for any help!
Try this in the ‘Custom CSS’ field on the ‘Edit Basic Simplicity’ page.
#header { background: #ffffff url(‘http://angelicasgarden.net/wp-content/themes/basic-simplicity/images/securedownload3.jpg’) center no-repeat; }
Hi Michael:
I love your theme. It’s still a work in progress but I do love it. Question–how can I eliminate the date in each post. I might also want to eliminate the “Posted by.”
Also, I adjusted the font. I like the result in my 1st 2 posts but the font went really small in my most recent post (the poll). I didn’t change anything between posts so I don’t know why that happened. I tried to adjust but it just wasn’t working.Suggestions Thanks.
Hi Cathy,
It looks like you added a style in the wordpress text editor which negated the style in the stylesheet.
To remove things like the posted by and date you’ll need to edit the template itself. Go to appearance > editor and select index.php on the right. Scroll down to the line:
Then remove the parts you don’t want.
The date: < ?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?>
The Author: by < ?php the_author() ?>
If you want to remove both on that line you might also want to remove the word “Posted”
I am very new to blogging and have no real technical skill. Can you please explain where I would go to to change the header picture. I am so lost! I am only familiar with the upload header themes(easy) Thanks
Shelisa
Using FTP software upload your photo to wp-content/themes/basic-simplicity/images/
Then enter the name of the file on the Appearance > Edit Basic Simplicity page.
Thanks, Michael. I’ll play around with it but I didn’t make a change between the 2nd & the 3rd post so that’s why I don’t get why it suddenly changed font size.
I did change the HTML for the last post to make the font size bigger on the last post only after it was very small font. I may revert back to your original as I didn’t make a ton of changes. Fingers crossed it works.
Hi Michael: Thanks so much for this theme – it is just what I was looking for! I am an intermediate level geek in site design and have had some challenges getting it to look like I want but they’ve each been a valuable lesson.
The one problem that remains is that I can’t find the files for the widget boxes to change the way the content appears in them. If you look at my site, the categories, archives and blogroll are all parked to the left of the sidebar column- can I move them to center somehow?
I love the simplicity of your website and the nice utility you included to customize certain elements. My wife, however, wants her logo to be taller. Is this an option in your theme or is completely fixed. I understand that it would probably result in some vertical scrolling as a result, but she’s the boss. Thanks, man.
Thanks Michael, but it didn’t work. Now there is no image. That’s weird. Any other advice? Thanks in advance.
Hi Jane,
#sidebar is wrapped around the entire sidebar so any styles applied to it would change the entire sidebar. for example:
#sidebar {text-align:center;}
.sidebar-widget is wrapped around each widget. styling this would style each widget and have essentially the same effect. for example:
.sidebar-widget {text-align:center;}
If you want the text aligned left but pushed to the left a little more you could try something like:
.sidebar-widget { width:300px; margin-right:20px;}
Did that help of confuse things more?
Hi Brad,
You could add a style in the ‘Custom CSS’ field like:
#header {height: 140px;}
That would be a bug
I need to fix that.
I’ll send you the updated file in a little bit (and upload it to wordpress)
Hey, that worked. Awesome.
My favorite thing about the Wordpress site is that you built a utility that allows customization. That’s very convenient for people who’d rather blog than code.
Thanks Brad… yeah that was me too! I got tired of editing other people’s themes and decided to go simple and build the ability to quickly customize for each of my blogs. Glad you like it!
I been using your theme for awhile. Now I am combining my website and blog together using Wordpress and want to know how to eliminate the posted date and by author on pages only with your theme? I still want those to show on posts
Hi Bruce,
I’ll work on the sample code for that but it will require an edit to the index.php page found at Appearance > Editor and then pick index.php
Also… I just posted a new version of Basic Simplicity. The only two things existing users will need to know is that the header image path is handled differently and if you’ve edited files like the index.php page you’ll need to backup your old copy first so you can go back and make those edits again.
-Michael
http://www.basicsimplicity.com/
I downloaded your theme earlier this week and love it! It was exactly what I was looking for. And I see you’ve been very patient and helpful with people’s questions.
I do have one that may not necessarily be an issue with the theme. Although I’ve changed various colors through your customization utility as well as on the css style sheet, those changes still don’t show up when I reload my pages. I’ve tried this at home and at work, and still the old changes I made yesterday show up although I’ve changed things today.
Also, I get a different look if I type in the ‘www.’ prefix to the url as opposed to leaving this out. Do you know why this might be?
And thanks again for your great work!
-C
Hi Carlos,
Two things come to mind first. The first is that any edits to style.css (the stylesheet) may get overridden by the data in the form. Basically the form adds styles, a second stylesheet if you will. View source and you’ll see it in the page between the style tags.
The other thing is a question… are you running WP Super Cache or similar? When style related edits don’t show up it’s usually because you’re looking at a cached (old) page, either in the browser or provided by the server or host. Could this be the case? Different browsers handle caching differently too, for example IE likes to hold onto it’s cached pages harder than say firefox.
I uploaded a fresh version of the theme too, see http://www.basicsimplicity.com for details on upgrading. It’s still free, just some new features.
Wow, quick reply! Originally, I thought it was a cache issue (and still think it is somehow). However, I’ve gone and cleared out my web history and cache on Firebox, Safari, and Explorer and the same problem exists. Plus, I had my girlfriend check out the site from her computer for the first time and she got the same old site colors even though she wouldn’t have had a cached site.
I don’t know about WP Super Cache but I will update the newest version of the theme. I’ll probably do more research on the wordpress forums.
Thanks Michael!
-C