Customize theme installation

• 

  Posted by Shawn M. (he/him/his) on October 26, 2010 at 9:46 am

  Hello everyone:

  I need to get under the hood of a WP theme I activated for a group blog. Is it possible to do this? I don’t see the area where you can normally access php/header/footer files in the dashboard.

• Matthew K. Gold (he/him)

  Member

  October 26, 2010 at 10:13 am

  Hi Shawn,

  Unless you’re using a theme like Atahualpa (http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/atahualpa) that enables changes (in CSS, at least) from the dashboard, this is not something we normally allow members to do.

  This is a security measure — if we allowed members to have direct access to theme php files, we’d compromise the security of the site.

  However, what you can do is create a child theme (http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes) of a parent theme. As long as the Development team approves it, we can then upload the child theme to the site so that you can use it.

  Let me know what you think and feel free to contact me by email to discuss this in further detail.

  Best,

  Matt
  Shawn M. (he/him/his)

  Participant

  October 26, 2010 at 5:32 pm

  Thanks Matt! I’ll start with the path of least resistance and experiment with Atahualpa. I like their special customization menu. Looks robust.
  Shawn M. (he/him/his)

  Participant

  December 13, 2010 at 11:27 am

  Hi All:

  I’ve been using Atahualpa 3.3.3 as my theme (formerly 3.3.2) as per Matt’s suggestion. Everything has been great until this morning, when I noticed that my custom header graphic is no longer available, as well as my group’s logo. In the Dashboard, the Atahualpa customization menu is completely gone (the one touting over 200 customization options). Do you know what could have caused this?
  Matthew K. Gold (he/him)

  Member

  December 13, 2010 at 11:39 am

  Apologies, Shawn. It sounds like this is related to our recent upgrade. We’ll work on the issue and update this thread soon.
  Matthew K. Gold (he/him)

  Member

  December 13, 2010 at 12:11 pm

  Hi Shawn and others using Atahualpa: please follow this ticket on our ticketing website for progress on this issue: http://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/show/461
  Shawn M. (he/him/his)

  Participant

  December 17, 2010 at 2:24 pm

  Thanks for having that addressed and fixed so quickly. The theme option menu has been restored, but sadly it’s no longer handling image uploads the way it used to…in order to use a custom header and logo, I now need to access the theme directory: /atahualpa/images/ and upload my images to that directory (where previously I could upload it in the Media section of Dashboard and it would make the connection). Do you know what I should do?
  Shawn M. (he/him/his)

  Participant

  December 17, 2010 at 2:26 pm

  The same applies to header images: .

  “All header images are located in /wp-content/themes/atahualpa/images/header/. All images in that directory will be rotated. If you don’t want rotating header images, leave only one image in that directory.”
  Aaron Kendall

  Participant

  December 17, 2010 at 5:20 pm

  Shawn, I’m having the same problems with Atahualpa, thanks for posting here.

  Question: how does one access the directory you mentioned above /wp-content/themes/atahualpa/images/header/?
  Scott Voth (he/him)

  Member

  December 19, 2010 at 11:38 am

  Hi – I’m using Atahualpa (but don’t use the rotating slideshow).
  For the custom header area I use (under “Logo Area: Styling”):

  background-image: url(http://codex.commons.gc.cuny.edu/files/2010/08/codexBackground3.png)

  And for the logo I just use the full url (under “Show Logo Image”):
  http://codex.commons.gc.cuny.edu/files/2010/08/cunyLogo.jpg

  Do you use the rotator? I will look to see how to configure that.
  Aaron Kendall

  Participant

  December 20, 2010 at 6:57 pm

  I’m not using the slideshow either, but my header still scrolls through various scales and zooms of my one header image… Anyone know what causes that?
  Scott Voth (he/him)

  Member

  December 20, 2010 at 8:20 pm

  Hi Aaron – You have a really cool blog! And I can see that there are problems with the header. I know that Atahualpa documentation says that the %image can be static, and I think that’s what you’re doing here – but I can’t really tell. Maybe there’s a problem that causes it to scale like that – I need to do some more testing. But one suggestion (i.e. – a quick fix) would be to set the “Header: Image Height” to 0 and use the “%logo” area instead.
  “%logo” includes both the logo itself (which you can leave blank) and the logo background image which you can specify under “Logo Area: Styling.”

  This is the way I do it in my blog – See Attached screenshot.

  Just wanted to mention that we now have a really easy to use Google maps plug-in – I would really find it interesting to see the areas you work in!
  Scott Voth (he/him)

  Member

  December 20, 2010 at 8:27 pm

  Another screenshot

  Attachments:

  You must be logged in to view attached files.
  Aaron Kendall

  Participant

  December 21, 2010 at 12:38 pm

  Thanks Scott! I’ll give it a try.
  Rowena Li

  Member

  December 21, 2010 at 1:55 pm

  I made a blog with this theme (gslis751.commons.gc.cuny.edu), but my blog title and tagline show up a few seconds and disappear behind the image. I have

  HEADER AREA> style and edit HEADER AREA >configure Header Area as %bar1 %image %bar2 %pages

  Logo area – blank
  Show logo image -blank
  Show blog title – no
  blog Tagline – no
  Search Box – yes

  HEADER AREA > Header image >
  Header image with Javascript – 3
  Face in/out – 4
  preload header image -yes
  Header image clickable – no
  Header image hight – 150
  Header image alignment – top left
  Opacity Left – blank
  Opacity right – blank
  Overlay blog title over header images – yes
  Overlay blog tagline over header images – yes
  Overlay blog title style:

  margin-top: 40px;
  margin-left: 20px;

  padding: 7px;
  background: #ffffff;

  filter: alpha(opacity=60);
  -moz-opacity:.60;
  opacity:.60;
  -moz-border-radius: 7px;
  -khtml-border-radius: 7px;
  -webkit-border-radius: 7px;
  border-radius: 7px;

  I cannot figure out what the problem is. And I would like to delete the two black bars behind the screen. How do I do that?

  Thanks.
  Aaron Kendall

  Participant

  December 21, 2010 at 2:13 pm

  I got the header image to show up and stay put, thanks for all your help Scott. Just working on getting it formatted to fit the page a bit better, and will also use the Google map plug-in, great idea!