Radical Congruency 2005 Theme [Justin]
This site’s theme is available as a WordPress (1.5+) template for use on your WordPress-powered website (if you need hosting, check out WebbleYou).
Download the RC2005 Theme (last updated Dec 4, 2005)
Fixes and tweaks in this release:
- Made center column’s width more consistent between Firefox and Internet Explorer; eliminated 20px gap on right side in Firefox
- Made post-title background image wider, to accomodate change in center column width
- Added min-height to blockquotes, so the
image doesn’t get cut off for one-line quotes. Also fixed some padding and margin issues with blockquotes - Clicking on banner now takes you to current site’s home page (used to be hardcoded to RadicalCongruency.com)
- Blog description in page title now uses bloginfo tag, rather than being hardcoded
- Added JavaScript to search box, which clears contents so you can type without erasing “Search this site” manually. Also tweaked size of font and box.
- Made a few changes to footer (though you’ll still need to edit it to include your own copyright/Creative Commons notice and such)
- Moved sidebars into sidebar.php, for compliance with plugin API (sidebars were previously part of the footer)
- Added KICKIN’ JavaScript to convert post/comment timestamp to user’s local timezone (thanks, Aaron!)
This is of course the theme used on this site, which you are free to use on your sites. First, you need WordPress, version 1.5 or higher. Second, download this zip file and copy the contents to your /wp-content/themes folder, so you have directories wp-content/themes/rc2005 with the template files and wp-content/themes/rc2005/images for the images.
Features of the Radical Congruency 2005 theme:
- Fills a 1024×768 screen perfectly, but doesn’t get unreasonably wide at higher resolutions (centered-magazine style)
- Center column is first in HTML, which improves search engine spidering and usability in alternative browsers and text readers
- Has alternating background images for comments
- Pre-formatted for CG-Amazon and Quicktags plugins
- Built-in Technorati links on each post
- Font size scales properly according to browser’s settings for greater accessibility
- It’s set up for use with great plugins, like Ultimate Tag Warrior - I even included the Ajax add-tag box
- All of the plugin calls are conditionalized, so if you deactivate one, it won’t break the site
- You can click on the banner to go to the home page (amazing how many themes leave that out)
- It’s the only theme in the world that displays post and comment time in the user’s timezone (thanks to Aaron’s fancy JavaScript)
- I support it, and even pre-install it if I host your WordPress-powered site
Credit:
This layout requires an unbelievable number of hacks to work on all (modern) browsers; I got the layout from Position Is Everything’s Piefecta layout.
The header image that is included with the downloadable theme is from The Stock Exchange (here to be exact), which offers free stock photos (w00t!). The image I use on this site (not included with the download) is from iStockPhoto, and I’d ask that you not use it so this site retains some stylistic uniqueness.
The timestamp JavaScript is by Aaron, who also blogs here but is a little too 1337 to waste time on such matters as designing WordPress themes :).
If you have questions about the theme, please leave them in the comments below. I will update this page as the discussion progresses so you don’t have to read all the comments to get all the info and help you may need. Please let me know if you run into any problems - I am using an older version of the CG-Amazon plugin, for example, so it may take some tweaking.
I love the theme. I have already rolled it out on my site and donw some tweaking, although no one will be fooled that mine is an original.
A few questions you may want to look at when you get a chance…in Firefox 1.0 on Mac, the line with the comments (RSS|Inlinks|Category) seems to be cut off a few pizels below the end of the text. As a result, the cool technorati link bubbles are truncated a little. Not a biggie, just cosmetic, but I thought I’d bring it up.
Any thoughts?
I added this to .technorati in the stylesheet:
padding-bottom: 3px;
and that seems to work. Note that I haven’t updated the theme, so you’ll need to make this change manually, even if you download it now.
[...] thanks to Justin Baeder of Radical Congreguency for the template we are working from. | RSS | Inlinks |us [...]
[...] I?ve changed the style of the blog, taking a cue from Signposts and Radical Congruency. [...]
I’m using IE 5.5 at work (ugh), and the layout is a little messed up. I don’t know that I’ll fix it, so be aware that this theme doesn’t look good on older computers.
If you know how to fix this problem, let me know and I’ll do it.
[...] // Theme [...]
[...] // Theme [...]
[...] The Radical Congruency 2005 theme was re-released today. Some new features in this release: [...]
[...] My struggle now is really the shell? what theme or what theme framework to use. I?m currently using the rc2005 theme. I like it for its look and feel and because the code was well done, clean, and easy to read. I think that is a key for me. No matter what I do, I?ll probably see something that I want to tweak slightly so being able to quickly understand what is going on in the code is a major plus. [...]
[...] made by Justin Baeder over at Radical Congruency. Credit where credits due. Mad props. | RSS | Inlinks| [...]
Hello. I’ve used your theme in my efforts to get my wifes blog moved over from blogger to a wordpress format. It’s a great theme and seems to work well. However, one problem that I’m having is that when I center a picture in a post, the pictures seems to drop down into the post below it. I’ve been trying to figure this out, and figured it was a wordpress 2.0 problem, but in the other two wordpress 2.0 blogs that I work with I ran some tests and this did not happen to me. Do you have any suggestions as to what the problem might be? Thanks so much for the theme and the help if you are able.
Are you guys working with Stan Granberg and Kairos Church Planting? I heard about your plant there from C.J. Wilder, and wanted to hear a little more about it. Do you know Jason Campbell in Salem OR? Does the church you are planting have a website?
Grace and Peace
Brad
[...] rc2005 NEW [...]
[...] Radical Congruency 2005 [...]
[...] The issue to me is that I really like 3-column layouts, but I like the content to be left side, and two navigation bars on the right side. This is because I read some web content on my Palm TX, and I’m tired of opening up a page, only to have to scroll down three times to get past the navigation links. With the RC2005 theme, however, even though the navigation bar is on the left, that’s not the way it shows of you don’t use the native style. (Go ahead, try it. On Firefox: View … Page Style … No Style. That’s the way the visually-impaired probably get around). For this, I think that the original developer of the RC2005 theme, Justin Baeder is a real master. [...]
“Built-in Technorati links on each post”
These lead me back here. Do you know where I should tweak the code so they keep people on my own site?
(I posted a comment somewhere else saying it was the categories that do this, but I was wrong. It’s just the tags on the post. Category lists work just fine)
Great blog! Keep it up.
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Sweet themes, and plugins man - I’m using them!
orangeTree blog
My Theology Blog
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