My First Wordpress Theme – SimpleIndy
India Fascinates is now dressed up with my first wordpress theme – SimpleIndy. SimpleIndy is a 3-column theme with curvy corners (for Mozilla based browsers) and offers considerable customization options to the user. I am planning to introduce more customizations to this theme.This is how the theme looks:
Simple Indy is a free theme, AND is easily customizable. The Footers, Featured Posts section and Thumbnails can be easily disabled or enable through the Theme Options Page.However you cannot disable the left or right sidebars. If you are looking for a 2-column right-sidebar variation, you will have to use another theme called Indy Premium – here.
Thumbnails in Home and other archive pages are created using the last image uploaded for a post. Hence, make sure that you upload the appropriate image (i.e. appropriate for showing as thumbnail), last, for every post. But don’t worry, in case you uploaded the wrong image last.Simply delete all the uploaded images for a post and upload them in the right order.
Simple Indy is WordPress 2.7+ compatible with widgetized sidebars and footer.
Features of Simple Indy Wordpress Theme:
- 3-column Theme with Left and Right Sidebars
- Sliding Featured Posts Section
- Multi level sliding menus
- Automatic thumbnails of first uploaded image of Posts, in Home page and other archives
- SEO optimized CSS layout
- Gravatar Ready Theme
- Social Media integration
- Compatible with most Wordpress plugins
- Compatible with Wordpress 2.7+ and earlier versions
- Easily spiderable, structured navigation
- W3C XHTML and CSS Validated theme
- support for threaded comments and seggregation of comments and pingbacks/trackbacks
FAQs:
You can find these in the theme’s ReadMe.txt as well.
Where can I find the Theme Options Page?
You can find the Theme Options Page under Appearance folder on your Wordpress Admin Menu Bar. It will have the title “Simple Indy Options”.
How to mark posts as Featured Posts?
Create a category by title “Featured”. Add every Post to an appropriate category and if you want to display it under Featured Posts Section,add it to “Featured” Category as well. Once it is done, all the latest Featured Posts will be displayed under “Featured” section in the Home Page.
How many posts can be displayed as Featured Posts?
In the Theme Options Page, you can set the number of Posts to be shown as Featured Posts. But decide on an optimal number (taking performance into consideration).
How to display medium sized images in Featured Posts?
Go to Settings –> Media and set Max width for Medium size as 300. Then, in the Theme Options Page (“simple Indy options”), check the option “Display medium sized image for Featured Posts”.
Note that by default, thumbnail images are shown for Featured Posts.
How to Change the Top Header Banner?
You can easily change top header banner by replacing banner.jpg file under Images folder (in the theme) with your own banner. But name your banner as banner.jpg
or
go to the stylesheet (style.css) in the theme folder, search for #head-bottom section and replace banner.jpg under background property with your banner name.
How to adjust the height of the Top Header Banner?
In style.css file within theme, search for “head-bottom” and adjust the height element in pixels.
I do not want a Top Header Banner? How to remove it?
Remove the following section in header.php (Pls. be careful in removing it.Don’t leave a open div tag):
-
<div id="head-bottom">
-
<!–This contains the banner as a bacground image in style.css. If you have your own banner specify it as the bacground in style.css for #head_bottom –>
-
</div>
What should be width of content in left sidebar and right sidebar?
Make sure that the width of content (or widget or image) in left sidebar is not more than 120px. Likewise, make sure that the width of content (or widget or image) in right sidebar is not more than 300px.Otherwise the sidebars may fall and the theme may get distorted.
How to add submenus?
Simply create pages and specify the hierarchy (Parent Page) via Wordpress admin interface. Indy Premium takes care of creating the sub menus. Indy Premium can support even 4 levels of sub menus and higher.
What happens if I disable Footer?
If footer is disabled, then the widegetized footer section will not displayed. However the theme is smart enough to retain your blog’s Copyright section.
Enjoy free Simple Indy Wordpress Theme !!!
dear mrs. rajesh, fyi, i like this theme and also used it in my blog. but i can’t actived the “featured” as in your home page of your website. Could you please tell me how to actived/install it? Thank you very much for your guidance.
It is like any installing any other theme. There is also a Readme.txt included.
Thanks… I am using this theme for one of my new blogging site. After I have finished with it I will let you know my new website address.
A very nice-looking theme.
I just downloaded this theme, but my categories are showing up in both my left and right sidebars. How do I make it show up on the right sidebar only?
Thanks,
May
The theme is widgetized.You can add widgets to your left sidebar.Then, all the default lists shown on the left sidebar, will be replaced by the widgets you choose.The same applies to the right sidebar. To add widgets, go to Appearance–>Widgets on your wordpress admin panel.
Dude, I love your theme!
Hi Subhashini,
Great job. I have tried using both versions simple and premiun and they look great. I have a quick question: I have set the number of post to 5 and featured section is working fine. But can I show some static content on home page?
Thanks,
Viman
I really like the theme. However I want to change the colour of the titlebars. They are black with white fonts now. How can I change them to something like grey with white font?
Great theme. Just cant get the featured content to work.
When I ad more than one post it adds it below it and doesnt scroll through.
Any ideas???
I think Rajesh solved your problem here – http://techblissonline.com/indy-premium-wordpress-theme/
Mrs. Rajesh,
Is there a way to change the thumbnail image in the post (when viewing the front page) to show the full image instead of the 128×128 or 150×150 thumbnail?
Thumnails are usually meant for smaller images as the name suggests.However you can set the thumbnail image dimensions (to whatever you want) in Settings –> Media on your wordpress admin panel
Awesome and amazing theme.
Just one thing…
How do I remove the need for readers to log in to leave a comment? Thanks!
There isn’t any need for the readers to login to leave a comment. Go to Settings — > Discussion of your wordpress admin panel and check if you have accidentally checked “Users must be registered and logged in to comment “. If so, deselect it.
I also have the problem, of not being able to use the Feature box. Your instructions don’t work.
I don’t see you pointing out the site to help you out.Unless i see your site, i cannot know what the problem is. Dave had a problem due to a plugin and Rajesh resolved it.
I need help with my page, I see the images on the news. (Translated)
Can you use a jquery version of the lightbox plugin rather a scriptaculous version? The one here – http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress-plugins/jquery-lightbox-for-native-galleries/
You download and install it, but still can not see the images in the news, I need your help thanks. (Translated).
You have not uploaded images throught the Post Write panel.Rather you are linking to images in external sites.The theme will not create thumbnails or medium sized images for featured posts, if the images are hosted elesewhere.
Another great tutorial! Thank you so much for taking the time and being so clear in your step by step instructions.
Thanks for the wonderful template! I love it!
Just a few Q’s
1) I’ve disabled the thumbnail option, which seems to have worked for the home page, but they still appear in the featured section and if I click on a category or archive page then thumbnails appear, I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t fix it
2)I have a lot of people who read my posts in a reader, and for some reason only the excerpt of posts is showing up in the reader. They have to click through to the actual blog to get the whole post. Do you know of any way I can rectify this so that entire posts show up in readers?
3) I want to widen the post/body space but can’t find it in the css, can you point me to where to go?
Sorry for all the questions!
Thanks in advance!
@Megan, thanks for liking the theme.
1) Yes, the featured section will show the thumbnail if you are not opting for medium sized images.At present there is no option to turn off images in featured posts.Will provide this option in the next version but not many will like to turn it off.
2) The excerpts in reader has nothing to do with the theme. Go to Setting –> Reading in your wordpress admin and choose Full Text against “For each article in a feed, show” option.
3) If you would really like to widen the post/body space then you need to get rid of the left sidebar as otherwise the blog will be too wide.So you could use Indy Premium theme found here – http://free-wp-themes.techblissonline.com/indy-premium-wordpress-theme/
Hey , you have a very good blog, its excellent information in its field. You have done a great job, keep doing it for to help, people like Myself.
Thank you for your theme. I’m not sure if my last comment posted but I’m just wondering if you can guide me as to where I can get rid of the rss buttons at the top in the header. I want to add a widget somewhere else or change what those buttons say to something else instead of “Entries” and “Comments”. Thanks for the info and the Theme.
You can find those in header.php as below:
<span class=”rss”><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘comments_rss2_url’);?>” rel=”nofollow”>Comments</a></span>
<span class=”rss”><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’);?>” rel=”nofollow”>Entries</a></span>
you can rename comments and Entries or remove those entire lines and instead add a widget to your sidebar through the wordpress admin under Appearance –> widgets
Very nice theme. Clean design. Thanks! Will use it on our college union website.
Hello!
Very nice theme and easily customizable.
But I’ve got a problem, I can’t manage to change the pausing time between sliding from a post to another on the Featured slider.
whearas I managed to change the speed with the “speed” value in the easySlider1.5 javascript file, when I tried to do the same with “pause”, I never saw any change, even with outerspace numbers.
So can you help me ?
Thanks by advance,
Bernard.
There is a Pause attribute as well in the easyslider javascript and it should be used to control the pause. Try increasing or decreasing the value for this attribute in header.php file of this theme.
Yeah !
It works !
Thank you very much !
How can I change the “categories” with the “pages” exchange?
So the categories under the “Top Header Banner” appear.
How can I exchange?
Thank you very much
Is there any way to change it so that it uses the “Read More” button instead of requiring the use of excerpts? I’ve looked and looked but can’t find anything.
Zac, I too was trying to find the answer for this. After tinkering around with the code, I’ve found out how to get this to work.
1) Edit the index.php (Main Index Template). There are 2 lines which the php calls to display “the_excerpt” Change this to “the_content”.
2) Under Simple Indy Options, disable thumbnail display.
Check out my blog to see this in action.
Thank you for your theme!
Is there a way to chance the title “Featured” to “Nyheder” and still have all the same functions?
Yes you can.go edit the header.php
Hello,
How can I add separate meta filds as : meta keywords,meta title and so on?
For example, I want that every single posts to have separate meta?
Thank you in advance!
Use a wordpress plugin – http://techblissonline.com/platinumseo-pack/ can do it.
Excellent theme bro
First off I must say that I love the theme!
I am a novice and this site is my first. How do I add comments to the pages and not just the posts?
One more question. Is the featured box restricted to just posts? I want to add a poll to my blog and would like for it to be in the featured content as well.
Yes it is available only for posts.
Hi Suhas,
I was wondering if you could help me with a problem related to the Simple Indy theme?
I have been having difficulties with the search function, and I just figured out the problem, though not the solution.
When using SimpleIndy, if you use the search function on the website domain level (e.g. http://indiafascinates.com/?s=example), it works just fine.
However, if you use the search function on any other page or subdirectory, it will either do nothing or give a 404 error (e.g. http://indiafascinates.com/about/?s=example).
I know that the search form and code is located in the header. Is there any way of forcing the search-get function to use the website domain level, no matter the user is on the site?
I hope this makes sense to you, I’d really appreciate any help you could offer. Please email me any suggestions you may have.
Thanks, Eric
BTW - I forgot to mention that I love the theme as well. Thanks for creating it!
Eric
Suhas – I FIXED IT!
Here is what I did, if you look at SimpleIndy’s header.php, go down to the search form:
<form id="searchformtop" method="get" action=”">
The area in bold is the problem, the search form is using whatever page it is on to conduct the search… that does work as I pointed out in my earlier comment.
The Fix:
<form id="searchformtop" method="get" action=”http://your-domain-name.com/”>
That’s it! It works just fine now. I would suggest that you make that change to your theme and update it on wordpress.org. Glad I could be of service
Take care,
Eric
Thanks Eric….will do that…
Great theme. I saw it and just fell in love with it but I have a question regarding images. On my homepage (http://www.AMomBlog.com ), I have it set to show 5 posts which it does no problem but I put an image in just about every post and only some of them show up.Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong that’s preventing them from showing on each post? Posts where it is just an image doesn’t even show the post at all? Any help you can share is appreciated. TIA
I love the SimpleIndy theme. Thank you for sharing it. It’s just what I’ve been looking for. I have a question though. All of my posts on the main page are showing in a bold font.
Is there any way I can change this. I’m not sure what I did wrong :/
hey, love your theme! using it now. except i do have a problem with tags. for some reason when i google my posts (which are all very similar), they are searchable by the title of the post, and then others it just picks a random tag for the post. e.g. if you google simply masses + math the band… i can only find my post by simply masses + justine mainville… instead of “math the band”… why is that? please help. i really want to keep simply indy as my theme.
@simpleton the theme has nothing to do with how your posts are discovered on search engines…
I have to chime in and say I love this theme as well. But I can not get the featured posts to work. I have created a category called “Featured” I have placed several posts in that category, but it still comes up empty on the homepage.
Thanks Again.
You should have the category name as “Featured” (without the double quotes). You seem to be having it as “featured-italian-cooking-articles”
That worked — Thank you for your quick reply..
I have one last question. I have been trying to change the Favicon. I uploaded my own favicon to overwrite the existing. And the original remained on the site. Finally I deleted the favicon file completely and still your original remains – Can you help me please?
Thank You.
favicon.ico is within the theme’s images folder.Delete it and replace it with your favicon.ico. You should be naming the favicon as “favicon”
Hi,
I very like your theme, you did a great job.
I just have a little problem : I ‘d like to eliminate from my clearfloat all the posts which are in Featured (you see 2 times the same post on my index). How can I fix it ?
(I hope I’ve been understood, my english is so poor…)