Arras.Theme Update: Sidebar Widgets
Another important change that I have made for the upcoming version of Arras.Theme is the sidebar widgets. Here’s a screenshot to begin:
As you can see, the tabbed sidebar, banners, latest previews and latest reviews have been widgetized. That means, you can move and arrange them like you would on a sidebar widgets, without editing the code manually. Most of the widgets are completed, except the banners, where I am figuring out a new way to do ad management, which I believe is one of the first thing the user wants to work with once they downloaded the theme.
Also, the options page is being redesigned, with tabs to organise and group the theme options. Personally, what makes WordPress a great platform to use is its simplicity of the admin interface. I’m not really a fan throwing 30-40 options in one page, especially those with fields that require you to enter the number of pixels of a certain element. Here’s the progress of the admin interface:
And here’s same look of the whole index page (almost):
Arras.Theme Update: Single Post
I know that it’s been a really long time since Arras.Theme has an update. I had to put aside the theme development due to school work and now that it’s done I’ve started development on it again.
For the upcoming version, you will see a lot of changes in terms of both the backend code, as well as the visual frontend of the theme. The CSS and theme library files are more organised now (no more throwing everything into one file).
Another important aspect I hope to achieve is to ensure that theme is easily customizable, and at the same time users are able to apply the theme updates easily without breaking their blog. One of the solutions would probably be using the parent-child theme structure as post here. Using action hooks might be the way to go, but this will definitely give a problem to those who do not know PHP.
Of course, the other issue that needs to be addressed is the compatibility with WordPress 2.7. So far, I have completed the new comments template, with has comments threading and paging introduced in the new version. The pingbacks and comments are separated, and the overall design has changed.
Oh bother, I’m not really a fan of writing a lot of stuff, so I will just let the pictures do the talking (don’t mind the layout, it’s still being experimented!):
Finished school work, taking a break at the moment!
Phew, just finished my final year project. I guessed I’m really shagged out right now. Let me take a break from developing stuff for a week or two, before clearing all the stuff ahead of me.
Cheers!
Looking Back, Looking Forward
Year 2008 is coming to an end and a new year is coming. To me, I feel that 2008 was the best year in web development, where I have accomplished many things throughout.
The first half of the year was pretty quiet to me, but the other half was the crazy part. I participated in three competitions, including WorldSkills Singapore 2008 and code::XtremeApps:: . Though I didn’t get anything for code::XtremeApps:: , the highlight of the year was me winning the silver medal for WorldSkills Singapore 2008. It feels rewarding when you have spent years working on web development.
During the course of the year I have also learnt new stuff like Adobe Flex/AIR, Facebook application development, ActionScript 3.0, jQuery and further working into the WordPress API.
So what’s next for the year 2009? I’m currently working on two projects right now, which will be brought forward to the year ahead.
The first is my final year project for my diploma, which is the usage of Flash and ActionScript 3.0 to create an mini social multiplayer browser game.
Another project would be a WordPress theme framework, where I will be working with a friend of mine on its development. We have thought of the name and it is called Buffet. The project page is now available at Google Code and is currently at the brainstorming page. Feel free to request what you want to see in the theme framework, we would appericate it!
Arras.Theme – Gaming Edition will be integrated into Buffet with the release of 1.2 and the same for SteamPress for its 1.0 release, which means that both releases will be delayed until the completion of the theme framework. We hope that we can finish it in mid-February.
Anyway, 2009 will be the year of my graduation but also the year where I will be enlisted in National Service 
. I certainly hope that will not disrupt in the course of my web development, but I doubt that will happen.
Never mind about that, let’s hope that the year ahead will be a good one for myself and for the world.
Happy New Year everyone!
WordPress: Post Classes for Backward Compatibility
If you haven’t checked on the page on migrating plugins and themes to WordPress 2.7, WordPress 2.7 includes a new function for post classes, which allows you to take advantage of the sticky post feature, called post_class().
Now if you were to follow what is shown on the page, which is:
<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>>
You might end up getting something like this if you were to install your theme on WordPress 2.6 and below:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function post_class() in .../index.php on line x
That’s not good.
One way to workaround this is to create a custom function in your functions.php of your theme:
function mytheme_post_class() {
// if WordPress 2.7+, run built-in post_class()
if ( function_exists(’post_class’) ) return post_class();
// else manually assign some class to the post element
else echo ‘class=”post”‘;
}
And replace the previous code with:
<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php mytheme_post_class(); ?>>
Hope this helps!