Give Theme Feedback

Posted January 19th, 2007 by Mike Cherim

Have some feedback? Want to remark on how cool the theme is? Got something on your mind? Speak up here. If it’s support you’re after, please try this support post, check out the FAQs, or contact me.

Okay, it’s your turn.

Filed under General Info —

55 Responses to: “Give Theme Feedback”

David Zemens responds:
Posted: January 22nd, 2007 at 4:49 pm →

What a terrific upgrade, Mike. Looks and works great. Thanks!
Rick Beckman responds:
Posted: January 24th, 2007 at 3:48 pm →

Looks great, and I look forward to upgrading my wife’s blog which is using an older version of Beast, but why so much added stuff? I decided against using another theme of yours because it was too much work stripping it of all the extraneous bits in the sidebar and elsewhere. I can understand why you have added it, but it seems like it just bloats an otherwise fantastic theme.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 24th, 2007 at 4:09 pm →

I’m sorry, what kinds of added stuff, Rick? There nothing there that isn’t part of WP (links, pages, blogroll, page guide, author info…. all of it is part of WordPress and the author info is optional). Anything else that’s there is simply to allow people to add stuff to the side bar; I provided spaces is all — none of it has to be used and you shouldn’t have to strip out anything. If you feel you have to strip stuff out you’re not using WordPress or the theme as you should. I mean there’s nothing there that you have to have, but those adding stuff to their sidebar will be grateful for the clear add-in spaces.

The config items — the one file I added per se — are rather simplistic in case you want to add the plugins I included, but all of it is purely optional. You don’t have to use any of it. All that’s left is pure WordPress. If anything, this theme is a lot simpler than version 1 because I took a bunch of stuff out. The templates I added are all optional. You don’t have to have a contact form, or site map, for that matter. Just don’t use those templates when making a page.

It’s up to you, but seriously there is no need to strip anything out.

EDIT: Bummer, I checked out your wife’s blog. I see one of the things you stripped out of that was the courtesy link-back to me. I do my themes for free and I provide really decent support. You stripping that out stings — it’s the only thing I ask for and you took it away from me.
Björn Lindström responds:
Posted: January 24th, 2007 at 5:31 pm →

It would be nice if your theme would support translation using gettext, like for instance Sandbox.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 24th, 2007 at 5:43 pm →

Thanks. I’ll have to look into that. Some of it should be able to be done using default WP .pot files but I know some parts of the theme would require hard edits. Making it translation-ready is a ton of work. If you do make a translated version I’ll gladly release it in your name. I’ve done that with the last version (French, German, and Hebrew). That works well for me, one person (not me) does the labor and many benefit.
Rick Beckman responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 3:46 pm →

Mike, you’re absolutely right; I apologize and have added the credit link to the site’s footer. It should never have been removed in the first place.
Rick Beckman responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 4:24 pm →

Also, regarding version 2… I’m glad to see there is at least one theme author who takes into account the fact that wp_footer() outputs P-enclosed content which needs to be accounted for. So often I see the wp_footer() action right at the bottom outside of any styled element, which is a nuisance to always have to fix!
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 28th, 2007 at 5:18 pm →

Thank you, Rick.
USMCsky responds:
Posted: February 1st, 2007 at 4:41 am →

Mike,

Beautiful job. I was so impressed with the theme that I decided a visit to the originators site was a necessity. I am very impressed with everything. For the time being it will also serve as my sites theme. I am an old web designer learning new “technology” that runs with blogging. I found WP and realized I no longer needed to reinvent the wheel with work like yours available as a theme.

Thanks for your hard work and for sharing this with the net.

Regards,

USMCsky
Eric Zabinsky
flashbyz.com
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 1st, 2007 at 12:27 pm →

Thank you Eric. It’s nice to get feedback like that.
USMCsky responds:
Posted: February 1st, 2007 at 11:26 pm →

Hey Mike,

Is it a WP or a theme issue when the search results cause the “sidebar” to drop down the right hand side? It settles below the results. When you click a result the text is “spread” across what used to be a very well put together design. I have not altered any thing within WP or the theme as of yet except for the masthead. SEO be danged.

When searching from any category page, I get “Not Found -The requested URL http:// was not found on this server.”

Needless to say, I have put the theme through its paces. =) I want to make sure everything is 100% prior to me breaking it. Once again, excellent job.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 2nd, 2007 at 12:30 am →

If you’re talking about the search results page I bet it’s the name of your blog shown in the search form label. It’s so long that the label is extending into the navigation. The sidebar’s not dropping for me, but if it is for you I have to assume you’re using IE. Not much I can do about it what with such a long blog name. Maybe shorten the name of the blog and use your blog’s description for the rest. It seems that’s how it should be. It would all be in the h1 heading and title element but, and I’m sorry to say, you have done some serious damage to the header of the theme and its accessibility has been compromised.

Since you asked me to look I looked and to me it looks like you’ve done an enormous amount of editing and customization already. You have a large number of mark-up validation errors: 73 just on the home page. On your sidebar, under “Blog Meta” is a link marked XHTML. This is used for validating your mark-up. I would start there. Truthfully, I’d consider downloading it again, to at least restore the header. I don’t understand why you did that.
USMCsky responds:
Posted: February 2nd, 2007 at 4:35 am →

Sorry Mike. I thought I had only removed the header/masthead PHP that fed in my Title info. I wanted the long title(WP BLOG TITLE) for SEO but I did not want it at the top of my page. Make sense? That explains why I did what I did. I put in a static masthead. I am sure there is a really easy way to accomplish it without removing that markup but like I said, I am new to the theme arena. I did not like the flickering “banner.”

I bought the WP2 QuickStart guide a few weeks ago and I am patiently waiting for the dummies version that is coming out in July. =)

Before it is all said and done, I will either reload or fix. I am sure you remember the early days. Flash and CSS are where I flourished when I was seriously designing. Ineed to change my mind set on the learn by reverse engineering. As to your comment… Yes, since my previous post, some major tinkering had been done.
USMCsky responds:
Posted: February 2nd, 2007 at 4:37 am →

You are right about the about the I.E. I use three browsers when doing site evaluations but did not even think to check my own with a different browser. LAUGHING. Crap. First thing you do when trouble-shooting? Make sure the computer is plugged in.

Thanks for the help.
USMCsky responds:
Posted: February 2nd, 2007 at 5:42 am →

LAST POST:

WOW! Your support for this theme is incredible. It took over an hour to read through all your online literature. Learned more on your site than I did the WP book.

All fixed. Thanks again.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 2nd, 2007 at 10:55 am →

Very cool, and you’re welcome. If you don’t want to have the hover/focus on the masthead, which can “flicker” with IE6 — but typically nothing else (IE7 seems to be okay) — the best why to go about that is alter it in the style sheet file “style.css.” As far the name being at the top, putting it in the title or description will put it there, but hidden underneath the background image. If it’s not wanted underneath up there, I would go into the header.php and remove this part from the h1 element:

<small><br /><?php bloginfo('description'); ?> » Home page</small>
USMCsky responds:
Posted: February 2nd, 2007 at 3:49 pm →

*LAUGHING* I new it would be an easy fix. It just escaped me.

I know this is a “labor of love” for you or you would not have spent so much time in your support area. Rewards should be to those who are kind and giving. A donation is forthcoming. =)

I want to share a bit of humor with you. Tao Backup. Figured this would be down your alley.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 2nd, 2007 at 4:15 pm →

That’s a cute story. Thanks. Your enlightened donation will be most appreciated. Thanks for that too (when it comes in).
Wendy responds:
Posted: March 10th, 2007 at 12:22 pm →

Any plans to widgetize this theme?

It is beautiful!
Dr Balwinder S "bsd" Dheeman responds:
Posted: March 10th, 2007 at 1:19 pm →

First of all, I must thank you for a such nice theme

I think you forget to differentiate trackbacks, plz check the MW theme for details. I’m considering adding this functionality and shall try submitting a patch soon.

The related-posts does not work either, even after ALTERING the table as have been suggested in the docs and the wp-admin.css is quite obsolete as compared to the one in the latest WordPress 2.1.2 release. One more thing is that I don’t like the idea of setting “activated” and, or “deactivaed” values in a specific configuration file, which can dynamically be determined and, examined from the environment itself for active WP plugins.

Thank anyway, the Beast-Blog theme for WordPress is cool!
Regards,
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: March 10th, 2007 at 1:39 pm →

@Wendy: Thinking about it. It does seem to be requested and it is on my “next build” list. I do builds about monthly unless something critical comes up. I take notes in between. Widgets is on my list.

@Dr: I’m not sure what you’re getting at regarding Trackbacks. As far as I can tell everything works. I haven’t heard from anyone about related posts not working. I have actually been informed otherwise. Yes, those functions can be dynamically determined using if function exists. I didn’t do it though. It’s three variables so I guess I don’t bee a big problem with doing it. The config file would still have to be there for some of the other stuff that has to be done manually.
Dr Balwinder S "bsd" Dheeman responds:
Posted: March 10th, 2007 at 4:14 pm →

Sorry for the typo, I wanted to say Pingback, that’s when comment_author_email is empty and comment_type is ‘pingback’.

I see no errors after altering the table, but could not find any related posts in the list, whereas, the MW theme is uses categories to relate posts, otherwise; need no alter any tables.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: March 10th, 2007 at 7:39 pm →

I see. The Related Posts plugin isn’t mine, but it does seem to work for me — I’m using it on several blogs. Not sure what to say about it. Thanks.
Dr Balwinder S "bsd" Dheeman responds:
Posted: March 12th, 2007 at 3:25 pm →

I have made it work, now it distinguishes the ‘pingback’ and, or ‘trackback’ comments. In addition to this I also have added facility to present gravatar icons of the commenter, though the later hack may slow down rendering pages that contain large number of comments. I yet have to benchmark the gravatar icons when WP caching enabled and, or disabled.

Plz check http://cto.homelinux.net/?p=8#comments and http://cto.homelinux.net/~vad/?p=1#comments

Let me know if you’re interested in merging this patch.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: March 12th, 2007 at 3:56 pm →

I hear you about gravatars. I don’t like them for that reason. It would be interested in seeing what you did regarding trackbacks versus pingbacks even though I don’t completely understand what I’m seeing. If I do incorporate this feature I will of course make it known that it is your contribution. You get in touch please use my contact form. Fromthere we can talk further and ahre files by email.

Thanks Doc.
Ralf and Ramona responds:
Posted: March 20th, 2007 at 5:26 am →

Hi Mike,

thanks for your great theme and your support. I love the appearance, even if we change some images, and I appreciate the technical realization. It’s one of the very few pro-themes in the theme-bulk out there.

All the best
Ralf
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: March 20th, 2007 at 8:41 am →

Thanks Ralf
Krissi responds:
Posted: April 24th, 2007 at 4:47 am →

Dear Mike! Thank you so much for a beautiful theme! I changed my blog to this theme yesterday, and have already got lots of good responses on my new beautiful site. As you can see on my site, I have edited some of it (check my site). And have translated it to Norwegian, mainly by using .mo file. A small (but hopeful) useful donation from Norway is on it’s way to you.

Best regards,
Krissi
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: April 24th, 2007 at 8:50 am →

Thanks Krissi
Gill responds:
Posted: May 15th, 2007 at 5:34 pm →

Noticed you were mentioning plugins on the main page. They all work fine with the latest version of WP.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: May 19th, 2007 at 3:04 am →

2.2?
Frank responds:
Posted: May 23rd, 2007 at 12:14 pm →

The Theme runs with wordpress 2.2
Only the bonusfiles wp-admin.css and quicktags.js for wp-admin makes some trouble…
Frank
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: May 23rd, 2007 at 12:36 pm →

Thanks Frank. I had heard that and will write something to that effect on the next build. Adding the CSS to the existing CSS shouldn’t cause problems that I’m aware of, but it is my understanding that the quicktags have been significantly changed.
Frank responds:
Posted: May 23rd, 2007 at 12:51 pm →

Mike: Your new quicktags.js runs with the normal wp-admin.css…
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: June 1st, 2007 at 9:07 am →

UPDATE: I’ve had a chance to work with version 2.2 personally now. I applied the quicktags.js and my styles without an issue. Everything works and looks okay.

quicktags.js — simple overwrite of file.
wp-admin.css style — add the styles I provide to the bottom of the existing wp-admin.css file.
ladynada responds:
Posted: June 5th, 2007 at 10:31 am →

I think I found a bugaboo, on my free blog, at the next page prompt at the bottom of page one, it has the following url

http://rinf.com/blogs/2wit/blogs/2wit/page/2/

If I enter the right address, it works, and then the previous button works.

I have my permalink structure set to
/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%post_id%/

Its a free blog so I do not have access to ftp anything
thanks,
nada
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: June 5th, 2007 at 10:53 am →

That’s strange. I haven’t seen that to date.
Maureen Oliver responds:
Posted: June 5th, 2007 at 12:23 pm →

Thank you Mike! I really love this theme. It’s the first time I’ve taken a wp blog template and played with it.

I have a little less hair than when I started but I know I probably would have been bald by now if not for your brilliant instructions on how to implement this theme.

So again thank you for your selfless dedication to your art!
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: June 5th, 2007 at 12:50 pm →

Thanks Maureen. I am bald, but that came from writing all those instructions
ladynada responds:
Posted: June 5th, 2007 at 9:20 pm →

Hi Maureen, I told Mike the same thing in email the other day… LOL
Mike here is more info. if you go to page with this
http://rinf.com/blogs/2wit notice no last slash
then the next page link formats wrong

if you go to the page with http://rinf.com/blogs/2wit/ then the next page link formats right
also the link on the nav bar for home leaves off the last slash
Hope that helps,
nada
fellow programmer and coding luvva
Maureen responds:
Posted: June 21st, 2007 at 6:23 am →

Hi there Mike,

I’ve tried using the add custom field for the description and keywords both on pages and posts and it doesn’t seem to work. I’ve tried it with description/keywords with and without quotes. Not sure if I’ve done something wrong or not. Seems simple enough, create a post, add custom field, save. No matter which way I do it, it still ends up with the description/keywords that are in the config file.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: June 21st, 2007 at 9:01 am →

Hi Maureen. I checked your blog and you’re using build number B20070204. That feature wasn’t added until B20070404. If you want, I did write a tutorial in this article on how to do it if you want to add it into the theme files yourself.
Maureen responds:
Posted: June 21st, 2007 at 7:39 pm →

Thanks Mike! It worked perfectly…yay! I now have descriptions and keywords in place. This php stuff is pretty nifty.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: June 22nd, 2007 at 9:00 am →

Glad it worked out for you. Watch out for that PHP… it’s like crack cocaine
Greg responds:
Posted: July 9th, 2007 at 5:23 pm →

Hey Mike… I’ve been using your template for several months now, after going through more than a couple of other, uh… others. Slotted in my graphics, streamlined it a bit and it works perfectly. So well, in fact, that I’m considering putting the RSS back in. Great work!
JJ responds:
Posted: August 5th, 2007 at 10:16 pm →

Great great template. Have you thought about doing a 3C version? I think if you expand left and right, less white space on the margins you could get the 3C on the right without disturbing the clean feel.
JJ responds:
Posted: August 5th, 2007 at 10:19 pm →

Also, I havent uploaded the template yet, but how do you get subcategories and submenu items?
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: August 5th, 2007 at 11:16 pm →

Hi JJ. 3C won’t be anytime soon. Sorry. I don’t have time.

To create subcategories, just assign a new category to an existing category and it’ll become a sub-category to that category item. An example can be seen here (using the same theme): The menu category “The Showcase” has three sub-categories: “Notable Awards,” “Quality Awards,” and “Classic Awards.” (There’s a fourth, Timeless Awards, but it’s never been given so it doesn’t show up on the menu.)
Dan Lee responds:
Posted: October 21st, 2007 at 12:25 am →

I love the theme, but I have done some clean up on the code and some minor fixes. One of the fixes is the flickering of the header image, you can see it happen on this very page at the top. To fix this I have done the following:
I use this code inthe header.php page, not that different but I prefer it as it looks easier to read.

Once again some minor changes, but it works beautifully

Keep up the good work,

Dan

[See link in next comment.]
Dan Lee responds:
Posted: October 21st, 2007 at 12:29 am →

The above code was fubared a bit, so updated it as a txt file.
http://www.danlee.ca/beast_blog_header.txt
Rob Mason responds:
Posted: November 19th, 2007 at 7:52 am →

Hey Mike, just installed Beast Blog v2 on my blog and it’s great. Huge thanks for making such a great theme.

Only issue I have is that images are not being displayed on the main page for posts that contain an image. Any thoughts?
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: November 19th, 2007 at 10:28 am →

Hi Rob. What I always do is copy and paste my first paragraph in the the “Optional Excerpts” textarea below the inline uploader on your post page. Markup is not retained in a post excerpt unless you do that, then you can post whatever markup you want and it gives absolute control over what’s in the excerpt. No more tag needed. Here’s a article I wrote a bit ago that discusses this and a few other goodies. This article posted here might help too.
Eddy responds:
Posted: January 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 pm →

Not sure about getting subcatogeries and menu items working properly.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: January 22nd, 2008 at 9:11 pm →

How so, Eddy?
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: March 2nd, 2008 at 7:27 pm →

Due to spam comments requiring moderation far out-numbering legitimate Theme Feedback, I decided to close comments on this post. If you have feedback to give, contact Mike via his contact form.

Sorry. Comments are closed.