How to modify the Modularity Lite 1.2 from Graph Paper Press

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If you don’t know this theme yet, you should check it out at Graph Paper Press.

Modularity Lite is Thad Allender’s freebie version of a larger framework. I was customising this theme for Jerry Hyde’s site recently, and thought I’d take some notes to share with you.

UPDATE January 2011: This article gained a lot of attention since it came out in January 2010. Code changes dramatically with each release, which is why I’ve written an updated version for Modularity Lite 1.3. This article is about version 1.2. Tweaks may NOT work in later versions.

How to add your own Background Image

The background image gets loaded via the style.css file in the following line of code:

/************************* GLOBAL STYLES ***************************/
body {color:#eee;background: #111 url(images/bg.jpg) no-repeat center fixed;}

The full path to the default background image is wp-content/themes/modularity-lite/images/bg.jpg. Change it to your heart’s contempt!

How to add your own Logo or Header

have a look at the header.php file and find the following section:

<!-- Begin Masthead -->
<div id="masthead">
<h4><a href="<?php echo get_settings('home'); ? rel="nofollow">/" title="Home"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a> <span><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></span></h4>
</div>

Delete the <h4> and <span> tags and replace them with a link to your logo like this:

<div id="masthead">
<img src="http://yourdomain.com/yourlogo.jpg">
</div>

If you’d like that logo to link to your home page, wrap it in a link like this:

<div id="masthead">
<a href="<?php echo get_settings('home'); ? rel="nofollow">/" title="Home">
<img src="http://yourdomain.com/yourlogo.jpg">
</a>
</div>

Image Sizes

If you’re hosting images in places other than your website (say Flickr) you may find that those images are too big for your layout. Rather than fiddle with that, let’s have imgaes automatically resize when they’re wider than your theme.

Have a look at the style.css file and find the /* Floats & Images */ section, under which you’ll find these three declarations:

img.centered...
img.alignright...
img.alignleft...

The last value on each line ends with

max-width:950px

Change that to a smaller value and your images will be resized automatically. You may also want to add

heigh:auto

to each line so your images don’t get squashed. I don’t know which image alignment you’re using when you embed an image, so for safe measure, amend all three of them. As an example, here’s the first line of code in its entirety changed to 500px width:

img.centered{display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;max-width:500px; height: auto;}

Slowing Down the Slideshow

The slideshow is generated in Java Script. Have a look in your functions.php file and look for a code block under the heading // Load Dom Ready Javascripts – it looks like this:

jQuery("#slideshow").cycle({
speed: '2500',
timeout: '500',
pause: 1

In it, you’ll find two parameters:

  • SPEED which is in fact the cross fade duration,
  • and TIMEOUT which is the duration of each slide.

1000 is about 1 second, 2000 is 2 seconds, and so forth. Play with those and see what happens. If you’d like cuts instead of corss fades, change the SPEED parameter to 1. The PAUSE parameter doesn’t seem to do anything so leave it alone.

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155 thoughts on “How to modify the Modularity Lite 1.2 from Graph Paper Press”

  1. Hi Thomas,

    the repeater graphic is an overlay to the entire site, including the text – hence you don’t see an improvement when you change it. I guess removing it altogether will increase your font contrast. Then you can change the colours under Appearance to #fff (that’s pure white and should yield the highest visibility).

    It’s difficult for me to comment on your blog problem because I don’t know what you’ve deleted. I suggest you download the theme and install it “as is” in a new subdirectory, then check if you can get the blog to work and take it from there. If you make amendmends, you may want to create a child theme or if you’d rather like to hack the original code, safe your amendmends stage by stage.

    Good luck 😉

  2. This page/thread has been an absolute life saver! Thank you! I am setting up my page and have the blog turned on. Wondering if there is a way to specify the number of blog posts that appear on the main page?

    Thanks for any and all help you might be able to provide me with!

  4. Hi!

    FYI this is a super impressive amount of information. Great job!

    I’m trying to get all of my sub-pages to match the layout of the initial page. my friend likes the amount of space that the BG image has on the front page, and wants that on all of the children. ive been eyeing over all the stylesheets, etc, and I can’t figure out where I’d set that. I’m sure its easy, but I’m just blind.

    Any help would be huge.
    All the best.
    ~ Dave

  5. Hi Jay!

    I have 2 questions.

    1) When I click “older entries” on the homepage of my site http://www.61northband.com, it brings me to the older posts, but the page is not styled. I tried attaching style.css as a in the archive.php file, but I didn’t have any luck.

    2) At the bottom of each individual blog entry on the homepage http://www.61northband.com, it says the date posted, categories, tags, and “leave a comment.” How can I remove the categories and tags and just leave the date + “leave a comment” link?

    Thanks so much! Love your site. You’ve already helped me out immensely with a question a few months ago.

    Alicia

Comments are closed.