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.
Thank you Jay….I’ll try
Hey Jay, If you go to my site I want to change the top left hand logo where it says Macdaddy, thought maybe you could give me some insight, gimme a shout. Ciao.
Hi Jay
I hope you’re doing well.
My blog is up and running now and seems to be working fine for the basic need I have of it. One question I do have for you if you can help is, how do I create a mailing list or something similar. So that whenever I update my blog etc. everybody who wants to be advised, receives an e-mail?
If you could let me know that would be great.
Thanks.
YBB (now from Toronto, Ontario Canada)
Hi Mark,
I’ve described how to insert a logo at the top of this article – it’s the same for the 1.3 version which I think you’re using. Have a look at the header.php file. Good luck!
Hello Toronto – how are you doing tonight?
The easiest way to get this going is via Feedburner. That’s a Google service which reads your site’s RSS feed and generates a new one. It does a lot of other magic like notify search engines when you post, send tweets automatically and let visitors subscribe via email. You can sign up at feedburner.google.com and have a play. I use Feedburner on all my higher traffic sites (including this one – the box in the sidebar is a piece of Feedburner code for example).
You can also replace your current feed with the new Feedburner feed – some Themes offer this functinoality, but there’s also the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin which does that for you. The advantage is that it takes some load off your server – but you don’t have to go that far if all you want to use is the mailing list function.
Have fun 😉