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. Hello 🙂
    I’ve inserted, through the modularity admin panel, a 600px wide video in my homepage.
    I’d like to make a div float to the right of it, to insert a little description and a button.
    How can i accomplish this since the homepage looks to be interely handled by the option in the backend of wp?

  2. Lorenzo,

    Assuming you added the video via the Welcome Box feature, this is called in index.php via /modularity-lite/library/apps/welcomebox.php

    This will insert and format text only by default, but you can add anything you like here (i.e. your video plus your float box). Share your site when you’re done – I’d love to see the result 😉
    PS: lovely music selection you’ve got on 3fingers.com! I’m currently listeing to it 🙂

  3. Hey Jay,
    thanks a lot, I really appreciate your fast help and I’m glad you’ve enjoyed my playlist 🙂
    I still got a little (hope so) question for you…I have to exclude a category to be listed inside the navigation bar. I’ve tried to search the “wp_list_categories” inside the nav.php file but it looks like it uses a different function to handle this.
    Do you got any suggestion on how to do this?

  4. Hi Jay,
    You have helped me out a bit with your suggestions with modularity lite, however, I’m trying to customize the nave bar at the top. I don’t want the categories tab up there because I can have a widget on the sidebar for that. What I would really like is for each of my pages to have their own tab. Can you get me started on the right track with this?

    Thanks!

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