I’m releasing a preliminary version of the Futurosity Aperio Prototype, the theme I orignally previewed under First Look: Futurosity Aperio WordPress Theme.
I’m calling this version a protoype because I consider it experimental; it’s still a little rough around the edges. I painted myself into a little bit of a corner by posting a preview before the theme was ready. I felt pretty confident about my initial ideas, but I encountered problems executing the design and some of the WordPress functionality, and this theme just doesn’t realize what I was after. I’m still mulling it over and I expect to come back to this theme at some point with fresh eyes and stronger skills, but I’m going to let things cool for awhile.
Please Note: If you know what you’re doing, feel free to use this prototype as a starting point, but I expect Aperio to evolve into something very different. Please leave a comment if you’re using this theme; I’d love to see what you do with it. And please, leave your suggestions for improvement.
Futurosity Aperio Prototype requires WordPress 2.3.2. It is built on Sandbox for power and flexibility and has been tested in Safari, Firefox, and IE 7. It should also work in IE6, but some of the formatting and effects are sacrificed.
Special Thanks
I want to give special thanks to Thin & Light, who wrote a custom function for me to display excerpts on the next and previous posts. I also want to thank everyone who commented on the first look with suggestions, especially Eli Foner and Darryl Hutchison.
Demo
Here’s a demo of Futurosity Aperio Prototype.
Download
Before you download Futurosity Aperio Prototype, please note: First, the theme is free, but I would ask you to please keep a link back to Futurosity (see the license below). Second, I do not offer support for WordPress (try the WordPress Documentation or Forums), I won’t help you with general CSS questions (try this CSS Tutorial), and I won’t tell you how to customize my themes. I will help you if you’ve found a bug. (I’m actually a pretty nice guy.) Just post a comment below. Thanks!
Download Futurosity Aperio Prototype
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Installation
To install, open the FuturosityAperioPrototype folder and upload the contents of the plugins folder to your wordpress/wp-content/plugins directory. Upload the futurosity_aperio_p folder to your wordpress/wp-content/themes folder. Then open your WP Admin, activate the plugins under the Plugins tab, and select the Futurosity Aperio Prototype theme under the Presentation tab.
Plugins
Futurosity Aperio Prototype uses two plugins, which are included in the download. They are highly recommended, but not required. The plugins are:
- Gravatar (not required if you’re using WordPress 2.5 or above)
- No Excerpt-P
Note that the gravatar plugin uses a generic gravatar if the commenter doesn’t have one. You can change this by editing comments.php. Find this code:
<?php gravatar("R", 60); ?>
and change it to this:
<?php gravatar("R", 60, "[path to your default gravatar]"); ?>
For more information, see WordPress Gravatar Plugin.
I’ve included a generic gravatar in the theme directory, gravatar.jpg (pictured above). To use it, move this image to your images folder and add the path to comments.php.
If you’re using WordPress 2.5, a default avatar is included in WordPress. If you’d like to use the default avatar above, upload it to your images directory and add the path to comments.php. Find this code:
echo get_avatar( get_comment_author_email(), '60' );
and change it to:
echo get_avatar( get_comment_author_email(), '60', '[path to the avatar]' );
Tips
Here are a few tips for customizing the theme.
“About” Text
You can edit the “About” text in sidebar.php.
Excerpts and Categories
Things will look better if you have actual excerpts for your posts, and they’re fairly short. Also, it’s best to assign one category to each post and to use multiple tags.
Sandbox
Futurosity Aperio Prototype is built on Sandbox, but I’ve edited the theme files so you can’t simply use the style.css file in Futurosity Aperio Prototype to style a standard Sandbox installation. Be sure to read the sandbox.html file in the futurosity_aperio_p folder for more information on customizing Sandbox.
Featured Posts
Futurosity Aperio Prototype features your latest posts on the home page. It will display post images if available. The images should be larger than 456 x 300 pixels and the preview will show the top left detail. The latest post will be featured in the top left on the home page. To add an image:
- Go to Custom Fields near the bottom of the Post page in your WP Admin.
- Under Key, type:
post-image. - Under Value, type the url for the image, e.g.,
http://www.futurosity.com/images/post-image.jpg
Here’s an example:
Links Page
If you want to use the links page, you should look at your code and clear every fourth category in the styles.css file. Under /* links */, change li#linkcat-7, etc. to li#linkcat-[number of category].
License
Futurosity Aperio Prototype is Copyright © 2007 by Robert Ellis. It is released under the GNU General Public License, version 3, as published by the Free Software Foundation (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html), meaning you can do pretty much whatever you want with it, but you should kindly keep the link back to Futurosity (http://www.futurosity.com), either in the sidebar or the footer. If you do, you will live a long and happy life. If you don’t, your personal possessions will have a habit of mysteriously disappearing.
History
0.1 Released 07 Feb 08.
0.2 Released 18 Mar 08. Fixed a few typos in style.css and removed extraneous numbers that were appearing in previous and next post excerpts on single posts. (Thanks to Will, netaudio, and Darke!)
0.3 Released 19 Mar 08. Fixed search page to match the rest of the theme (thanks again, Darke!) and added avatar tag for WordPress 2.5.
0.4 Released 19 Mar 08. Fixed the glitch in the avatar tag. Removed the gravatar tag from the comment form (it was displaying the last, not the current, commenter). Back-to-back updates like these are why I ask you to subscribe to Futurosity!
0.5 Released 31 Mar 08. Quick fix to comments.php to display trackbacks.
0.6 Released 02 Apr 08. Added missing wp_footer tag to footer.php.
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186 Comments
Awesome theme Robert!
That’s pretty much the nicest blog home page ever. Beautiful.
Plus, I can click on the excerpts!
Thanks, guys. I like the home page, which was the starting point for the whole thing, but I fell out of love with the rest of it. I think I’ll come back to it eventually and the inside pages will look completely different.
hi - great theme but the Featured Posts part of it does not work. image is not displayed?
1. Go to Custom Fields near the bottom of the Post page in your WP Admin.
2. Under Key, type: featured-image.
3. Under Value, type the url for the image, e.g., http://www.futurosity.com/images/avatar.png
- tried on clean install of WP with plugins supplied.
cj: You’re right. I lifted the directions from my Eos theme, but they’re not the same.
You want to use
post-imageas the key. I’ve corrected the instructions. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.cheers - i was looking for the correct syntax but you beat me too it. awsome theme.. ive been looking for a fresh theme for ages and this is by far the best theme ive found in ages. in fact im going to digg it :)
http://digg.com/design/Fantastic_Fresh_Wordpress_Theme_worth_the_download
Thanks very much, cj! Please post a comment with your URL when you get your site up. I’d love to see how you’re using the theme.
probably the greatest theme I’ve ever seen!
Wow, Kelly! Thanks! BTW, love your artwork, especially altered book.
i wish i was a photographer. this is an awesome blog theme. i can imagine a freelance photographer documenting his latest artwork/captures OR National Geographic special project. Awesome, Robert!
couldnt agree more kelly!
Wow, great! This is one of the best designs I’ve ever seen!
Thanks for the comments everyone! I still expect to come back to this one at some point and tweak it. Something about it still doesn’t work for me. Any suggestions for improvement would be greatly appreciated.
Robert, I may play with this one over the next week. I have some ideas that I would like to incorporate into the theme. Maybe I can send a generic version to you to look over…
Great, Will! I’m very interested to see what you come up with. Feel free to email me directly.
Another masterpiece from Mr. Ellis.
Great job. I’m going to install and try this new theme.
Something says to me this will be my preferred.
Bye.
Thanks, Tiziano!
Wow! I saw that you were working on this via twitter and it looks amazing. Love the homepage and the ideas for the inside pages… I would love for the home page image to be displayed across the width of the single post rather than remaining on the left in a small size.
Not sure how that would work behind the scenes…
Sometimes a post could just be lots of images… and sometimes not with text on top of them (just thinking as a photographer)…
Anyhoo — love where you are going with this :-)
Thanks, Deb.
You can use the same image in the single post. Just create an
<img>tag in your post for the same image, or add multiple images. They should resize to the width of the post.Robert,
I’m using this theme for my personal blog. I love it! Thanks for all the great designs. I use futuroisty eos for another blog of mine The Co-LAB One thing I just noticed on my recent post with Aperio, which included two different types of embedded videos, is that something changed the style of all the text below the videos, it affected the “sidebar”, “add comment” and “browse”. Weird?! See this post if you’re interested.
Robert, this is brilliant… sends shivers down my spine when I see such design!
Noticed an anomaly that appears in Safari but not Firefox. It’s in every instance of Aperio I can find in use (including the demo). The jpeg at http://www.tassels.ca/images/AperioAnomaly.jpg shows the issue at the lower right of each box. Any thoughts?
And again… love your design work!
@Justin: I think the problem is because the width of the videos is wider than the post column. You should be able to change the width of the embed code. Also, make sure that you’ve copied and pasted the embed code properly. If you missed a closing tag, for example, the embed will still show up but will throw off the layout.
@josef: This is very odd. When I look at the demo in Safari and Firefox, I don’t see any problem at all. But I see what you mean from your image. Do you have a test blog set up somewhere that I can take a look at? Are you on Windows? (I’m on a Mac, but that shouldn’t make any difference. Odd.)
Thanks Robert.
I’m on Macs and have noticed at home (Powerbook G4) and at work (PowerPC G5). Safari v 3.0.4 in both cases but one’s on Tiger the other on Leopard. My test blog is http://josefstevens.com As noted I checked this against several other Aperio installations I found on a google search and it’s always the same.
Cheers!
josef, your site looks fine in my browser. Anyone else seeing this problem?
Just discovered if I increase font size twice in Safari it’s fine and appears exactly the same as Firefox when side by side.
Guys just one question: where do you get all this nice post-images from?
Checked several royalty free image databases in the web, but I’m not happy with the images I found there…
Claude, my favorite source is Flickr. Go to Advanced Search and look for Creative Commons-licensed photos.
Robert- thanks for the tip, i re=copied the embed code and change the size to fit 370 width. Cheers! JW
Justin, glad it’s fixed.
BTW, I love what you’ve done with Eos on Co-LAB. Amazing how much better it looks with just a few subtle color tweaks. And your wife’s photographs are fantastic, too.
i like you.
Thanks. I like you too.
Robert. Excellent theme. *almost* perfect for what I need.
I was trying to use your older futurositymag theme, which was great in many ways, but got lost in customizing it.
if you want a suggestion, I really like the way futurositymag kept the top posts at the top of the page no matter where you were. it was a great way to keep a site with lots of categories ‘accessible’.
Thanks for the feedback, Alec. What would make it *perfect*?
thanks Robert, i passed on your compliment re: my wife’s pics. btw, we are starting a community for artists and people who support the arts, called society6.com I will be sure to invite you to the beta. we’d love to get your early feedback.
Sounds interesting, Justin. Yes, please send me an invite. I’d love to check it out.
re: Perfect
Very subjective naturally. ‘Perfect for me’ would involve too much of your valuable time.
The thing I loved about this and futurositymag is that they don’t focus on a linear ‘latest post is best’ blog-centric theme. My clients tend to have too much going on to have the latest post be what they want their customers to focus on. A more ‘pick and choose’ works better, like this quite awesome theme.
Like I said, I like the -mag version’s upper block of clickable posts on every page and I’m going to try and modify this one to do something like that. If I get there in some elegant way, I’ll let you know.
Thanks again for the feedback, Alec. I’ll mull it over and maybe something like that will work its way into a future theme.
Hi Robert -
I’ve just discovered your WP theme work over the last few days, (from Skelly’s “best of” list) and all very unique and beautiful designs - but….You absolutely have to “finish” the Aperio design, the front page is such a beautiful and artistic and singularly original touch in the WP themes world that the internal pages beg for something closer in aesthetics and originality. ( I do like them - especially the category block view - but something still seems to not quite “match” the brilliance of the index) Great work though, and look forward to watching your stuff evolve! Best..:-) irh
Thanks, irh. I have every intention of coming back to it at some point, but I’m not feeling very inspired at the moment. But I agree, the inside pages don’t fit the home page as well as they should. They feel a bit too heavy to me.
A very good theme! Compliment!
But i have a little question - How can i change yellow-background-color?
Note: If you open a archiv-page in the IE, the page-logo have an onther height and width as normal.
Thanks, Christoph.
To change the hover color, open style.css and find this code:
.home .post-content:hover{background-color:orange;}Change “orange” to whatever color you want.
I’ll check out the IE bug if I ever come back to this theme, otherwise I’m not planning any updates. But thanks for the heads up.
Thank you!
I think it is one of the best themes ever which be ever made for wordpress. Look - this theme have more than any other wp theme a very big capability. It’s the first which can photos integrate by showing, looks more than good and is very flexible.
I know, you made this theme for free and take your private time therefor, of course. But it’s realy one of the best, perhaps the best. ;-)
You’re welcome, Christoph. Post your URL so we can have a look at your site.
GREAT theme!!!, we are starting to use it and transform it a little bit, but as we are new to wordpress… just very few things, anyway it is already very cool like this. Thanks for this and keep up the good work.
Patrice, Hip Island looks very cool.
Thanks for having a look to our site. by the way i was wondering if it is possible to get more posts on the home page, and if so, what we should play with in order to get that?
And again, a great “prototype”!
It should be easy to add posts to the home page. Just open home.php and find this line:
<?php query_posts('showposts=7'); ?>Change
showposts=7toshowposts=[replace with the number of posts you want to display].Wow! easy can’t wait to check it out.
Thanks again and again!
Robert,
this is the most beautiful theme I’ve ever seen!
I have been looking for exactly this theme for 4 months… I knew what I wanted it to look and feel like and youldn’t start my blog because I couldn’t find a theme like that. Thanks a lot!
I am very new to tweaking themes, so please forgive me my rookie question: how do I change the Aperio-Logo in the header and replace it with my site’s name? I’ve been really scanning the header.php but didn’t get anywhere.
Thanks so much for your support!
Thanks, Rakete!
Changing the header image is easy. Just replace header.jpg in the futurosity_aperio_p folder with your own image named header.jpg.
Thanks for this incredible design. I’ve spent months messing around with magazine themes for my online mag and never felt that they did our contributor’s content the justice it deserved–this is a fantastic design!
Glad you like it, Paul. I love what you’ve done with Aperio on Is Greater Than.
Paul has done a magnificent job on an already beautiful theme! Love it..:-)
Robert, is there a simple way to accomplish the look Paul has gotten on the pages, ie - relative to the sidebar and wider area for content…or is a code idiot going to be in deep trouble?
Beautiful work across the board!
Ian, making the content area wider and changing the sidebar is relatively easy to do, but not simple to explain. Assuming you know a bit about CSS, you’ll want to look at the style.css file and play with the widths under the
/* =single */section. These are the selectors that affect the single post pages. You’d also have to change the selectors under/* =sidebar */so they don’t float next to each other. Experiment until you have the layout you want.Hey Rob, just one question as wordpress 2.5 is upcoming. Will there be a adapted version of aperio for wp 2.5?
I would very much appreciate this ;-)
Claude, I think Aperio will be compatible with 2.5, but I’ll go through my themes after I upgrade and make any necessary changes. It may be a few days, though.
I use this theme on my website…
and it rocks !
thx :)
Hey, yO²! Looks great!
thx :p
astonishing theme!
i use it!
http://www.netlabels.ru/
Looks great, netaudio! And your site is interesting, too. Great music links!
Robert, the more i use it - the more i love this theme!
you know, i found just one strange thing - in previous/next navigations there are strange digits
as example:
http://www.netlabels.ru/?p=8
“54If you would like…”
“47If you like to make…”
i wonder, what do they mean? :)
@netaudio: The numbers must a bug in my hacked function for generating the next and previous posts excerpts. I’ll have a look and try to post an update in the next couple of days. Thanks for giving me the heads up!
@netaudio: I’m stumped. I took a look at the code and I’m using the same code in Vero, without any problems. I’m going to be updating all of the themes for WordPress 2.5 and I’ll take another pass at it.
Robert Ellis: Thanks for a great theme. I’ve been playing around with it the last couple of weeks for a soon-to-be-launched website, and I encountered exactly the same problem as Netaudio did. I found out that what caused it was some of the excerpt code in functions.php (at the far bottom), from which I removed this line:
“echo count($words);”
Thanks, Darke! Outstanding! I appreciate your help. I’ll put together an update for download.
Okay, I’ve posted an update to fix the numbers in the previous and next excerpts, as well as the glitches in the style.css. Thanks, netaudio and Darke!
And thanks to you for putting time and effort into this. Your themes are the best I’ve tried. I’m almost done tweaking Futurosity Apeiro to suit my purposes, and it really looks awesome. I’ll put up a link when my site is ready for take-off. One thing, though: the search results page has got a different layout than the rest of the theme. Lately I’ve been trying to make it look more like the pages you get when you run them through the categories.php template, but when you’re a trial-and-error guy like me you easily get lost among the div tags. Where should I start?
->ROBERT ELLIS:
ok :)
at the moment i’ll use strpos and substr functions, you know what i mean :)
@Darke: Arrgh! How did I miss that? I’ll post a fix for the search page later today. Sorry ’bout that.
@netaudio: Just open functions.php, scroll down to the last function, and delete this line:
echo count($words);Problem solved!
This looks very awesome. thanks!
It’s a beautiful and functional theme. I’m already thinking about creating a new website so I could get an excuse for using it. Form and function over content. =)
Many thanks. I’m happy you seem to have totally misinterpreted the idea of “unsupported”, it’s unusual to get help this quick. I’m glad I chose your theme.
This is a beautiful theme.
Love your work, it’s so much more artistic than other Wordpress themes…
Thank you for creating this beautiful theme. I agree with your point that “the inside pages don’t fit the home page as well as they should. They feel a bit too heavy to me.”
When I saw the front page of the theme I thought it would be perfect for my new photoblog. However, the inside pages are indeed a bit heavy and have very narrow columns. Not suitable for a photoblog but perfect for a magazine layout. I can’t wait to have some time to start tweaking it :)
I hope you will continue working on this theme because I haven’t seen such a great theme in a long time.
This theme is the step forward! Great job!
Interesting theme, especially for photo bloggers. I’ll have to recommend it to a few of my friends that are really into posting their pics. Great job!
@Darke: I don’t like to promise too much because I never know how much time I’ll have. This is just a hobby for me. But it’s a little embarrassing when I forget to theme an entire page.
@Anne: I think you’re right. Aperio doesn’t know what it wants to be on the inside. If I find the inspiration, I may redesign it in two flavors: as a photo blog and as a magazine-style theme. I’ll be interested to see what you come up with. Let us know when you’re done tweaking.
Everyone else: thanks so much for the positive feedback. I’d almost forgotten about Aperio, but perhaps when I catch up on some other work I’ll come back to it feeling more inspired.
Awesome theme, it was just the right inspiration at just the right time!
I love this theme. Can you make a videoblogging-centric theme?
Personal choices for videoblogging theme:
- Three column theme.
- Content column at least 500px wide so it can have one 480px video.
- 1st sidebar that has thumbnails from previous episodes.
- 2nd sidebar that has some news and categories.
- search and other stuff can be in the footer.
- Much like the Aperio theme, it is wide instead of long.
I would love to see you do this.
Interesting idea, Ajit. I’ll think about it.
BTW, cool trailer for Hello. Sorry. Whatever.
Hi this is a really nice theme - and very easily modifiable: I’m using a modified version of this theme for a website I’m putting together for my mums work. You can see it here.
(* that link points to my desktop machine and only works while it’s on… thankfully that’s pretty much 24hrs a day :) )
What problems did you have with development? If it’s coding related I’d be happy to help out (I’m the developer of a few WordPress plugins :) ).
Let me know & all the best.
Thanks, Martin!
Most of the problems I was having were design related. I just didn’t like the way the inside pages were coming together. But I’m going to revisit this design as soon as I can find the time and I have some ideas that might require more coding skills than I possess. Thanks very much for the offer to help. I’ll definitely keep you in mind!
having an issue with unordered lists. I went through the demo and didn’t see any just to make sure it wasn’t me screwin with the code.
Alec, you’re right. Lists aren’t styled. You can add something like this to style.css:
.entry-content ul li {list-style-type: disc;margin-left:32px;}The
list-style-typecan be whatever you want: disc, circle, square, etc. You can also change themargin-leftto whatever you want.When I release a redux version of this theme (this is just a prototype, remember), it will be based on Blueprint CSS, so there will be default styles for everything not explicitly styled in the theme.
I just wanted to say I love this theme and definately will be using it again. It’s the base for my current site and u can tell that I didn’t make many changes to the actual theme, mainly the stylesheet. Very nice work my friend, soon as I get some cash on the card, ur up for donation : )
http://www.artikal.net
Leerie, thanks very much for your comment. TheArtikalBlog looks great!
Great work man! Its brilliant. One question!? Something do not work with the tag-links from article view. If I click on a tag, then I got no results…
have a look here:
http://grupetto.info/?tag=columbia-university
jens, did you change anything in the tag.php file? Everything works in the demo so the problem isn’t in the theme. You might try installing it again.
Hi There,
First of all - THANKS for the great beautiful Theme…
I tried to translate it to Hebrew (Israel) - and It’s really working good, but just in FF. When IE scan it to all goes to the right - can you help me with this one please?
thanks!
eVi, I’m seeing the same problem in Safari. It looks like you’ve made a lot of changes to the code and I can’t really tell you what the problem is. Look at your CSS for the container or content selectors. You may have changed something in the alignment there.
I installed it again, but no progress. Used the original tag.php file from your zip.file.
any ideas?
Hi again, I installed everything from the begeining, but it’s still looks the same problem (I ckeared the cache)…..
@jens: I’m stumped. Are you using 2.5? I can’t think of any reason why your tags shouldn’t be working if they’re working here on my demo site.
@eVi: Again, I’m stumped. I have no idea what would be different using Hebrew. It should work since the layout is supposed to be centered even if you expand the width of the window. I’m really sorry I can’t be more helpful.
Great template and easy to work with. Still messing with galleries and how to make them fit the tight columns on the post pages, but overall super pleased with design and function of the theme. Thanks for the theme!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, this is a fantastic theme…
But there are some trouble with the theme on tag and category pages:
In IE7 the logo gets resized so it doesn’t look good :-)
In FF the preview images don’t resize on the tag and category pages, which also make them look kind of wierd.
Maybe this open source to do the trick towards the problems I stated above: http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/04/02/timthumb-php-script-released/
Thomas, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. When I look at the demo in Firefox everything looks fine. And there’s no reason for IE 7 to resize the image.
It was just that the images act differently in the two browsers on the tag and category overview page.
And that the header.jpg got squeezed in IE on the tag and category overview page.
Robert, for this (Aperio) theme, could you tell me which classes to edit to make the main content area slightly wider?
My goal is to put two medium-sized images side by side, allowing users to view the full image in a lightbox window.
Also, is the font used in the image (logo) at the very top Helvetica?
I’m loving this theme, a million thanks for creating it and all of your others :)
Nick, to make the content wider, open style.php and look for this:
body{background-color:#fff;color:#444;margin:0 auto;width:928px;}Change the width to whatever you want.
The font in the logo is either Helvetica or Helvetica Neu, but any bold sans-serif font should look fine.
Thank you Robert :)
You’re welcome! BTW, love your photos.
Thanks :) The site will soon be updated with Aperio… not a big fan of Flash.
Aperio is great work, thank yopu very much.
I’m facing same problems withe the automated gallery tags in wp 2.5, doesn’t seem to work for me. Any ideas how to fix that?
Thx in advance
Christian
Christian, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. What exactly is the problem? Where can I see your site?
Hi Robert,
thanks for your answer. I’m trying to use the built-in gallery feature o wordpress 2.5 by clicking the “use gallery in article” feature in admin section. in the backend a post there’s just a [gallery] showing up at the point where i want the gallery to be shown. in fro