FuturosityEverything is probable

I’m releasing a slightly simplified version of the current Futurosity design, Futurosity Eos. The theme is built on Sandbox for power and flexibility, and is ready to rock out-of-the-box.

Futurosity Eos requires WordPress 2.3.2, has been tested in Safari and Firefox, and should work in IE 6 and IE 7. But I’m on a Mac, so if you’ve found a problem in IE please post a comment below.

Demo

Here’s a demo of Futurosity Eos.

Download

Before you download Futurosity Eos, 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 Eos

Don’t miss an update to this theme! Subscribe to Futurosity. And if you’re looking for a host that doesn’t suck, you can get great hosting, save money, and support Futurosity: Use code FUTUROSITY for 3 free months!

Installation

To install, open the FuturosityEos folder and upload the contents of the plugins folder to your wordpress/wp-content/plugins directory. Upload the futurosity_eos folder to your wordpress/wp-content/themes folder. Then open your WP Admin, activate the plugins under the Plugins tab, and select the Futurosity Eos theme under the Presentation tab.

Plugins

Futurosity Eos uses four plugins, which are included in the download. They are highly recommended, but not required. The plugins are:

1. Get Recent Comments
2. Gravatar
3. Popularity Contest
4. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

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", 40); ?>

and change it to this:

<?php gravatar("R", 40, "[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.

Important Note: If you downloaded version 0.2, your comments.php is pulling my default gravatar for Futurosity. Please edit your comments.php file to use the one provided, or one of your own design. Thank you.

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(), '40' );

and change it to:

echo get_avatar( get_comment_author_email(), '40', '[path to the avatar]' );

Tips

Here are a few tips for customizing the theme.

“About” Text

Note: The sidebar in versions prior to 0.4 incorrectly says you can edit the “About” text in home.php. Actually, the text is in sidebar.php.

Sandbox

Futurosity Eos is built on Sandbox, but I’ve edited the theme files so you can’t simply use the style.css file in Futurosity Eos to style a standard Sandbox installation. Be sure to read the sandbox.html file in the futurosity_eos folder for more information on customizing Sandbox.

Excerpts

Futurosity Eos displays excerpts above the post entry on single pages. This isn’t a mistake. For best effect you should manually enter an excerpt in the Optional Excerpt field when you write a new post.

Featured Posts

Futurosity Eos features your latest post at the top of the home page. It will display a background image if available. The image should be 600 pixels wide and 180 pixels tall. To add an image:

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

Here’s an example:

I’m currently using SmoothGallery on Futurosity. It’s fairly easy to install and configure, but if you want to use it, you’ll have to edit your header.php and home.php files:

1. Download SmoothGallery and upload the /css and /scripts subfolders to your futurosity_eos directory.
2. Add these lines to your header.php file, just before the closing </head> tag:
   
   <script src="<?php bloginfo('template_url') ?>/scripts/mootools.v1.11.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="<?php bloginfo('template_url') ?>/scripts/jd.gallery.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url') ?>/css/jd.gallery.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <script type="text/javascript"> function startGallery() { var myGallery = new gallery($('myGallery'), { timed: true, showArrows: false, showInfopane: true, showCarousel: false }); } window.addEvent('domready', startGallery); </script>
   
3. Open home.php and replace this…
   
   <h3>Featured</h3> <?php $my_query = new WP_Query('showposts=1'); while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID; ?> <div class="featured-image-wrapper"> <h2 class="transparent"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2> <img src="<?php $key="featured-image"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?>" alt="" /> </div> <?php endwhile; ?>
   
   …with this (replacing the content in brackets with your appropriate information):
   
   <h3>Featured</h3> <div id="myGallery"> <div class="imageElement"> <h3>[Title]</h3> <p>[Excerpt]</p> <a href="[permalink]" title="open image" class="open"></a> <img src="[path to image]" class="full" /> </div> </div>
4. Copy the last “Featured” block again, changing the content in brackets, to add more featured posts.

See Getting Started for more information on using SmoothGallery.

Recent Comments

You can edit the formatting for the recent comments plugin under the WP Admin Options tab. This is the code I use:

<li><span style="float:left; padding-right:6px;">%gravatar</span> %comment_author on <a href="%comment_link" title="%post_title">%post_title</a>:<br/>%comment_excerpt </li>

Pages

The theme includes templates for an About page, an Archives page, and a Links page. To use these, go to Write > Pages in your WP Admin. Create a new page and select the appropriate template from the Page Template dropdown menu.

Upgrading to 0.5

If you’re upgrading from 0.4 and you’ve already edited your theme files, the only file that has changed is style.css. And if you’ve edited style.css, you can just change the font for the <body> tag to Arial and fix the excerpts by adding this:

.single .excerpt { border-bottom:1px solid #eaeaea; color:#777; font-size:1.5em; margin-bottom:28px; }

Known Issues

On the home page, the latest posts should decrease in size from top to bottom (most recent posts are in a larger font). This works fine in Safari and Firefox, but not in IE. If anyone can figure out why, I’d appreciate it.

If you prefer all of the posts to be the same size, just delete these lines from style.css:

• .home .p1 { font-size:1.5em; }
• .home .p2 { font-size:1.4em; }
• .home .p3 { font-size:1.3em; }
• .home .p4 { font-size:1.2em; }
• .home .p5 { font-size:1.1em; }

License

Futurosity Eos 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 21 Jan 08.
0.2 Released 22 Jan 08. Changes:

• Fixed formatting of trackbacks to match comments.
• Fixed img.alignright in style.css.
• Added support for gravatar plugin for comments.

0.3 Released 22 Jan 08. Changes:

• Fixed overflow for code and pre in style.css.
• Fixed comments so gravatar doesn’t load my Futurosity gravatar. Now uses default image if commenter doesn’t have a gravatar.

0.4 Released 24 Jan 08. Changes:

• Fixed the width on the meta column in single posts.
• Fixed the About text so it correctly instructs you to edit it in sidebar.php.
• Added support for a related posts plugin on single pages.
• Removed the border from the top of the bottom navigation on single pages.
• Fixed the width for next and previous links.
• Changed image links so they no long display a border.
• Adjusted the spacing after titles on the home page.

0.5 Released 16 Feb 08. Changes:

• Fixed excerpts on individual posts so they are formatted properly (larger type, etc.).
• Changed font to Arial from Helvetica (looks better in Firefox).

0.6 Released 20 Mar 08. Added the avatar tag for WordPress 2.5.

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