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!
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:
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:
- Go to Custom Fields near the bottom of the Post page in your WP Admin.
- Under Key, type:
featured-image. - 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:
- Download SmoothGallery and upload the /css and /scripts subfolders to your futurosity_eos directory.
- 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> - 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> - 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.alignrightin 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.
If you liked this post, why not subscribe to Futurosity?
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73 Comments
I have been working on a theme that looks a lot like this. So I like it a lot! I guess great minds think alike…
Ha! I’m not surprised. We share similar tastes, it seems. How is your theme coming? I’d like to see it.
I have since totally changed the design. I will shoot you a like to my dev environment.
Cool. I’m interested to see what you’re working on. And feel free to do a mod of Eos, if you feel inspired!
Dude, this is hot! I am in love even more than the other one I just love! I’m changing over, stay tuned.
Thanks, Kakariki!
Trying to use this great theme but I’m getting the following error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_tag() in /var/www/blog.switchplanet.com/wp-content/themes/FuturosityEos/futurosity_eos/functions.php on line 78
I can’t find where the function is supposed to be defined and what it’s supposed to do?
Any ideas?
CSamarin, you’re using an old version of WordPress which doesn’t support tags. Upgrade to WordPress 2.3.2 and let me know if you still run into problems.
Great Work Robert! But somehow I don’t seem to get version 0.4… I downloaded from the above link but it says v0.3 in my dashboard. I also noticed that the about text still features the home.php reference. Maybe the link is not updated?
Thanks for the heads up, Bob. The link should work now.
Hi Robert. I know you said it was a DIY job if we’re interested in working with SmoothGallery but I’ve been fighting with it for hours now and was wondering if theres any chance of a teensy-weensy pointer in the right direction to get the beast actually into ‘features’.
No hassle getting the gallery going per se (especially as Christian Schenk as just created a plugin for it ) but could really use a pointer on where I should be working to get it integrated with the posts.
Obviously if you’ve gotta stand firm on your word and brush my wretched shortcomings to one side I can take it and will continue fighting through on my own.
I’m sending you a copy of my header.php and home.php file. You should be able to figure it out from there, but let me know if you still run into problems.
ooh ooh I did it and it looks H.O.T. still got to do a few things to it, but I just love the new look! 10 times better than a new haircut I reckon.
xoxoxox
Thanks, Kakariki. Looks great! And I love the valentine!
Hi Robert
Just a small piece of feedback, it’s kind of a bug but not. The default post setup goes all skewiff if you put a youtube standard size imbed in your post. Do you reckon the best way to fix it is to change the post width or the sidebar width?
I’ve been getting so much positive feedback for the new look, it’s great!
xox
Kakariki, I just tried that and it works fine. The width of the single post column in Eos is 460px. The videos on YouTube are 480px wide, but the standard embed code that you copy for each video is only 425px wide. If I’m missing something, let me know.
Hmmm wonder what it is then. Check this post http://radicalcrossstitch.com/2008/02/02/mars-attacks/ when I look at it all the side bar stuff drops to the bottom. And I’ve checked it out on two separate computers both running firefox and camino. I thought it might be my wee screen but that’s not the issue on the other computer and there’s the same issue in the other browser.
Kakariki, there’s something funny about the way you’ve embedded the video. The video and the last paragraph are outside of the entry div, so they’re taking up the whole width of the browser. Check the code in your post in your WP Admin and see if something looks wonky. I can’t tell you exactly what the problem is without looking at your admin, but I’m pretty confident it isn’t a problem with the theme because it works fine in my test blog. Let me know what you find out. Thanks!
Hmm I realy don’t get it. I look at the page source and it all seems to be inside the div tags to me. This is what the post code looks like (the more tag is in there to keep the front age from being affected by this weird thing. It still does the same thing whether it’s there or not):
So while you were all having a good time on New Years Eve the good people of ALF in Oamaru were defending the earth from a Martian attack. Lucky for you they won.
Lucky for us, someone filmed it.
(Yes folks, this is what my friends did on NYE, jealous?)
oh crap it didn’t show you the code. If you want I can email it to you.
Try taking out the
<!--more-->tag and see if it works. You can always put an excerpt in the Optional Excerpt field in your WP Admin for the post so it looks fine on your home page.Let me know if that fixes it. If not, I’ll be in touch directly.
nah it doesn’t affect it at all. I think I found a glitch in the matrix…
Kakariki, I see that you have the layout fixed. But why is the video down so low? What was the glitch in the matrix?
Hmm not sure what you’re seeing, I haven’t got it fixed at all. Still have the sidebar slipping down to the bottom. I have no idea what the problem is. I’m searching the net for tips but any advice much appreciated.
Kakariki, I was looking at it in Safari again; forgot the problem is in Firefox. There’s definitely something weird going on with you post because the embed code comes after the closing
</div>for the wrapper. Have you edited the single.php template at all?Kakariki, the problem was with the embed code. A reminder for everyone: when you copy and past embed codes, be very careful. If you miss any of the tags, it can ruin the layout.
Is there any way you can post a quick tutorial on how to get smoothgallery going on futurosity eos. maybe even just provide the theme with it pre installed. I am fairly good at working with this stuff but i can’t seem to make it work.
Ian, I just don’t have time to make a tutorial on SmoothGallery. Besides, I’m not sure I like it that much. I’m looking for something better. But I’m emailing you my home.php file, which should help you figure it out.
Robert,
Great theme, but I seem to have a problem.
I just installed it and, to the best of my knowledge, followed every step (activated all four plugins and such). When I create a post, however, this is the format that it is published in:
Title Of Post
“Content of post blah blah blah.”
“Content of post blah blah blah.” (repeated from above)
Basically, the content of the post is repeated, or duplicated, and is essentially amended to the end of the post. Can you point me in the right direction? Where did I go wrong? Feel free to email me.
Thanks a bunch,
Mike
Mike, I would need to see your site. Post your URL and I’ll have a look.
I’m testing it on:
If you go to the post “Test post” you will see how the content is duplicated.
Mike, I can’t see any obvious reason why this should be happening. Have you edited or changed anything? Do you have any other plugins installed? Try disabling the plugins and activating them one at a time and see if that makes a difference.
I tried deactivating each plugin one at a time, which didn’t seem to do anything. I also checked to see if I had the newest version of each plugin (which I do - I actually ended up upgrading YARPP to 1.5.1).
I really don’t recall editing anything that would cause what’s happening, but I clearly broke something somewhere along the line. Any advice?
Mike, the most likely problem is that you’ve accidently mucked up single.php. If you’ve edited that, try downloading the theme again and replacing it with a clean version.
Robert,
I re-downloaded the theme and replaced the single.php file with the new one. No luck with that.
Then, I completely uninstalled futurosity_eos and the four plugins (deactivated and deleted). I went back and reinstalled the four plugins, activated them, reinstalled the theme, and activated it, but I’m still getting the same exact problem. It’s very strange.
I see you mentioning your theme working for WP 2.3.2, but I’m running 2.3.3. Could that be the problem? In any event, I’m thinking of completely uninstalling WP, deleting it’s databases, and starting again from scratch.
Mike, as long as you’re using 2.3.2 or higher, that shouldn’t be the problem.
Do you have the problem when all plugins are disabled? If not, the problem is with a plugin. Activate them one by one.
Do you have the problem if you use the default theme? If so, there’s a problem with your WordPress installation. If you can’t get the default theme to work, try the WordPress Forums. I don’t think the issue is with Eos.
Good luck!
This is driving me crazy!
I uninstalled WP and deleted the database for it. I then reinstalled it and uploaded the four plugins and Eos. Before activating the plugins and the new theme, I made a test post with the default theme, and everything was normal. When I activated the plugins and the Eos theme, however, the text duplication happened again.
I tried deactivating each plugin one at a time, while refreshing the test post page, but no dice. And when I switch back to the default WP theme (even with all four plugins activated), the text duplication is not evident.
Also, I am positive I did not edit any of the Eos files this time. In fact, I re-downloaded it from your site and used that just to be sure.
I’ll need access to your WP Admin to try to troubleshoot this. I’ve sent you an email.
Mike, you’re right!
Eos displays the excerpt at the top of each post, followed by the actual post. Because your test post consisted of only one line, the excerpt and the post were the same. The problem is that the excerpt is supposed to be styled differently, as it is on my site. But that wasn’t happening in the theme for some strange reason.
I’ve fixed the style.css file and it should work properly now. Thanks very much for bringing this to my attention!
A very amazing design you have here. I love the grid layout, black and white spaces and all around look. I would love to use this, just have to find a place to use it! :) haha
Thanks, Dude!
Hey, as everyone says great theme. But what confuses me is on this site, the featured page is a static page, how do you set that? as it “features” the newest post. On that note, who would I put the most recent post in the fresh column like here aswell?
Cheers
Sam, I’m not sure what you’re asking. The “featured” page in the theme is the home page, home.php. It will automatically display the most recent post as the featured post. On my site, I’m using SmoothGallery and the “featured” section is hand coded into home.php. If you don’t want the featured post to change, just hand code it.
Ah I see, how stupid of me. Seems im also too stupid to figure out how to code smoothgallery in too.
Like a few other people I can’t quite figure out the SmoothGallery feature. I never was a JavaScript virtuoso. Any chance I can sneak a peek at your home.php? Once I figure out how to setup SmoothGallery I can write up a quick tutorial for everyone else.
By the way all of your themes are top notch. Keep up the great work.
Okay, I’ve added instructions for using SmoothGallery to this post (see above). Let me know if you run into any problems.
ahh! thanks rob, I wasn’t too far off, but I don’t think id of been able to figure it. Great support, makes a nice change
Sam, you’re welcome!
The SmoothGallery was far simpler than I thought. I was trying to make it way more complex than it needed to be. I actually feel guilty asking for the help. Where’s the link to your Amazon wish list? I think I owe you at least a CD.
Rob, no need to feel guilty. And no need to get me anything from Amazon, unless you’re just feeling particularly generous. :)
Hard work should always be recognized and rewarded. Enjoy the book, it was the last copy Amazon had (so they claim).
Thanks very much, Rob! You made my day!
Very nice theme. Good job!
very nice. I like the futurosity series. magazine was a great start. keep it up, the web gets prettier if you do.
Hi Robert,
We love your work. Everything has been working great, but we’ve heard back from some readers that in IE6 the header link is way down at the bottom, instead of up top like in IE7 / Firefox / Safari. Is there a fix for this, or any insight you can provide?
BTW, we liked your Vero theme so much, we through together a new site just to use it.
Cheers,
e&f
Thanks, glassbox. Your site looks great!
I think the problem on your site is because the pictures in your post are too wide, which is breaking the layout. In IE7, the style sheet prevents them from displaying at full size, but that CSS doesn’t work in IE6. Try resizing your images, or hope that your users will upgrade. Not many people are using IE6 anymore.
Such a simple answer ;o) Thanks, we really like all your themes.
If you’d like to check it out, guywords.com is the other site we threw together to use your Vero theme. Still under construction, but we love the feature/fresh ability.
Hey, glassbox, guywords.com looks interesting.
I was having some serious problems with K2 after updating to the latest version of wordpress 2.5 and RC5 of K2 theme so I found your theme and like the style, but I’m having problems getting the archive widget to show -in that its not showing at all.
@pylorns: The archives are hidden in styles.css. Open styles.css and find this line:
Delete
,#archivesso the line looks like this:Awesome! Thanks, keep up the good work!
Hi Rob
Its a great template and i have been editing it, but i do have the same problem as mike had and it posts it twice. Im trying to solve the problem but i thought it might be easier to ask you as you have dealt with it before.
Thanks
Tom
ah sorry rob it was me being stupid, ignore that last comment, its a great theme anyway! thanks!
i switched to smooth gallery following youe instruction then decided to switch back to just plain featured. Now, when i add a post i am getting an error saying it cant modify header, and the featured area is just using the newest post!!!!!!!!! driving me nuts i even did a straigt copy and paste from the old header.php and home.php no change. i know how annoying this but if you could help that would be rad.
ian, I couldn’t even begin to help you without seeing your site and I don’t really have time to troubleshoot things that aren’t a problem with the theme itself. Best suggestion: If you haven’t made too many other changes, start over with a fresh install of the theme and start over.
Hi, I’m using this theme on my test site to see if it works for my needs. I noticed there is no page navigation to view previous entries from the main home page. However, there is page navigation in the archives.
Is there a way to use navigation from the main page? I tried the standard wordpress code and it just shows the main page posts for each page. Any ideas?
Mark, if you want to have page navigation on the home page, open home.php and find this
</div><!-- #content -->Add this code just before the above:
Hi Robert,
I tried what you suggested and the navigation simply does not show up at all. Is there a bit of code that could be causing it to hide?
Mark, you’re right. Open style.css and find this:
Remove
.home #nav-belowand things should work.Wow, I hate to keep bothering you. I apologize for that. Your advice did work: the navigation now shows up but when clicked it simply shows the latests posts again. Any suggestions?
Update!
I solved my problem with this bit of code in my query_posts function:
Oops:
Glad you worked it out, Mark!
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