Cornerstone Theme Update
Nov 23rd, 07 | 22 remarksSince the release of my Cornerstone theme earlier this week, I’ve received a lot of positive feedback, some really good suggestions for improvements, and even a few bug reports… so I wanted to post a quick update about what has changed.
First of all (and most importantly), Cornerstone now supports thumbnail functionality via Custom Fields - as it should’ve to begin with. I can’t believe I overlooked something so obvious! Thanks to Nick for pointing out that a magazine style theme just isn’t complete without a little eye candy. I think the results made a big difference, and really brought the theme to life.
Nick is running Adii’s recent Premium News theme, and has done a great job of modifying it to suit his blog’s niche. After taking stock of that, and looking more critically at a few big news sites, I realized this was an essential feature. (FYI, I’ll be writing up a tutorial on the official site about how to use Custom Fields with Cornerstone as soon as I can get to it.)
Second, I’ve added a lot of comment documentation to the code in the index file, hopefully making it a little easier for users to understand and customize their home pages. Thanks also goes out to Kevin and Don for pointing out a pagination issue and a couple IE6 display bugs. I’ll be working to resolve these for the next release, along with some enhancements to “out of the box” functionality. I’ll also more than likely add the thumbnail feature to the Latest Entry, as suggested by Conrad. I just haven’t got that far yet. :)
Finally, one thing I discovered in the journey is that there’s sooo much to learn and do and remember when launching a premium theme - at least for the first time. I say first because there will be more, oh yeah. :) I have a hard time sitting idle, and already my wheels are spinning for another theme. Ah but that’s a post for another day.
On that note, thanks to all of you who commented, stumbled, linked back or sent some buzz in Cornerstone’s direction! You are appreciated.
Aw, thanks for the link. I can’t wait to show you how the site is looking with your theme. I just got so many things to do, and so little time… -_-
On another note, why are all premium themes the same price ($99, $249)? When’s the price war gonna start? haha
If I had time I’d love to do my own theme from scratch, but unfortunately I haven’t got any spare time at all.
Oh, and by the way. I had problems with the Related Posts plugin that comes with the theme. It seems like the author’s page is offline, and the plugin doesn’t work with 2.3 or something like that. Also, for the plugin to work, you first need to run a script to create the database tables. Maybe this is something you should point out in a readme or something like that.
And the Popularity Contest plugin is an old version too. Nothing to worry about, but just in case.
Nov 23, 07 | 6:03 pmAh price wars, GOOD question. :) Honestly, I went back and forth several times on the price of Cornerstone before setting it at $99 just to stay competitive. If the market begins to saturate, or even if bloggers just become more savvy in creating their own themes, we may see everyone’s prices dropping!
I’m not sure what’s going on with Wasabi.com. It’s been down for a week now (that I know of), but I’m using the Reated Posts plugin on this site (which is running 2.3) and it’s working fine. Adding a readme file is a good idea though. I guess the disadvantage of bundling plugins with a theme is that they inevitably go out of date. I’ll probably try to avoid doing that with themes in the future.
Nov 23, 07 | 7:07 pmWell done with the update - the images makes the theme feel like a well-rounded package! :) Has business been going well?
Nov 24, 07 | 12:49 amNot as well as I had hoped, but I think my launch time was all wrong - what with Thanksgiving, then the shopping craze of “Black Friday”, not to mention being right on the heels of Nate’s theme.
Some of it could also be attributed to the lack of images at first, so it’ll be interesting to see if that makes a difference. I remain hopeful though, and certainly not complaining! :)
Nov 24, 07 | 1:06 amI gotta say I was really suprised to see the link coming from your site. I’m really glad I could help. So uhh, got a really weird question though, how much would it cost to just buy the footer code? Lol! I love that footer. I actually tried to kind of create my own off of yours but I failed miserably.
Nov 24, 07 | 1:34 amCharity,
Nov 24, 07 | 1:38 amHave you checked this in IE? I don’t know if it’s just my computer but nothing appears properly. That footer I love doesn’t appear properly, you’ll see what I mean. I checked it in Firefox, and it appear properly, and I have to tell you it looks amazing.
Nick, you are right, Cornerstone looks completely scrambled in IE6 (didn’t check on IE7). Working on a mac I assumed that was sorted out, but guess some homework needs to be done. Welcome to the “Damn IE club”. :)
Nov 24, 07 | 7:50 am@Nick - I believe in giving credit where it’s due. Perhaps we can make a deal on the footer once I get everything displaying properly again. :)
@All - I realized what was happening late last night after downloading a freestanding IE6 to test on. I don’t know what the problem is yet, but everything looked fine in IE7 prior to adding the thumbnails update yesterday. I’ll have to scrape through my code again. Ugh, setbacks! :( Hopefully it’s just a missing semi-colon or something because I’m heading out of town this morning and don’t want to let it sit! Anyway thanks for pointing this out.
Nov 24, 07 | 8:59 amWhew! It WAS something simple. :) I had left out a closing slash on a span element. Take another look Nick. All is well. :) Amazing how one little keystroke makes such a difference in IE. Firefox is so forgiving!
Nov 24, 07 | 9:11 amyea it looks great now
Nov 24, 07 | 2:54 pmHey Charity! Glad to see you’ve launched the theme - it looks great. :)
We need to talk about tutorial sites and CSS galleries - but I’ll drop you a mail on those during the week!
Nov 24, 07 | 9:02 pmHi again. I think I got another bug.
For example:
http://cornerstonetheme.com/random/where-credit-is-due/#comments
Once the page loads, it displays nothing. I think you forgot to add the #comments anchor tag in the template (haven’t checked yet).
Nov 25, 07 | 9:07 pmAlso, I reccomend the following plugin to avoid what just happend in my previous comment. :P
http://www.village-idiot.org/archives/2006/06/29/wp-chunk/
Nov 25, 07 | 9:11 pm@Paul - good to see you up and around again, and yes that conversation is long overdue. ;)
@Kevin - I tried a couple similar plugins once long ago but they ended up breaking other stuff. Haven’t heard of this one, but I’ll check it out. I think overflow:scroll would work too, though I haven’t tried it yet.
Nov 26, 07 | 9:38 amI’m still wondering around with the previous bug I found. I thought it was only on the #comments thing, but I see that if I load the page with an anchor tag in the URL, once loaded, it goes blank.
For example, I added an anchor tag to the footer, then opened a new tab a pasted http://psnow.es/#footer, once loaded, it goes white.
A bit wierd tbh, can’t imagine what it can be. :S
Dec 1, 07 | 8:59 pmI’m wondering about it too! I’ve never run across anything like that before. I haven’t had a chance yet, but I’ll be looking into it and working on a few other bugs this week. (I’ve just been swamped with client work.) I’ll let you know if I come up with anything Kevin.
Dec 2, 07 | 10:53 amHi,
I just installed the cornerstone theme. It all looks fine in Firefox but in IE 6.0, it looks all messy. Please advice by having a look at http://www.navatarangam.com/publish
Thanks
Dec 5, 07 | 5:45 amVenkat
Hi,
I tried fix it and I was fairly successful.I closed the span tags at three places and it looks ok in IE except for the search form which is still pushed to a new line.
Any ideas?
Regards
Dec 5, 07 | 8:32 amVenkat
http://www.navatarangam.com/publish
Cornerstone is really looking like a premium web site. It’s very good! Well done, Charity :)
Apr 6, 08 | 9:06 pmGreat stuff. Love the cornerstone design.
Jul 1, 08 | 12:29 pmGreat stuff. Thanks for the input on the new design.
Jul 1, 08 | 12:30 pmgreat designs, we might even use them for our blogs.
Jul 2, 08 | 7:25 am