As a result of three Digg homepage appearances over a period of a few weeks bringing my blog to it’s knees I decided to make a few changes. In addition to acquiring a new server and finding someone to optimize the heck out of it for me, I also decided to re-vamp my Wordpress theme.
I’m probably a little pickier than most, but I was looking for the following list of features in the new theme:
- Speed – Along with the rapid growth of traffic on this blog I noticed a decline in page responsiveness. That is not something I want to subject hundreds of thousands of people to monthly. But most of the themes I came across suffer from “PHP bloat”, or the author’s feeling that more is always better.
- Accessibility – being one of the founders of HTMLHelp.com, it’s important to practice what I preach. So themes need to be accessible by any Web browser, on any operating system at any screen resolution – including screen readers for the visually impaired. This is currently very, very hard to find.
- Search Friendly – Although almost every theme claims to be “Search engine friendly”, I found that many could use quite a bit of improvement.
- Extensible – Webmasters have different tastes, so themes need to be flexible. Unfortunately the majority are poorly documented, use illogical naming schemes for CLASSes and IDs, and generally make it hard to modify them.
After having no luck finding an appropriate theme out of the hundreds that are publicly available I decided to just build it myself. The theme is currently in use here on One Man’s Blog, and I’m now making it available to anyone that would like to use it.
Rapid Access Menu
Rapid Access is a three-column, fluid width theme. This means that it resizes automatically to fit various resolution monitors. If you change the size of your browser window you can see how the theme fluidly adjusts. It will look best in resolutions over about 700 pixels wide (>99% of my visitors), but is usable even on smaller screens.
Rapid Access has been tested and works with Wordpress 1.5.x – 2.3.x branches. If anyone has other versions and would like to test it I’d be happy to add your results.
Fast
- Rapid Access was designed so that the left (content) column loads first. This means that scripts and plugins within the sidebars won’t slow down content rendering even if they are coming from another site which is typically slow (i.e. – MyBlogLog). Other templates which load the sidebar(s) first delay the entire page rendering until sidebar content is downloaded.
- All PHP files have been streamlined and unnecessary calls to the database have been eliminated. The faster a PHP page can be executed, the faster the Web page loads.
- Rapid Access avoids the often found (and dreaded) “themetoolkit.php” page which is known to tremendously increase the load on the server. Webmasters should be wary of themes which allow a high degree of customization within the control panel because these themes will not survive heavy traffic such as a DIGGing, or Slashdotting. (Trust me… I’ve proven this three times now.)
- The RA Stylesheet is under 10KB. Considering that the stylesheet is loaded for virtually every page load, this dramatically speeds up rendering compared to most theme’s 15-30kb.
Accessible
- Unlike fixed-width themes, the fluid width of Rapid Access accommodates more browser resolutions and makes better use of screen real estate at the same time. It is always better for readers, and Jakob Nielsen agrees with me in his Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines where number 2 states “Use a liquid layout that lets users adjust the homepage size”.
- The theme contains valid XHTML and CSS. This enables a wider range of Web browsers to access the site without issues.
- This theme includes a basic Aural Stylesheet. These enable people with Visual impairments easier access to the site.
- Sites running Rapid Access are (at least initially) Section 508 compliant and pass the Cynthia accessibility test. The ADA requires organizations to avoid discrimination on the basis of disability when providing services. (More info: ICDRI.org)
- This site (obviously running Rapid Access) achieved a “95″ in the SiteScore accessibility test the first and only time I checked it.
- Please note, although the framework for a Blog based on Rapid Access is accessible you must take care to ensure your individual blog entries and all of the plugins you use are also accessible. Here is the HTMLHelp.com guide on Accessibility to help out.
Search Friendly
If you’re interested in improving Search Engine rankings I wrote an article a while back on the topic which you may find helpful. I advise you to pay particular attention to the section on Content.
- Rapid Access’ left column, containing the main content of the blog, loads first putting the content for search engines to parse at the very beginning. This helps them to better index the site, which in turn results in more search engine traffic.
- You may notice that the Page title comes before the Blog name in the title bar. This seems to assist some search engines with relevance ranking, and makes reader bookmarking more meaningful.
- Accessibility is also an important factor with search engines, and of course we’ve already covered that.
Extensible
- The theme supports Wordpress Widgets. My favorite site to find them is the Web Log Tools Collection. Please keep in mind that some Widets are not professionally created and may cause your site to stop validating.
- Each page of PHP and CSS within Rapid Access contains notes regarding various functions.
- Whenever possible I used logical naming for styles and functions to make it easier to find and make changes.
- Logical “human readable” classes were used for style sheet definitions.
- Stylesheet definitions are ordered logically as they appear from top of the page to bottom.
Attention to Detail
- I believe this is the only theme for Wordpress which does not include an active link to the homepage, on the homepage; another of Jakob Nielsen’s Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines.
- Unlike most Wordpress themes which make a mess of printing, Rapid Access includes a Print Stylesheet that renders printouts that closely resemble the screen version.
- The stylesheet includes definitions for manual insertion of text or image asides, as well as left or right floating pullquotes.
- Style has been included for right or left Pullquotes. See a real example here.
- Style has been included for right or left floating ad units. You can use either text or image ads and they will have a border around them. See a real example here.
- I spent a great deal of time trimming down the code. This includes removing unnecessary spaces, punctuation, tabs, line breaks, etc. All of this work amounts to only a few KBs saved per page, but when you add them all up it amounts to a signifigant savings in bandwidth and time. Especially for high traffic blogs, or users on slow connections.
In the case of built in plugin support, I always use the “function_exists()” check to first checks if the plugin is installed. If the end user does not wish to use the plugin it should not break page rendering.
Got a plugin you’d like to see supported that won’t mess up the theme? Use the contact form to send a suggestion.
Version History
- July 7, 2007 v.13 – Changes to Style Sheets which fix IE6 rendering issue with blockquotes and add new styles for footer column support. Changes to Footer.php to allow 3 footer columns to be inserted. I recommend all users at least update stylesheet.css and print.css
- May 7, 2007 v.12 – Changes to index.php and single.php to fix a date stamp bug. (Thanks to Roy Kaldung!)
- May 1, 2007 v.11 – Minimal changes to header.php to better handle IE7 RSS requests.
- Initial Release v.1
- Download, unzip and upload the Rapid Access Theme to your “/wp-content/themes/” directory.
- Download and install any of your desired plugins.
- In the Wordpress Admin area, activate the Rapid Access theme under the Presentation menu.
- Configure your desired Widgets in the Presentation | Sidebar Widgets menu.
- Enjoy your fast, accessible new theme!
Optional:
- Upload your own “Favicon.jpg” to the Rapid Access theme folder to customize your site’s bookmark icon. (Here are a few ideas.)
- In the “header.php” file update the content in the following lines with info related to your site:
<meta name=”Author” content=”" />
<meta name=”Description” content=”" />
<meta name=”Keywords” content=”" />
Sites Using the Rapid Access Theme
If you have a site running Rapid Access and would like to submit it for inclusion please drop a comment below or use the contact form.
Additional Stylesheets for Rapid Access
If you develop an alternative style for Rapid Access please let me know and, if it’s good enough, I’ll list it here.
Please note, no PHP modifications are allowed, but additional graphics may be included along with style.css, print.css and aural.css sheets. Zip them and provide a link for inclusion.
I’d love to see hundreds of different CSS based designs for this theme. Also, if you have suggestions for changes to the underlying PHP (including necessary classes or ids) please work with me on those so that I can update the theme for everyone’s benefit.
- Your stylesheet listed here!
The Rapid Access theme is distributed under my new Nice Person License as Postcardware. Please use it, modify it, build commercial Web sites around it, and make the Web a faster, more accessible place. Here is what you could do for me in return:
- If you could either leave the attribution link in the footer in place or link back to any article on One Man’s Blog I sure would appreciate it!
- If you discover ways to improve the speed, accessibility or features of this theme, please let me know.
- Do you have some experience with HTML, CSS, PHP, etc.? Please join our community at HTMLHelp.com and share your knowledge with those in need.
- If not, do something nice for someone you don’t know today.
- Finally, if you really like it, drop me an old fashioned post card in the mail! That would be completely awesome! You can send them to:
John Pozadzides
PO Box 2591
Frisco, TX 75034
USA
If I get enough of them I’ll put together a post with the really interesting ones.
As always, comments and suggestions are encouraged. My future development and support of this theme will be directly proportional to the amount of enthusiasm it appears to garner from the community.
Enjoy!
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Am giving it a whirl now. Not overly keen on the link:visited colour, but that’s easily fixed. I like it.
Peter,
To be honest I’m not too crazy about that color either, and in fact I think that the entire color scheme could be improved upon immensely. If you come up with a better stylesheet and want to share it please let me know and I’ll list it. Also, let me know if you find any other glitches or anything.
John
[...] Rapid Access is a 3 column, fluid width and widget ready theme. [...]
[...] Aproveitei e fiz uma mudança radical no tema deste blog; como está escrito lá no final da página, estou utilizando o Rapid Access, um tema bem interessante e rápido. Ainda falta algum amadurecimento do tema, particularmente em termos de emoticons, mas acho que o custo/benefÃcio do tema é bem interessante. E carrega sem grandes estresses no Nokia 770 [...]
Using it now. A real fast theme without being spartan, wow!
Cesar,
Thanks for the compliment. :-) It does look good on your site.
I do notice that we have a small problem with your site rendering in IE6 and a little bit in FF2 as well. This is because your drop down links are wider than the 200px fixed sidebar width in the first sidebar, so let’s try to see if we can fix that.
You need to edit the stylesheet.css document to change two lines. First find the following line:
.Sidebar {float:right; position:relative; width:420px; padding:20px 0 4px 0; margin-left:-420px}and change it to:
.Sidebar {float:right; position:relative; width:470px; padding:20px 0 4px 0; margin-left:-470px}Then find the following line:
.Sidebar .SidebarLeft {float: left; width: 200px; clear:right}and change it to:
.Sidebar .SidebarLeft {float: left; width: 250px; clear:right}This should make your left sidebar about 25% wider and I’m just guessing that might be a good width. Let me know after you’ve made the change and we’ll see if that doesn’t fix your problem.
Of course, the other option is to simply make sure that the items in your sidebar are around 190px wide or less. If you decide to change the stylesheet instead of the items in your sidebar you’ll need to remember to make the same change again later if you download new versions of the theme here.
John
Rapid Access Theme…
John Pozadzides of One Man’s Blog has made available a clean and robust theme named Rapid Access.
So far, I like it. Loads a little bit faster than my previous theme, Web 2.0 which also boasted a fluid design and no decorative images.
It’s …
[...] Rapid Access es un tema de 3 columnas, ancho fluido y listo para widget. [...]
[...] Rapid Access es un tema a 3 columnas, de ancho fluido y listo para widgets. [...]
Hm… your suggestion overlapped the main content with the left sidebar:
http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/1869/overlapzj4.jpg
A little manipulation of the widgets made the trick. Lost the organization logic, but c’est la vie.
A feedback: a reader of mine made a private remark that liked the theme, but he missed the number of comments for each post on the main page.
Cesar,
Oops. Sorry, I forgot one other change necessary for the stylesheet:
Change:
.ContentArea {float:left; margin:0px 420px 0px 0px; padding-top:20px}to
.ContentArea {float:left; margin:0px 470px 0px 0px; padding-top:20px}That is what caused the content to overlap. If you make all three of those changes together it should work now. :-)
The other problem I’m now seeing is your entire sidebar floats down at the bottom of the page instead of being at the top right. This time I think it’s because your recently listened to music list is a 255px wide image. That extra 55px seems to be breaking the sidebar.
If you make the change to the stylesheet this may resolve it’s self (and you can re-order your sidebar the way you wanted it), if you’re going to keep it “stock” you’ll need to either remove that particular plugin or somehow reconfigure it to be no more than 200px wide (190 would probably be better).
Hope that helps! And I’m glad to hear that one of your readers gave some positive feedback.
John
The Man,
your suggestion did the trick. Awesome! Thanks!
Oooops… I forgot to ask another thing:
I saw in the posts that there is a line like “Digg This! • Save to del.icio.us (2 saves) • Stumble It! • Submit to Reddit • Add to Technorati! • Technorati: 3 links to this item • 11 comments on this item”. Is that a plugin? Or a modification of the theme?
Thanks a lot!
Cesar,
Two things. First, although your sidebar looks much better now we have a different problem! :-) It’s still pushing down to the bottom of the page in IE6, this time I think it’s because the DVD code link in the sidebar is not wrapping. So, we’re going to try one more thing…
Find this line in the stylesheet:
.Sidebar {float:right; position:relative; width:420px; padding:20px 0 4px 0; margin-left:-420px}And change it to:
.Sidebar {float:right; overflow:hidden; position:relative; width:420px; padding:20px 0 4px 0; margin-left:-420px}The addition of “overflow:hidden” should prevent further breakage of the sidebar. If you put something too wide in there you should only see the portion that fits. I’m going to make this particular change to the stylesheet for everyone.
Now, the line that says Digg This!, etc. is actually a free script you can get from Feedburner. What you need to do is go over there and sign up for a free account, register your blog, and then set up the FeedFlare. It will let you choose which things you want to display on your blog and then generate the script.
After you’ve got your script you need to edit two files. index.php and single.php. You’ll see a comment line I included which says something like “Paste your FEEDBURNER.COM FeedFlare here”. Delete that entire line and put your script line in there, then save it and upload it.
FeedFlares take about 30 minutes or so to start working, so after you’ve made the change you’ll see a little blank area there for a while. Check back in about an hour and you’ll have your flares working! :-)
John
John,
thanks for the FeedFlare tip! :)
I made the changes to the theme, hope it finally looks good on IE 6.
[...] Imagino que quem não tem IE 6 não tenha notado, mas o tema deste blog ainda continua meio em fluxo; o próprio John Pozdazides tem me dado muitas dicas de melhorias no layout. E, atendendo a um pedido do Danilo Cesar, agora tem o número de comentários do post, mais os tradicionais adicione-a-um-bando-de-redes-sociais; mais um serviço do Feedburner(*), o FeedFlare, fez a mágica; e, graças a uns scripts do Urubatan, agora você pode adicionar posts deste blog ao Rec6, Linkk e EuCurti. [...]
Cesar, Success! It looks like that finally fixed all the issues, and your FeedFlare is looking great!
John
Can’t open file. This is error message:
! C:\Documents and Settings\George\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\8TCQJS2B\rapid-access-v.12[1].zip: Unexpected end of archive
I’m not sure why you’re getting that error. I’m able to download and unzip it without any issue. Sometimes downloads can get corrupted and you might need to download them again. I’m guessing you already tried that, but you may also need to clear your cache before trying again.
Just in case though, I uploaded another copy here. Let me know if you are still unable to get it unzipped.
John
[...] Another change is that this three column theme has the postings on the left side with two columns to the right of that. I have not been a fan of this theme style before because I tend to think that having two narrow columns together doesn’t look nice. But I changed my mind when I saw this one. Highly recommended! Go to onemansblog.com/2007/04/30/free-wordpress-theme-rapid-access/ to download it if you are interested. [...]
Nice theme and appears to be working fine in Wordpress 1.5xx on bodmas.org.
I did add a simple if/else loop to the ‘postcontent’ DIV in Main Page so that pages that are not home or single show just the_excerpt() instead of the whole post, I prefer this and I use the CQS plug in to list all the excerpts of a post category in one page.
I also dumped the calendar and moved my external links list to the far right column, but that is personal preference.
How do I put the search box back in?
Keith,
Thanks for the report on WP 1.5, though it appears that you encountered some sort of issue as you reported on your blog problems with display in IE below 1280 resolution? I have tested it with IE 6&7 extensively and have found it works in all resolutions, though below 700px it will wrap the sidebars down to the bottom. Could you tell me what you noticed when you reported this error?
As far as the calendar and links, etc. it sounds like you are not using the Widgets plugin, which of course is fine, but I am using it along with the Google search embedded in a text widget. You could easily add it directly to a fixed sidebar, but may I suggest that you give the Widgets a try as they’ll make your life a lot easier when it comes to making changes to your sidebars.
John
MS IE problems related to wide preformatted text, my changes to the margin settings and changes to padding to get the background colours in the right and left side bar columns so there was no gap between them. Your site looks fine in MS IE 6 except for the bottom scroll bar.
Cheers
[...] I don’t like the word “branding” but am using it anyway to describe a little doodle image I recently created to “brand” this site. You might notice it in the address bar of your web browser. What do you think? Now if I could figure out a way to include it in the header of the current theme (Rapid Access) I’m using… [...]
[...] What, then, is the appeal of this hideous theme? It’s fast, fluid-width, accessible even to screen readers, and search engine friendly. When you have a great foundation, it’s worth taking the time to remodel. So this weekend I’ll be doing some redecorating around here, but in the meantime, all the functionality is back. And if you’re a Wordpress user interested in the theme, you can learn more here. Fast, clean code by a bona-fide accessibility expert. If you can manage some CSS editing, than this is the theme for you. [...]
Great theme – thank you so much for making it available.
Just as a note to those of you that have subscribed to comments on this post, I’ve updated the theme and recommend that you at least update the Stylesheet.css file (unless of course you’ve highly customized yours already :-).
Hello!
Thanks for your theme! I have made my first post, but the comments area is not showing up. What am I missing or need to do?
Thanks,
Denise
Denise,
I really like the way you updated the colors! The green looks really nice (much better than the original :-)).
Anyway, your comments area does not show up on the home page, only when you click on the specific page to read the article. So, if you select the title of the article it takes you to the full page for that article and there you will see the comments area at the bottom.
On the home page you will see a continuously updated listing of your most recent posts. If you want to have it look like mine where there are just a couple of paragraphs on that page followed by a “read more” link, you just need to use the MORE button when you are writing the article. In the graphical editor it looks like a little horizontal line separating two white pages. That tells Wordpress where to cut it off on the front page, but it does not affect the individual article page at all. Give it a try! ;-)
Honestly this is one of the reasons that I don’t post the entire article to the home page. In addition to cluttering things up there, it may leave readers wondering how they can comment.
I also recommend that you use the Other Posts from Cat plugin and it will show up below your post so readers can see related articles they may wish to read after they finish one post.
OK, that makes sense. Less clutter.
Thanks for your help!
I appreciate your attention to accessibility!
Denise
Hi John, terrific Theme. It loads very fast on an iPhone which is great for some of the things I do.
Dumb question but will ask anyway. How do I change out the header image? What are the best dimensions for the image? Thanks for creating a terrific theme…John
John,
That is a really good question!
The theme doesn’t actually come with an image in the header, but I recently stuck my picture up there for the heck of it. I’m using a 100px X 100 px image, and I put it in the “header.php” file. My recommendation is that you stick to images no taller than 100px, and probably not much wider than 300-400px.
It’s quite simple to do, just open the header.php file in a text editor and look for this line:
<div align="left" class="Header"><!-- This begins the common page Header -->Then insert the following line immediately afterwards:
<img src="/JohnPsmall.jpg" align="right" alt="John P." height="100" width="100" />Just make sure that you change the image location (/JohnPsmall.jpg) to whatever image you want to use, and modify the height and width attributes as well as the alt text description.
If you’ve done it correctly you should see your image floating over on the right side of the page just where mine is. Let me know if you run into any problems or need more help.
John
John, thanks for quick response. Your code did the trick…John
How do I get my image into the header.php file? I can go to my dashboard-presentation-theme editor-header. I can insert the code for the .jpg file. My problem is, I don’t know where or how to place the .jpg file to begin with.
Steve,
As far as where to place your image… you can upload it to your server anywhere. But for the sake of simplicity I would suggest that your upload it (using FTP) into your root directory where you loaded WordPress. After you’ve uploaded your image you can then use something like the following code to insert the image into your PHP file:
<img src="/steve.jpg" align="right" alt="Steve S." height="100" width="100" />If that doesn’t answer your question I’ll need a little more information about where your blog is being hosted: Did you install WordPress yourself? Who is your Web hosting provider? Do you know how to use FTP?
Let me know how it works out!
John
Thank you John, that’s what I needed. I host at Bluehost and I FTP’d it.
Liked your template so much, that I dumped my old one, and swtiched… I like it, I like it! :)
-Chuck
Chuck,
That is awesome. I’m glad you like it! Now, let me give you a couple of tips about things I’ve found most effective when using this theme:
First, my WP Admin Bar Reloaded plugin will make your life so much better. Give it a try. Trust me!
Next, I’m guessing the ads you’ve currently got on the site are somewhat ineffective. I recommend you remove all of those and try something completely different!
Let me know if you need any help or run into any problems with the use of the theme.
John
The Ads do work, I’m making money on them…. :) I dumped Blog Ads last night… They changed thier code and it don’t like Wordpress! :mad: :cry:
If I could change anything on the theme it would be this. A rounded quote Bubble on quoted text would be nice. and Maybe the colors. I’d like a Little more Blue in my Blog. As it is my favorite color.
Also, the Ability to have a picture on the top left would be nice too. :)
I’m still kinda working importing everything over from blogger.
Drop me an e-mail sometime… tpblogeditor@gmail.com
-Chuck
I do recommend for your read this program for writing to thier Wordpress Blogs from remote.
They just released Beta 3, and it’s awesome…
-Chuck
[...] link: Free Wordpress Theme: Rapid Access – One Man’s Blog [...]
[...] Free Wordpress Theme: Rapid Access [...]
John, thanks for sharing your theme. I’ve downloaded it for study, when I get some more time.
I’m a big fan of 3-column themes, because (a) I don’t like wasted screen real estate, and (b) I’ve discovered that a wider main column is harder to read. (I tried that on my son’s blog, and he complained!)
I had documented my last experiences on installing and customizing Wordpress on your own domain, where I settled on the Relaxation 3-column theme as a reasonable choice for friends. It’s widget friendly and comes with a lot of different photo and colour alternatives. (I’m not good at picking colours, and defer to real artists!)
For myself, though, on my personal photoblog and professional blog, I modified the Radical Congruency 2005 theme. It’s working fine, except that when I moved the main column from the centre to the left, it occasionally causes issues with submarining of middle (i.e. left sidebar) column. After many hours of staring at the CSS, I’ve left the bug in, to be fixed at a later date. (I should also upgrade to widgets, then, too).
Here’s my question, stripping away most of the CSS content: how did you originally set up the basic 3-column structure when you built up the theme? Did you use use something like Piefecta? Or did you just write from scratch?
I’m not a CSS newbie, but clearly, I’m in over my head. Thanks.
David,
First of all, I enjoyed your blogs. They look nice, and I know they represent a LOT of work and effort. Thanks for sharing all of your experiences.
On to your question, I am pretty old fashioned… I just coded this theme from scratch. I built it to suit my own needs and desires, and although I know it’s not much to look at, I was much more interested in speed and accessibility than appearances.
The way I look at it, my content provides plenty of pictures and other things like that to spice up the pages, so I’m more interested in having a nice framework to showcase my posts than something that competes with them.
Having said that, I am 100% sure that my CSS could be reworked to generate a much more attractive site by a real designer, and it has been my hope that a few would do that so we could end up with some different choices from a visual perspective, while still retaining the PHP discipline of this underlying framework.
My theme was designed from the start with the main content area on the left, and I did see random instances where the sidebar would push to the bottom of the page. The answer in my case was to add
overflow:hidden;to the sidebar CSS.Anyway, feel free to mess with this theme as much as you want, and if you have questions just ask and I’ll offer whatever assistance I can.
Take care,
John
Hi John,
have you tested the theme with Wordpress 2.3?
Cesar,
Yes, I’ve got it running on 3 different blogs successfully with 2.3 so far, so it should be just fine. I’ll also update the post to reflect that.
Take care,
John
Hey John,
I’ve also got it on two blogs with WP 2.3 –
Hippie Spelunker – “H2″
and
Lisa Marie Mary
I’m just getting going with these blogs, I know I have a lot of work to do, I haven’t even finished implementing all of your recommendations yet.
But I am really enjoying this theme and more importantly, all of your great advice that goes along with it! :D Thank you very much!
Hi!
I was wondering if it were possible to add buttons next to the about button, like feed, home, etc.
thanks!
[...] Meine Entscheidung für WordPress führt zurzeit zu einem etwas schlichten Erscheinungsbild dieser Seiten, da ich auf Basis des Rapid Access Themes ein barrierefreies eigenes Theme erstelle [...]
[...] I said in a previous entry, the WordPress theme that I use is Rapid Access – built from the ground up for speed, ease of use, and no [...]
Seems like a great site, and i intend to use it as a new theme for my site at http://gadgetsandsuch.com. tested you site at testiphone.com, but found that it generated a secondary scroll bar. This something I’m trying to eleminate from any theme that I use.
Have you tested this theme or any mobile device to see if it is rendered without generating an horizontal scrollbar?
Planner,
The only time I’ve seen a secondary scroll bar is when someone puts something in the sidebar that is wider than the 200px limit. In those cases the simple fix is to adjust the width of the containers within the sidebar. If you are seeing it under different conditions please send over a link and I’ll take a look at it and see if it can be fixed.
I access my site on my Windows based cell phone routinely. It works in single column mode, condensed mode, and full “desktop” mode with horizontal scroll bars. So again, if you’re having problems just send me over the link and we’ll see if we can’t get you fixed up.
Take care,
John
hii!..
Thank you very much for this project..
Your work allows other people to create masterpieces in NetSpace
Many thanks!
One awesome theme right out of the box. Great functionality. Really solid. I uploaded it to my website and instantly thought “bingo”, this was right along the lines of what I was searching for.
I haven’t yet fiddled with the styles or colours yet, I’ve been to impressed with this theme after so many disappointing ones floating around the internet.
Out of curiosity… you mentioned you were going to have alternative stylesheets uploaded here, I couldn’t spot any floating around, did I miss them somewhere?
Thanks for having posted this awesome theme.
Patmanpato,
You know, I don’t have any additional stylesheets uploaded yet! I need to get on that. I am planning on having a contest with real cash prizes to incent people to create stylesheets for this theme, but I have made a few minor changes to my version of it that have not yet been updated.
I’ll try to get my changes uploaded to the site sometime in the next week or so and launch a contest after that. Nothing would make me happier than to see some really nice skin wrapped around the theme. :-)
John
Love the theme! I’ve got it on Life on the Road and my other site Adventures in Trucking. Life on the Road I changed the most, Adventures only the top banner is changed. Adventures is my “test” site for Life on the Road.
My question is – Do you use anything to update the footer or is it done by hand? I ask because the Popularity plug in doesn’t seem to update because of the Super Cache, but I still like to highlight popular posts.
Three of the sites you have listed as using your theme, aren’t using your theme anymore.
Love your wpadmin plug in too!
Wayne,
Thanks for the pointer about those other sites… I’ve removed them and added yours instead. And I must say – yours look fantastic! Much better than mine! :-) Oh, and your podcasts kick ass too! I really like the way you’ve got the music fading in there.
John
Oh, and I almost forgot… I update the footer area manually, but you can use plugins in there just as easily.
If you are using Super Cache it will update, just less often. However often you have it set to refresh the cache in the back end is how often the footer will update. Of course, for visitors that leave comments or who are logged into your site they will bypass the supercache altogether.
Hope that helps!
John
Your sites look great Wayne.
I’m going to try to fiddle with the CSS when I get home this weekend for some fun. But honestly, the layout and functionality of this theme has impressed me enough to have not bothered fiddling yet! :D
Thanks. I’ve been through several themes. I even paid for a custom on my other trucking blog (that’s redirected to Life…). but he did more of what he wanted and if I wanted something different, it was a big deal. I like simple and functional in most things.
I’ve moved to the “more stuff above the fold” line of thought and this works great. My wife wanted our picture back on the site, so I had to learn how to do that. And I changed the colors on my other site and put back the banner they had before back up there.
My Adventures site was featured in Wall St. Journal Online and got hammered. So if it happens again, I’ll be ready!
John’s been great for answering questions, between him and htmlhelp.com, I’m really learning a lot about this stuff.
Hi there,
The CSS for this theme has been quite a pleasure to work with. Most other themes CSS is mangled up beyond repair, but in this theme everything has been right where I’d expected it. Quality!
I’ve just begun fiddling with the CSS for my own site, but one thing I’m having difficulty locating, is how to remove the border around the entire page. Ie. the border outside the gray border that you see on your blog. Removing the gray border was a piece of cake, but what I want is basically to have the header and footer extend right to the end of the page, both top and bottom, and left to right.
Thanks heaps for any help!
Ps… Not sure if my modifications will look even 1/2 as great as the original, but it’s fun to experiment!
Patmanpato,
If I’m understanding exactly what you are talking about – and I’m assuming you are talking about the fact that outside of the greyish border around the whole page is a small white border, I believe that is caused by the fact that the background for then entire blog is set to white. This is set in the following CSS:
body {background:#fff; font-family:'Arial', 'Verdana'; color:#40454b; font-size:.8em; border:solid 8px #CCCCCC}Now, if you change the “#fff” to another color I believe you’ll see that white border disappear, but it might also make the background of the entire page change too. So play with it and let me know if that was what you were looking for or not.
Take care,
John
that line of code seems to affect the colour of the background (which affects the colour of that white border) , and the last part affects the grey border. So I can change the colour of this white border, but the problem is I’m trying to eliminate it altogether. It seems like it’s some kind of padding around everything, but I cant figure out where it is.
My aim is to have the header flush with the top and sides and no border around it, similarly have the footer flush with the bottom etc.
A quick look at my page might make things clearer. My css file is here if it helps.
Thanks heaps. :)
Hey I got your theme crankin on my site now at UnfitMan
I did a few minor modifications to make it even more minimal (I think). It’s probably not to most peoples tastes I guess (not sure if its worth making an example of :P ).
It’s the first time I’ve ever really started a blog. I was getting too hung up with fiddling with the layout and all that, so for now I guess I’ll just focus on putting some content up and iron out the tid-bits later on.
So for me, your theme has been a blessing. Thanks Mate! All the way from the down under ;)
cheers,
Patmanpato
I’m wondering if I could please get your input on something. Out of the clear blue sky I started having serious CPU overload problems, with the result that my weblog would disappear for minutes at a time. I hadn’t made any big changes or added any plugins, but I did everything I could think of: I talked to my hosting provider (hostican) who suggested that I block bots that might be bombarding the site, which I then did. No change. I followed all the suggestions I could find on the forums and in various wp blogs, turned off plugins, made sure supercache was working, reduced the number of posts on the front page, and I changed themes. First to something else, and then as soon as I found your rapid access, I switched to that. In the midst of making simple template changes (taking out comments so I’d have three columns in the footer, for example) I got locked out again.
Once I got back in, I checked the bottom of the page and here’s what it told me: generated with 23 queries, in 1.333 seconds. Comparing that to the bottom of this weblog (85 queries, 0.435 seconds) I’m wondering what the heck could be going on. My hosting provider isn’t open to the idea that it might be a server configuration problem, but these numbers seem to indicate that might be the case. But then this isn’t my strong suite, so I thought you might be able to give me some ideas.
Thanks for whatever help you provide.
I’m no expert either, but I would check the server stats. From your control panel go to stats and see if there’s anything that justifies the slow response.
I’m looking at your site now and the numbers look about the same as my personal site about 86 in 1.0 My business site shows 293 in 0.383, I’m pretty sure that’s on it’s own or it’s extremely well managed. (I don’t pay the server bill).
Yours is showing 29 in 1.3, unless you see some anomaly in the stats I would say it’s something in the server. Your problem earlier could have been caused by another site on your same server, but the hosting company is never going to admit that.
Hope that helps.
Thanks so much for that quick and helpful response. At least now I have concrete numbers to use when I go back to the hosting company.
One more thing: I have this sense that the problem will be with the hosting provider, and they won’t be much help. Can I ask you (Wayne, or anyone else with info) who you use to host your weblog? I fear a move may be in the offing.
go to my site (click on my name here on the comment) and find the email link on the right and I’ll be glad to discuss it with you.
Wayne – feel free to share your hosting info here. I don’t mind. :-)
Rosina – I recently joined Layered Technologies as Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Sales. We have a low end offering called a Virtual Private Server which would be very good for hosting your domain(s) if you are experienced enough to use a control panel like Plesk. Check out the specials page at http://layeredtechnologies.com for a great deal we have for the next few days.
If you need something much cheaper I would recommend one of the cheap shared hosting plans at http://1and1.com.
John
I tend to ramble a little so an email was probably better. In a nutshell, I have bluehost.com on my personal blog and only one problem when I had a bunch of traffic. I was going to move and tried to research this question a few months ago and found I wasn’t doing so bad compared to some of the stories out there.
I was looking at my host for the blog I edit for which is midphase.com but don’t have any experience with their support, but haven’t had any problems either.
And it’s more of a – you get what you pay for on some of these hosting plans. But most of us don’t have the traffic (yet) to justify a major plan.
Yeah, I can understand that. A lot of folks only need the $5-10 per month hosting plans, which is fine. But there comes a time when some folks get 4-5 of these little sites going and end up paying more to have them all running on separate sites then they would to step up to something like a dedicated VPS which can host as many sites as you like on it with no additional cost.
It usually takes a little bit of a learning curve to make the move, but no one that I know who has moved to VPS or dedicated servers would go back to shared hosting. :-)
John
John — thanks for the suggestions. I’m sorting things through. If you’d like to see another stab at a style sheet for your very elegant theme, please have a look at my weblog. Also, when next you get around to fiddling with the theme, it would be great to have an alternate page template, one that has no sidebars at all, just one column with wide margins. For chunks of text to be read without distraction. I know there’s a way to do this but I never manage to pull it off without messing up crucial bits.
thanks again
John or anyone who knows the main index template well — could you possibly look at my source file? Suddenly the sidebars are sliding to the bottom of the page, which usually means there’s a stray div, or a missing div, but I can’t see it for the life of me.
Any help much appreciated.
I may be speaking totally out of turn here but I had a little bug a couple days ago. I simply re-loaded this theme by FTP into my theme folder at my host provider. It asked me if I wanted to replace existing file? I clicked yes. It reloaded just fine. When I viewed my site, everything was ok. I didn’t lose any content. That worked for me.
It was a missing div, I finally found it.
[...] the footer, there it was in plain english…a Wordpress theme. Rapid Access. I went to the theme page and discovered that the owner of this blog, John Pozadzides, was in fact the designer of this [...]
I use blogger but i am well aware of the abilities of a wordpress template.A blogger template lack such fast loading abilities.But i also prefer to use wordpress themes converted to blogger.
Great new color, John! I really like it, it livens up the place in a smart, manly kind of way! :)
I’d still like to figure out how to keep that bottom frame on my header border, and I’ve realized a way I can show you what I’m talking about, since my silly explanations don’t make a whole lot of sense. -Unless you were sitting here right next to me! ha! Lisa points excitedly at the screen, “Right there, John, right there! That line, that one!”
Hahahaha!
I never seen that you released this style, I’ll check it out and see if I can use it on vBSetup
cheers
Hi John, I’ve downloaded and installed RA on a WP 2.2 install and once I activate the theme and view the site I get an error :
Parse error: parse error, unexpected $end in D:\wamp\www\wp\wp-content\themes\rapid-access\header.php on line 31
I’m sure it’s me being dumb, but this has stumped me! Any help would be appreciated.
Rods,
I’ve never heard this particular issue reported before. I know the theme works on 2.2+ so it makes me wonder if you might have a plugin that is somehow in contention with the theme. That would be unusual, but not impossible.
The strangest thing of all is that by my count line 31 would be the very last closing <DIV> in the file which really should not break any parsing. Did you by any chance modify the header.php file to add anything at all?
John
Hello everyone. I need a little help on this theme please. I was on a computer today that was running IE7. My theme wasn’t rendering properly. I’m on a Mac and I use Safari mostly. This theme loads perfectly. It seems to do well on IE6. On IE7, all of my text with widgets, plug-ins etc. on the right side of the page, runs beyond the border stripe. You have to use the scroll on the bottom of the page to see the entire page. John, I pulled up OneMansBlog to check it, and was rendering just fine. Is there some sort of update or can anyone offer suggestions please? Thanks.
Hey John, I was searching google for “free wordpress styles” and your blog came up #1
well, I guess it wasn’t free wordpress style, but it was something close… Just wanted to say good job on the ranking, I wish I could remember the exact phrase though :(
Hi John, I downloaded Rapid Access theme and I tried it on my localhost with wordpress2.5 but it doesnt work for me.
I tried it on firefox, IE7, Maxthon, but it shows nothing on the website, not even a word. I tested on other themes and I have no problem with them.
Any solution to detect this kind of error?
TSO,
It’s got to be some sort of problem on your end. Rapid Access is currently running perfectly on at least 20 blogs that I am aware of under 2.5. You might check and see if you have any rogue plugins interfering…
John
I deactivated all widgets and plugins but still got error. I will figure it out later.
Oh by the way, Maxthon browser couldn’t render the theme perfectly on home page, right side contents are out of boundary.
John, have you had any problems loading images after the 2.5 upgrade? When uploading an image from a local computer it starts “crunching”, but stops with an error.
I disabled all plugins and get the same error. The one site I’m not using your theme works fine. I haven’t had much time to really get into it because I work around it by uploading an image with ftp, then using the url when inserting into a post.
I was just curious if you had heard any other problems like that or had any ideas.
Wayne
I was scratching my head for a long time with this one too. Plus, my blog would not accept any pingbacks from other blogs.
For me, the problem was that in Settings > General > WordPress address I had capitalised some letters in the URL. When I put them all in lowercase it all started working.
Cool. :)
I have problems about uploading images. Any solution to this problem?
Apparently the uploading images in wp2.5 is affecting some hosts and not others. If you’re having a problem put this in your .htaccess it seems to fix it.
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI /wp-admin/async-upload.php$ MODSEC_ENABLE=Off
There’s also a fix in track, but that involves updating core files and I haven’t tried that. This one I know works.
Thanks for this. I’m only getting into blogging and learning all I can fast! :)
Cheers
Hi John, found your site from your presentation video at Dallas Wordcamp.
Just curious why you state that the CSS stylesheet will be downloaded with every page view? Surely the benefit of using an external stylesheet is that it will be cached locally.
Mandar,
Of course, you are correct that the CSS file can be cached locally. But it depends on the average number of page views that each of your visitors have. Most sites only average one or two per visit, so effectively this negates the cache effect.
John
Can I use this theme for the latest version of Wordpress? I love the simplicity of the layout. One of the best themes I’ve seen so far.
Yes, you certainly can! I’ve got one of my sites updated to 2.5 and it works great! Need to get that one and the rest up to 2.5.1 – I think the guys at WP just watch for me to update, then a day or so later, come out with another update. Yep, it’s a total conspiracy against Lisa, yep, that’s it!
(Ok, ok, I’m only kidding. But yeah, the theme works kick a$$ on upgraded WP!) :P
Yes. It works great in 2.5.1 either.
It doesn’t work for me. :( Maybe i have made a mistake..
[...] Seriously, I am a little embarrassed that despite my technological (Web 2.0) interests over the years, in conjunction with my progressive political efforts, that I have not been more conscious about disability access until now. In order to remedy this, then, I will be working towards redesigning my website, both the blog and the vlog. I am therefore collecting URLs to code and design resources for making websites more accessible. Currently my focus is on WordPress themes, and here’s what I’ve found so far: Nice2All Rapid Access [...]
Hi,
don’t run with the 2.6.2 version.
Bye.
Not sure what you’re talking about. I, and many others, are using Rapid Access with 2.6.2 with no problems.
If there is a specific issue let me know and I can help you fix it.
John P.
Hi, John. tried to figure this out for several hours. I’m a newbie here that has installed rapid access theme. Love it. But I don’t have comments enabled. Did I not flip a switch or can you suggest a plug-in? I tried to find one myself, but instead found 47,000 plugins for modifying the comments that I can’t seem to turn on!
Thanks.
Chris
Chris,
Comments are a basic built-in feature of WordPress. Check the Settings | Discussion tab in your control panel and make sure that your default is set to allow comments on posts. You can also manually enable or disable comments when you are writing any post by selecting the options from the Comments & Pings section at the bottom of any post in your control panel.
Cheers,
John
Thanks for the speedy answer, John. I’m embarrassed b/c I just realized that I *do* have comments enabled! I didn’t notice that rapid access doesn’t show info on comments unless you click on the title of a post to go to that specific page.
Can I ask why you set it up that way? Don’t we want to encourage people to post? I just assumed that b/c I didn’t see anything about comments that no one could leave comments.
But I also notice that on some of your posts (but only some) it shows the number of comments, along with the social bookmarking links. Is that a plug-in?
I’ve subscribed to the site. Thanks again.
Hi John, I’m using a Localhost install of WP, and can’t activate Rapid-Access. Keep getting this error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in K:\wamp\www\blog\wp-content\themes\rapid-access\header.php on line 31
Line 31 is:
I’ve tried to figure this out but can’t. Can you help?
Thanks!
To add to above comment/question, I’m using WP 2.6.2, no plugins active, fresh install of Rapid-Access in /themes/rapid-access.
I saw someone asked about this error msg back in April.
I just installed rapid-access on WP 2.6.2, but I am getting a broken themes issue, which says the stylesheet is missing. Any ideas why this would be, and what needs to be done to correct this?
Thanks
Larry,
I’m not sure what you’re experiencing. I’ve been running this theme on all of the 2.6 versions without a problem. One thing you could try however, would be to go into the header.php file and change the line that is looking for the stylesheet to be an absolute link to the file on your server instead of a PHP link.
Perhaps you could also give me a link to the site that you’re trying it on?
John
John,
I couldn’t understand how to do what you suggested in your comment. But I tried to upload it one more time, and it loaded fine this time. So I’m not sure why after 6 or 7 times, it finally worked, but glad that I’m finally in!
thanks
Larry
John, I see the tags do not show on the blogs with your rapid access theme. I am including them with my blogs, as I write them as well and they’re not showing up either. So my question is, are the tags still helping out my SEO, when they’re not visably showing?
Thanks,
Larry
The theme is okay, but looks somewhat messy. And it has to be updated to wordpress v2.7
I like this theme. I will surely use it in some of my niche blogs.
“As a result of three Digg homepage appearances over a period of a few weeks bringing my blog to it’s knees I decided to make a few changes”
Well you could have just installed a caching plug-in to your blog to avoid this from happening again. Even if you’ve already changed your theme, the PHP calls from the theme codes will still put a strain on your server. With a cache plug-in, users will be served a static HTML
Hi John,
Just to let you know that I’ve started using your theme at The Dog’s Blog.
I’m using WordPress 2.7.1. The installation went without a hitch. I’m really impressed with how lightweight and accessible Rapid Access is.
Many thanks for the work you put into it!
Gary
Im using WordPress 2.7.1. The installation went without a hitch. Im really impressed with how lightweight and accessible Rapid Access is.
I like this theme. I will surely use it in some of my niche blogs.
thanks.
[...] you are using my Rapid Access theme, you don’t need to do anything other than install and activate the plugin. The theme already [...]
great theme! however, how do you get rid of the calender on the top right? can i remove it! it doesnt go well with my blog theme..
also, i actually like this site the way it is set up.!!
I am particularly interested in knowing how you have a photo in the header on top left and also the top right, how you have something going on up there as well. i am a little confused on the editing part so if you do not mind explaining a little.
Thank You,
Dave L.