sugardeath

More Site Work

Messed with the CSS and templates so as to get the sidebar to always display.  It annoyed me how it disappeared, especially when it seemed as if it was needed most.  'Twas actually REALLY easy to do so.  I love the way WP1.5 handles themes!  Every aspect or piece of the theme is contained in a separate php file.  Each file is then called through a series of php commands.  This makes each theme easily magageable and containable.  If something is wrong, you now know exactly where to look.  Well, if you know what's wrong, that is, otherwise you can easily find what's wrong by going through the template files.  I had something similar to this back when I used to use MovableType.  Basically, I took the code that displayed the posts and put it in it's own template file.  I did the same with the sidebar.  That was the extent of my system, however.  This system is MUCH better!  Everything from the header to the post data to the comments to the sidebar to the archive template to the main template, and even the search form! are contained within these template files.  Sure, this means the theme contains many files, but wouldn't you rather have more, smaller files than one huge-ass file for the entire site?  I would. 

That's enough to make one wet one's pants.  But they went a step further.  Instead of just dividing up the files into easily manageable, bitesize bits, they've also added a whole new system for choosing themes!  With WP1.2, I had to backup my index.php and all the other files associated with the theme.  I then had to put my new theme up in it's place.  Hardly a friendly system.  Now, with WP1.5, I just drop the files into wp-content/themes/%themename%, add a few lines to the styles.css so that WP sees it as a valid theme, and I'm set!  I go into the WP-Admin control panel, click on 'Presentation' and choose the theme I want.  It's SO much nicer!  I plan to make use of this new system QUITE a bit!  Hopefully I can finally make a new theme for this site without too much hassle.  I've already got quite a few themes in there: Neuron (one I downloaded, pretty nice), Sato - Blue (this one), Sato -Gray (same as this one, gray instead of blue), Slate (old-school Sato theme!), WordPress Classic (default theme for WP pre1.5), WordPress Default (default WP1.5 theme, based on the Kubrick theme.  The demo site is actually running WP1.2).