I love it when business and pleasure coincide. I had to look into styling widgets today for an upcoming project, and decided to use my Paper Trail theme as test material. Turns out the markup of widgets gives you surprisingly (frustratingly) little to work with in terms of CSS. Still I managed to get the widgets to look like I wanted them to, thus completing the theme.
Paper Trail is a two column layout with fancy Flash post and blog titles.
- It requires Flash and Javascript (although it doesn’t break completely if these are missing). If your blog targets mobile users (for instance), this is not the theme for you.
- This is my first theme where I’ve paid any real attention to widget styling. Third party widgets may not look as intended. Chances are they will.
- Thanks to Geoff Stearns, the use of flash will not affect search engine ranking.
- The Flash titles contain complex algorithms that change things like line breaks and font size in order to best accommodate your post’s titles. Let me know if they act up. Using very long words in titles might render them unreadable.
- I’ll not be releasing the source code for the Flash movies. Mostly because I’m afraid you’ll laugh at me for my poor coding skills, but also because I fear you’ll ask me to explain how they work.
- Paper Trail was built for WordPress version 2.3, and will spend most if it’s time looking for missing things like tags on older versions (and not actually work).
- Because of limitations in the way Flash handles dynamic text the theme supports basic Latin characters only. Sorry about that.
If you want to give it a try, you can download it here.
great looking theme. i really love the simplicity. does the fact that he headers are in flash kill any of the SEO?
Comment by Malan — March 13, 2008 @ 6:02 pm
[...] Du grand art un peu gadget, je vous laisse en juger avec la démonstration de ma traduction. Pensez aussi à aller voir la démonstration sur le site de l’auteur Roy Tanck. [...]
Pingback by Thème WordPress Paper Trail avec des titres en flash | WordPress tuto — March 16, 2008 @ 2:35 pm
@Malan: No it doesn’t. The theme uses SWFObject to provide alternative content (regular titles in this case) to non-flash users.
Comment by Roy — March 17, 2008 @ 12:37 pm
Hi Roy..
I just landed on your site and thought Wow I like the looks of this, the colors etc, and the cealniness of it.. then when I saw your theme was available to use I thought Yeaa..soo, I just downloaded it to give it a whirl but when I activated it and go to view the site, theres nothing there, just Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage, page not found sort of thing..
Im running it on xamps local server at the moment, do you think that could be the prob? ie does it need to be hosted to an online server for the flash to work etc?.
Thanks again for creating and sharing this great theme
Martin
Comment by Martin — March 17, 2008 @ 6:01 pm
Hi Martin. I can think of no reason why it wouldn’t work on a local server. This isn’t one of those themes that use all sorts of custom code. All it needs is WP 2.3 or better.
As for Flash, even if the movies fail miserably you should still see the other content. Are you sure everything is “uploaded” correctly? The zip should contain 12 files and a ‘pics’ folder with a single image.
Comment by Roy — March 17, 2008 @ 7:14 pm
Hi Roy,
Thanks for your reply!. and yeah its really strange, I cant figure it out either I checked and all the files are there. I de-activated all the plugins too but its still the same.. soo, I’m going to try it on my test domain and see what happenes there. I’m using 2.3.3 I think. Anyway, I will report back..
M
Comment by Martin — March 17, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
Hi Roy..
Heres an update (sorta). to the chase…
I did have another go at it, and some other things, but Its really strange I got no idea why it just shows as page not found. I’ve tried on both my local server and my test domain and looked through the code etc.. but Im clueless. soo.
I am going to keep at it, so I will keep you posted.. Thanks again!.
Martin
Comment by Martin — March 20, 2008 @ 2:01 am
Man Roy. Another great theme! Love it. Thanks.
Comment by Adrian — March 27, 2008 @ 5:39 am
I’m Vietnamese. I don’t speak well english.
title post not work with vietnamese. Can you fix this problem ? I like this theme
Comment by wOw!bloggiNE — March 28, 2008 @ 9:51 am
[...] Paper Trail WordPress Theme [...]
Pingback by Paper Trail WordPress Theme • Griffin & Hoxie — March 28, 2008 @ 5:27 pm
Hi Roy,
It seems that i am having the same issues as what Martin has.
For me, it was really weird. I’ve installed the theme on my blog and activated it.
THan it was fine. all things worked and it was great.
Than, just now, I went back to check out my blog, and the design doesnt show at all.
I’ve tried to uninstall the theme and and reinstalling it. And it doesnt work.
Not sure what happened.
WHat i see on my screen is just the right side bar, all in text, with no design elements.
On top, i get this :
so.addVariable(”tagcloud”, “”); so.write(”tagcloudflash”); // ]]> –>
So… not sure what’s wrong with it.
Any suggestions?
Best Regards,
Eugene
Comment by Eugene — May 19, 2008 @ 2:06 pm
oh i forgot, i’m using wordpress 2.5
Cheers.
Comment by Eugene — May 19, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
Hi Eugene. It appears you’re also using my WP-Cumulus plugin, which is causing trouble for some users. I’m still trying to find out why this happens, but for now I’d recommend you to disable it. PLease let me know if this restores your blog.
Strange thing is that I’m also at 2.5(.1), with this theme and use WP-Cumulus without issues…
Comment by Roy — May 19, 2008 @ 2:15 pm
hi it’s me again.
I was trying to fix the problem which I and martin is facing.
What i ddi was to deactivated all the plugins, and presto it works!.
Than i reactivated the plugins, one by one, and realised that there is one
plugin that seem to be incompatible with PaperTrail plugin. This plugin is
All in one SEO box.
But i suppose that would not be a big issue for people who are using Wordpress 2.5 isnce
the features provided in All in One SEO Pack (tagging feature) is generally provided for in Wordpress
2.5
Hope this helps,
Cheers.
Comment by Eugene — May 19, 2008 @ 2:21 pm
Actually, I have the All In One SEO Pack plugin installed here as well…
Comment by Roy — May 19, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
I just found a major error in this theme, and have fixed it. Please download it again if you’re having any problems. Sorry about this.
Comment by Roy — May 20, 2008 @ 1:24 pm
Hey, really cool theme.
Any chance of releasing the flash source if I ask super duper nice??!
Just want to change the colors.
puh puh puh please….
Comment by Max — June 5, 2008 @ 5:29 pm
Hi Max. What would you like to change exactly?
Comment by Roy — June 6, 2008 @ 6:53 pm
Hi Roy,
very unique and nice theme but the sidebar drops down below the main content in IE6 (on a 1024px screen), on both your blog here and my test blog
Comment by Ata — July 8, 2008 @ 4:22 pm
Hi Ata. Are you using IE6? I’ve seen the effect you’re describing happen on older browsers. I’ll have to look into this, but unfortunately, I’m quite busy at the moment…
Comment by Roy — July 10, 2008 @ 2:19 pm
Hey,
Nice theme. I was just wondering whether a browser not supporting flash would throw in alternate text or just a blank? Like lets say a iPhone browsing this page. What would happen?
Comment by Rohitbalasub — July 12, 2008 @ 9:10 pm
Hi Rohitbalasub. It throws in alternate texts, but thos currently do not look very nice. If you’re targeting a mobile audience, this is not the theme for you.
Comment by Roy — July 13, 2008 @ 7:17 am
Do your headings support fixes for widows?
Comment by Pasquale — July 17, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
Hi Pasquale. I’m not quite sure what you mean…
Comment by Roy — July 17, 2008 @ 2:14 pm
http://shauninman.com/archive/2006/08/22/widont_wordpress_plugin
Comment by Pasquale — July 23, 2008 @ 12:17 pm
Hi Pasquale. Ah I see. No the titles don’t have a specific fix for widowed words, but the Flash movie does try to create lines of the same length, which could end up widowing all words or none.
Comment by Roy — July 23, 2008 @ 3:11 pm