/images/header_2.jpg "Cutline Theme for WordPress")
It seems like there’s always something out there to fix, something to improve upon, and as a result, I bring you Cutline version 1.03. While it’s not quite as significant an upgrade as version 1.02, version 1.03 does contain a couple of major additions as well as a few cosmetic and under-the-hood changes.
All in all, this is yet another big step for the theme, and just like last time, I’ve gone ahead and compiled a list of the individual changes and the affected files. Oh, except this time, I was a little less reverent and a little more funny 
Version 1.03 Changelog
Numbers one, two, and three in the list below can all be considered major upgrades. One and two were highly requested by users, and number three makes for a great addition to any blog. So, without further ado, here are the changes in Cutline version 1.03:
- 1. Link categories now supported in the sidebar
- Although I was hesitant to do it because the auto-generated code is so poor (my opinion), I went ahead and included link categories in the
sidebar.phpfile. Now, all of your links will be separated and nicely categorized, just like those you see in the sidebar on this site. - 2. Larger font in the sidebar
- Lots and lots of people had complained, both here and on WordPress.com, about their inability to read some of the sidebar items on certain monitors. The primary gripe was that the text was too small, and that was actually something that I specifically set out to avoid when I created the theme. Apparently I didn’t do a good enough job on the first go-round, so now I’ve made the sidebar fonts a bit larger.
- 3. Support for the Subscribe to Comments plugin
- While this plugin actually works quite well out of the box, a tiny bit of styling is necessary to make it mesh perfectly with Cutline. Two lines of CSS later, you’ve got a perfect implementation of a comment subscription option.
- 4. All (and I do mean all) vertical spacing has been converted into ems instead of pixels
-
Paragraphs, margins, padding, text sizes, you name it — they’re all consistently sized in ems now, so that the entire site scales seamlessly whenever text is resized. This should have been done in the first place, but I figure it’s better late than never, eh?
Actually, it scaled nicely before, but whitespace was defined in pixels, not ems, and as a result, the whitespace appeared to shrink whenever text was resized. Since I lose sleep at night over things like this, I bit the bullet and changed all vertical pixel references into ems. Take that, neuroticism!
- 5. Line heights in the posts have been changed from 1.7em to
1.6em1.65em - Maybe it’s because I’ve been looking at the theme for so long, or maybe it’s because I’ve been reading too many books on typography…but the bottom line is that I felt as though the line height in the content area was just a tiny bit too large. So, I dropped the height a twentieth of an em, and the difference, although subtle, pleases me greatly. Y tu?
- 6. Vertical spacing after titles in definition lists
- Many of you may not even be aware of what a definition list is, but either way, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that I’ve allowed for more vertical spacing after
<dt>items. Now, definition lists are cleaner and more legible than ever before! In fact, this entire changelog is one big definition list. Looks good, no? - 7. Unnecessary XHTML removed from
comments.php - I found some lame code lying around inside the
comments.phpfile, so I got out my nuker and, well, nuked it. - 8. (Some) unnecessary CSS removed from
style.css - Ummm, yeah. Same story as number 7 above. Used the nuker.
Only three core theme files have changed for this release — comments.php, sidebar.php, and style.css.
Upgrade Instructions
If you haven’t made any changes to your theme files, then you have nothing to worry about. Just overwrite them all and have a good day.
If you’ve changed your header images, don’t overwrite the images folder within the Cutline directory! Don’t do it! Stop already!
If you’ve made changes to your style.css file, you’re kind of up a creek here. A lot has changed in various places, so I think it’s probably best if you just try and move your major changes over to this new CSS file.
Very soon, I’ll be releasing a special CSS file that you can use to handle personal changes to the theme. This way, whenever there’s an upgrade, your changes will go unaffected.
If you’ve got the moxie, you can go ahead and do this on your own by creating a new CSS file — say, my_styles.css — and then including a second stylesheet reference in header.php. You’d need to add this reference inside the <head> tags, and it would look something like this:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/my_styles.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
Got it?
Now go forth, and be more functional than you were one version ago.
Does anyone know how to enable “Posted by” with a bit of a bio, at the end of each post. To see what I mean, see http://www.coachamatic.com. This is great when you have more that one person writing content or posts.
Phil.
Hi Chris, I have created a three column version and uploaded it at themes.wordpress.net (with proper attribution of course). You can see it here
I hope that’s ok with you
I really like cutline! Particularly the random banners…
However, as Josh has posted above, widgets in the side bar are broken with upgrade to Wordpress 2.1. This leaves an ugly mess of links on the right hand side of my blog. Are there any plans to get this fixed?
Thanks in advance.
Hello,
How can I get my web site Slogan to appear underneath my web site title?
Thanks for your support.
Hello,
My –more– is not working on my 1rst page; needed to add Keep reading to bring forward the readers. What is happening?
Read http://yvondurelle.com/index.php?paged=4 bottom/last page article with Keep reading in order to read the +20 pages.
Thanks for your support.
Robert.
To Robert,
Here is what I did:
It is a change in header.php
Just below the line with the div id=”masthead” php bloginfo( ‘url’ ) and php bloginfo( ‘name’ )
I put in a new line:
with a div class “entry” and na h4 with the coding php bloginfo( ‘description’ )
You can see the effect on my blog.
Sorry I can’t post the full code for you to cute and paste, won’t work here.
so nice, cute, clean… and can be easily editable and personalized..
We are very happy with our new web theme.. thanks a lot!!!
The above codes is all I need to get the Slogan in the top header?
Thanks for your patience.
Robert,
If you look around this test site, you’ll notice a few subtle changes. Among those changes is a tagline in the header, which is exactly what you’re after here.
All of these updated elements will be available in version 1.1 of the theme, which I plan on releasing this week. Although there are still more changes I intend to make, I may offer a pre-release version of the theme later this evening so folks like yourself can take advantage right away.
Chris,
Your the best, but I already voted for You at http://2007.bloggies.com/
So I love to see what you will bring us Now !!
P.s. Yes I voted for http://www.copyblogger.com as well.
Hello,
I have an old 3 column version of the template and I’m wondering if there is a way to make the new template into a 3 column one?
Thanks!
Chris-
I use cutline on my WordPress blog and I love it. We just installed the cutline theme on a new MUWP blog that we are setting up. The theme works, but we do not get the tabs for “Extras,” “Custom Image Header,” “Sidebar Widgets,” and “Edit CSS” on our dashboard. Can you please tell me how to get those to appear?
Thanks,
-Steve
Hent din version! // Feb 24, 2007 at 7:34 am
[...] … benytter du tidlgere versioner af WordPress som fx. ver. 2.0.7 kan du hente Cutline ver. 1.0.3 fra forfatterens hjemmeside. [...]
Chris, I tried to download 1.3but the file says 1.1 is this right?
Jeff — The file you need is located here.
Every time upload and go to themes it says style sheet missing.
First, great theme, makes our site look nice and clean. Thanks so much for your efforts.
Second, I can’t figure out how to get the links manager to behave in the sidebar. I have two categories of links, yet I can’t get them to do anything other than appear as one big list. Is there some way to adjust the code so that I can create a title for each link category and have the links list under the correct category?
Thanks,
Stu
GNMParents
Hi Chris and everyone else. First, thanks for the beautiful theme. I’m looking to make some improvements to my blog, which my brother set up for me, but don’t have the time to learn how, even with the free tutorials etc. etc. In particular, I want to have a list of categories in a side panel, want to understand how to allow people to register so they can get new posts with specific category tags emailed to them (because lawyers won’t set up RSS feed readers), I want to instal custom images in substitution for Chris’s, I want to promote old content most effectively from the home page, and I want to be able to edit a post by clicking on something on the homepage rather than having to go through the dashboard to get to the edit screen. I know this isn’t the blogging spirit, but I’m somewhat web illiterate, and am willing to pay for someone’s expert help. I’m sure there are 10,000 other little tricks which would make my blogging more effective and efficient. On the other hand, I don’t have an income right now, so my expectations are relatively modest. I’m afraid I just don’t know what the going rates are, or how many enthusiastic amateurs are out there who might want to give me a hand.
Hi.
I’m new to blogging and have just installed the Cutline theme which is great.
However, I put in two or three test posts and on the front page it’s displaying all the text in the posts, not just a snippit with the ‘Keep reading..’ link (which is what I want).
How do I change it to just display a snippit with the Keep reading link for each post on the front page?
Thanks.
Cool Theme!
Hey Chris! We use the cutline theme on our site and we love it. I am trying to change the color of the page background and right sidebar while leaving the main content column white. Any tips on how I might go about doing this? Thanks!