Giraffe2 – Wonky edition

Four months into the new year and a total of 2 posts. Not so good. I was working on a new version of my Giraffe theme that would allow all the page elements to be dragged around the screen, but it was taking too long and I just didn’t have time to finish it. Instead, I cleaned up what I already had, made it WordPress 2.0 compatible, and dropped in a few new features. Now presenting Giraffe2 – the slightly wonky edition.

The design remains largely the same. There are a few cosmetic changes, such as cleaning up header fonts, but the majority of changes are to increase configurability. To summarize them all:

  • WordPress 2.0 only
  • Supports WordPress widgets
  • Options page now in the ‘Presentation’ section
  • Layout can be configured to contain from 1 to 3 columns, in different sizes
  • Dynamically generated CSS is separated from static CSS (so if you do customize the theme you won’t get annoyed when it starts over-writing all your code)
  • AJAX comments support
  • Footer content can be edited
  • Logo is fully configurable, with a live-update feature – upload your own logos and background, and change sizes and positions
  • Colour skins can now be plugged in
  • Top navigation menu is configurable

As before, the theme is fully localized and the existing localizations work, although they may not be complete.

Full details can be found on the Giraffe2 page.

5 comments

  1. omg no ! just where did i screw up when changing to giraffe2 ?

    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare _g() (previously declared in /www/htdocs/v154547/wp-content/themes/giraffe/giraffe_functions.php:118) in /www/htdocs/v154547/wp-content/themes/giraffe2/functions.php on line 197

    just copied giraffe2- folder into themes directory and activated is. no everything is fucked ? cant change back / cant get nowhere (i.e. admin area).

    could u pls help ?

  2. Damn, I forgot to add one very important point… you must disable the old Giraffe plugin before you enable the Giraffe2 theme. If you’ve already enabled the theme then just go to the plugins directory and delete the giraffe plugin. All will be well. Sorry!

  3. Hi,

    I love Giraffe2, but . . . I can’t get the sidebars to show! In Presentation / Layout I’ve set the page to 100% and both sidebars to 20%, but when I update and refresh, only the middle column shows, covering the full width of the screen. No sidebars. Sorry to be so clueless. Where have I gone wrong?

    Thanks,

    Eric

  4. John,
    Thank you so much for all your work. It was a real breakthrough for me in learning WordPress when I found your site. Your instructions for installing locally were invaluable. I used your tutorials, and bought your book in both versions. Am awaiting delivery of the hardcopy. I asked for regular shipping. We’ll see how long it takes (I live in Toronto.)

    Most of all, thanks for Giraffe2. I am now using it as the basis for the blog site I am designing (not yet on line). One suggestion. It was a great idea putting all the giraffe-specific styles in skin.css. However, it doesn’t show up in the WordPress Theme Editor, because it is not in the root directory of the theme. It took me a long time to find it, and a lot of wasted effort pouring over style.css and tweaking this and that and nothing working. It was your reply to falke’s question on May 9 (about changing the color of the header text) that tipped me off. “Aha!”, I thought.

    Fortunately, I use tsWebEdit most of the time, but if I had relied on the WordPress Theme Editor, I would never have found it at all. Is there any reason why skin.css can’t be in the giraffe2 root directory? (Alternatively, I suppose, a comment at the top of style.css directing the unsuspecting user.)

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