Ahimsa for WordPress: Version 2.0

Ahren Code

Bits of software inspired by little Ahren and Tanish

October 28th, 2008 by ravi

Below is the download link for version 2.0 of the Ahimsa theme for WordPress.

Ahimsa for WordPress
Version 2.0

As indicated by the major version number change, there are a lot of new features in this release:

Admin preference panel for setting customising various settings
Collapsible sidebar:
- Sidebar now present on pages and posts also, but collapsed.
- Sidebar visible on main/home page but collapsible.
- Tab on side of main section can be used to hide/unhide sidebar.
- Sidebars collapse with neat fade effect on non-IE browsers.
Authors section in sidebar can now be disabled if so desired.
Custom copyright text shown at bottom of page.
Credits (back to my site) are no longer always visible at bottom.
Login/logout and RSS links now moved to the top.
Smaller font size for the page, post and comment text.
More XHTML compatibility.
Category and Tag bubbles more subtle on main page:
- Option to fade them unless hovered over, to minimise distraction.
- More subtle rendering of tags and categories without bubbles.
Support for a “Links” section at the top of the main/home page, using
the Delicious for WordPress plugin (plugin has to be present).
More consistent styling (e.g: Next/Previous page links at bottom.
Removed the white border around main section.
More attempts at decent IE rendering. Still no curved borders, but
post titles now render similar to Firefox/Safari/Chrome. A lot of
such IE specific fixes.
Dulled down the rather bright bluish colour of quoted text.
Even for long blog titles, space between title and vertical bar
in header is preserved.
Lots of other subtle fixes and changes.

A word of caution: some of these changes might be reversed in a later release. I am ambivalent about:

Replacing the clean green line separating the bubbles for categories
and tags with a fading grey box. The green line might return!
Reducing the font size of entry text. I have to see how this renders
across browsers, fonts and screen resolutions.
Top fixed section for login/logout and RSS links might undergo more,
including perhaps moving to the left edge of the page.

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25 Responses

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Mike Boas writes:
October 31st, 2008 at 12:40 pm

I love the latest version of your Ahisma theme! I’m working to implement it on my “Almost A Movie” website.

One thing I’d like to change, however, is the squiggly “S” that appears before every item in the sidebar. I thought I could eliminate this by deleting the multiple § text in my sidebar.php, but that didn’t do it.

Can you offer any advice?

Thanks,
Mike
ravi writes:
October 31st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Mike, thanks for the positive comments. What you did — editing sidebar.php — is not enough any more with the new widgetised sidebar in WordPress. Along with editing sidebar.php you should also edit Theme Functions (functions.php) and edit the following section right at the top:
```
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
    register_sidebar(array(
        ....
        'before_title' => '<legend> § ',
    ));
```
And remove the § that follows the “legend” tag.

I will make this a configurable option in the next version of the theme.
Chiara writes:
November 1st, 2008 at 5:01 am

I like your theme very, very much. I never seen it before the 2.0 version but I pick it immediatly for my blog.
I would ask you for an help if it’s possibile: I would put the list of my pages at the bottom of the header red bar in a horizontal position to save space on the sidebar.
you can see on my website my clumsy attempt.
Can you help me?

thanks,
Chiara
ravi writes:
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:13 pm

Chiara, that’s pretty good that you managed to get it that far. The unfortunate news is that there is no easy way in my theme to achieve what you want. The only option is to do what you did: edit header.php and make the appropriate calls to get the list of pages.

I will note your idea as a possible feature for the next version…
Hendrik de Goede writes:
November 12th, 2008 at 5:34 am

As you already noticed, I used the Ahimsa theme on the website for my kids. I have a few suggestions for the next update though.

1) The same as the first comment here, the squiggly “S”. But that’s going to be configurable already, great.
2) The sidebar hiding is optional, however, the option only works for blog listings. I changed the page and item php files to use this setting as well to make the sidebar visible on them by default. Maybe you could include options for these kind of pages as well.
3) I prefer to have the tags always shown on the blog listings, and to have categories and tags shown on single entry pages. I had to modify the theme (a bit) to get this done. Could this also be an option in the next version?
4) When tags or categories are shown, I would like the arrow besides the ‘buttons’ to change direction (pointing upwards instead of down).

Again, thanks for the great theme.
damien writes:
December 16th, 2008 at 7:58 pm

Hello,

I use your theme on my website and find it great.

I have read the different posts and your response and I’m interrested with one of your future evolution :

“Reducing the font size of entry text. I have to see how this renders across browsers, fonts and screen resolutions.”

Do you have an idea of the date of your future release with this evolution :-)

Regards,
Damien
damien writes:
December 16th, 2008 at 8:00 pm

One precision to my precedent question :

Is it possible to have also a smaller font in the widget box ?

regards
Damien
ravi writes:
December 17th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Damien,

I already lowered the font size (one smaller) for version 2.0. I will make it a configurable option per large block in the next version. If you get a second, can you file a bug at:

http://ahrencode.16bugs.com/

under Ahimsa for WordPress? Thank you.
Pat writes:
January 4th, 2009 at 8:03 pm

Hi, I’m new to WP and love your theme! Question: is it my browser/computer? or when you scroll the page it sore of “fuzzy” Not sure if I make sense.. is just hard to scroll and read at the same time. Is this theme, memory, related? I’m on FF3 both pc and Mac
Nakke writes:
January 12th, 2009 at 7:48 pm

Hi. I love Ahimsha theme. Really nice looking.

Is there a bug on 2.0? The internet explorer wont show round corners!? Working fine on FF and Safari.

And second if you install Viper’s Video Quicktags and make the video appear in center it will jump on midle of the page from the space where it should be. This only when you go on comments. Its ok in fronpage.

Is there a way to adjust the width of the page.. Its a litle too wide for video blog.

Keep on the good work :) Is it posible to donait some money via paypal to keep you going?
ravi writes:
January 13th, 2009 at 1:06 am

Nakke,

I am sorry to disappoint you but it is indeed true that the rounded corners will not work on IE. That’s because IE does not support any form of the CSS3 “border-radius” attribute. Without that, I will have to do tricks with rounded corner images (or even crazier tricks with tables) to get rounded corners working across browsers, and I am not up to that. I realise IE owns 75% or so of the browser market, but hacky tricks using images and tables are too off-putting for me.

Can you point me to an example of the problem you face with Viper’s Video Quicktags?

The width of the page is not fixed but based on the size of the sidebar and the content. On a typical blog which does not have wide images in posts, the index page should render in 700 pixels or less. Can you point me to your page so I can see how it looks?

Thank you for your offer to donate. That is very kind and generous of you. I am not looking for donations, but be assured that I plan to continue to work on and support this theme.
ravi writes:
January 13th, 2009 at 1:25 am

Pat, the issue you report does not occur for me. Can you point me to your page? I am doubtful the theme is the cause, but I do have some JavaScript in the theme that fades small sections in and out and it is possible, though unlikely, that they are misbehaving…
Nakke writes:
January 13th, 2009 at 3:05 am

OK. Uuh too bad IE is peace of …. and still 70% or + use it.

Can i but the url of my page on your e-mail? What is the addres?
- ravi writes:
  March 24th, 2009 at 11:32 am
  
  You can reach me at code [at symbol] ahren [dot] org.
Anonymous writes:
January 13th, 2009 at 5:14 pm

Thanks Ravi, I don’t have it install anywhere, it was just my observation from looking at it in your site. I must however that in fact it may be my computer…. it scrolls fine in my Apple but by PC (XP) get’s a little fuzy when you scroll up/down. Appreciate your respond.
Crystal writes:
January 25th, 2009 at 10:27 pm

Is it possible to completely disable the option to hide the sidebar?
- ravi writes:
  February 11th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
  
  Crystal, do you mean you don’t want your viewer to be able to click on the little “SIDEBAR” tab to hide/unhide the sidebar?
  - MAN vs. GEORGE DESIGN writes:
    March 27th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
    
    Hello, Ravi – Wonderful theme! I have the same question as Crystal (I think). I would like for the sidebar content to display at all times, and I would like to hide the tab that says “SIDEBAR”. So, basically, have the sidebar on by default, and disable the ability for the user to hide it. Does that make sense?
    
    Thanks in advance for any help you can provide…
    Ryan
    - ravi writes:
      March 30th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
      
      Ryan, its possible to display the Sidebar at all times by chosing the right options in Ahimsa 2.1 or later. Removing the “SIDEBAR” tab will require you to hack the code. Contact me (code [at] ahren [dot] org) if you want details.
Devin writes:
March 24th, 2009 at 1:05 am

Hello,

I have another question for you – on our blog, comments show up fine with your theme, but there is no “edit” link for administrators to edit or delete comments by each comment. (other themes have this) Also, there is a small orange box in the bottom right side of each comment – is that supposed to be something?

Thanks
- ravi writes:
  March 24th, 2009 at 11:14 am
  
  Devin, I will have to look through the WP docs on the relevant API calls, but yes, my theme does not support edit/delete of comments in-place, right now. You will have to go the admin panel to do that. If you wish, you can add this as a feature request (http://ahrencode.16bugs.com) for the next release. The empty orange box should really say “reply”. If you give me your blog URL I can check it out and see why its empty.
Leo writes:
August 31st, 2009 at 5:43 am

Hey! Is it possible to collapse subpages? If I create a tree type pages, is it possible to keep the subpages hidden until visitor clicks on main category, then subpages will show up?
- packetofthree writes:
  November 28th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
  
  Hi Ravi
  
  This theme is just great! I’d love the ability to collapse the nested pages in the sidebar – if you can let us know how to do this it would be fabulous!
  - ravi writes:
    December 2nd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
    
    Hello, thank you for your comment on my theme. Do you want to be able to dynamically expand and collapse the pages list? Or just have it always collapsed so it displays only the top level? The former would be difficult (and should really be supported by WP core code and not the theme) but is available via plugins (example: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/collapsing-pages/), but the latter can be achieved easily if you are willing to hack the theme code, in particular the stylesheet, and add at the end:
    .page_item UL { display: none !important; }
Leo writes:
August 31st, 2009 at 5:46 am

…or second option, that if I create new page, it would not show up in Pages menu but if I create a link to it, it opens in main frame. If I create a hidden page, then visitors can’t see it.

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