Duo tone Theme

  • Unknown's avatar
    matthewseanmclachlan · Member ·

    Hi, My name is Matt. My website is: http://matthewseanmclaughlin.com

    I am using the Duotone Theme and have some CSS modifications I would like to make. Currently the background is white, but there are gray boxes that appear. I would like them to also be white, with the font being gray (matching the task bar at top). I would also like to increase the size the image on the Home Page is displayed so that it touches the left and right side of the screen, the image is highly detailed, and can appreciated for the time that went into it at its current size.

    Ultimately my desire is to remove all extraneous text and colored gray blocks so that there is only the images and text I want seen for my artwork. If I could have the CSS code for these to test and preview before purchasing the Custom Design feature of $30 that would great.

    Thanks,
    Matt

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    justpi · Member ·

    Before answering your questions:
    Are you going to publish posts? If not, I don’t see why you selected Duotone.

  • Unknown's avatar
    matthewseanmclachlan · Member ·

    No I am not going to publish posts. Duo Tone was selected as the theme because it got me the closest to the final result I wanted (why I only have 2 questions instead of 15 questions) which is a clean white background with multiple pages to display my spectrum of work. If you have a theme that gets me closer to that desired finished look with less changes required, I am open to those suggestions. The fact that Duo offers the option for a post and I do not use that option does not bother me. I am only concerned in creating the final product i’ve outlined in this message.

    Thanks,
    Matt

  • Unknown's avatar
    justpi · Member ·

    You’re welcome.
    Duotone is a quirky theme, designed exclusively for photoblogging. The only reason why you would select it is if you’re interested in its unique features: one post per page, automatically changing bg color to each post. Check the demo:
    http://duotonedemo.wordpress.com/
    If you have no use for these features, you really should select a different theme. All themes support an unlimited number of static pages, several themes have “a clean white background”, and most of them can be turned to that once you have the upgrade.
    So I would strongly suggest you reconsider and browse the theme demos for a more ‘normal’ theme:
    http://theme.wordpress.com/

  • Unknown's avatar
    matthewseanmclachlan · Member ·

    okay, that’s great you think there is a theme (or several themes) that you would suggest do a better job for what I am going. Since, I thought I went through all of them and thought Duo was the best fit can you suggest one or even two, instead of just saying “no, no, no try again.” lol I did put a lot of thought into this, so telling me I’m wrong for picking the theme I chose isn’t really helping me get better acquainted with WordPress as it is simply criticizing what I thought was the best theme i could find.

    Thanks again,
    Matt

  • Unknown's avatar
    justpi · Member ·

    “Criticizing”? Unbelievable…

    a) To turn the grey bg to white and the text to grey, you’d add this: 

    #page {
background-color: #FFFFFF;
}
.description, h3#reply-title, #comments, #content #sidebar h2, h2, h2 a, h2 a:link, h2 a:visited, h2 a:active, h3, h3 a, h3 a:link, h3 a:visited, h3 a:active, h4, h4 a, h4 a:link, h4 a:visited, h4 a:active, h5, h5 a, h5 a:link, h5 a:visited, h5 a:active, h6, h6 a, h6 a:link, h6 a:visited, h6 a:active, #header h1, #header h1 a, #header h1 a:link, #header h1 a:visited, #header h1 a:active, #postmetadata, #commentform p, .commentlist li, #post, #postmetadata .sleeve, #post .sleeve, #content, a, a:link, a:visited, input {
color: #808080 !important;
}

    b) Turning the main image of the page to full width is impossible: Duotone constrains the main image of a post or a page to maximum 840px (if it’s landscape-shaped), and that’s PHP, not CSS, so you can’t change it. The only way around this would be to insert the image twice (because the rest of the images inserted into a Duotone page or post are different), hide the main image, turn the overall container and the page container to full width, then change the positioning of the top menu and the footer – after you decide whether you want these changes on the homepage only or on all pages.

    See now? Your two changes aren’t two changes anyway, and when an experienced user urges you to avoid using a quirky theme, i.e. a theme that isn’t as suitable as you think it is, that’s not called criticism, it’s called advice.

    Besides, when you buy the upgrade the idea is to customize the theme, not to remain as close to its out-of-the-box version as possible. If you only want a couple of changes then it’s simply not worth buying the upgrade (reminder: the fee is annual). For example, if you only wanted grey text against a white bg, here are some themes that do the job for free:
    AutoFocus, Imbalance 2, Spun, Typo, Twenty Twelve, Widely, Wu Wei.
    But you needn’t select one of these themes if you buy the upgrade, since the upgrade allows you to change all the colors as well as lots of other things (including removing whatever you don’t want on your page).

    On another issue: no user has a 8800px wide screen, so when you upload and insert a 8800px wide image you waste your storage space, you increase the loading time of your page, and you get worse quality on the page.

  • Unknown's avatar
    matthewseanmclachlan · Member ·

    Yes, this above, that you just gave, is advice. Thank you.

    Okay, so going with a “non-post” theme. I like the Spun version and the other pages look great now.

    I still want the homepage big. I don’t know what the size 8000 applies to, I just know I want that image to be a size that it only has a little white area on the left side and right of the image on the screen. When I manually blow up the page’s screen the image looks fantastic at this, retaining great resolution.

    *Also there’s a box in the corner of every page that returns the user to homepage, how do I remove this.

    Thanks,
    Matt

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    @matt
    As the justpi is the Volunteer who has the most information and the most personal experience with the themes and their characteristics it’s ridiculous to say he was just criticizing. In fact justpi he posts only facts and he posts only to help so please register that.

    Assuming you want a successful blog, then going with a no-posts on the site is one that requires full information re: the very different characteristics of posts and pages so you comprehend creating a page based structure will not result in high traffic or backlinks. Search spiders don’t have any focus on Pages and their content. Pages are for static content that rarely changes. If you want to achieve higher traffic and presumably have other bloggers backlink to your content, then without the shadow of any doubt, the way to go is with Posts not Pages. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/05/12/better-blogging-at-wordpress-com-pages-and-posts/

  • Unknown's avatar
    matthewseanmclachlan · Member ·

    @timethief I’m not going to be tag teamed on an issue that has resolved itself. register that. This site is not meant to change it is meant to be static and does not require traffic for the function I have for it.

  • Unknown's avatar
    thesacredpath · Member ·

    Hi Matt, with the Custom Design upgrade, the main page of your site can be specifically targeted and widened (along with the image) to whatever width you desire. The overall width of the page right now 1000px and the content is set at 700px in width.

    Go to Appearance > Customize, click on the “Custom Design tab at top right and click the “Try” button. Then click on the CSS tab, delete all the informational text and paste in the following to see what your home page would look like with a 1200px width.

    .home .site, .home #primary, .home .hentry {
width: 1200px !important;
}
  • Unknown's avatar
    matthewseanmclachlan · Member ·

    The sacred path you are awesome! This totally worked :)

    A couple of follow up questions:

    1. I feel like the homepage’s image is off center, the image being to the right, can I center it with CSS code?

    2. For the homepage I would like to remove the page title name, “Home” so that the image is closer to the top menu. Can this be removed and the graphic brought closer to the top menu?

    Thanks again for all your help!
    Matt

  • Unknown's avatar
    designsimply · Member ·

    I checked http://matthewseanmclaughlin.com/ and it looks like you’ve switched to the Spun theme and are getting help in a separate thread at https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/spun-theme-css-code-to-decrease-white-space-between-top-menu-bar-and-content?replies=4 so I’m going to close this thread and mark it as resolved.

    Please start a new thread if you still need help with Duotone and custom CSS.

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