WordPress Themes
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OK so im going crazy tryin to figure this out – Is it possible to download a theme on to your comp. get the css file and paste into the css editor to make ur page look just like the theme u downloaded? I have the css upgrade and everytime i cut & paste a file it never looks the same – Do i have to use the ftp thing like i saw somewhere or is that just for wordpress.org or what is the difference??? im so stuck and so confused. I have a domain on godaddy.com if that makes any difference?????
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You cannot upload themes to wordpress.com, you have to work with the themes on the presentation page. CSS for each theme is different, so if you apply the CSS from a theme from somewhere else, things are not going to look right. What you have to do is modify the CSS for your particular theme here on wordpress.com.
This requires that you either have CSS editing skills, or that you get someone who does. WordPress does not provide support for CSS editing.
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ok so i have to go in and pick at the code till i get it just right? cant i just go into my godaddy.com options and host my wordpress.com blog on there- then upload a the downloaded theme folder through ftp
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If you have your own domain or host, then you can download and install the wordpress software from http://wordpress.org and install it and then you can your choice of themes and plugins and such, no restrictions at all.
Since we are on a multi-user version of the wordpress software here at wordpress.com, there are limits to what we can do for security and stability reasons.
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so it doesnt matter if i already have a wordpress.com blog – i can still download the wordpress.org file and in my hosting site type in the wordpress.com blog???
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What you would do is after you had the wordpress.org software up and running on your domain, you would export your blog at wordpress.com to an xml file under dashboard > manage > export, and then import it into your domain. Leaving your blog here and mapping it to the new domain will not get you what you want.
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I wish someone would clarify this for me. To install any custom 3rd party theme, I can only paste in their CSS, and to do that, I must not only select the “sandbox theme,” but also have the paid CSS option?
I wish somewhere, they had a “using custom themes, 123” help. There is no reason it should take as long as it has to understand such basics.
Thanks in advance
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If you don’t understand CSS and creating sheets, it can be extremely daunting on how to do it. Just pasting in a CSS sheet from a random theme will only partly work because almost every single theme out there uses different elements and the sheet describes how those elements are to look. Even the themes here at wordpress.com use different elements from theme to theme. The struggle is getting the CSS sheet you are using to describe the different elements used on the theme you are editing. For instance, you can have a theme that describes the sidebar in 3 different ways that are all different:
#sidebar
#sidebars
#sidebar-designYour CSS sheet could be describing #sidebar and the theme doesn’t take on the attributes because the theme needs the element #sidebar-design to be described!
There are some designs made just for wordpress.com, but they need searching for and you have to know what is the starting theme they based the changes on :)
Trent
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At wordpress.com we are on a shared multiuser blogging platform. The reason no individual user can be allowed to edit the underlying template for their theme, is that doing so, would likewise effect all other blogs with the same theme.
A. Personalizing Your Blog
There are three options.
* You can choose to use one of the themes made available at wordpress.com through your admin section -> Dashboard -> Presentation -> Themes* You can choose to undertake css customizing a wordpress.com theme or making one of your own.
* Or, you can choose move to self hosting by downloading and altering a free wordpress.org template to suit.
B. WordPress Options
* You can edit your theme’s style sheet or create one of your own to personalize the appearance of your blog, only if you purchase an upgrade and undertake css customization yourself. (For more detailed information see CSS Customization Upgrade below. )* If you don’t purchase the upgrade, you can choose a theme from the admin area of your blog -> Dashboard -> Presentation -> Many themes provide for a customized a header and, sidebar widgets allow for posting of unique images, etc. to personalize your blog. Note that if you do not opt for the css upgrade then this link http://faq.wordpress.com/2005/09/27/edit-my-templates/ has information on point for you to read. Also take note that we are not allowed to use javascript, iframes, forms, some media embeds and styles, etc. for for security reasons.
* Although some themes at wordpress.org and wordpress.com may appear to be the same they are not; the software is different. The “wordpress.com and wordpress.org” sticky at the head of the wp support forum outlines the differences between blogs hosted by wordpress at wordpress.com and self-hosted wordpress.org software.
C. CSS Customization Upgrade
* The 15$ you pay to upgrade a wordpress.com blog enables you to to alter the appearance of your theme found here -> Presentation -> Theme and but not the underlying php code. Purchasing the upgrade entitles you to customize css on one blog for one year. http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/08/04/custom-css/* The upgrade is not recommended to bloggers who do not have css customization experience. Although there is a forum and other bloggers may volunteer to help you if needs be, there is no staff support provided for learning css customization.
* CSS customization can be used to improve on any existing theme; you can define your own classes for use in posts; you can select the Sandbox theme and build on one of the Minimalist layouts or, opt for no stylesheet and do it all yourself. If you feel you are up to the challenge of customizing a theme then these links will be helpful. There are also css resources that you can access listed in the FAQs blog.
http://wordpress.com/products/custom-css/
http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/12/29/css-improvements/
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=3697
http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/where-can-i-find-css-customization-help/Happy Blogging!
{waving to trent :) }
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The custom CSS upgrade is officially unsupported (i.e. the upgrade is aimed at those who already know how it’s going to work, they’re not going to walk you through it). That’s why there’s no documentation for beginners.
Even with the custom CSS upgrade in place, you can’t use a third-party theme, because that would require uploading files. What you can do is copy and paste a third-party stylesheet to be used with an existing wordpress.com theme. (This doesn’t necessarily have to be Sandbox, but as Sandbox was designed for this purpose, that’s the one which is generally recommended.)
The trouble is, most themes use slightly different code, so you can’t slot a stylesheet for one theme straight into another theme and expect it to work. There are some Sandbox stylesheets out there, but few of them are cut-and-paste; you will generally have to upload the images and edit the image locations in the stylesheet, not to mention edit the CSS to accommodate the fact that wordpress.com is running an outdated version of the theme.
I don’t think custom CSS gets a huge amount of takeup, to be honest, because for only a couple of dollars more you can switch to wordpress.org on your own host and upload as many themes as you like without needing to poke around in the code at all. I wouldn’t buy it again, even if they hadn’t robbed me the first time round by claiming a discount that didn’t exist.
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Thank you, Timethief.
I have seen many of the standard FAQ and theme pages and those links didn’t jump out at me. IF you check the main FAQ index, they are not there, nor are they available under the THEME tag, or any of the links on that page. Or if they were, I sure missed them. In any event, the custom-css page finally made it clear.
So basically, in a nutshell, I must: 1) pay for the CSS upgrade, and then 2) switch to sandbox theme and 2) paste in either a 3rd party CSS file or my own?
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Read what wank said above please. She has laid out the situation very clearly. The css upgrade is not aimed at beginners so no documentation has been provided for it.
(1) Yes you must pay for the upgrade and you must do the work yourself. Staff will not assist you to learn css and if you bork your stylesheet then fixing it is your responsibility.
(2) Yes – refer to what wank says above.
(3) Yes – refer to what wank says above.
(4) IMHO the other wordpress alternative of simply hiring a webhost and downloading free software from http://wordpress.org that you can hack to suit is the more attractive one. Moreover quality hosting is not expensive. Mine costs only $25 per year.
http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/05/07/wordpresscom-vs-wordpressorg/
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=3700 -
Trent
I know a lot about CSS. I was just trying to grasp what I could and couldn’t do here.
If I understand our point in discussing the elements, it’s that once a user chooses a given theme, it will already have a corresponding HTML template with named elements and CSS classes. Thus, unless the CSS is written expressly for that template, it cannot work without a lot of modification, so using themes written for other blog software would not be an easy fit.
Thus, I assume then that if a theme is expressly written for the Sandbox template, it should run with no customization at all. Does that mean thenm that most wordpress theme authors are instructing people to first switch to the sandbox — or other standard theme — with a known set of elements, at which point their custome CSS will lay on top and work fairly well out of the box?
I’ve seen a lot of themes around. Do most users always want to make some tweaks, as they do on mySpace, for example, or are they content to run the vanilla themes?
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Does that mean then that most wordpress theme authors are instructing people to first switch to the sandbox — or other standard theme — with a known set of elements, at which point their custome CSS will lay on top and work fairly well out of the box?
The chance of any theme in the WP community being picked for com is very remote. And even then they are butchered beyond recognition and there are issues with both licensing and upgrading pace Sandbox.
Authors generally do not pay any attention to it. And Matt just sweeps up anything that takes his fancy.
All in all it’s pretty hit and miss. Anyone who is serious about their theme needs to go self hosted.
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While many around here tell everyone to jump back to sandbox to reconstruct a theme, not many wordpress themes out there are designed with sandbox in mind either. I have created custom themes based off 3 base themes at wordpress.com and none of them were sandbox. It is just a matter of looking at the source of a page of the theme you want and then change the CSS sheet to have the same naming schemes. Uploading the images is the only other thing that may be required.
The reasons that I have chosen different base themes than just sandbox is the existing functionality in the theme I am modifying has something I wanted to retain. It sometimes is the search box or the navigation links. I take a base design that best resembles what I want my changed theme to look like. Makes it easier for me to conceptualize the end product. It depends on what you want.
Sandbox is good because of what you said about the ‘known elements’. If you design all your themes changes based on 1 theme (in this case sandbox), it is easy for others to use your theme if you release it with just the CSS. Regardless of that, most CSS upgrades are by users that really want to change a theme to something else already out there, or design a custom theme for themeselves!
Hope that helps.
Trent
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Thanks for all the replies. Making some headway here.
Now I’m curious about something. I’ve been considering the idea of making a blog about certain aspects of CSS development, and perhaps a WordPress section might be useful. But I wonder how often casual bloggers want to tweak their CSS? Not really a completely custom theme, but just changing colors, backgrounds, buttons, icons, images, etc.. Would you suppose it’s 1% of the community? 15%? 40% More? MySpacers and other communities always want to personalize their sites, and very serious bloggers often do. But I’m curious about the mass-market of bloggers that have emerged in the past few years; the Jane & Joe Everyblogger, if you will. Are they just as individualistic? If it were much easier to do, would my mom be likely to fiddling with her theme, or do most people not really not care much?
I doubt there are any surveys on this. And I’d more trust the hunches of forum moderators anyway :) Any hunches?
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IMHO I think there are a good number that would like to change the color of this or that and other (seemingly) simple things, but do not want to attempt it because of what it takes. It’s a daunting task if you have no experience with CSS. I’m just starting to poke around in CSS a bit, and there is a lot to learn.
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@atthe404
Now .. now … I know that you know that we do have one Moderator, Trent, who is very busy and only infrequently available. ;)@matteblack
Although “idea” and “question” forums are suitable for navel gazing types of dialog, most people posting into support forum threads post technical questions and are desirous of receiving speedy answers. So maybe picking the “brain” of the only Moderator we have and whom we rarely ever see may be best done in an email format (just a suggestion).The bottom line here is that neither Volunteers nor Moderators have any input whatsoever into theme selection. Theme selection is done by Matt Mullenweg so perhaps contacting him directly is the way to go.
Also note that atthe404 is a professional web developer who knows a lot about theme design.
HTH :)
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