Theme Updated - 2nd October, 2010 (Reflection-Mod 1.2.1)
Reflection-Mod v 1.2.1 Photoblog Theme for WordPress : Demo
Reflection-Mod Logo for Header (Photoshop PSD File)
Reflection by David Moxey is a beautiful WordPress theme for photoblogs which utilizes Johannes Jarolim's excellent wordpress plugin, Yet Another PhotoBlog Plugin (YAPB). Reflection-Mod is my modification to the original Reflection theme to enable Category and Tag functionality and a host of other enhancements both in appearance and functionality. These include a number of slick Javascript slider animations that help unclutter the look of the site while still having all the relevant information/links easily accessible. I have listed the features of this theme below. For a detailed description of all the changes made to my theme since it's original release, please check the Reflection-Mod Changelog. The best way to see the differences is to visit my Reflection-Mod Photoblog for a Demo. Also, be sure to check out my new theme - Refractal. This theme is meant to compliment Reflection-Mod as a similar looking theme for your regular blogging purposes.
If you'd like to see a good example of Reflection-Mod integrated with Refractal to form a complete blog+photoblog, check out Markus Hellmold's new site featuring a tight integration between both themes:
Xtropolis (WARNING: Some photographs have adult content, so it isn't a work safe site)
Changes in Latest Reflection-Mod (1.2.1) (October 2nd, 2010)
- PHP 5.3 compatible: Thanks to Qlawy for a modified version of reflection-mod that got rid of some unsupported code. This should fix issues people were having with reflection-mod spitting out some weird code.
- Better SEO support with title and alt tags for improved SERPS - Thanks to Harry on the forums
Changes in Reflection-Mod 1.2 (January 31, 2010)
- Lightbox (SlimBox) effects can be enabled for Category/Tag archive galleries: New in version 1.2 is an option in the admin panel to enable a lightbox effect for quickly browsing through images in your category/tag archives.
- Disable/Enable automatic display of Shot Info (Post Text) with Photoblog Image: Admin panel option to enable or disable the automatic display of your Shot Info/Post text along with the photoblog image. Gives you this option depending on whether the image is of utmost importance or whether you prefer to display both the text and image as a single combined entity.
- Enable/Disable EXIF link in Photoblog
- Latest Theme Version Box in Admin Panel: The theme admin panel now displays the latest available version of Reflection-Mod with a link to the download page. Now you will always know if you have the latest version of the theme without having to actively check my site.
Features
- Implemented a multi-level CSS drop down menu: capable of displaying multiple levels of pages in the navbar.
- Improved compatibility with older versions of PHP: Introduced an option in the Admin panel to turn of AJAX browsing of images which should make the theme compatible with practically all webhosts and PHP versions. Also includes JSON encoding for better PHP compatibility
- Ability to change image quality: Implemented an admin menu option enabling the user to specify the image quality of images. Higher quality images will take longer to download. Can be optimized for a given webhost's speed/performance.
- Support for a lower navbar: Make a separate unordered list in header.php with an id of "navbar2" to create a second set of hard coded links in the lower row of the navbar. Can be useful for integrating the photoblog with a regular text-blog running the Refractal theme.
- Support for Category and Tag listings. When browsing images in a category, Prev/Next image links allow you to browse single images within the same category. I think this is a key feature missing in almost all WordPress photoblog themes (Even Pixelpost). Note: You need fancy permalinks enabled in WordPress for this to work. If you have the default permalink structure, in-category browsing will not work.
- Widget ready sidebar (can be disabled): While I prefer to have a completely uncluttered look, I have enabled it to show how it looks. You can use any widget you like.
- Random images hyperlink now displays a slick slider that pops down with 7 thumbnails of random images from your archive. This allows the user to select an interesting image out of an assortment of random images.
- Neat slider animations (Javascript - MooTools 1.11) for the Category and Tags listings, Random image slider as well as dynamically loaded comments.
- AJAX effects are persistent throughout the browsing process. In the original theme, clicking on Archives/Comments, etc would break the AJAX browsing mode and would switch to regular page loading.
- Robust Admin Menu with tons of options! Now you can control a host of options from the Admin menu such as Copyright Information, enabling/disabling tags, categories, sidebar, reflection-effect, header page listings, etc. This means you shouldn't have to meddle with the actual theme code to get the look you desire.
- Downloadable Photoshop Template for creating customized header logo for the theme.
- MOST IMPORTANTLY: A brand new, matching text-blog theme - Refractal - that can be used on your website for a separate WP installation for the regular Blog component of your site. The two themes, Reflection-Mod and Refractal look and feel the same so it allows you to integrate your regular blog and your photoblog under one common umbrella!
Installation
Before you install this theme, please make sure that:
- You have installed the Yet-Another-PhotoBlog plugin correctly and that it is working. Follow the instructions on the plugin webpage to install the plugin properly.
- Once YAPB is installed, go to the YAPB options section in the Administration section and make sure to disable all the automatic image insertion options for the plugin. If you fail to do so, YAPB will conflict with Reflection-Mod and things will behave very strangely.
- Like Reflection, this theme requires every post to contain a YAPB image. If you wish to have your own content (without an image) add it in pages and not posts.
Once you have done the above:
- Download Reflection-Mod 1.2 Photoblog theme for WordPress and unzip the contents of the file.
- You should now have a directory titled 'reflectionmod'. Copy this directory and all its contents into the wp-content/themes/ folder of your WordPress install.
- Once all the files have copied over, select Reflection-Mod from the Themes panel in the Administration section and activate it.
Customization
Creating your own Reflection-Mod Logo for the Header
This is one of the first things you probably want to change. (I presume that having your own photoblog under my name is not a very appealing option =) ). To make this process simpler for you, I've gone ahead and uploaded a Photoshop template for the logo. Download the Photoshop Template for the Reflection-Mod header and open it in Photoshop. The Layers in the file are labeled and you should be able to easily edit the text in the Title layer. Copy paste the same text into the reflection text layer to get your final logo. Of course, you can go crazy and make a much more creative logo if you feel like it :).
For those who don't have access to photoshop, it won't be as easy, but creating a logo is still simple. Just open up the logo.png file in /reflectionmod/images/ in GIMP (Opensource software equivalent of Photoshop). Use the eyedropper tool to pick the color of the 1pixel gray line, and create a new 1px line of that color on a new layer and position it over the line in the original logo.png image. Then follow a tutorial such as this one to create the reflection effect on your text. Finally save your image as logo.png and overwrite the default file in the /reflectionmod/images/ folder.
Creating Archive/Mosaic Page
If you wish to have a link in your Navbar titled Archive or Mosaic, which contains an array of thumbnails of images from all your posts (grouped by year), then create a new page and make sure to select the Mosaic Page Template instead of the Default template. Unless you want to have some text preceeding the thumbnail archive display, you can leave the body of the page empty. If you have the "Disable AutoPage Listing in NavBar?" option unchecked, the Navbar will automatically update to show a link to the Archive/Mosaic page. If you do choose to disable the AutoPage listing option, then you will need to go into header.php and manually enter the URL to the Archive page as an "a href" link in the Navbar unordered list.
Creating an About Page
Create a new page titled "About", but this time use the "Default Template" for the page. Enter whatever text you want (feel free to embed images too) and then save the page. As mentioned above, it will automatically show up in the Navbar if Autopage listing isn't disabled.
Other Theme Customizations
Most of the other admin options are fairly self explanatory. The first few options deal with the Copyright information that is listed in the footer.
The portrait image width and landscape image width refers to the maximum width the images should have when displayed. Keep in mind that the value in these boxes should not exceed 800 as it will break the theme. (The theme is coded to have a maximum image container size of 800 pixels). The default value is 800 for landscape images and 450 for portrait images.
Sidebar
By default, the Sidebar is disabled. When you first enable it, it will say something like "No Widget". You will need to add elements to the sidebar using the Widgets option in the dashboard. I am currently using the Subscribe Sidebar and the Yet-Another-Photo-Blog sidebar widget plugin on my photoblog. The latter is setup to display 5 recent thumbnails (100px width).
Permalink Structure for your PhotoBlog
I would strongly recommend that you use the fancy permalink structures for your photoblog. This will also enable in-category browsing of posts for this theme. The URL for your posts will look cleaner and the names are far more intuitive than a URL that looks like www.yourdomain.com/?p=XX . My favourite permalink structure for photoblogs is: /%category%/%postname%/ . Check the image below to see what your permalink settings should look like.
EXIF Data
To customize the Exif data that is displayed in the overlay panel, select Exif filtering in the YAPB options and select the different field values that you would like to have displayed.
Final Comments
Reflection 1.2 along with Refractal is a new update, and one that I wasn't planning on ever doing, but made possible thanks to feedback from users and encouragement from a good friend (we have come to become friends due to this theme) Markus. So if you like the theme, let me know! I don't expect everyone to donate but it really does help a lot to know that there are folks out there who find this theme useful and enjoying it :). Also if there are any features you'd love to see, let me know. I can't guarantee anything, but you never know!
Acknowledgements:
- The biggest thanks has to go to Dave Moxey for his Reflection theme. It has been a lot of fun learning PHP, basic Javascript, CSS and WordPress while I tried to modify his theme and I owe it all to him. I would never have started on this if I hadn't fallen in love with the original Reflection 1.0 theme to begin with. Once I started setting it up I got more into it and decided to mod it to my liking resulting in this theme.
- Johannes also deserves a huge thanks for his amazing Yet-Another-Photo-Blog Plugin for WordPress.
- A big thanks to www.w3schools.com and all the other great sites on the net with some amazing tutorials that made modding the theme possible for a PHP/JS/WP newbie such as myself.
Does anyone know how to have the webpage display automatically adjust to the size of the computer screen on which it’s viewed?
Thanks
Hi there,
The theme is built as a fixed width theme. It isn’t something that is easy to switch to a variable width theme. You would need to play with the css in style.css to try and get it to work although it would take quite a bit of effort. In any case, I’m not sure it would look very good as the photoblog images are still going to be displayed at a preset size. Dynamically scaling the size of the loaded images as well would involve a lot of coding and I have no idea how one would go about doing that.
Sorry I can’t be of more help.
Hi! i’m planning on running your awesome theme for my website (linked) but i have one small issue.
i had planned on using the static front page feature, and hand-coding the header.php file to include only those pages. and on my local xampp installation, it worked perfectly fine. when i uploaded the tweaked files to my site, for some reason the header.php does not work fine- the logo is there, but the UL containing the pages does not show up and neither does it throw up an error…i hardcoded the links, just to make sure it wasn’t an issue. automatic generation is ok, but i intend on making a lot of pages, which would make the navbar quite ugly..
Hey there,
Did you make sure to clear out your browser cache completely before testing your website? When I checked it right now, it seems that some pages are being listed in the header. Not sure if these are hardcoded or using the auto page listing within the theme. In any case, hard-coding should definitely work. I have done so in the past without any trouble. I’d suggest going back to the original index.php that comes with the theme and modifying the header list. Also make sure to disable auto page listing in the theme options.
If you want, try looking at an older version of the themes index.php to see how I had hardcoded a couple of links in.
http://www.sudeepmandal.com/downloads/Reflection-Mod-1.0.1.zip
i am using the auto-page listing for now, will try reinstalling the theme and see if it works out, thanks for the quick reply 🙂
i think the problem was a wayward <? php tag 🙂 solution found! whee!
Sweet! Glad it worked out. Yeah, sometimes it is best to go back to the original working version and then re-start editing. I had the same thing happen when modifying reflection-mod for a new update and I completely broke the theme. I still don’t know what it was. In the end it was a lot easier to just go back to a previous working version and re-code everything carefully. Good luck with your site!
Hello Sudeep!
Wow, what a great theme! I had just been trying to modify david’s original theme when I bumped into yours! I am having a problem though when I want to activate your theme:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in …/wp-content/themes/reflectionmod/index.php on line 36
In my experience this has got to do with my PHP version. Unfortunately im reliant on a host that forces PHP Version 4.4.9 onto me. In your latest update, you mention that you fixed “Improved PHP Compatibility: Added JSON encoding function to help with AJAX compatibility for people with PHP version 4.”.
So, in theory, this should work for me.. Is there something special I need to do to make this work?
thank you for any help,
mat
Hey Mat,
Unfortunately I am quite terrible at trouble shooting PHP related issues. Out of curiosity, does Dave’s current version of Reflection work fine for you? While I have modified his theme quite a bit, I haven’t actually made use of any new PHP, etc, so I’m not sure what would cause the error. Reading up on the error, it seems to be related with “chaining” in PHP, which isn’t supported till PHP 5. That is why the following lines are giving errors:
I don’t really know enough PHP to figure out how to convert this code into something PHP 4 compatible. You might have better luck asking some friend who is good at it, or maybe post on some PHP forum asking for help. The other thing that would worry me is that you might have this issue with other code in other files too. One last thing, you might want to check the YAPB page to find out what minimum version of PHP it requires to work. I have a feeling that might also have issues with your version of PHP. Sorry I couldn’t be of much help. Let me know if you have any luck figuring this out. I can incorporate changes in future versions of the theme.
Cheers
Hello Sudeep,
wow, thank you for the fast response time! as we had both feared, the problem lies in the version of PHP. I have contacted my host (1and1) who told me that I can use PHP5 if I add a .htaccess file containing
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
into the wp folder. I did this which solves my problem – I can now run your theme!!
thank you again!
I think you should run a forum with all the help posted in the comments because there is a lot of valuable information in it!
On that note, I do have a second question..
I would like to see my front page not to be single picture, but perhaps 4-6 of my latest pictures in thumbnail-ish format (i.e. 150 px wide). I have been trying out a few commands but so far with no luck. Is there a reflection, or YAPB command, that pulls the latest images, in thumbnail format and can show them as a starting page?
any help would be appreciated!
thank you and greetings from germany,
Mat
Hey Mat,
Guten Tag! I’m glad you got PHP5 working. That will help a lot with other themes/WP related stuff too. As for your question about having a homepage with multiple thumbnails instead of a single pic…unfortunately I don’t think I can give you a straighforward solution. That is something I am considering implementing in a newer update for Reflection-Mod. However, things have been very hectic for me so I’m not sure when I will be able to do this.
I think the best way to figure it out is to use the Recent Images widget that comes with YAPB (check out the YAPB website). You can see it in action on my photoblog on the sidebar. If you analyze the code, you should be able to pretty much implement something similar for your homepage. Then I would copy the contents of index.php into a file called home.php, and make all the changes you want just for the homepage in this file. If you look here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy you will see that home.php will be used first for the homepage as it has a higher priority than index.php. For all your other posts, index.php will be used.
I hope that gives you an idea on how to go about implementing it. You would also need to play with the css rules in style.css or to add your own css to get the thumbnails to display as you like in your homepage. Let me know if you have any luck with it. I can gladly credit you and add your code into the next release of the theme.
Cheers
Hello … I really like your theme, and in part I changed on my blog …
I wanted to ask if you can add a sidebar to the left equal to the right …
If it were possible you could give me the code to add …
thanks and see you soon
Hey Fabio. Glad you like the theme. I’m not entirely sure if I understand you correctly. Do you want another sidebar which is the same as the right sidebar to be displayed on the left? If so, you should add the following code below the very last line (a /div statement) in header.php
If you want to remove the right sidebar, look for similar code as above in the middle of header.php and delete it. Btw, don’t copy paste the code from the text above…WP messes up the encoding of some of the characters. You’d be better off either rewriting it yourself or by copy-pasting the same code from what is already in header.php, just making sure to change the left:850px; statement to left:0px;
Hello Sudeep, I am sorry but my english is not perfect …
What I wanted to know is whether you can add a sidebar on the left side of the issue, but is configured differently so that you can add other than the sidebar widget to the right …
in code that you gave me works but creates a sidebar identical and therefore not separately configurable ..
sorry for disturbing again and again congratulations for the theme ..
Navigation question:
Hello,
I really love your theme but I had two questions regarding the navigation and I was wondering whether you could help.
1) Image Overlay
I wanted to change the previous/next image that appears when hovering over the homepage image. I found a good .png file and changed the CSS of the img src:
#overNextLink:hover{
background:transparent url(images/p_next.png) no-repeat 100% 30%;
}
#overPrevLink:hover{
background:transparent url(images/p_prev.png) no-repeat 0% 30%;
}
When I check, the old images are still there. I checked all of your script but found only these two linking to the src files.
Interestingly, When i browse my website through a cloak (i.e. http://www.the-cloak.com/) the new images appear. Do you know what the problem may be?
2. Navigation when viewing single post
I would like to have a navigation text ( <> ) above the image at all times: that is both when the post is home and when it is a single post. Is this possible?
Thank you for any help
Peter
Site URL: http://tinyurl.com/lxlvtn
Hi Peter,
I checked your site right now but it seems like you are using Reflection, so I’m not sure if the new images are coded into the theme currently. When you did try it, did you make sure to delete all your internet files from your browser cache? That is usually the biggest culprit when things like this happen…especially since the other site was capturing the new image.
Regarding the navigation, I don’t think I understand what you want. Currently there is a navigation hyperlink above all images on all pages. How is what you want different?
Let me know if the issue was just as simple as your browser cache. I like your white modification of the Reflection theme. It looks great!
Hello Sudeep,
After a long time, I finally found out the problem. There was a link to the .gif file hardcoded into the blog.js file in the js folder. Once that is changed, everything is OK. Thank you for your help anyways,
Peter
Hello Sudeep, I am sorry but my english is not perfect …
What I wanted to know is whether you can add a sidebar on the left side of the issue, but is configured differently so that you can add other than the sidebar widget to the right …
in code that you gave me works but creates a sidebar identical and therefore not separately configurable ..
sorry for disturbing again and again congratulations for the theme ..
hi Sudeep, I have a problem with comments links anchor from the side bar. If I include recent comments in the side bar although the link is correct and it call the right page it displays the page scrolled down to absolute bottom and doesnt expand the slider to show the comments area. What the user actually sees in my case is a black screen that needs scrolling to the top of frame in order to then click the comments link within the title area to display the comment. I appreciate this is complex because of the slider function but wondered if you might see a solution. this is what my side bar link looks like http://www.illuminatus.tv/illuminatus/wpblog/2009/06/laura-bar-nic-fliters/comment-page-1/#comment-3 if you click the side bar link once the slider is open the vertical position of the content is perfect so it appears as if all is needed is an instruction to open the slider. hasta hora David
Hi David. Unfortunately I can’t access the page on your site to see what the problem is as it is asking me for a login/password. I’d have to check it to see what the issue is and if there might be an easy work around. Nice job with the website. Cheers.
hi Sudeep, did you get the code to get onto the site? D
hi Sudeep, I’ve mailed you the access code. d
It is a really nice theme. However, I couldn’t use it. After activating the theme, I got the following message:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in /homepages/23/d166335702/htdocs/memories/wp-content/themes/reflectionmod/index.php on line 36.
Can you help?
WordPress version 2.8.4 and YAPB is 1.9.
Thanks.
Hi Jun,
The error is probably because you are running a lower version of PHP than PHP5 on your webhost. You will need to figure out a way to use PHP5 on your webhost. You can try this…it might work. Add the following lines to your .htaccess file for your WP site:
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
hi sudeep, one question regarding image width. I’ve noticed with some portrait photos of narrow width the title results are scrambled with the date and info text as in the case of a narrow image there isn’t enough horizontal space to display properly. I found the code for the div is generated by the image width but couldn’t see how I could over ride it. I’d like the topcontent to be fixed at 800pix despite the image width. Can you point me to where I can make that mod please. Best David
Hey, This is a great theme. This was why I wanted to have a photoblog! anyway.
I have two problems. One of them is the above question (david’s question). But here is the other: why doesn’t the theme resize portrait (vertical photos) when I press the info button?
Thanks alot.
I found the solution!
I disable “Display as thumbnail with width of 460 px”.
I’ve installed reflectionmod and customized the permalink structure as at the top of this page is explained !!! My WP version is 2.8.4
All was fine except for the Next/Prev function that do not work…
When i press Next or Prev the code “?cat=0” is added to the end of the link and a white image with the loading logo is shown but no prev or next photo is recalled !!!
Can someone help me ..please ?
Thanks !
Hi there,
I’m not entirely sure why it isn’t working. The theme definitely works with WP 2.8.4. Did you make any changes to any of the theme files? Any edits?
It most likely is something on the side of your server/webhost. Do you know what version of PHP is running on your web host?
One thing you could try is installing this theme:
http://xyloid.org/projects/reflection/
See if that also gives a similar error. In that case it would definitely point to an issue on the server side. I do plan to make the next version of the theme such that you can turn off this dynamic image loading to help folk like you who are having trouble with it due to some complication.
Thanks for your quick replay…
…i’m shure that is not a changes in your files because the problem was alredy present since the first install…anyway…i checked my server’s PHP version that is 5.2.10.
Do you know if there are some PHP configurations to check ?
I’ve istalled reflection theme and it randomly use the dynamic image loading and when this function is used no photo is shown….when is not used i’m be able to switch between photos !
Hope to have an help on how to bypass this problem…
Thanks !!!
Nik
Hi Nik,
I can’t quite figure out why the AJAX loading isn’t working. I hope to eventually release a new version of reflection-mod that allows you to disable it for improved compatibility. I’ll try to remember to send you and email letting you know when I manage to do so. Sorry!
Cheers.
I sure hope someone can help me out. I have the orginal reflection theme installed and it working great. I have been trying to install the reflectionmod theme and for some reason it won’t activate. It installs fine and when I go to preview it, there is no preview and if I click activate all I get is a blank page. I have lost track of how many times I have tried to get this working. I have the newest version of WordPress and as mentioned earlier in this post the original reflection theme works great. If someone can help me out, I would really appreciate it. Thank you
Hi MesaBoogie,
I don’t really know what the issue is. Do you know what version of PHP you are running on your server? Also, if you could post a link to your site I might be able to help troubleshoot it.
Cheers
thanks for the reply … I just checked on the php version and it says version 4.4.7 … I have also tried installing the theme on another site that I have and again, there is no preview and when you click activate, all I get is a blank page … maybe it has something to do with the php version … if there is a way I could email you the site, I would prefer that, or if you could send me an email then I will forward the site
to you … maybe you could answer a question for me .. since your template is a modified version of reflection is there a way to change the archive from YEAR to MONTH and is there a way to limit the number of thumbnails appearing on the archive page … I would like to have a maximum of 50 and then have it go to the NEXT page … if you don’t have my email address with this comment, then please let me know … and if there is any way you could let me know if the YEAR archive can be changed to MONTH and have a limit set on the number of thumbnails on the archive page that would be great .. I have been trying to figure this out for over 24 hours ….
Hey there,
For the number of thumbnails in the Archive page, check the article above under “Changes in Reflection 1.0.1”. That explains how to set the number of thumbnails in the Archive page.
Hi there,
Great theme! Unfortunately there seems to be a bug with the thumbnails, when I upload portrait images the thumbs work fine, however when I upload Landscape images the thumbnails appear as a tiny 2px x 2px image.
Using Firefox Version 3.5.3
Can anyone help with this please? As advised when installing the theme I have unticked ALL checkboxes in the settings beneath the tab: ‘Automatic Image Insertion’.
Thanks heaps
Could you post a link to your blog? I have no idea why this is happening. I haven’t really seen this issue with any of my images. It is probably an issue with YAPB but it might be having trouble with your particular type of images.
Hi Sudeep
Here is my blog – still under dev
rhondabonnici.com
Cheers
Sorry I forgot to add, please check out the “Other” category for an example of the issue
Hey Rhonda,
Sorry for not replying earlier. Are you still having that issue? I just checked your site and you only have one image at the moment which seems to work fine.
same problem as NiK here.. php version is 5.2.8.
i checked so many themes and this is the one..
here’s my website: http://goro.bzzz.net/
Hi Goro,
I’m not sure what the issue is exactly. I tried loading your website and it works perfectly for me. The only thing missing is the Logo image which you might have edited? If it isn’t working on your browser, maybe try clearing out your browser cache and delete all temporary internet files.
Cheers
still not working. i did what you wrote and few people checked my website from other computers and they see the same error.
i don’t know if it useful, but one thing i noticed that if i click “open link in new tab” i’m able to see it.
Hi goro,
Sorry about that. Yup, I am also having the same issue on your site. I really don’t know what the issue is. It would seem it is something to do with the Javascript for updating the pages. I know for sure that it isn’t an issue with WP 2.8.4 though as a lot of sites out there are using my theme with the latest WP version. I’ll try to release a new version of Reflection-Mod at some point which allows you to disable the Javascript browsing. However, I can’t promise it any time soon as I am currently very busy with other stuff =(. Sorry, I wish I could be of more help.
One last suggestion I would make is to delete all your theme files and re-install it from the original reflection-mod zip file. See if it works without any modifications to any of the theme code.
since your template is a modified version of reflection is there a way to change the archive from YEAR to MONTH and is there a way to limit the number of thumbnails appearing on the archive page … I would like to have a maximum of 50 and then have it go to the NEXT page … if you don’t have my email address with this comment, then please let me know … and if there is any way you could let me know if the YEAR archive can be changed to MONTH and have a limit set on the number of thumbnails on the archive page that would be great .. I have been trying to figure this out for over 24 hours ….
me again … forget the monthly archive … I now have another question … when you click on the ARCHIVE page it shows ALL the thumbnails for all the years … instead of having it show ALL is it possible to have it just show the thumbnails for 2009 … for example if there were posts for 2009 – 2008 – 2007, is it possible to just have the thumbnails show on the main ARCHIVE page for 2009 instead of ALL the thumbnails for all the years …. if this can be done, what needs to be changed … I have tried changing the archive page so many times that nothing I am doing is working … thank you for any help you can offer with this …. its really appreciated
If you want to only display the last years images you will need to get your hands dirty and do some custom PHP coding in the mosaic.php file. This link might help:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/get_posts
Unfortunately there isn’t any simple WP command that only lists posts from the latest year. You can try modifying the “foreach ($posts as $post)” loop in mosaic.php to try and put in some conditional statements so you only display thumbnails from the latest year. However, you will also need ton enable a link to all previous years posts.
thank you for the reply … and this sounds way too complicated for me … I’ve been messing around with the template for well over 2 days now …. could I ask just one more question … is there a way that when you click on the archive page or browse page to not have any thumbnails show up until you click on one of the categories ….
thanks for your help
I’m not quite sure what you are looking for. Do you want your archive page to instead list clickable links for your categories (and tags) just like the “Categories” slider in the theme? Then when someone clicks on the category, the actual thumbnails for only that category is displayed?
If that is the case, then create a new page and use:
<?php wp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&show_count=1&title_li=’); ?>
to display the category list in that page. Then when this page is called only the categories will be listed and when someone clicks on a particular category they will see the thumbnails. However it would seem a bit redundant since users can any way browse your category and tag thumbnails using the Category and Tag sliders in the navigation bar at the top. The idea of the ARCHIVE page is to allow users to browse all your images quickly and visually. If you’d prefer not to have that enabled, you can just disable the mosaic listing and instead let users browse using categories or tags.
thanks again for your reply and your help … I guess what I want is when the ARCHIVE page is clicked you see all the thumbnails listed there … I would prefer just to have the words and no thumbnails showing until they click on one of the categories …
ALL – CATEGORYNAME – CATEGORYNAME2
my main concern is that if the ARCHIVE page shows all the thumbnails it can be a very long page and take time to load …. I can’t seem to find anywhere where I can limit the number of thumbnails that appear on a page before it goes to OLDER ENTRIES ….
for instance if in CATEGORYNAME there happens to be for example 400 posts, that would mean that 400 thumbnails would have to load …. ideally I would like to be able to set a limit of say for example 100 thumbnails per page and then have it go to an OLDER ENTRIES page …. is there somewhere where I can set a limit to how many thumbnails appear on the ARCHIVE page ….
Hey there,
Great theme.
Is it possible to change the large photo on the front to display a random image instead of the latest image?
Hi Steve,
I’m going to look into this to see if there is an easy way to do it. Sorry if it takes a while. I just found out that my site had been minorly hacked last night (minor iframes insertion)
Cheers
Hi Sudeep. I installed the theme, the thumbs are generated (on the archives, or on the sidebar widget) but the main post doesn`t show. I have a blank page instead …
I allready used another YAPB them (Grain) and it`s worked with the post. So, the images exist but aren`t show …
Can you help me?
Here is the testing server: http://emi.floaredecolt.org/photography/
Thanks.
My PHP version is 4.4.7.
This is a problem?
The original Reflection theme is working with this version.
I’m not quite sure whats going on. For some reason it was displaying the “Mosaic” on your homepage when it should be displaying your latest picture. If you check my PbLog you will see that the archive shows up separately. Did you follow the instructions above on setting up the mosaic?
Also, are all your posts containing a single YAPB image? Also check to make sure that you do not have any post without a YAPB image (the theme is not meant to deal with posts without YAPB images). Your issue is probably related to your installation of WP or your permalinks if I had to take a guess.
I set myself the mosaic on homepage. Before was the latest post, and it show only a blank page. The same error (the problem is with the post page not with archives or page templates … if you see, the about page is showing, the same the archives or mosaic).
All the post are with YAPB images (uploaded like YAPB images) and contain only a single photo.
Hi Sudeep,
Thanks for the amazing photo theme. I think that it’s absolutely fantastic and I’m now running it here. I’m curious though, when I’m looking at your own photo blog it appears that there’s a thin black border at the top and the bottom of your main photo.
The overall result is that the <hr> tag at the top is about 19px above your photo and that the reflection at the bottom is separated by about 18px from the photo. I like the professional feel that it invokes and was hopeful that you could show us how you did that?
From what I can tell you’ve uploaded your normal image file but then when the 800px wide thumbnail is generated a 9px black border is appended to the bottom and to the top. Was it in a .js file that’s included with the theme? Or is it a change to a certain YAPB plugin file?
Thanks for your time,
Paul
Hey Paul,
Thanks for the compliments. I’m glad you like the theme. Unfortunately the look in my blog is due to my image postprocessing and not my theme :). I use Adobe Lightroom and the Lightroom Imagemagick/mogrify plugin to add a border around the image. In this case as you notices, it is only a border on the top and bottom. Implementing it in the theme would be way beyond my coding skill levels :). If you use lightroom, I’d recommend looking into the plug-in. It is awesome and it enables you to create some excellent presets for exporting images for the web.
Cheers,
Sudeep
Dear Sudeep,
It’s really a perfect work that you’ve done, and have made the original reflection theme even more pro and good looking and functional at the same time. All of the features that you’ve embedded into it are all very useful and in-the-right-place…
there’s only one issue that I hadn’t been able to understand and solve even in the original reflection theme, and that’s what happens to the posted image…
I had decided to change my template and think I have finally found what I’m looking for. I was previously using the grain theme which I had modified a little myself too. This version of reflection template is just perfect but, as you may see in my one and only post… the image seems a little cripples around the shapes and any text which is seen in the photo, specially the watermark that I put on the photo…
I’ve also added the same photo which I’ve uploaded and is shown with reflection-mod theme to the info section of my post for you to see. It seems as if a second let’s say quality reduction or size-reduction is being applied to the photo after it is retrieved by the theme and is shown… this is something related to reflection theme I think, and something which I’m not doing right maybe to make the photo size or ? suitable for reflection based themes.
I would really appreciate it if you could guide me on this and tell me what I’m doing wrong and what should I do to fix it.
Thanks for everything in advance.
Kaveh
Hi Kaveh,
Thanks for the compliments. I’m glad you are enjoying the theme. I think I will try to make this a user option in the next release of the theme. In the mean time, you need to edit the file yapb_filter.php in the reflectionmod directory. Look for this function:
Replace q=70 with q=99 and see if that helps. Let me know if it works.
Cheers,
Sudeep
WoW… thank you so much Sudeep…
That fixed the problem like a work of a magician…
now it’s all in all perfect…
I should again thank you for this excellent theme, you’ve done a great job, Well done.
And you are enough thoughtful to provide us with the PSD file for the logo…
Thanks a million times Sudeep
And I noticed that you haven’t added your theme in the Johannes’e “Ready to use templates” page… I think so many people will miss the opportunity to use this perfect theme like me…
Thanks for your time and attention dear Sudeep,
Everything’s alright now… 🙂
Regards,
Kaveh
Hi Kaveh,
Great to hear that it worked out for you :). Good luck with the photoblog. I’m glad that other folks are enjoying the theme. I will try to ask Johannes to add my theme in his list. Have fun!
Cheers,
Sudeep
Hi Sudeep,
Thank you for a great theme. The modifications you made were exactly what I was looking for. I have been successfully running your theme for almost two months at http://www.richardhamiltonphotography.com
The one thing that the theme appears to be missing are slideshows. Are you aware of any way of automatically creating slide shows in your theme? If not, would you consider adding this feature 🙂
As a stop gap measure, I have actually created pages with embedded slide shows from my Zenfolio.com account. I have created slide shows based on the categories by manually creating folders in zenfolio, creating a slide show and coping the zenfolio slide show link into my photo blog. It works, but is a lot of work, not only to setup but to maintain as I always have to have photos in two different locations.
The stop gap measure also consists of separate pages for each the of slide shows which are linked to a main slide show page (which is accessible from the Nav bar). Ideally, I would like to eliminate the main slide show page and allow readers to click on a link to a slide show when they are viewing the photos in a category. This link for example could be to the right of the Category title on the white line (just above the photos). Are you able to suggest a way that I could do this?
Kind regards,
Richard
Hi Richard,
Nice website! I think a slideshow feature would be a great addition to the theme. Unfortunately I am really busy at the moment. I also think that implementing it will take quite a bit of Javascript work…something I’m personally not very good at.
The other problem is that YAPB and this theme are more tailored towards a photoblog which has a one image per page/post philosophy. Slideshow type functionality is meant more when you are displaying galleries using something like NEXTGEN Gallery. It might be tricky to access all your images and posts from YAPB and WordPress on the fly for a slideshow. I think your current solution is probably the easiest although it takes twice the work since you have to upload your images in two spots.
I’ll put this down on my list for my next big update (if I can actually implement it). Unfortunately I haven’t had much free time to work on this off late.
Cheers.
Thank you Sudeep for the compliment and adding slideshows to your list (my fingers are crossed :-)).
Any suggestions on how I could program a link to the right of the Category title on the white line (just above the photos) thus allowing me to eliminate the main slide show page and allow readers to click on a link to a slide show when they are viewing the photos in a category page?
Regards,
Richard