xMark Theme Upgraded for 2.3

Tags: Blog Design, GPL Theme, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, Theme Upgrade, Wordpress, WordPress-Themes, xmark

• Diane Warth
  8:40 pm on October 2nd, 2007 1

  Great theme. Thank you.

  The link here for Clean Archives doesn’t work. It takes me to an 500 Internal Server error page.

  Also, would you have an idea why some titles in my RSS widgets are red and can’t be seen, whilst the rest are fine?

  thanks again

• Sam Nova
  5:23 am on October 3rd, 2007 2

  Thanks a lot for a great theme Lisa; and also for the 2.3 update.
  I have upgraded my site to use it; I did do a few modifications as you can see on my site (top X is no longer a X… hope you dont mind).
  I just added Share This and got one question/request, would it not be possible to align the Share This icon so that it is not higher up than the text, your comment icon works perfect. If you check AlexKing’s blog you will see that he got it aligned correct.

  Hope this will be possible.
  Keep up the great work.

• Lisa
  10:19 am on October 3rd, 2007 3

  Thanks, Sam - A quick way to go about it is to edit the style in Alex’s plugin. Go to your plugins page and click the Edit link to the right of the Share this plugin. Search for this line:

  <?php
  if (AKST_SHOWICON) {
  ?>
  
  .akst_share_link {
  	background: 1px 0 url(share-icon-16x16.gif) no-repeat;
  	padding: 1px 0 3px 22px;
  }

  and change it to:

  <?php
  if (AKST_SHOWICON) {
  ?>
  
  .akst_share_link {
  	background: 0 50% url(share-icon-16x16.gif) no-repeat;
  	padding: 1px 0 3px 22px;
  }

  That’s a quick n’ dirty fix. I did try it by adding that line directly to my stylesheet, but the plugin style overrode my CSS - so then I made the change directly in the plugin file and it worked for me.

  Thanks for your kind words!

• Lisa
  10:27 am on October 3rd, 2007 4

  @Diane - I’m unsure. At first I thought it was because the RSS titles on your site that aren’t white are in the left column..that maybe I left something out that handled those links correctly. But when I placed an RSS widget in my left column..the link is white on my site (but not on yours - - which is perplexing.)

  Try adding this to your CSS stylesheet (at the very bottom is fine):

  .widgettitle a:link, .widgettitle a, .widgettitle a:visited {color:white;}

  See if that helps.

  Thanks!

• Diane Warth
  10:41 am on October 3rd, 2007 5

  Thanks, Lisa, but it didn’t work. Thought it might be the object just above the RSS feeds, removed it, but that wasn’t it.

• Lisa
  11:07 am on October 3rd, 2007 6

  Ok, one last go

  In the CSS stylesheet - search for this block of code:

  #lside2 .widgettitle a,#lside2 .widgettitle a:visited,#rside .widgettitle a:link,#rside .widgettitle a:visited
  {
  	color:#FFF
  }

  and change it to:

  #lside2 .widgettitle a:link,#lside2 .widgettitle a:visited,#rside .widgettitle a:link,#rside .widgettitle a:visited
  {
  	color:#FFF
  }

  Let me know if that helps

• Diane Warth
  11:12 am on October 3rd, 2007 7

  Success! Awesome. Thanks.

• Lisa
  12:04 pm on October 3rd, 2007 8

  Great news - thanks Diane

• Sam Nova
  12:44 pm on October 3rd, 2007 9

  Thanks Lisa, that 50 percent worked perfect. Looks way better now.

• Sam Nova
  2:12 pm on October 3rd, 2007 10

  Hi Lisa, just wanted to mention that I did a post describing the upgrade progress (to WP 2.3) and also the change in the theme on my blog (changed to xMark of course)
  It can be found here.

• Stephen Hopson
  9:17 am on October 5th, 2007 11

  In my exhausive search for the “right” theme for my new blog (I’m switching from Blogger over to WP 2.3), I discovered this on the list of compatible themes for the latest version. I just downloaded version 2.3 and am ready to take on a theme I like.

  I guess I want to ask if adsense can be put inside the posts and whether the layout is flexible enough for the user to move things around.

  Otherwise, it’s a VERY ATTRACTIVE design! The background is white (clean), the fonts are big enough (easy to read),

• Lisa
  10:06 am on October 5th, 2007 12

  @Stephen - thank you for your kind words, I’m happy to hear you like xMark and that you think it will suit your needs.

  You can add adsense inside your posts with no problem. There are quite a few Adsense ad management plugins available for WordPress - you may want to search the plugins repository at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins.

  I do think the theme is flexibile enough for you to move things around, switch colors/graphics, etc - - you just need a bit of CSS know-how in order to do it.

  Best of luck!

• Stephen Hopson
  3:47 pm on October 5th, 2007 13

  Hi Lisa:

  Thanks very much for responding back to me. I have one more question. I noticed that your demo only lists one post per page. I am wondering if this has the capability of:

  1. providing a “teaser” with a link to read the full article

  2. listing more than one post on the home page instead of one

  Please advise. I am VERY close to making my final decision and your design is ranking VERY high on the list. But before I download it, I want to satisfy those questions.

  Thanks a bunch.

  stephen

• Stephen Hopson
  4:21 pm on October 5th, 2007 14

  I just wanted to let you know that I ordered your book “Wordpress for Dummies.” I’m so happy for you. Your gonna be famous before this is over….I’m so glad I caught you before the book was released. I hope that you’ll still find time for bloggers like me who are “non-techkies” who need a question or a problem solved from time to time!

  Congratulations - what a privledge to be talking to someone who is about to publish a BIG SELLING book! How did you become the one to do this? Amazing!

  Stephen Hopson

• Lisa
  7:05 pm on October 5th, 2007 15

  Stephen - thank you. I’m very proud of WordPress For Dummies and hope it provides assistance that new WordPress users need. I was approached by the publisher through my professional site. It was quite an honor to be asked and quite a task to complete. I can say that I am happy it’s over with now - but it was good fun to do

  For your questions - - they aren’t really theme related questions.. you can accomplish these things no matter what theme you use:

  1. You can set that amount of posts you’d like to show on the front page in your WordPress admin panel under the Options tab, then the Reading subtab. There is no limit to the number of posts you can show on your front page.

  2. You can use a “Read More” option by using the “More” button while writing your post. (you’ll find this button on the page you write your post - - in the buttons above the text editor). You can also auto-accomplish this with a plugin like WeyHan Ng’s Post Teaser.

• Stephen Hopson
  6:45 am on October 6th, 2007 16

  Lisa:

  You’re very welcome (about my kind words). I am using this comment section only because I think your replies will help others who might want to use your theme.

  First, let me direct you the latest entry to my soon-to-be “old” blog at adversityuniversity.blogspot.com I wrote a compliment about you but without revealing your identity since I want to keep them in suspense until I launch the new site (adversityuniversityblog.com).

  Aside from that, I have a couple other questions that I hope you can help me with:

  1. if you look at my current blog, I have a short snoposis of what the blog is about on the very top of the home page–how can I accomplish this on your template? There doesn’t appear to be any room on the bar with Adversity University on it. Take a look at my new site location http://www.adversityuniversityblog.com I noticed you had “because X marks the spot” up there - how did you do that? Perhaps I could write a short snyoposis there………unless you have other ideas.

  2. I also want to put a picture of me in the sidebar so that peeople can see my friendly face immediately. How do I do this? (FYI, in the About page, I plan to put an introductory video introducing myself to people but I want a photo on the home page)

  That’s all for now - thanks for your support. I truly appreciate it. And when I’m all done, I plan to help promote your book to my readers, whom I think might be Wordpress bloggers!

  Stephen Hopson

• Lisa
  6:42 pm on October 7th, 2007 17

  Hi again, Stephen - thank you very much for the post you made… it brought a smile, which is always worth the time to read

  On your questions:

  1. On this site at the top where it says “Because X Marks the Spot” - that is my tagline. You’ll find a spot to enter your tagline in your WordPress admin panel under Options/General. Whatever you enter into the tagline field will appear above the dark grey bar on the site. Nifty, no? (You can adjust the look of that text in the CSS stylesheet - - look for this selector: .description - - you can change the font size, weight, etc there)

  2. Use a Text Widget to place your picture in the sidebar. Enter your code into it like this: <img src="http://yourdomain.com/yourpicture.jpg">
  (of course, using your own domain and the name of your own picture file).

  Cheers!

• Sam Nova
  1:54 pm on October 8th, 2007 18

  Hi Lisa,

  I tried to email you but never got a reply, so here goes:

  The page with the “Clean Archives plugin” is broken. Seems the whole site is down. Got any alternative links (or feel free to send it over).

  I just added SiteMap to my blog http://www.samuelnova.com/sitemap/ works fine

  But your headers looks way better (All internal Pages…) I saw in the sitemap.php that they use class clog but I could not find anywhere where it is defined !!!

  Any advise you can give???

  Thanks in Advance,
  Sam

• Lisa
  2:33 pm on October 8th, 2007 19

  Hi Sam - unsure why the Clean Archives page wouldn’t be working for you if you followed the instructions given on my documentation page.

  For the headers in the SiteMap - if you want them like mine, add this to you stylesheet (at the very bottom is fine):

  .clog {color: #b97577; text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom: 1px solid #E5E5E5; padding:0; margin:5px 0 0 0;}
  
  .clog p{margin:0; padding:0;}

  Cheers!

• Lisa
  2:37 pm on October 8th, 2007 20

  Hmm..looks like the Clean Archives plugin developer has gone away. I’ll have to update xmark with a different archives option.. or just leave the Sitemap page to handle both. Or, in the meantime, you can download the SRG Clean Archives plugin from me right here.

  Cheers!

• Sam Nova
  2:45 pm on October 8th, 2007 21

  Yup, thats the problem with the clean archive… site/page gone

  Oh, seems your download page is failing.. I had the problem recently when I added a file to my site (BrainBug demo). But it seems you are using a download manager!!!

  Thanks for the clog information. I will give it a try in a bit.

  Just noticed one thing, having the newest comment at the top is nice, but a bit annoying when the form for the comments are at the bottom. Maybe something to add as option, the order of the comments (if thats easy of course).

• Lisa
  3:00 pm on October 8th, 2007 22

  Actually, it looks like this guy took over the SRG Clean Archives plugin project. You can download it from that link.

• Stephen Hopson
  3:28 pm on October 8th, 2007 23

  This ongoing dialogue between commentators and the theme author is EXCELLENT!!!! I am subscribed to this post so I am kept informed of the dialogue. It’s enormously, enormously helpful as I try to settle in my new “home.”

  I have to say to Sam that most blogs are set up that way with the newest at the top and the oldest at the bottom where the comment form is located. I think that’s normal??

  Anyway, I am pulling what’s left of my hair out in trying to make the Feedburner “Subscribe” box smaller at my site http://www.adversityuniversityblog.com I managed to figure out how to adjust the box for people to put their email address in but not the subscribe button. HELP!

  One other thing and I know this is not theme related but I’m hoping someone could help with the duplication of Share This button. At my site, it’s both at the bottom of the post and at the footer of the post. How can I get rid of at least one of them?

  And speaking of Share This….at the footer of the post, it seems this is too close to the Comment link. How can I pull them a little further apart?

  And finally, I’m trying to get a picture of myself in a sidebar widget but a small one and then write a little something about me. There doesn’t seem to be a plug-in to help me resize uploaded photos for sidebar widgets. I guess that means I need to resize them on my computer first? What’s the measurement for a small but visible, clear photo to be put in the widget?

• Sam Nova
  3:44 pm on October 8th, 2007 24

  Hi Stephen
  I have to agree with you, the support that Lisa is giving is GREAT, thanks again.

  About comments order, I just checked a few blogs and some got it the way xMark does, some the way I prefer. Now I’m sitting here and commenting on your comment and I have to scroll up to see what you wrote, and then continue with this text. BUT if you click on the Show All, then you get newest comment at the bottom, just like I like it. So I guess it is alright.

  About the Share This, agree, some spacing would be nice.. Let’s see what Lisa will come up with. You might want to see comment #3 also, as she gave me some tips about the vertical alignment. Guess some of those values can be used for the spacing.

  For the image of yourself, I guess you need to use a specific size, as it otherwise should resize it on the fly, as the width of the sidebars are adjusting the width (Thanks for that)

• Stephen Hopson
  3:58 pm on October 8th, 2007 25

  Please forgive me for my last comment where I asked about the double “Share This” situation. I missed your instructions in the Documentation page about this. Sorry about that!

  But I still need help with the other things like the photo insertion in a widget sidebar, moving the Share This and Comment links a little further apart and making the Subscribe button smaller to fit the sidebar (or conversely making the sidebar a little bigger?)

  And one other thing. The tag line doesn’t allow me to type all that much in there. If you look at my old blog, anyone who stopped by could see what the blog was about by looking at the top portion of it http://www.adversityuniversity.blogspot.com I’d love to get that much information somewhere on the main page for new people to get acquainted. HOW?

  Thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks. And SORRY for missing the “Share This” duplicate situation.

  Stephen

  Your theme and template has been AWESOME. I’m having a fun time learning how to tweak my site.

• Stephen Hopson
  4:11 pm on October 8th, 2007 26

  Hi Sam:

  I didn’t realize that by clicking “Show All,” the comments are in numerical order. Neat! So I guess we shouldn’t worry about the order of comments then? Except how will visitors or others know this? They might get frustrated when trying to leave a message and need to see comments that they are responding to?

  Thoughts?

  Anyway, I’m enjoying this dialoge and I hope we can all help one another.

  Lisa - you are AWESOME. I knew I did the right thing by picking your template for my new blog. I knew it. Cuz I could use all the help with WP being a new thing for me.

  Oh one more thing. I’m trying to move almost 200 subscribers to my new blog. I am going nuts trying to figure it out. I’ve looked all over the place on ways to do this. I was at blogger where I had Feedblitz for email subscriptions and a RSS feed that was channeled into Feedburner to count all my subscribers (you know about that right? Feedburner gave instructions to redirect Feedblitz subscribers over to Feedburner so that all subscribers can be counted).

  Now that I’m at a completely new site with a hosted server, how the heck do I get Feedblitz email subscribers over to the new Feedburner feed for the new site? The Feedblitz and Feedburner sites are not very clear on how this is to be done. Any ideas?

  Let me know if this is clear or not. If not, I’ll try to be clearer in the next comment.

  Stephen

  Stephen

• Alex Bell
  2:04 am on October 9th, 2007 27

  Hello,
  Newest comment at the top is nice but in bottom it never showanything like what page url we are visisiting,article does a great job expounding upon the essential points of building great apps. Thx!
  it was very nice to go through this blog. usually we cant find that much informative blogs like this. thanks.

  Regards,
  Alex Bell

• Drupal Theme Garden
  4:11 am on October 9th, 2007 28

  Nice theme, wish to somebody port it to drupal theme

  Suggestion:
  you could add some min-width in your css for preventing “collapsing” of theme when browser windows is too small.

• Lisa
  10:18 am on October 9th, 2007 29

  Wow - well let me take these comments one at a time. The order of comments on this site is the way it is because I’m paginating the comments here for my own benefit - sometimes the comments thread on posts here get rather long, so I like to shorten them up a bit. Though, theme users will find the comments list in numerical order and there are plugins that you can use to thread the comments or have inline reply, that kind of thing. Check the WordPress / Extend / Plugins for some ideas.

  @Stephen - on your Feedburner/Feedblitz account - if it were me, I would have kept the same feedburner account and just changed the feed URL to your new one. That way - subscribers that you had on your Blogspot blog would be updated on your new WordPress blog. I wouldn’t have created a new Feedburner feed for your new blog, if you already had one for your old blog (Feedburner allows you to edit the feed URL for your existing account). Hope that makes sense. As far as importing your Feedblitz subscribers - - I’d have to read up on their documentation and find out — maybe they have a support contact where you can ask them specific questions.

  On your pictures in the sidebar - I would go with a 150pixel width image, if it were me. You will need to resize it on your computer and then upload it and place the correct HTML code to the image source in order to display it. Using a Text Widget is the best bet here - that way you can also include the accompanying text.

  On moving the Share This link/image further to the right of the comments link - try adding this to your CSS:
  .sharethis {margin-left: 25px; }

  You can, of course, increase that left margin as much as you want - 25px is just what I used as an example.

  Regarding the tagline at the top - if you have more text for that tag line area than what will fit up there, consider using a text widget at the top of one of the two sidebars and input text that gives your visitors/readers an introduction to your site..you could also then provide a link to more information and link them to your profile/about page like:

  This is my site, welcome to it - here you will find this and that and other things, as well as more stuff about whatever. Read more about me and my site on my About Page here »

  On your feedburner subscribe button - that is code provided to you by feedburner - - you might want to try inserting an id selector within that code (like id=”feedbutton”) - something like this:

  <input id="feedbutton" type="submit" value="Send Free Updates!" />

  and then styling it in the CSS, something like this:

  #feedbutton {width: 140px; font-size: 0.9em}

  Those are just suggestions - you can style it however you’d like.

  Cheers!

• Stephen Hopson
  12:29 pm on October 9th, 2007 30

  Lisa:

  Thank you for all of your very helpful suggestions! I will follow each one of them to the letter.

  One thing I want to clarify is that I had a Feedblitz email subscription over at the old blog. I am now using Feedburner’s email subscription at the new blog. The question is how do I move them over? See? In other words, I never had Feedburner’s email subscription at the old blog. I merely did the “redirecting” thing they had going on earlier this year where blogger.com blogs could redirect all of their emails from Feedblitz to Feedburner to make sure all subscribers were counted. Remember that? It was a pretty big thing.

  So that’s where I am now. I am using 100 percent Feedburner subscription options (email, RSS, etc). Is this clearer now?

  While I try and find the solution to this perplexing problem, I have asked my subscribers to re-subscribe over at my old blog (you can see that at http://www.adversityuniversity.blogspot.com It was the leaset I could do until I figure out a more painless solution.

  Ideas?

  Also, you gave me a suggestion on how to increase the space between Comments and Share this. You gave me a CSS code to add. Where am I adding this to?

  You also gave me a code for the id feedbutton. I imagine this goes inside the code I put in the text widget for the sidebar. Is that correct? If so, where inside that code would the Id feedbutton code go?

  Then you gave me CSS styling information. Would that be the stylesheet link under theme editor? If so, where would that styling code for the subscribe button go inside that?

  Thanks so much for your help - you’ve been enormously helpful and generous with your time. I plan to donate some money for all of this. It’s been on my mind constantly. I feel that buying your book was not enough of a compensation. So in the near future I’m going to donate some money to you - it won’t be in the billions or millions or thousands but it will certainly be something. Okay?

  Stehen

  Stephen

• Lisa
  6:54 pm on October 9th, 2007 31

  Stephen - I appreciate your desire to provide support through a donation..every little bit does help, thank you I do hope you enjoy the book and that you find it helpful…it seems like the clock is ticking sooooooooooo slow waiting for the release date on it..I do wish I had more control over that, if I did - it would be out by now

  On your Feedburner/Feedblitz question - I can’t really say, having never had to deal with it before. However, a quick search on Google, and I found this post - maybe you will find it helpful.
  How To Move Your Feedblitz Subscribers To Feedburner

  The CSS code that I provided in my earlier comments get placed in the Stylesheet of the theme (go to Presentation/Theme Editor and click the Stylesheet link on the right). Just copy an paste those CSS code bits I gave you in there - - making sure you place them each on their own seprarate line (I would recommend scrolling to the very bottom of the Stylesheet and pasting them at the bottom, on their own line).

  I would also recommend creating a copy of your original Stylesheet first - - just in case you make changes that cause problems with your site.. you can always restore the original easily enough, as long as you have a copy of the original.

  The code you have for your Feed subscription ( in your widget) — look for this line:

  <input type="submit" value="Send Free Updates!" />

  and replace it with this:

  <input id="feedbutton" type="submit" value="Send Free Updates!" />

  Then add the CSS code that I gave you for the id feedbutton in your stylesheet.

• Stephen Hopson
  7:33 pm on October 9th, 2007 32

  Lisa:

  And so my contribution shall be forthcoming. Definitely. Be on the lookout for it.

  Thanks for the tips that you just provided me. How do I make an extra copy of the original style sheet? Do I highlight the code and copy then paste it to a word document or to ….what’s that called…notepad?

  And one last thing - I am looking to put in Google Analytics in my new blog. Where do I put this in your theme? Please advise. I have already signed up for a new account at Google Analytics and have the code for it. I’ve seen several “plug-ins” floating around but they don’t seem to be compatible with WP 2.3 So if I knew where to copy and paste the code in your theme, I’d have no problem doing it as long as I know exactly where to put it. Can you assist?

  Stephen

• Stephen Hopson
  7:52 pm on October 9th, 2007 33

  Lisa:

  I found this page about putting Google coding in the “editing.footer.php here:

  http://themeplayground.com/how-to-install-google-analytics-on-your-wordpress-blog

  If you go to that page, it says something about how it all depends on the theme you’re using in order for this to be effective.

  Thoughts?

  Stephen

• Stephen Hopson
  7:57 pm on October 9th, 2007 34

  Lisa:

  I found this page about putting Google coding in the “editing.footer.php here:

  http://themeplayground.com/how-to-install-google-analytics-on-your-wordpress-blog

  If you go to that page, it says something about how it all depends on the theme you’re using in order for this to be effective.

  Thoughts? BTW, the article about moving from Feedblitz to Feedburner was Godsent! I don’t know why I couldn’t find this when I did a Google search!

  P.S. I just donated $50 through Paypal for you. You’ve done a WONDERFUL job with the theme and you’ve also been extraordinarly responsive, helpful, cheerful and supportive - all of which I truly, truly appreciate. Since words aren’t usually enough to demonstrate my gratitude, I thought maybe some nice money would.

  Stephen

  Stephen

• Stephen Hopson
  8:02 pm on October 9th, 2007 35

  When you go to that link I just provided (about Google Analytics), scroll down the page where you’ll see this:

  Log into your dashboard (preferably in a new window) and browse to Presentation > Theme Editor > footer.php.

  “Note: This is assuming that you are using a fairly standard Wordpress theme which uses footer.php as the final template of a page. If this is not how your blog is set up and you can’t figure out where to go, post a question in the comments to this post.”

  This is followed by a screen picture of editing.footer.php That’s why I am asking you if this is a safe thing for me to do and whether putting the code on that page as it instructs will count every page of this theme for the Google report.

  Stephen

• Lisa
  8:06 pm on October 9th, 2007 36

  Stephen - many thanks for the donation. I’m happy to provide the theme and the support and do very much appreciate the donation, thank you.

  I’m happy to hear that article was helpful for your feed subscribers issue.

  I believe the Google Analytics code can be placed in the Footer template. In your WP admin panel - go to Presentation then Theme Editor - click the Footer template on the right and look for this bit of code in the Footer template:

  <?php wp_footer(); ?>

  paste your Google Analytics code above that and then save the template - that should do it.

• Stephen Hopson
  8:20 pm on October 9th, 2007 37

  Do you think a plug=in like Google Analyaticator is better than inserting the Google Analytics code in the editing.footer.php ?

  Here’s a link to the plug-in page…please tell me which option you think works best for your theme. The plug in or the actual insertion of the Google Analsytics code on the editing.footer.php page?

  http://cavemonkey50.com/code/google-analyticator/

  I think this information would be of great help to those who want to use your theme.

  Thanks again, I promise no more questions. I’m going to sleep now (it’s 10 pm EST now).

  Stephen

• Lisa
  8:29 pm on October 9th, 2007 38

  Stephen - that Google Analyticator plugin looks like a nice option and probably gives you some additional detail and configuration options over simply placing the code in the footer.php. If I used Google Analytics (and I really should..just haven’t gotten around to it) - I would probably give that plugin a shot. If you do - let me know what you think of it. Thanks!

• Sam Nova
  1:25 am on October 10th, 2007 39

  I just installed the plug in for Google Analytics. Went very smooth. I enabled it in the footer (option in the plug in) and verified the page source if it is included, and it is.
  So now it is gathering data, will be interesting to see the results (if I just had more page views).
  Thanks to Stephen for the url for the plug in.

• Stephen Hopson
  6:54 am on October 10th, 2007 40

  Sam:

  Thanks for your input about the Google Analyticator. I haven’t installed it yet because I went ahead and put in Google Analytics in the footer.php myself. After I did that, Google Analytics said that the coding was successful and that it was starting to collect data. So I’ll have to take a look and see.

  Please keep me posted on the success of your plug-in. I would be very interested in knowing if that plug-in is more beneficial and gives more options than the Google Analytics alone.

  Stephen

• Stephen Hopson
  6:58 pm on October 10th, 2007 41

  Lisa, Sam or anyone else who uses this theme:

  I’m discovering that replying to comments isn’t as easy as I thought it would be!

  1. Does anyone use a special plug-in for the purpose of responding to commentators without having to go to the blog itself to respond?

  2. For some reason, I’m not being notified of comments when people leave them. I want them to go directly to my email, alerting me that a comment was left like Blogger did. But it’s not working. Any idea why?

  (Note: At first I was getting an email notification every single time I approved a comment, when someone left a comment and when I left a comment! I decided to change email addresses and all of a sudden I get no email notifications at all! What’s happening?)

• Sam Nova
  8:31 am on October 11th, 2007 42

  I’m not using any plugins and I got no issue with replying to comments directly from the comment section. Then I can also check if someone else left other comments

  About not getting an auto responds, as far as I understood, then when you have approved someones comment then it indirectly means you have approved that person, so if they leave more comments then you do not have to approve them.

  When someone leaves a comment here then I get a email but if someone else also leaves comment then I do not get a new email, I need to check here before it is enabled again. No need to get emails for 10 comments, but you are just told that someone replied, and then you click the link and check and reply.

  Hope that was clear.. Works fine as long as you don’t expect to be able to just read the email you get and then it is fine, as you will not know about the comments left afterwards. It is also the way most forums works.

• Bruce
  11:02 pm on October 11th, 2007 43

  Lisa.

  I have just upgraded to WP 2.3 and thought now would be a good time to change to your Xmark theme. However I want to keep my original header which I have resized to fit but have an issue now with the site title showing through and the ‘nav bar’ links in the header and not below it.
  A bit of help on sorting this would be appreciated and also how do I add links into the ‘nav bar’ such as ‘Home’

  Bruce

• Bruce
  9:12 pm on October 13th, 2007 44

  Hi Lisa.

  I have upgraded WP to 2.3 and taken the opportunity to move to this excellent theme, but I want to use my original header. I have fiddled around and got the nav bar below the header but too much white space below this. I presume it is controlled by one of the ‘padding settings’ but can’t see which one, could you help. Adding sitemap and archives following your instructions was fine but could you tell me how to add other links to this bar, such as ‘home’
  Thanks.

  Bruce

• Lisa
  9:23 pm on October 13th, 2007 45

  @ Bruce -

  Look for this in the Header template (header.php):

  <ul>< ?php wp_list_pages('depth=1&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li='); ?></ul>

  and change it to this (adding the home link):

  <ul><li><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">Home</a></li>
  < ?php wp_list_pages('depth=1&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li='); ?></ul>

  (be sure to remove the space before the second ?php - I had to put it there so the code would display)

  Should work for you.

  In terms of the white space under your header - - not sure on first glance, it would require a bit of play with the CSS in order to adjust it … just be sure to keep a copy of the original file to make sure you have a back up.

  Cheers!

• Bruce
  12:21 am on October 14th, 2007 46

  Lisa, thanks, it worked a treat. Just one more question. I need to move the ’search form’ to the same level as the nav bar but keeping on the right hand side. I’ve tried but failed.
  Bruce

• Lisa
  11:23 am on October 14th, 2007 47

  Bruce - that is controlled in the CSS. Find this line in the stylesheet:

  #searchform
  
  {
  
  	float:right;
  
  	margin:0;
  
  	padding:0
  
  }

  And apply margin/padding as necessary.

  cheers!

• BillyT
  4:50 pm on October 14th, 2007 48

  Hi Lisa,
  Thanks for a great theme..but I need a little help.
  I have tried to create a archives page and sitemap pages using the clean archives plugin…I followed your instructions as per your documents page…but when I click on them I get a page cant be found error.
  Can you give me a hint where I have gone wrong.
  Regards
  BillyT

• Lisa
  5:13 pm on October 14th, 2007 49

  @BillyT - it’s not the theme, it’s your WP installation. None of your permalinks work (for instance, the links to your posts give a 404 error).

  Fix that problem and your Archives and Sitemap problem will also be fixed.

  Cheers!

• BillyT
  6:19 pm on October 14th, 2007 50

  Hi Lisa,
  Thanks for the quick reply and fix.
  I hadnt made my htaccess writable.
  Once again..thank you
  Regards,
  BillyT

• Rob
  10:49 pm on October 16th, 2007 51

  Hi Lisa,

  I love the theme, but I am having an issue with the “Recent Posts” area. It seems on others’ sites’ that when you click on a page link or post link, the “Recent Posts” remains the same regardless of where you navigate. On my site, when I navigate to another page or post, the “Recent Posts” results change. Is there a way to fix that?

  Also, is there a way to move some of the Page results down to the footer? I don’t really want the links to the Privacy Policy, Terms Of Service, etc. on the top of the page. Thanks for the theme!

  Rob

• Bruce
  5:32 am on October 17th, 2007 52

  Hi Lisa. Thanks for your previous reply to my question regarding moving the search form by varying the padding. I couldn’t get it to work as it just put more white space below the header graphic so have left it where it was.
  Something that I have noticed and wouldn’t know if it is just me or the theme.
  I have modified the html for an Aweber submission form to fit into a sidebar widget, by default it is too wide. It is only 120px wide now but is distorted to the full width of the sidebar and is still cut off with the right border missing. I have repeated it in another theme on another site and it shows as expected.
  I have used 3 different widgets with the same result. What do you think.
  Bruce

• Philip
  3:06 pm on October 17th, 2007 53

  Hello Lisa. Thanks for a fine, rock-steady and adaptable theme. I looked for a long time to find a theme that would display a lot of information clearly - and ideally released under GPL, so I couldn’t believe my luck when I found your xMark. Still some finessing to do but I’ve deployed it over a couple of subsites and I’m very happy with it.

  I’m not sure where you’re based, but I checked on Amazon.co.uk and yes indeed *WordPress for Dummies* is due in UK on Nov 27. As I live in Ireland I can put in the order there.
  Many thanks again.

• liciece
  5:54 pm on October 19th, 2007 54

  hi,i use Xmark for long time and recently I find some problem i can’t solve by my own.As I add some widget inside my sidebar,the width of that sidebar is not so suitable so that I have to do some edits to make sidebar fit.The problem is I don’t know where I can make this adjustment.Could you figure it out for me?I do appreciate your doings.Thank you.

• Joe
  8:14 pm on October 22nd, 2007 55

  Hi Lisa, this goes way back to an old question, but I’d like to put something there instead of the X. How would I go about doing that? This is a wonderful theme and I really love it!

• Lisa
  8:29 pm on October 22nd, 2007 56

  @Joe - you will need to create a graphic to replace the old one. Name that graphic: bodybg.png and replace the one that’s comes in the /images folder for this theme.

  Thanks - glad you like it!

• Lisa
  8:31 pm on October 22nd, 2007 57

  @liciece In the stylesheet - you can adjust the width of the left and right sidebar by finding this bit of code within the Stylesheet:

  #lside2,#rside
  {
  	float:left;
  	background:transparent;
  	width:18%;
  	overflow:hidden;
  	margin:60px 0 0;
  	padding:0 0 0 20px
  }

  And adjusting it to suit your needs.

  Cheers!

• Lisa
  8:32 pm on October 22nd, 2007 58

  @Philip - thank you so much! If you purchase and read the WordPress For Dummies book, I would love to hear back from you on how helpful you found it to be. thank you for the support, Cheers!

• Lisa
  8:35 pm on October 22nd, 2007 59

  @Bruce - perhaps the Aweber form needs a little styling, I’m unsure. If you have a knack for CSS, you can try to add some CSS to the stylesheet to style forms that are included within text widgets - like:

  .textwidget form   ...
  .textwidget input  ...

  Perhaps on the next update to the theme, I’ll include some CSS for that so that forms within the text widgets are handled differently. Thanks!

• Lisa
  8:43 pm on October 22nd, 2007 60

  @Rob - not sure what the issue is. I do not experience the same issue on my site, here. There is no special coding that I’ve done to the Recent Posts section in the theme, as it’s just calling in the generic WordPress Recent Posts Widget. Not sure what to suggest there.

  As for putting page links in the footer - you’ll have to edit the Footer template to include them there yourself. If you want to exclude certain pages from your top menu - you can do that by adding the exclude parameter to the wp_list_pages tag in the Header template.

  Look for this:

  and add the exclude parameter, like this:

  (assuming pages 10, 11, 12 are the ones you want to exclude. You’ll need to adjust that with your own page IDs for the pages you want to exclude. You can find the Page ID numbers in Manage/Pages in your WP admin. The IDs are listed to the left of each page.)

  Cheers!

• liciece
  9:25 pm on October 22nd, 2007 61

  Thanks Lisa.After several times of adjustments,I think the default margin of the spreadsheet is wonderful,though it can’t fit my needs,but I do think I will maintain it and wait the widget provider resizing itself.

• Rob
  12:54 pm on October 23rd, 2007 62

  Thank you Lisa for your response!

  I am still hoping someone here reading the comments knows how to correct the issue I am having.

  If you go to my site: http://www.cheatingspousetraps.com you will see I have the “Recent Posts” named “Hot Topics”. If you click on any of the posts and navigate to that page, you will only see that particular post listed in the “Hot Topics” area, all the other recent posts are not on the list unless you navigate to the home page.

  Any suggestions?

  Thanks in advance!

  Rob

• Bruce
  8:45 pm on October 23rd, 2007 63

  Rob.

  Have your tried a different ‘Recent Posts’ widget. I had a similar problem when no recent posts were seen except on the home page. I think I used another widget. Just do a search for ‘recent post widgets’ and try another one. That’s the beauty of widgets, so quick and easy.

  Bruce

• WordPress For Dummies - Available Monday 10/29 | Talking
  10:09 pm on October 23rd, 2007 64

  [...] blogging tools’ design work and meanwhile she designed many themes too,including the latest xMark v2.0 which I’m [...]

• Rob
  10:15 pm on October 23rd, 2007 65

  Bruce,

  You rock dude! Thank you so much! That worked. I used the
  Fuzzy Recent Posts plugin from Semiologic and that solved the problem. Widgets are a beautiful thing…

  Thanks again!

• Bruce
  11:09 pm on October 23rd, 2007 66

  Rob

  If life was always so easy! Certainly Lisa makes it easy for us with the theme and her great help.

  Bruce

• Bruce
  11:18 pm on October 23rd, 2007 67

  Rob.

  Ever thought of taking out the X graphic behind your mousetrap. Lisa explains it in post 56. Just a thought from a viewer of your site.

  Bruce

• Stephen Hopson
  6:56 am on October 24th, 2007 68

  Hi Lisa:

  I’m back after not commenting for a while but I’ve been keeping close tabs on other people’s comments in hopes of benefiting from their questions and your answers.

  One thing I haven’t seen yet is the question of how to organize the page tabs on top? I’d like to be able to switch the order of pages and not be stuck with the order in which the pages were created.

  How to do that?

  Stephen

• Rob
  11:14 am on October 24th, 2007 69

  Hey Bruce,

  I did think about taking out the X and I probably will. I just haven’t got around to it yet. So much to do…

• Joe
  9:06 pm on October 24th, 2007 70

  Hi Lisa!

  I was trying to use a plugin with this them, the “buy me an X” plugin, and the image that comes out of it is too big, but it works fine on my other site, http://www.webinfiniti.com

  Do you have any idea what might be going on?

• Bruce
  12:19 am on November 2nd, 2007 71

  Hi Lisa. I am having trouble with widgets in the side bar. The widgets keep appearing in ‘another’ sidebar and distorting my site and it also depends in what order they are in. Being on top position or bottom position can make a difference between displaying correctly and distorting.
  Could this be related to my earlier post regarding posting aweber html code.
  Bruce

• Stephen Hopson
  5:28 pm on November 24th, 2007 72

  Lisa:

  Been a while since I’ve communicated with you. I’ve told a lot of people about your new WP book. Hope it’s selling well for you!

  Your theme continues to do well for me and I’m most grateful for having found it.

  I am contacting you because I am wondering if you can help me clear up some confusion. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Do Follow plug in?

  Up to now, I have not installed this plug in. But I’ve read everywhere that by default, WP disables the ability of commentators to link back to their sites after leaving a comment. When checking the latest posts, at least those that were created AFTER I migrated from Blogger.com to WP (then adopted your theme), the links all work fine. In fact, the Top Commentators and Recent Comments plugins both display commentator names and links to their sites (as a way of rewarding them for participating).

  HOWEVER, when I go back in my archives, especially past the date of the migration, it seems that commentator links have all dimmed, meaning no links to their sites.
  I’m puzzled - why is that?

  This begs the question: If by default WP does not allow commentators to leave a link, then why would I need a “Do follow” plugin?

  Is there a certain time constraint in the WP program that shuts down commentator links? If I were to install the Do Follow plugin, will that revive commentator links from the past (esp before the date I moved over from Blogger)?????

  Hope you can guide me.

  Stephen

• Ridwan Ibrahim
  5:31 am on December 6th, 2007 73

  Hi Bruce,

  Yes I think is got to do with your pasting of the aweber html code try to remove it first and see the effect.

  Cheers!

• Sm Nova
  8:14 pm on December 7th, 2007 74

  Regarding comment #54 and #57
  I have just been experimenting in forcing a minimum with for both right side bars, forcing min width of 200px. If I use min-width then it works fine if the whole page is bigger than that. But if I run it with 1024×768 then the rightmost side bar gets moved below all posts.
  The problem is that right now the graphics are cut off at the right side of the widgets, just like your WordPress for dummies is cut off when viewing in 1024.

  Would like to set it so both sidebars uses 200 pixels as min width (and also max actually), and the left area uses whatever is left..

  Do you have any solutions/suggestions?

• Johan
  9:55 pm on December 7th, 2007 75

  Hi Lisa
  I read your wordpress for dumies and was surprised to find that you also discussed MU in there. Thanks. It was great and a very useful resources for newbies and more experienced user of wordpress.

  I have a question? Is it possible to integrate new blog creation with aweber? This will help me to create a new list at aweber and I don’t have to try and use the WPMU Mailer (that does not seems to work for me).

• Bill
  12:35 am on December 30th, 2007 76

  The WP-Polls plugin doesn’t like xMark 1.01 or xMark 2.00. When I use either of these themes, the checkbox and radio buttons are REAALLLLY wide — they take up the entire width of the widget column and are not usable.

  Anyone else notice this? I can’t seem to figure this one out. Switching to other themes works, but I like xMark on this website.

  Cheers,

  bill

• Bill
  1:27 am on December 30th, 2007 77

  Lisa,

  I haven’t solved the WP-Polls widget width problem yet, despite some mild hackery on the stylesheet.

  But, I wanted to say “thanks” for a really well-designed theme. I have a few blogs that use different themes and I’ve borrowed some of the CSS tags you used in xMark to make other themes behave properly. The “overflow:hidden” tag was just what I needed to make tag cloud items from spilling over the edge on another theme.

  I’m an old-school HTML nerd, all of this CSS is still “magic” to me.

  Cheers,

  bill

• Bill
  11:07 pm on January 1st, 2008 78

  One of your hints to another person suggested that a plugin may require some “stylizing” to make it work in your theme.

  I don’t know CSS but I used the FireFox extension “FireBug” (awesome!) to examine and edit your stylesheet in realtime and finally found a set of CSS hacks to make the wp-polls widget display properly in xMark 2.

  I added these to style.css:

  /* Hacks by shadow */
  .wp-polls input {width:1em;}
  .wp-polls .Buttons {background-color:#F3F6F8;border:1px solid #C8C8C8;width:4em;}

  Cheers and happy new year!

• Evert Meulie
  3:11 pm on January 27th, 2008 79

  Great theme! I’ve started using in on my web log.

  One minor note: the part in the docs ( http://blogdesignsolutions.com/docs/ ) on the Share-this plugin seems outdated…?

• Mike
  11:16 pm on February 6th, 2008 80

  I realised I placed my comments on the wrong page…sorry about that.

  This is a great theme. What I was wondering was if there was an easy way to make it a bit more web2.0.

  On the sidebars,where the widgets are, how would we change them from square/rectangles to rounded corners?

  Thank you

• Peggy
  9:33 pm on April 9th, 2008 81

  I’m curious…. is there a reason why you didn’t code the header image to have just the logo then repeat the rest of the image (called an expandable header)? Rather than have one HUGE header image? I mean, it’s fine for MY monitor resolution, but people who use smaller resolution lose a good portion of the right side of the header, including the search box.

  Thanks!

• Wordpress theme - which one? | www.web2whizzing.com
  6:28 pm on April 29th, 2008 82

  [...] am using Xmark wordpress theme, which is really nice designed, and it brings two sidebars, what is important for me, because I [...]

• aaron
  7:14 pm on May 27th, 2008 83

  I am having an issue with Share this (the old version 1.4 and new 2.1) Once you click on the “Share This” icon it pops up the choices for a moment and then acts as a link to my home page..Any ideas? Thanks for the help.

 

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