blog.NOVALISTIC

No, there will be no revamp of the current design because I simply find it too awesome to be replaced (as yet). However, to harness WordPress 2.7′s new theming features, especially threaded comments, which I myself will take a while to adjust to, I will be substantially refactoring the theme and release blog.NOVALISTIC 2.1 as soon as WordPress 2.7 RC1 is out the door.

I have a feeling this design will live through the launch of NOVALISTIC 4.0 “Sarathos”.

dev.NOVALISTIC and Thistle

Like what will become blog.NOVALISTIC 2.1, Thistle 1.1 will also be worked on to welcome WordPress 2.7 and I suspect Thistle should be out at around the same time frame as when RC1 arrives. Don’t worry though: rest assured that Thistle 1.1 will remain backward compatible with WordPress ≤ 2.6, and you can upgrade painlessly. Of course, dev.NOVALISTIC’s WordPress setup will be upgraded to the release candidate, and the theme will be updated.

Potassium

Potassium will be updated, as Potassium 1.0.6, to go with Sandbox 1.7, the version of Sandbox that should be made for WordPress 2.7.

Phi

Phi is not affected in any way by WordPress 2.7. Although that means Phi is already WordPress 2.7-ready, that doesn’t mean I’ll only support use of it on WordPress 2.7 when I release it. All versions from 2.0 onwards are supported. I believe Phi will be ready for release shortly after 2.7 rolls out.

I’m going to start hosting my WordPress themes at the new theme directory. If you’re interested in hosting at the new site as well, here’s some stuff you’ll want to know.

By themes, I mean complete themes. My Sandbox designs (Potassium and Bromine) will not be available there. EDIT [7/19]: At least, not yet, until what Adam hypothesizes in his comment comes to light.

And along with this piece of great news, I have also put together Thistle 1.0.2, ready for download now. EDIT [7/19]: It will be available in the theme directory It is now available in the theme directory, and of course it’ll remain hosted here at NOVALISTIC as well.

Here’s what’s new from 1.0.1:

Changelog

• WordPress 2.5 visual editor CSS classes are now present, and thus:
  • The visual editor will be happy.
  • I’ll be able to host Thistle at the new WordPress Theme Directory.
• Thistle 1.0.1′s static Meta widget was not updated to reflect the credit to me. Ouch.
• Images now overflow the left column if necessary and are now visible over the sidebar.
• Corrected inconsistencies in a couple other templates.
• The theme’s PHP code has been edited to adhere to WordPress’s coding standards.

In this Potassium release, among other changes I also now allow it to deal differently with certain other widget options. See what you get for lack of extensive testing? Yes, I forgot

Changelog (Potassium 1.0.4)

• Made compatible with Sandbox 1.5 by altering some theme-specific CSS classes.
• Hence the introduction of Gravatar support!
• With some new CSS classes being introduced in newer versions of the Sandbox theme, Potassium’s use of attribute selectors has been cut slightly. That means a bit more IE6 support – but who cares?
• Adjusted display for some widget options, like displaying categories or archives as drop-down menus.

Download Potassium 1.0.4 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) 4f1a5fc4b4c90235d1963c20c9d27e43
MD5 (.tar.gz) 5a59bd45b86fd483466aa3a69a928f61

The new Thistle release convinces IE6 and IE7 to display the above tabbed navigation properly and parts of it have been refactored for use with WordPress 2.5. Backwards compatible code will still be present, so whether you’re using WP 2.5 or older, whether or not you’re concerned about readers using IE, I suggest you upgrade.

Changelog (Thistle 1.0.1)

• Fixes IE’s problem with the tabbed navigation – mad props to Justin Tadlock!
• If an author doesn’t have a web site, Thistle won’t convert the author’s name to a link in the author display page.
• Moved the designed-by information to the Meta widget as it seems to be a somewhat more suitable place than the footer.
• Extraneous template markup removed from a few areas.
• Some other very tiny fixes here and there.
• Updated for WordPress 2.5 (with backwards compatibility still in place):
  • If the blog is running WP 2.5, use is_front_page(), otherwise fall back to is_home()
  • If the blog is running WP 2.5, use get_avatar() for Gravatars, otherwise fall back to gravatar() if a Gravatar plugin is installed.

Download Thistle 1.0.1 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) 1a1a5e50152e1df4a306016a8ddfda8c
MD5 (.tar.gz) 9bff91c66d82a3e298db7dfcefab7b5c

I decided to bump the version up to 1.0.0 despite problems with Internet Explorer and me saying I’ll continue supporting IE6 till the end of the year, because I simply couldn’t wait to release the theme any longer.

Since I’m still new to WordPress themes, if you encounter any issues with Thistle that I don’t already know of please let me know via comments or something else.

Download and enjoy my new theme!

It’ll be available for release very early next month. I promise.

In the meantime please say what you have to about it in this post. All feedback is gratefully appreciated, so thanks!