Help

Filthy Theme for WordPress

Created: 09/11/2009
By: Matt Brett
Contact Info: Check my official support forums for known issues http://forums.mattbrett.com, or send a message through ThemeForest if you can’t find your answer in the forums.

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–VERSION HISTORY–

1.0 – 09/11/2009
* Initial release.

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–TABLE OF CONTENTS–

A) Installation & First Steps
B) Markup, Style, and Layout
C) Internet Explorer Compatibility
D) Dynamic Image Resizer
E) Image Dimensions
F) Creating the Nav
G) Widgetized Sidebars
H) Managing Ads
I) Credits
J) Support & Feature Requests

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A) Installation & First Steps

When you select Filthy from the Themes screen to activate it, the preview may look a little messed up the first time. This is because you haven’t configured the theme yet and no colour scheme has been selected. Simply activate the theme, then head over to the Theme Settings screen, located in the Appearance section of WP-Admin.

For a quick setup, hit the save button at the bottom. Your blog should look half decent now and will be sporting the default (back in black) colour scheme. Now take your time and configure the rest of the settings. Just about everything is optional – so if you don’t want or need it, leave it blank.

Filthy uses a handful of third party plugins that are required for certain functionality. There’s no sense in reinventing the wheel, so be sure to grab which ever ones you need.

Twitter Tools

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/
For Twitter status updates to appear. Once this plugin is activated, it will appear in the right sidebar if there are no widgets present. If you have already place widgets here, you’ll need to drop the Twitter (not Twitter Tools, simply named Twitter) widget in this sidebar. Looks best at the top.

FlickrRSS

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flickr-rss/
For recent Flickr images in the header. Thumbnails will start to show up in the header as soon as you activate the plugin. For best results, set the options to 6 photos. And if you have cache enabled, make sure “square” is selected for image size.

The WP-PageNavi (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/) and Subscribe to Comments (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/) plugins are supported out of the box, but not required. They just add some extra functionality that’s nice to have.

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B) Markup & Style

Filthy is built on XHTML 1.0 Strict and makes use of Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset technique. The templates are well commented with obvious flags, so figuring out where containers start and end shouldn’t be an issue.

There are a few stylesheets in the /css directory – screen.css being the main one that contains all of the theme’s structure and style. There are some overrides for different versions of IE located in separate stylesheets that are displayed conditionally.

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C) Internet Explorer Compatibility

Filthy is compatible with all versions of IE (version 6 and up), to an extent. Some frills are missing in action since older versions aren’t up to par with the latest CSS.

In short, the theme fully works in all versions of IE, but some of the bells and whistles are missing.

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D) Dynamic Image Resizer

Filthy uses Tim McDaniels’ TimThumb (http://code.google.com/p/timthumb/) script for resizing the images used in the featured posts sections and in archive listings. Simply upload your images using the built-in media manager or direct FTP, then copy/paste the original file’s path into the Post Image field in the Additional Information box.

When you enter image paths in WP-Admin, you should start with the /wp-content directory. The WP home path is entered automatically in the templates. For example, if your image path is http://mydomain.com/wp-content/uploads/image.jpg, you would paste /wp-content/uploads/image.jpg in the field.

TimThumb requires the GD library, which is available on any host sever with PHP 4.3+ installed. There shouldn’t be a problem with most web hosts, but if images are broken, this could be why. Contact your host and see if they can help you out.

If you are certain your server is compatible, you may need to check that the /cache directory is writable on your web server – set the permissions to 755 or 777.

If you absolutely cannot get TimThumb to work, I can offer no further assistance. As such, I’ve included an option in Theme Settings to disable image resizing entirely. In this case, you will have to resize images manually.

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E) Image Dimensions

If you’re able to make use of TimThumb, you can bypass this section entirely. In the case that your server is incompatible, you will have to resize images manually if you want them to look their best. Otherwise, images will be resized via CSS restrictions, which doesn’t produce the best results. Here are the exact sizes for each of the different images…

Post Image: 125×166

Any easy way to automate image resizing, is to use the WP media manager and adjust your settings so that images are resized to the above specifications automatically when they’re uploaded. From the Settings -> Media panel, change the thumbnail size to 125×166.

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F) Creating the Nav

The nav is comprised of pages within your WP install. By default, Filthy displays all pages (even sub-pages) in the left sidebar. You can exclude pages you don’t wish to show here by adding their IDs to the Exclude Page IDs from Nav field in Theme Settings.

I would have preferred to have you include pages you want in the nav, but the stock WP function doesn’t work that way. Instead, you exclude the pages you don’t want to show up in the nav . At this time, you have to exclude sub-pages as well. Page exclusions are a comma separated list of IDs.

To find an ID, go to the Pages screens in WP-Admin and hover over the name you want to exclude. Glance down to the status bar in your browser and take a look at the path. post= at the end of the URL is what you’re after.

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G) Widgetized Sidebars

The sidebar is widgetized, so you can drag and drop standard WP widgets and custom widgets designed specifically for Filthy. I didn’t test every single widget I could get my hands on, but the most popular ones should display just fine.

Please refer to the WordPress Codex if you’re unfamiliar with using widgets.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Appearance_Widgets_SubPanel

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H) Managing Ads

There are several built-in ad spots in Filthy. On the Theme Settings panel you will see a series of text areas after the basic settings which are for the ads. Once you have placed your code in the appropriate areas and saved, you will need to add the associated widgets to the sidebars.

The 125×125 buttons widget can support any number of ads, up to 4.

Filthy has built-in support for the following ads…

728×90 Leaderboard
Sits above logo and description in the header.

125×125 Buttons (4x)
Sidebar widget.

300×250 Big Box
Sidebar widget.

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I) Support & Feature Requests

Please use this space (http://forums.mattbrett.com) to ask for help troubleshooting issues, find out how to extend the theme, share your modifications, etc. If you can’t find your answer there, feel free to send me a direct message via ThemeForest. I will not answer support requests left as comments here.

I will gladly help squash any bugs that might pop up and assist as best I can in resolving issues with the theme itself. I will continue to update Filthy if updates to the WordPress core render it incompatible over time.

However, I cannot facilitate feature requests, including customizing the theme at this point. Knowledge of Photoshop, XHTML /CSS, and the WordPress template system are required for advanced customization.

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J) Credits

Dynamic image resizing via Tim McDaniels’ TimThumb.
http://code.google.com/p/timthumb/

Icons for social networking sites are part of Komodo Media’s Social Network Icon Pack. Thanks Rogie!
http://www.komodomedia.com/download/#social-network-icon-pack

Fonts courtesy of Font Squirrel.
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/

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Once again, thank you so much for purchasing this theme! As I said at the beginning, I’d be glad to help you if you have any questions relating to this theme. No guarantees, but I’ll do my best to assist.

Matt Brett
http://mattbrett.com
http://twitter.com/mattbrett