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Help working with blanktheme

Posted: 14.05.2008, 07:17
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Gidday, I am mucking around with blanktheme and .8 RC4, but I am not sure where to start. I have read the docs associated with blanktheme but cant really make heads or tails of them.
I want to alter the theme to a 3 columns template with a center block at the bottom.
I figured I need to alter this part of the master.htm file?
Code





<!DOCTYPE html
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Posted: 14.05.2008, 07:49

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Okay I figured out, that I needed to alter that part but in the home.htm file which was in the module directory of blanktheme.

Now, how do I insert content into the bottom center block?

Cheers

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Posted: 14.05.2008, 10:21

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Okay, moving right along now.... I am not sure where these are one and the same or I am doing two different things.

1. I got the site to pick up the 3col template using the home.htm file

2. I then created a bottom block using the block creation component of the blocks section.

3. I can now use that block as if it is a normal block - sort of.

What I am wondering:

How do I get the bottom block to stretch the width of the page, rather than just the width of the centre block?

Is creating the bottom block within the block creation component the right way to go?

What other block positions are available? Should they all be made available by default? I only guessed at the bottom block.

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Posted: 14.05.2008, 14:08

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Hi,
the grid layout (instead of 3col) gives more flexibility. 123_3b gives 3 columns and below that 3 subcolumns (More or less like this example).
3columns with 1 full center block below that is not foreseen at this moment in the standard available templates. You could file a featurerequest here.

Blanktheme is just the theme framework, you will need to add the relevant block positions and use them in your site. You can see the blockposition names also in templates/includes/3col.htm and the others there. After that you can use them just as any other blockposition. You don't want all blockpositions there since you will need only some of them.

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Involved in: BlankTheme, StoriesExt, Menu templates, SmugView, ValueAddon News and zikula.nl

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Posted: 14.05.2008, 17:21

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Thanks espaan, I can get the bottom center block operating, but not the "centerbl" or the "centerbr". Any suggestions? I have switched them on using the block module, and have designated some content but they just dont wanna to show up

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Posted: 14.05.2008, 20:13

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Are you using the 3col template?
Then you can assign a bottom block with layout 123_cb and the blockposition is called bottom
or
layout 123_2cb and the blockpositions of the 2 subcolumn blocks are centerbl and centerbr. In this case there are 2 columns below the center block of 50% each.

With the grid template it's a little bit different. 3 columns for example and below that another 3 subcolums with layout 123_3b, bottom blockpos are then bottoml, bottomc and bottomr.

Grid template and 123_3b example with bottom columns here

edited by: espaan, May 14, 2008 - 05:00 PM

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Posted: 14.05.2008, 21:31

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Hi Namtrak!
Nice to see you playing with BlankTheme!

Well, like Erik says, you need to create a block position in the Blocks Admin Panel for each zone you want to use (like the bottoml and bottomr block positions) then assign one or more blocks to that positions to show content there.

You can also customize the 2col, 3col and grid layouts to show a different block position. You can change the bottoml to simply bottom, and reuse the bottom blocks if that's useful for you.

I guess i'll write more docs in the BlankTheme Trac project about how to customize the default layouts, and the first example will be the full center bottom block.

BTW: a new ported theme is available: http://blanktheme.org/Pluralism
i'll commit and upload it to the BT download section.

Happy BlankTheming!

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Posted: 15.05.2008, 07:53
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Thanks guys, but I am still having problems getting the bottom blocks to show.
I have included a screen dump of my blocks setup, and a copy of the opening part of my home.htm file to see if I am missing something?
Code




Also, I would like to use the drop down menu in the admin pages for the main page, but I have no idea how to either set it up or configure it?
All in all the blanktheme looks like a great little tool, however as it stands at the moment it is not very intuitive. I would like to see more (if possible) notes within the coding itself to explain what each component does, and a more simplified step by step on using the blanktheme.
Otherwise - great stuff
Cheers
On first looks blanktheme looks like a great little tool
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Posted: 15.05.2008, 14:33

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The Blanktheme project comes with menutree as a module. A lot of templates are developed for menutree that can "easily" be used within blanktheme. It is an slightly adapted version of menutree in the NOC. BTW menutree is being updated by Jusuff frum topic.

In short:
In the blanktheme admin -> variables you can set the use menu instead of plugins to navtop block position. You create the navtop block positions in Blocks and assign a menu (like menutree) to it.
The usage of menutree is another subject and it's not that hard, but also not that intuitive yet. Install menutree, initialize etc. make a multi level menu and then you have to choose the template you want to use and the style sheet with that (check out Docs on menutree templates).

Set for example template to menutree_block_solidblocktabs.htm
and the style sheet to solidblocktabs_blueblack.css
for a topmenu like this one.

Several new templates and styles are on the planning, especially the ones from cssplay are very nice. As you see, blanktheme (and menutree templates) are still in development, which also means Docs are being written as we speak
It's when people start using blanktheme that the "nasty" things are becoming clear, so don't hesitate to ask questions.

edited by: espaan, May 15, 2008 - 01:35 PM

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Posted: 16.05.2008, 08:02

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Hey Namtrak!
Have you readed the current BlankTheme docs in Trac?
We've wrote some docs, and i don't know if are clear or not, so take a look and PLEASE:
Tell us how to improve that docs for newcomers in BlankTheme

Trac project:
http://trac.postnuke.com/blanktheme

Step 1: How to install doc:
http://trac.postnuke.com/blanktheme/wiki/DocsInstall

Enjoy and appreciate any feedback

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- Mateo T. -
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Posted: 19.05.2008, 16:31

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I am currently building a website for our local village hall using RC4 and a modified blank theme. Everything works ok until I rename the modified blank theme. I download the modified blank theme, rename it and modify the version.php and the language defines and upload the modified folder. I regenerate the themes list and recreate the Page configurations assignments for the renamed theme. I then select the modified theme as the default theme and everything works ok. However when I log out and attempt to log in I am presented with a Blank Page. To get back into the site I rename the modified theme to modified theme2, PostNuke then defaults to the ExtraLite theme which allows me to log in and change the theme back to the original blanktheme, which you can see here http://www.hadspenvillagehall.org/index.php
So what am I missing or doing incorrectly ?

Later comment:
the following error message is shown:
In Array module, cannot find template includes/.htm

edited by: DavidJ, May 19, 2008 - 06:07 PM

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Posted: 20.05.2008, 22:50

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Well,
a welcome Blank Page after the second login is a pretty pretty weird issue.
Your use theme is the same of your site default theme? I can imagine a Blank Page only with introduced errors in the lang files or the version PHP file of your new theme. I recommend you to check those files with a colored editor to see if there's any problem with the PHP syntax.

Second, i ever had an error with "In Array module",
pretty crazy. May check the syntax of the PHP files in your theme,
and discard introduced errors there.

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Posted: 23.05.2008, 18:26

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Mateo thanks, yes it is really weird. The theme that does not work is an exact copy, a clone, of the blanktheme used here www.hadspenvillagehall.org. and renamed hadspen, with a modified version.php:

Code

<?php 
/**
 * PostNuke Application Framework
 *
 * @author Mateo Tibaquira [mateo]
 * @copyright (c) 2007-2008, Mateo Tibaquira
 * @link http://www.nestormateo.com
 * @license GNU/GPL - http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
 * @abstract Blank theme to develop new themes with ease
 */


$themeversion['name']           = 'hadspen';
$themeversion['displayname']    = _HADSPEN_DISPLAYNAME;
$themeversion['description']    = _HADSPEN_DESCRIPTION;
$themeversion['version']        = '0.9';
$themeversion['regid']          = '0';
$themeversion['official']       = '0';
$themeversion['author']         = 'Mateo Tibaquira';
$themeversion['contact']        = 'http://www.nestormateo.com';
$themeversion['admin']          = 1;
$themeversion['user']           = 1;
$themeversion['system']         = 0;
$themeversion['changelog']      = 'docs/changelog.txt';
$themeversion['credits']        = 'docs/credits.txt';
$themeversion['help']           = 'docs/help.txt';
$themeversion['license']        = 'docs/license.txt';
$themeversion['xhtml']          = true;

and modified language defines:

Code

<?php
/**
 * PostNuke Application Framework
 *
 * @copyright (c) 2007-2008, Mateo Tibaquira
 * @link http://www.nestormateo.com
 * @license GNU/GPL - http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
 */

define('_HADSPEN_DISPLAYNAME', 'Hadspen');
define('_HADSPEN_DESCRIPTION', 'theme for Xanthia 3');

I can repeat the problem by uploading the hadspen theme to a second server and you can see the log in and other problems here : hadspen.pittriver.org
(click the login to generate the Blank Page)
I can cure the problem by creating a page configuration for the Users module, but that doesn?t explain why theme A (blanktheme) works perfectly without a page configuration for the Users module.
Also in theme B (hadspen) you will notice that the efa javascript links do not display?.why ?

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David

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Posted: 24.05.2008, 00:49
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Well
seems like the configuration of the master template is wrong.

The user page loads:
Code

<body id="bt_Users" class="bt_master bt_">
</body>
So, it seems that the theme variables are missing ($template and $layout), so, you should check the line 2 and 3 of the themevariables.ini file (check here the latest version of that one) to see if default values of both are Ok, (or just override them from the master.htm template uncommenting the assignations).

Take in account that there's a recent change in the layout convention.
The 'lcr' notation was changed to '213', specifying column numbers instead "position letters".
I'll upload a recent copy of the development version to Trac.

If you want, paste here the first lines of your master.htm template
and i can tell you what to change
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- Mateo T. -
Mis principios... son mis fines
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Posted: 24.05.2008, 01:44

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It was the themevariables.ini. My local copy was ok but for some reason when moving the theme folder to the server via ftp the themevariables.ini was transferred as an empty file! Still learning thanks for your help.

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David

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