Doc is a one-column theme, with a fixed width and lots of white space. It is intended to spoil your content and to satisfy your users’ reading pleasure.
Doc is minimal. I mean really minimal: it has the simplest layout and the most basic color scheme. Anyways, this simplicity only affects the design; the code is complete and the usability wasn’t neglected.
The story behind
Like you all, I spend a lot of time reading word processed documents. The image of a Pages, Word or Writer document is so familiar, that I can’t conceive my life without it. It’s like coffee. I thought that maybe that’s the case for you also, so I designed a theme impersonating such a document.
The default font is Times New Roman for consistency), but you can change it under the “body” declaration in the style.css file. The print stylesheet aims to reproduce a regular word document; if you want to display more then the post itself on the print version, just delete the respective selectors in the print stylesheet, under the line containing the declaration {display:none}.
Doc was designed for personal or non profit blogs. Doc wasn’t designed for advertisements; if you intend to place ads on your pages, you should style them properly.
Doc’s features
- valid strict XHTML 1.0 markup;
- valid CSS 2.1;
- really fast loading: for the test blog (without gzip compression – 0.56′ with a T1 1.44 Mbps connection; 2.25′ with a ISDN 128k connection; 12.17 with a 28k dial up connection); you can check it on websiteoptimization.com;
- search engine optimized;
- fixed width (fit to 1024px screens);
- custom templates (404.php, error message, archive page, page without comments);
- 3 widgetized areas in the lower section;
- sticky posts (italics);
- gravatars;
- threaded comments;
- social bookmarks (no plugin needed);
- white space, for the sake of your readers’ eyes;
- Microsoft Word-like design;
- print stylesheet.
Caution
Doc can only be used with WordPress 2.7 and above.
Usage
Just use it like any other theme: download the zip file, extract the theme folder, upload it on the server and activate the theme in the appearence tab of the admin area.
Customization and better performance
You can customize the colors or even the layout (if you’re familiar with CSS).
Doc was designed for speed, but you can speed it even more, by replacing the PHP calls with plain HTML (I shoul write a tutorial about this).
Licence
Doc is released under a GNU/GPL licence; you are allowed to freely use it, modify it and distribute it with the condition of preserving the licence and the attribution.
Demo and download
Demo blog
That would be all. Happy blogging.
Later edit
Pictures not appearing on the first page seem to be an important issue. Unfortunately I cannot find the time right now to release a new version of Doc with options included; hopefully it will be available in a couple of months. Anyhow, I’ll provide two alternatives.
1. Full posts on the homepage (as well as on category, tag and time-based archives).
You’ll have to do a little editing, but it’s only a matter of copy/paste. Copy this document (index-full post on homepage.txt). In the admin area, under the Appearance tag, go to Editor and select Main Index Template (index.php). Select the entire content of the document and replace it with the text you’ve just copied.
The main drawback of this method is that the images will only appear if they’re above the “more” quicktag. Additionally, you won’t be able to control the size of the pictures displyed; WordPress will preserve their original width and height.
2. The second alternative is more elegant, but involves two file editing actions (don’t worry, it’s still a copy/paste matter). You’ll need to download this archive (excerpt-and-image.zip); it contains two files: functions.txt and index-excerpt plus image.txt. Go to Appearance > Editor, select Theme Functions (functions.php) and replace the existing content with the content of the functions.txt you’ve found in the archive; then replace the current content of the Main Index Template (index.php) with the text in index-excerpt plus image.txt.
At this point, the first picture of each post will be automatically displayed. The pictures are resized (300px wide ane 225 px heigh) and aligned to left. If you’re plased with these settings, you’re done.
Possible customizations
You can control which image will get displayed on the front page, its size, its position. To do this, you only have to spot a line in the Main Index Template (index.php):
The arguments:
1 = the first image; (2=second image), etc;
300 = the picture’s width; / replace it with another numeric value;
225 = the picture’s height;
alignleft = picture floating left and wrapped by text; / you can replace it with: ‘alignright’ or ‘alignnone’ (in this case, the text will be pushed under the picture).
false = image not clickable; / true = clickable image (this argument should’t be wrapped by single quotes, otherwise the images are clickable by default).
Hope it was clear enough. If you’re havng any trouble in implementing this, please let me know.
PS If you want to add some special styles to these images, simply use the “thumbnail” class.
Published on the 10th of May, 2009, in free themes · Print
Great theme, very impressive!
Delicia,
This is cool. I was browsing simplethemes.net and found your theme. Very close to the design I wanted to achieve and your code is valid, unlike many others, also GPL!
I’m planning to modify it a little bit, things like giving links a colour (word processors do it too, better usability) and changing typography to my taste.
I’m sure this theme will be overused, since its familiar and clean interface will attract both bloggers and visitors.
I appreciate your clean work. Thank you!
I downloaded this one and I am now using it on my main web site (www.alexwolfe.ca) where I post free short stories. It’s absolutely perfect for writers and anyone who wants their words to stand out!
Great job!
Hi,
I love this theme very much! Have used it for my blog but could you give me some hits as to how to get the pictures to show on front page? It ‘s currently only showing pictures in content at page level.
Thanks,
E
nice themes,
i used it for my blog,
thx a lot …
Thanks for making this available. But, I have to re ask the same question, Eric did. How, do you get the pictures to show, on the front page? They seem to work, very well on this blog.
Whoops, I thought I had answered to that question. The pictures don’t show on the front page because of a little php call that would display only the first 45 words of a post and would strip the HTML; I used this template tag to help theme’s users to avoid the duplicate content issue.
There are actually several ways to get the pictures show. The most common is to get the whole post to display. To do this, you’ll have to edit the index.php file, spot the expression
<?php the_excerpt_rss() ?>and replace it with<?php the_content('Read more...') ?>. If you’re opting for this method, don’t forget to delete the existing link to the post (under the_excerpt_rss line, starting with<p><a href="">), for the new template tag will generate it automatically. The problem with this method is that the_content template tag will only show what is above the<!--more-->quicktag. So, if the pictures are below, they won’t show.Another method, quite common in last year’s magazine style themes, involves the use of custom fields. The drawback is that you’d have to specify a key and a value for each picture you want to get displayed on the front page, so it is annoying.
Nowadays, the trend is to use Darren Hoyt’s TimThumb script. There are also a few plugins in the WordPress repository.
On this blog I use a script. It is lighter than the TimThumb script, automatically retrieves the first image of a post and displays it on the first page. I get the pictures resized via HTML and CSS. A more elegant solution is to use C. Bavota’s plugin (Simple Image Grabber), that will resize the images via PHP, or even integrate it with your theme. To integrate it, you’ll have to copy the content of the simple-image-grabber.php file (without the first line –
<?php), paste it in the functions.php file, and place the functions call in the index.php file, just above the line containing the_excerpt_rss tag. (The best spot to paste the plugin’s script in the theme’s functions file is at the end of the document, above the last line (?>; make sure you don’t touch that line, otherwise your blog won’t be desplayed at all).I hope I mannaged to answer. If you’re having troubles with these codes, please let me know.
re: getting the pictures to show on the front page.
i was scrolling wordpress themes for hours, then saw ‘doc’. wow. the simplicity of this is so clean and sophisticated looking – just the sort of thing i want. no clutter!
i want my blog to look like words in an art gallery. which means that every post will have a photo. and i do want the photos to show on the first page, so a visitor could scroll down and see a rainbow of color jump out on the white back drop.
thing is, i’m really stupid when it comes to these kinds of instructions you just gave above. perhaps it is simple, but seems complicated enough to make me not want to try.
is there a simpler way? like, something that says ‘do you want pictures to appear on the first page? if so, click here’?
i’ve never had a blog before. and computer language makes no sense to me. obviously.
thought i’d ask ~
k.
hi, Karyn, I’ll update this post and send you an email
I really like the look of the page but i want to get rid f all the widgets in the sidebars. i do not want meta or tags on the page. how can i get rid of the widgets?
thank you!!
Hi Mitch, I’m afraid you’ll have to do some editing. My advice is to keep the widgets (you never know when you’ll need them) and, instead, delete the content displayed by default.
First, it’s a good idea to make a backup copy of your actual sidebar.php file. Then spot the things you want to get rid of and delete the code from the starting
<li>tag to the closing</li>. Make sure you don’t delete something else. If you’re having any trouble, just drop me a line and I’ll send you a new sidebar.php file.Hi there;
I love Delicia. It’s a perfect theme for me. However, I’d like to know if there’s an option to add an “Edit Page” function, as I’m always updating pages and posts, and it’d be easier for me to do it “on the fly,” rather than having to go back to the admin panel, search for each page and then edit. Is there a fix for this?
Best,
Rudy
I mean the Doc template, sorry!
I just installed Doc theme as it is perfect for my writing blog, except for one tiny little thing. How do I remove the automatic indents? I’ll keep searching, but if you could point me in the right direction that would be helpful, too.
Thank you.
Rudy, I’m afraid you’ll need to edit some template files (single.php, page.php and, only if you wish, index.php).
.Copy this piece of code
<?php edit_post_link(); ?>, paste it in a text editor to avoid any formatting issue, re-copy it and paste it inside of the loop. The best place would be in the .meta div (spot the line beginning withdiv class="meta"and drop it there.Hi, Anne, it’s easier than you’d expect it. Edit the stylesheet (style css) and look for these lines:
They’re in the “/* ========== HTML elements ========== */” section.
If you’ll delete these four lines, the browsers will handle the paragraphs according to their defaults – generally by inserting a line break after each paragraph.
Best regards.
Thank you, for the theme and the help.
Thank you… I have just searched for an hour looking for a perfect one column theme for my new site…. This is perfect… Simple but beautiful… This will give my readers a greater reading experience..
Please post any updates… Bookmarked.
Thanks very much. A very easy fix. I’m much obliged!
We love the theme but we are having a real problem! All the text on the About and Welcome Pages is showing up on the gray area instead of the white background. We don’t think it’s a css problem. Can you help?
No, it’s not a css problem, it’s definitely a html problem. While editing the template files, you must have deleted a closing div tag. You could try validate the markup – http://validator.w3.org/. Once the code is valid, the issue will disappear. If you’re still be having troubles after validation, you could send me your template files so I can take a look (delicia at wp-content-themes.com). But the easiest solution, provided you didn’t dramatically change the code, would be to download a fresh copy of the theme and reinstall it or replace the content of the files that are causing problems (page.php, index.php).
you’re very welcome
Thanks so much for your help. We had decided to try reinstalling the theme (and use the newest version) so your answer came just at the right time! I’ll let you know if it works.
Hi Delicia and thanks for your great theme.
I’d like to put more recent comments than 3, maybe 5 or 6 and delete “blogroll” can you please tell me how?
And when I’m clicking on a vertical photography, in the article the photo is align to the right and i’d like it to be centered. Is it possible ?
Sorry i’m not quite sure about my english.
And thank you very much !
Well, I must apologize for my slow response time; hope that I’ll eventually get to focus on this blog.
Comme il est beau ton blog, me fait envie d’aller à Paris (à présent, je suis “délocalisée”); en le voyant, j’ai pensé qu’il serait bon de faire une “vitrine” exposant des blogs qui font usage des thèmes que j’ai faits.
En ce qui est de tes questions:
1. Les commentaires récents
Tu dois éditer sidebar.php. et trouver LIMIT 3″; (ligne 36) et remplace 3 avec 5 ou 6.
2. Le Blogroll
Toujours dans sidebar.php, tu dois trouver ces lignes:
Tu peux soit les effacer, soit les commenter, mais touche pas aux lignes antérieure et suivante.
3. L’alignement des photos
Oui, il est bien possible (en fait il y a plusieurs moyens). La solution la plus simple et d’éditer style.css, de trouver la ligne qui commence avec
.post img{et de modifier la déclaration; remplacemargin:10pxavecmargin:10px auto;; tu pourrais y ajouterclear:both;; ou bien tu pourrais ajouter la classe “center” aux images (. Mais tout dépend de ce que tu veux obtenir. Je pense qu'il serait préférable que tu m'envoies un mail décrivant exactement le problème (surtout n'oublie pas d'attacher ces fichiers - index.php, single.php et style.css); je vais les modifier et te les renvoyer.Merci ! Et merci pour tes réponses très précises.
Ton thème est une très bonne vitrine pour mes images,
donc si mes photos peuvent servir de vitrine à ton thème pas de problèmes !
Je te tiens au courant des problèmes que je pourrai rencontrer.
Lovely theme.
And I’m wondering how I get it to:
– Insert doublespacing between paragraphs?
– Indent the first line in a post? (The code line — if this will let me insert code here — p + p {
text-indent : 20px;
margin-top : -8px;
} indents the first line of every paragraph except the first. Way to solve that? I don’t mind editing the code, just need to know where.
Thanks so much.
Hi, is it possible to add a tiled background to this theme?
Hi, Ken, there’s a very simple solution:
.text p { text-indent: 20px; margin: 0 0 20px 0 }
This code will target all the paragraphs of your posts. Don’t hesitate to adjust the values to your own taste
Optionally, you could delete the p+p declaration.
Yes, Tanya, it is possible, I sent you an email.