smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

You’ve just stumbled upon my first theme release - creatively entitled broad leaf.

Note: This theme is now ‘final’ - support will be provided as best possible however no further development will occur.

This release is based on Derek Punsalan’s foliage theme - without which this customised wide two (or one plus asides) column theme could not exist.

This theme has the ability to pull a neat trick and morph between two different layouts, depending on whether asides are displayed or not. Feel free to have a look at the code I’ve used to pull the chameleon affect off - it’s not pretty, but it does work.

It should be noted that while this theme does look substantively better with asides displayed, it’s designed to cope without them if that is your preferred modus operandi.

Legal stuffs

Broad leaf is the result of many hours of tweaking and liberal splashes of code and released to you, for free. It should be noted that this theme is distributed under the same GPL license as foliage, so as a reminder - the license must stay intact¹.

I’d also consider it great form if you keep the footer links to broad leaf and foliage - a good deal of work has gone into broad leaf and the original design. :)

For a live demo - check out the theme viewer.

Versions

Official Release

• 1.5b - Now compatible with 2.1 - props szimek
• 1.5a - Fix for main column overlap and header cut off
• 1.5 - Official release - includes fixes for GMT and updates to page templates, :)

Release Candidates

• 1.4r3 - Final release candidate, incl. fixes for the loop
• 1.4r2 - Release two, masses of code cleanup in index.php and home.php and bug squashing! ((Thankyou to Karthik, VOLKAN and ChamPioNeer for bug spotting..))
• 1.4r1 - Release one, includes loop and asides handling improvements as well as code cleanup

Beta builds

• 1.3b2 - added options to nominate noteworthy cetegory and tag URI²
• 1.3b1 - clear some redundant code from footer.php
• 1.3b - clean up in tags.php to enable additional plugins if available³.
• 1.3a - public release. :)

Install Notes

Ok, now for the obligatory installation notes:

• Wordpress 2.0.x is recommended - I have no idea how much this may break under 1.5.x.
• The zip file contains the original PSD files care of the original theme.
• There are four plugins in use: Ultimate Tag Warrior, Dunstan’s Time Since, Recent Comments and Gravatars.
• Asides or “short entries” are disabled by default.
• All the theme configuration is found in data.php
• This theme makes use of home.php to display the front page - leaving index.php for other tasks⁴
• The archives template tags.php will now display live archives and blogtimes if you have those plugins
• There is no readme file - since no one ever reads them.

Installation love

Ready to rock and roll? Sweet - you should be ready for the following:

1. The download zip can be found below, save somewhere handy and extract
2. Copy⁵ the plugins directory contents⁶ to your wp-content/plugins directory
3. Copy the theme directory broad_leaf to your wp-contents/themes directory
4. Enable the theme, then open the data.php template and update to suit your blog
5. Edit the header.php file to reflect your archives and about page settings
6. Edit bottom_index.php and bottom_single.php to add your preferred content
7. Bask in the loving glow of all things green

Download

Version 1.6f ‘Final Freddy’

Question time

Q: What is the scoop on this ‘asides’ or short entries I keep hearing about?
A: That’s a great question - basically asides, or “short entries” are a great way of creating a concise entry without it bumping full posts off the front page.

Q: Will this cause my wordpress install to implode?
A: That’s a strong “probably not” - I’ve spent a lot of time on this theme and it’s never caused my install to break⁷.

Q: What’s with the data.php file - what on earth are you thinking?
A: While there are some great theme toolkit’s out there - I wanted to keep this theme simple and keep theme options out of the wordpress db. It’s also more portable this way.. you can copy the entire theme and take your customised options with you.

Q: home.php and index.php - am I seeing double??
A: Have no fear - that is as it should be. The template relies on home.php for the front page and index.php for search results and general index page work.

Q: The whole theme is broken because I changed some stuff - help?
A: Not a problem - remember you should first consider making your changes in data.php first. However if you have broken something or the theme causes odd things to happen, please feel free to send feedback. I am by no means a code and css guru and this is all done in my spare time. Be aware however that questions to the effect of “I ignored your advice, didn’t use data.php and it’s all fracked” may not result in immediate assistance being rendered. By all means hack and slash if you’re familiar with PHP and CSS basics.

Q: I have a question regarding the original foliage theme - can you help?
A: Sure, although the best place would be having a chat with the original author - since he built it. :)

Q: I’ve changed the colours and header image - can I sell the design or claim it as my own?
A: The GPL license provides a platform that both allows and indeed encourages derivative designs based on the original as long as the licence is intact and you clearly acknowledge the original author(s). If this design inspires a whole new theme, then you are quite entitled to claim it as your own. So the answer is no - however if you come up with something new based on this design, then yes. :)

Q: I’ve found some bugs in your design - can I help you make it better?
A: Damn straight. If you find something that needs fixing, or have discovered the fix yourself, please leave a comment in the official post
Q: Can I leave a comment?
A: Certainly - please drop by the original thread to leave a comment.

If you would like to help support continuing plugin development, please do consider making a donation. Thanks!

1. in plain terms - you should attribute any theme design based on broad leaf, or foliage, back to the original authors and keep the licence intact (↩)
2. be sure to check data.php as it has been updated to reflect a few changes (↩)
3. plugins blogtimes and extended live archives now supported for extra leafy love (↩)
4. be aware: you’ll need both index.php and home.php for the theme to work (↩)
5. copy, upload, teleport - whichever method you use to transfer files to your wordpress install location (↩)
6. you can skip any plugins already in use (↩)
7. If you make major changes to the theme without understanding what you are doing - then you’re just asking for greif :) (↩)