Southern Highlands Theme

The Southern Highlands Theme came about as we were going back through our Tulip Time theme, and basically attempting to restructure the html so it wouldn’t do strange things when Internet Explorer’s browser window’s width was 500 or so pixels. We used bits of the Jello-piefecta 3 column fix, and took it from there. When we had finished, we figured we’d throw up some new images and call it a whole new theme! We couldn’t think of anything crazy to call it, so we just settled on the Southern Highlands theme.

Southern Highlands Theme Features

3 column fluid/liquid layout
Textured backgrounds
Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict
Valid CSS
Widget Ready
digg, reddit, delicious buttons on posts
Reasonably easy to customise
Big ass RSS button
Search Engine friendly code

Download the theme

You can download the WordPress Southern Highlands theme here.

You can also view it in action here.

This entry was posted on April 24th, 2007 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Theme.
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There are currently 35 responses to “Southern Highlands Theme”

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1 On April 25th, 2007, TheFool said:

Hi I really like your theme but I was wondering how I could change the color?
I think it might look really good in some other colors. Do you think you could help me?

You can email me at ownerpg@buyitquality.com

So long!

TheFool

posted on April 25th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
2 On April 25th, 2007, TheFool said:

One more question. How do you get the digg, reddit, delicious buttons on posts? And again you can email me at ownerpg@buyitquality.com or I guess just leave another comment.

Thanks!

TheFool

posted on April 25th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
3 On April 26th, 2007, Highlands by Design said:

The digg, reddit, etc buttons should show up automatically on posts (but not any other pages) in the right hand column (just under the RSS button).

To change the colours, you would need to edit the images (pretty much most the images in the /images folder), as well as the colour hex values in the style.css file. It’s not a huge job if you have any experience with css and general image editing. If you can use Photoshop, the easiest way is to set the Image/Mode to RGB, and then select Image/Adjustments/Hue-Saturation and click the Colorize checkbox. If you then play around with the Hue slider bar, it’ll change the Hue of the image. If you are really lazy, you could create save the process as an Action, and then just Automate/Batch the whole /images folder.

We will release more themes soon, and in a wider range/variety of colours. Any suggestions for colours you’d like to see?

posted on April 26th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
4 On April 27th, 2007, TheFool said:

Ok awesome thanks.

posted on April 27th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
5 On April 28th, 2007, pokok penyu said:

hiya,

we’ve just changed our theme to this one, and absolutely love the layout and the functionality. great job!

but we’re fairly new with css and php, and i’ve tried several times (unsuccessfully) to disable the comments for googleadsense and about author functions. tried deleting */ at the beginning and end of the quote, but the whole sidebar just disappeared! can you help?

also, the blogroll doesn’t seem to be pulling from the list that we have. is there something else that we should be doing?

any advice really appreciated! and again, thanks for such an awesome theme :)

posted on April 28th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
6 On April 28th, 2007, Highlands by Design said:

Hey pokok penyu,

Thanks for the kind words :)

To enable the Adsense and author information, you’ll need to delete the entire commented line (including the < ?php and ?> bits). I should make that more clear in the code sorry.

So where it says
<?php /* Adsense is disabled. Uncomment and fill in your details (ad_client_number) if you want to use it.

and

*/ ?>

delete those lines, and it should enable it. Do the same thing for the Author Information if you wish to enable that.

I’ll look into the blogroll thing. I’ve noticed it happened to someone else somewhere with another theme, so I’ll have a look and get back to you.

posted on April 28th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
7 On April 29th, 2007, pokok penyu said:

heya,

thanks for such a quick response and the tip! managed to disable the comments fine :)

sorry to bug some more, but the text colour for the “author” blends into the white background because it’s a very light yellow. where should i go to change this? and is there a way to enable the “advertising” to show up on the mainpage itself?

sorry to be such a css dummy.

posted on April 29th, 2007 at 1:01 am
8 On May 2nd, 2007, Highlands by Design said:

Woops sorry, that was my mistake. I didn’t actually check the author panel to see if it would work properly.

What you’ll need to do is add

.about {padding-left: 35px !important; display: block; color: #a60;}

anywhere in the style.css file.

Then in the sidebar.php, add the ‘about’ class to the li tag of the author bit. Basically just replace that one line with the one below, and then fill out your Author text.

<li class=”about”><p>A little something about you, the author. Nothing lengthy, just an overview.</p></li>

I’ve just found some time so I’ll check the blogroll problem. I should look into putting together an option page so editing code won’t be required for some of that stuff.

posted on May 2nd, 2007 at 4:16 pm
9 On May 3rd, 2007, pokok penyu said:

heya,

thanks for that, works now :)

looking forward to blogroll solution. thanks so much again for taking the time to do this. it’s awesome!

posted on May 3rd, 2007 at 12:32 am
10 On May 7th, 2007, Christian said:

Hmm.. the theme seems to break the wp-lightbox plugin.. do you know what’s the problem?

posted on May 7th, 2007 at 1:23 am
11 On May 7th, 2007, Christian said:

forgot to add, break the wp-lightbox in firefox only!

posted on May 7th, 2007 at 1:25 am
12 On May 13th, 2007, Sam said:

Love the theme. But I’m having difficulty with the column widths and margins in Firefox/2.0.0.3 for the Mac. Due to an overflow issue, its shoving the sidebar contents out of the containers. This only occurs on the main page of the site. This doesn’t occur on individual posts. I’ve read about the various fixes for IE and some referances to similar issues with Firefox. So far haven’t found an effective resolution. My fellow Mac buddies think it looks great in Safari. But obviously most people viewing the site are going to be using IE or Firefox. Any thoughts? Thanks for the help and advice.

posted on May 13th, 2007 at 11:16 am
13 On May 14th, 2007, Blogmasterpg said:

This is one of the more beautiful thèeme i never seen . It’s more than one month i’mlooking a ‘perfect theme’ for my Arcana Intellego, but it is very difficult to me. I have 100 post ( in english and in ittalian language9 i’d take a 2 language theme, with some plug-in like analysis, tag aggregator, SEO friendly and Ad-Sense advertisment.. I see one of your theme: Ad.Sense advertisment are few.. You know if you’ll do another realease?

posted on May 14th, 2007 at 4:30 am
14 On May 15th, 2007, Aamer Javed said:

hi
I have one little problem with this awesome theme.
On my contact page, I cannot see the the outline on the boxes. I have the same problem on my front page (there should be password box between the fields ‘Password’ and ‘Submit’)
I know for sure this problem is due to the theme because I have switched around several themes and the ‘outlines’ seem to be ok with those.

Thanks and hope you have a suggestion.

posted on May 15th, 2007 at 5:17 am
15 On May 15th, 2007, Highlands by Design said:

Hi Christian,

Sorry for the late response. I haven’t tried that plugin, but will have a look, and I’ll get back to you. I dig your logo!

———————————

Hi Sam,

Again I’ll have a better look at that and get back to you. I did test it on Firefox on the mac, but it did seem to work ok. I might have missed something though.

———————————

Hi Blogmasterpg,

We will be updating the themes eventually (no time frame at the moment though) with an options page that will add a bunch of stuff. Translations though might be difficult, but I’ll have a look at how other themes deal with that sort of thing. If it’s not too complex, we might give it a go.

———————————

Hi Aamer,

The theme currently has styles for the default form elements, and I’ve since realised that this tends to break custom form elements people put on the various pages. I’ll make sure to fix that in the next version.

To fix it at the moment, if you edit your style.css file (either through Wordpress, or manually), add the following line somewhere

input {padding: 2px; border: 1px solid #ca3; background: #fed;}

This should add the border and a background colour to the form elements on your site. I’m hoping it doesn’t break anything else though :) If you have any other problems, let me know :)

Thanks guys.

posted on May 15th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
16 On May 16th, 2007, Aamer Javed said:

thanks bunch. that did add borders to almost all the items. If you look at my contact page now, there is no border on the ‘your message’ field.
Everything else is fine.

posted on May 16th, 2007 at 5:56 am
17 On May 16th, 2007, Highlands by Design said:

Hey Aamaer,

Ahh sorry, didn’t see the contact box before.

If you edit that style i put up before to include textarea, it’ll do the trick.

so basically edit the line mentioned above (or just replace it) with

textarea, input {padding: 2px; margin-bottom: 2px; border: 1px solid #ca3; background: #fed;}

and the text box should also have the borders. I’ve also added a bottom margin so your password field doesn’t sit on-top of your submit button on the front page.

If you wanted them to change colour when the form fields are focused/selected, you could also add the following to your style.css file

input:focus, textarea:focus {background: #fe9;}

Hope that works ok :)

John

posted on May 16th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
18 On May 16th, 2007, Sam said:

Thanks for looking into this for me and the speedy reply. It seems to spontaneously have fixed itself.

posted on May 16th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
19 On May 17th, 2007, Aamer Javed said:

Thanks soo much

posted on May 17th, 2007 at 3:01 am
20 On May 17th, 2007, Christian said:

Thanks for the compliment on the logo =) and many thanks for this great skin.

One question though, can i swap the left section with the middle section? Ie: the 2 sidebars are together and the main section is on the left?

posted on May 17th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
21 On May 18th, 2007, Highlands by Design said:

Hey Christian,

It is possible, but it’ll take a little bit of time to do. I haven’t tested it, but by looking at it, it would involve redoing a couple of the images (shadow_right.gif and shadow_left.gif), and then going through the style.css, and setting #column2 to float: right, #column1 to float: left (you’d swap their positions).

Then it’ll get fun as you’ll need to tweak a few of the styles to make it all work. You would remove the padding from body and #expander, give #column1 a padding-right to make #column2 fit, remove margin-left from .outer, and play around with the margins in #footer (getting rid of the left will probably do it). I think that’s all you’d need to do, but might have missed something. Ohh, and you’ll also need to play with the margins in .container-left and .container-right.

I’ll probably have a play around with it to see how well it’ll work, but it should be fine I think (unless I’ve missed something).

posted on May 18th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
22 On May 19th, 2007, Christian said:

woah.. sounds complicating! I guess I’ll leave it as it is for now! =) Thanks for the prompt reply though.

Btw, have you had the chance to take alook at the wp-lightbox plugin?

posted on May 19th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
23 On June 5th, 2007, Bill Compton said:

Hi Jim. Photos i received. Thanks

posted on June 5th, 2007 at 8:58 am
24 On June 10th, 2007, Anne Madison said:

Great theme! Cheerful, colorful, readable. I installed it today for a group Wordpress site for a group of Anglican women who have managed to find fault with just about every other theme Out There. This one seems to be a “go.” I have widgets installed in both left and right columns–no problems at all. Any words of wisdom on installing the Photopress plugin with it? That’s the next step.
Thanks,
Anne

posted on June 10th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
25 On June 12th, 2007, Alexandra said:

Thats a great theme, thanks. Very summerish)
I have just one problem - in му sidebar panel in wp-admin ш do not have a widget for UTF. And i really need it badly. It appears in other themes, in this - just disappears…?

posted on June 12th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
26 On June 12th, 2007, Alexandra said:

and i also seem to have lost the big rss button which i like so much))

posted on June 12th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
27 On June 12th, 2007, Alexandra said:

>a widget for UTF
sorry. UTG - ultimatу tag warrior

posted on June 12th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
28 On June 19th, 2007, ladynada said:

I like this theme very much. I like the you are here feature at the top, and the post title under the blog title. I like the use of color all around, in the quotes, entry boxes and comments.

good job!

nada

posted on June 19th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
29 On July 8th, 2007, jaka said:

great!!! I vote 10/10…. so amazing
the best theme i ever seen!!!!

posted on July 8th, 2007 at 10:32 am
30 On July 8th, 2007, Kevin Dobo said:

Absolutely gorgeous theme!

I have a question about the formatting in the sidebars. I am using a number of widgets, and any text that is not contained in a link is shoved way to the left of the container. The text was also light and unreadable. I found the CSS style to control the color: .container-left and .container-right.

What I can’t figure out is how to force the text over, so that it aligns with the linked text in the other widgets. Take a look at my website (using the theme switcher) and you’ll see what I mean.

Thanks!

posted on July 8th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
31 On July 17th, 2007, Marie Yuzuki said:

Hello,

I am a Japanese user of Wordpress.
Your design is very very nice though I need to arrange many things because of Japanese language.

I can’t wait your new version !

I really like Wordpress and your design.

Thank you a lot.

posted on July 17th, 2007 at 8:41 am
32 On July 28th, 2007, debdeb said:

Great theme! I love it!

If you could, would you make it more clear than the diggit and other cool links will
only show up after a post has been made (and that the Hello World post
does not make those useful links show up?). I spent an hour
trying to figure out how to make delicious and diggit, etc show up. Finally
I found this place and see that I needed to add a *new* post and
it would never show up beneath the Hello World test post.

Also, any ideas on how to turn the RSS image into text? My readers
might not be savvy enough to know what that rss image means.

Thanks for any help you can provide and many, many thanks
for this super cool theme!

posted on July 28th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
33 On August 15th, 2007, Highlands by Design said:

hey debdeb,

If you wanted to change the RSS image to text, you’ll need to go to the sidebar.php file and look for the bit of RSS code that’ll look like so

<div class="rss"><a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" title="Subscribe to the <?php bloginfo('name'); ?> Blog" class="iconrss">rss posts</a></div>

It’ll exist within the column-3 div.

What’ll need to do is either replace it, or if you wanted to, you could paste the bit of code below just under it (so you have the image and the text link to the rss feed).

<ul> <li class="listHeader"><h2>RSS</h2></li> <li><a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" title="Subscribe to the <?php bloginfo('name'); ?> Blog">Subscribe to RSS Feed</a></li> </ul>

There are other ways to do it, but this is probably the easiest way. Hopefully it should work ok!

posted on August 15th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
34 On September 15th, 2007, Eugene Veinotte said:

Hi. Thanks for the theme. Do you have others available?

I also have some websites/links (under Friends) off the main blog that I wish to convert to something different/original but not sure how to adapt this. I am looking for a template that does not have to be altered to fit the format I have as the content is the same.

Thanks again.

Gene

posted on September 15th, 2007 at 9:23 am
35 On September 15th, 2007, Gene E-Racer said:

Please delete my previous comment and post this one.

Hi. Thanks for the theme. I did find it a bit washed out but have gotten used to it now.

Do you have other wp themes available?

I also have some websites/links (under Friends) off the main blog that I wish to convert to something different/original but not sure how to adapt this.

I am looking for a website template that does not have to be altered to fit the format I have now as most content is the same or similar. There are different themes for the sites and I will want to be able to change headers to suit the various themes.

Thanks again.

Gene

posted on September 15th, 2007 at 9:42 am