WordPress magazine style theme “BranfordMagazine” - Version 2.51 available now!

Deutsche Version dieses Textes

I´m very pround to present my very first WordPress theme.

I´d like to make very clear that I did not everything completely new. I looked for good existing stuff and adopted it for my purposes. That´s one of the good things about open source: you don´t have to invent the wheel over and over again. The result is an amazing magazine style theme combining the very best of two famous magazine themes in one single theme.

The inspiration and lots of elements came from “Revolution” by Brian Gardner and “Mimbo” by Darren Hoyt

You can expect a full documentation here as well as some tutorial stuff about how to use the theme. It uses custom fields to manage various areas. Learn more about custom fields.

DEMO
DOWNLOAD
SUPPORT FORUMS
TUTORIALS

Theme history / Changelog

2008-01-16
BETA Version (1.0) released

2008-01-20
First official non-beta release (1.1)

2008-01-27
Version 1.2 released
Sidebar and Featured Page Template are now widget ready

2008-02-02
Version 1.3 released
Theme is prepared for localization using gettext
German language file included

2008-02-16
Version 2.0 released
Complete change of the tabbed section to ui.tabs script
Some style changes
Some code adjustments
Additional comments in the stylesheet file for easier adjusting

2008-03-15
Version 2.1 released
Slimbox/Lightbox issue solved
Widetized sidebar issue solved. Now you can use EITHER standard OR the widgetized sidebar. No “mixing up” anymore.
Some other small issues solved
Added Turkish language file
Demo images and PSD Logofile attached

2008-03-16
Version 2.2 released
Small bug with title Tag removed
More flexibility with the upload path for the custom fields (upload path gets autmatically detected)

2008-04-05
Version 2.5 released
2.5 READY: Theme runs under WP 2.5 without any issues
Solved “broken image” issue on the homepage. You can use images in the various HP areas or not. No broken image will be displayed if you don´t use images e.g in the lead story.
Re-solved Lightbox issue
Dropdown menue expanded to show up to two levels of child pages
RSS images are displayed at feed-links

2008-04-20
Version 2.51 released
Small bugfixes in archive.php and sidebar.php

Upgrade from previous version

If you run version 2.2 and like to upgrade, you need to update the following files:
- /js/dropdown.js
- /styles/nav.css
- header.php
- footer.php
- index.php
- style.css
- ui.tabs.php
- sidebar.php

Credits

Thanks to Darren Hoyt and his “Mimbo” theme which has been a great inspiration and a good source for lots of the code I used for this theme especially the intensive use of custom fields.

Thanks to Brian Gardner and “Revolution” which inspired me to put the two additional page layouts “Featured Page” and “3-Column-Page” into the theme.

Thanks to Patrick Griffiths who delivered the script for the dropdown menues. http://www.htmldog.com/articles/suckerfish/dropdowns/

I´d also like to thank Klaus Hartl (stilbuero.de) for the brilliant script I used for the tabbed section with the fade effect.

And last but not least my very special thanks go out to all of you out there using the theme and sending me tons of emails telling me how great this theme is.

THANK YOU ALL!!!

BranfordMagazine in your language

Currently BranfordMagazine supports the following languages:

- English (standard)
- German (included since Version 1.3)
- Spanish (By www.deperros.com)
- Brasilian Portuguese ((By Nilton)
- Italian ((By Paolo Valenti)
- Japanese ((By ne-design)
- Turkish ((By Erhan Kocabuga)
- Greek ((By George Valsamis)
- Russian ((By Steve Francis)

If you like to contribute to this project and translate the file into your language, please make sure you do it properly. Please send me both files (*.po and *.mo) and I will publish them on the themes website and you´ll become not rich but famous

Download the latest language pack (includes all languages mentioned above)

Installation

Installation is as easy as usual with WordPress:

1. Download and unzip the file
2. Dump the theme folder into your “/wp-content/themes/” folder
3. Log in into your WordPress control panel
4. Click the Presentation tab and activate the theme
5. If you need help, please use the Support Forums

General useage of the theme and configuration

BranfordMagazine is built to support Wordpress 2.3 and above. If you get fatal errors related to tags (”Call to undefined function: is_tag”), please upgrade.

In the “index.php” and “sidebar.php” templates, you will find a series of query_posts functions which refer to specific category ID numbers from my database.

Example:

< ?php query_posts('showposts=1&cat=4'); ?>

You will need to change them to reflect the ID numbers in your own database. They can be found in your control panel under Manage >> Categories.

How to use the tabed section and the lead story

BranfordMagazine features a lead story with a photo, a category title, an article title and an excerpt. This is part of the tabed section on top of the homepage. The content of the tabed section will be defined and configured in the “ui.tabs.php” file. Everything that is displayed as a tab and its content has to be configured here.

The featured articles

The idea behind the featured articles is to have a category for teasers, specials and whatever you like to show in a featured way.

The middle homepage column

In the middle column you can teaser the first article of any other catagory except the News and the Featured Articles (of course you can show these as well but does that really make sense?). The excerpt of the most recent article of each category will be shown here. In the demo you see the first one with a thumbnail image and the others without. If you like to give it a thumbnail you have to use custom field again. The key for this custom field is “rightcolimage” and it works in the same way as for the Featured Article and the Lead Article.

Special page templates: The Featured Page

This theme comes with two additional templates for static WordPress pages. One is the “Featured Page” template. Its purpose is to build a page that has some featured content on top that comes along with an image of the same size like the homepage image in the tabed section (300×200px). You have three different areas you can edit seperately by using - you guessed it - custom fields again.

Special page templates: The 3-Columns-Page

This template gives you the opportunity to display three different categories in a static page. It can be a nice starting point if you use it e.g as the entry for a news section with three sub-categories. You don´t have to enter any content via the WP write panel since this page shows the most recent posts from three categories that you define.

Tested in

- Firefox
- Internet Explorer 7
- Internet Exporer 6
- Opera

That´s it so far. I hope this little documentation helps you to set up the first steps with BranfordMagazine. Check out the tutorials for more detailed information. If you need any support, visit the Support Forums.