I thought I will never be doing this, but looking at the popularity of this Neoclassical Theme mod, I think I owe it to those who are using it to have it upgraded a little with WordPress 2.9 features. Frankly, in my opinion, the 2 visible features added to the latest version of WordPress do not serve a hell lot of purpose, but since it is part of the deal, well….
For those using the old version you can just download the new copy and upload in the usual way. I have given it a new name so it won’t overwrite any of your old files, just in case you prefer your old copy. The old copy has been discontinued, so for new users, only the new version is available.
Changes:
Though it can be still considered 2 column, this new version has 3 widgetized sidebars as I have split the right sidebar into 2.
Sidebar1 is the top rectangular box which you can use to insert the popular 125px block Ads, use it with a text widget as your About or Profile summary or in any way you see fit. If you are using it as text you have to include html tags for breaks and paragraphs. It can accommodate anything up to the size of 300px wide.
Sidebar2 is the narrow sidebar on the left of the main sidebar. It has a width of 130px and can be used for horizontal banner ads of 120 pixels or whatever you deem fit. You can also use it for a single column 125 Ads block.
Sidebar3 is the similar one on the right.
Post Thumbnails
The new version includes the latest WP 2.9 feature which allows you to have thumbnail images for your homepage. Thumbnails are best if you use post excerpts in your front page. I have said that this feature is not very versatile if you prefer different image sizes for your Homepage like what you see here as the parameters of the thumbnails are fixed and cannot be changed for individual post. In this version, I have fixed the thumbnail images at 100 x 100 pixels with frames and aligned permanently to the left.
To use this feature, instead of using the “Insert Image” in your post editor, use the “Set Thumbnail” located at the bottom right of your “Add new Post” page. Clicking on that will bring up the same window which you use for inserting images. After uploading your image, choose the use as thumbnail option. The front page will display the thumbnail and your single post will display the default image size. Some days this feature does not work. Please don’t ask me why as I do not use it anyway. 
No Sidebars page
I have added a page template that has no sidebars. It is to be used for your About page, Your Privacy Policy Page or whatever pages you want that has no need for displaying the sidebar to distract readers from the contents.
To use the template. After writing your page (not post) , choose the “No-Sidebars” Template under Attributes in your right hand sidebar.
Image Frames
You can frame your image by adding the word, ‘frame’ to the class alignment after you have uploaded your image. Like this:
class="aligncenter frame
Customizing the Theme.
All customizations should be done in the custom css file. This way, you will not screw up the original file and should anything go wrong, you can delete whatever you have added in the customs css file and everything will revert back to the original.
To use the custom css file all you need to add is dot custom followed by the div and attributes you want to change. For those whose server does not automatically set your files to writable, log in to your server and set the customs css file permissions to 666.
Some mods that you might want to do, All these codes can be copied and pasted into your custom css file:
To Replace Header Image
Make your new header image to the size of 820px wide by 180px wide. Save it as “header.jpg”. Log in to your server, open the images folder for the Theme, then upload the new image. It will overwrite the old one.
Changing the Content fonts and font sizes : This will change the fonts to Verdana
.custom #content {font-family : Verdana; font-size: 10px;}
Sidebar colors: This will set the sidebar colors to grey
.custom #content_box {background : #ddd}
.custom #content {background: #fff}
Content background: This will change the color of your contents background:
.custom #content_inner {background: #eee;}
Titles and Post titles: This will change the looks and size of all your titles. If you want to keep the original looks of any H tags, just remove the said tags.
h1, h2, h3, h4 .custom {font-family: Verdana; font-weight: normal; font-size: 20px;}
Sidebar Titles: This will change the background colors of the sidebar titles
.custom .sidebar h2 {background: #eee;}
Top Navigation: This will change the background colors and remove borders of the the top navigation bar
.custom ul#nav li {background: #fff; border: none;}
Some special classes
To have text with a blue background, use the ‘blue’ class:
<p class="blue"> All your text here </p>
Also available are yellow background. Use the word ‘yellow’ as the class attribute.
Better looking Nested Comments
This new version has better looking nested comments with child comments neatly boxed up insode the parent comment. Comments by authors also have a different color tone.
To enable this feature, you must have ‘Enable threaded (nested) comments’ checked in your Settings- Discussions page.
Note:
The header image size for this new version is 820px wide by 180 pixel high. The width cannot be changed. The height can vary.
To replace the header image, just replace the header image in the images folder with one of the suitable width. If your image is higher than 180 pixels, change the height accordingly in the custom css file.
Using the WP125 Plugin for the top sidebox.
Download the WP125 plugin in your Admin panel by going to Plugins – Add New. Type in “WP125″ in the search form . Install directly then activate the plugin.
After activation, scroll down the left sidebar of your Admin page and locate Ads.
Settings –
Ad Orientation – 2 columns
Number of Ad Slots – Up to your own preference.
Fill in other options or leave the default settings.
Save Changes.
Add/Edit –
Name – Name your Ad for your own reference
Slot – Start with 1 and go from there. Each Ad should have a different slot number. If you have 10 Ads then it will be from 1 to 10
Target URL – The url where the click will lead to. Normally this will be your Affiliate link.
Ad Image – The image source. For banner Ads, it’s the url after the “img src” tag
Click Save Ad
Manage Ads –
Where you manage your Ads.
To display your Ads in the Sidebox, just drag the WP125 widget into Sidebar1.
Homepage Excerpts
This Theme comes with excerpts in the homepage. The default WordPress settings strips all images and html tags for the excerpts. To improve this, use the “Fancy Excerpt” plugin.
Same as above, use the Plugins – Add new function in your Admin panel to have it directly installed. Remember to activate after installation.
If you prefer to display Full Contents in your front page. After activating the Theme, Go – Appearance – Editor – Main Index Template (index.php) Look for this line:
<?php the_excerpt('[Read more →]'); ?>
Replace with this:
<?php the_content('[Read more →]'); ?>
I hope I did not leave out anything. If you find anything funny or buggy, please let me know. By the way, I have tested the theme in Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, Chrome and Safari. All works fine.
Sorry I do not have a working demo at present but if anyone who have used the Theme and would like to showcase your modified design, do drop me a comment and I will link your blog here. Good way to get a link from a PR4 blog, no?
UPDATE: APOLOGIES. THE THEME HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED
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Real Great! It looks like the Thesis theme, Do you agree?
Yup, The original already looks like Thesis, so this is suppose to be a free alternative for those who can’t afford the real thing.
How would I load/ add jquery that WP already has, if I wanted to use some jquery somewhere in this theme?
Don’t quite understand your question, but my advise is, stay away from jquery if you do not have a very good understanding of it.
However if u are really up to it here it is:
that jquery code must be before the wp_head fuction or you might run into problems.
Then you can even call your own .js files with:
<script type="text/javascript"
src="/js/yourScript.js”>
However using jquery in your theme, might cause certain symbols like $ so u would have to modify the Jquery code to read
var $j = jQuery.noConflict();
$j(function(){
As Costa said, if you are not experienced with jQuery and/or do not wanna deal with problems
stay away from it. I just like having weird issues and troubles to run into ha ha.
Ya, you even got me confused there. LOL.
before the :
oh… it’s not displaying php code ….
@bobbi then I guess follow http://digwp.com/2009/06/including-jquery-in-wordpress-the-right-way/
try wrapping them inside the “code” tag next time.
is a footer link required to stay?
Melissa,
Not really, but would be appreciated.
Hi Chris,
Glad that you are enjoying the theme. The gray color highlight indicates a visited link. If you want to keep it all fresh and blue, copy and paste these 2 lines into your custom css file
.custom .format_text a { text-decoration: underline; }
.custom .format_text a:visited { color: #2a65b5; background: none; text-decoration: underline; }
Hi Tomiwa,
Sorry I missed out this comment before replying your email. I think you got a bad download. Try downloading again. Sometimes it happens.
Contact me again if you have any problems.
Hi Tomiwa,
As I do this purely as a hobby, I don’t think I can actually offer any support. I can only offer some help.
Most customization tips that newbies looks for are available in this this blog. I have added back the Video Tutorials links in my bottom column so you can find them more easily. Many other simple but popular tips are also in this blog if you would just search for it.
BTW, it is essential that you learn some html so you have an easier time understanding the tips.
Hi Spinch,
Unfortunately, the rotating header images have been removed. You can however still display the blog’s title and tagline if you prefer not to have any header images.
Go to the custom css file where you will find a comment that says,
/* This codes sets the clickable background image based on the site title’s link */
You can delete the codes beneath that line or if you want to keep it, can comment it out with the two symbols you see on the top in the beginning and the end of the codes.
The header will now display the default Blog Titles.
One minor adjustment that you should make to make the left sidebar’s content align with those in the right.
Open your left_bar php. just beneath these lines,
<div id="left_bar" class="sidebar"><ul class="left_bar_list">
you will see a
<br>tag, Please remove it.Somehow, I missed that. I have cleaned it up though for those who downloaded the Theme after I discovered it.
Costa,
Thanks so much for the reply. I’ll probably just end up rotating the headers manually every few weeks or so (or make custom ones based on upcoming holidays)… provided I have enough traffic to even make it worth that much effort.
I’ll fix the sidebar alignment tonight. Thanks again!
I uploaded this theme to my wordpress and got this message
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: add_theme_support() in /homepages/25/d217415539/htdocs/wp-content/themes/2Column-Neoclassical V2/functions.php on line 6
What do I do now?
Are you sure you uploaded it to the right place? Or do you intend to mod the Theme off line before uploading the Theme.
The htdocs folder don’t looks like a folder in WordPress. More like a folder in Xampp which I use locally in my computer for Theme building and modification purpose.
Thanks for your kind contribution. I have basic HTML, CSS knowledge and getting the handle on PHP and wordpress. I do have a quick question. Using this link as a reference:
http://www.shrikhande.us/index.php
A) How can one lengthen the search field so that we can see the complete text in box? Right not we can only see “To search and” , so that may be confusing for some users. I went to the Theme editor for “seachform.php” but could not see how I could increase the size of the search field. I do not plan to use this field in Sideabar2 or Sidebar 3, so I can lengthen the field.
B) Right now i do not have anything in sidebar 2 or sidebar 3 -= but i still display the “Recent Posts” plugin. I checked the Theme editor for “left_bar.php” and “right_bar.php”, and wonder how I can remove those ‘if” statements so I do not display those recent post lists, if I just want to leave sidebar 2 or sidebar 3 empty?
C) How do I make the home page a simple text page and not the actual blog page?
Thanks for this awesome contribution!
dss
Hi DS,
A. To lengthen the search form.
Go to your stylesheet css – scroll down till you see this comment:
[default search form styles]
the second line of codes find, this: #search_form .search_input
change the width to 90%. it should look something like this after the change;
#search_form .search_input { width:90%; padding: 5px; color: #333; background: #f2f2f2; font: normal 0.91667em
B. To make the two smaller side bars disappear. The fastest way is :
Go to your sidebar php – Delete these two line.
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/left_bar.php'); ?>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/right_bar.php'); ?>
C. To make the homepage a simple text page, you will have to use the Themes like a Content Management Site.
Follow this tutorial:
http://blogigs.com/how-to-turn-your-wordpress-blog-into-a-cms/
Hello Costa
Appreciate your patient response as I bumble my way through the system.
A: I got the search bar expanded accordingly – thanks!
http://www.shrikhande.us/
B: To make the sidebars ‘disappear’. I did this hack to allow me to keep the sidebars without losing the functionality in case I decide to add it back
I trust that is okay?
C: Using as CMS – thanks for that reference. i will have a look at the same.
I have stumbled on a couple of other things…
D: Styling on the no sidebar page.
http://www.shrikhande.us/?page_id=223
For some reason I cannot get the style to display as Verdana font, nor can I get any of the spacing between paragraphs to hold. I have added p to the following line in the custom.css, but that did not work – I guess I need to adjust div area for the no-sidebar page?
.custom #content {font-family : Verdana; font-size: 10px;}
h1, h2, h3, h4, p .custom {font-family: Verdana; font-weight: normal; font-size: 20px;}
E: How I can I prevent the Subscribe-RSS icon and the twitter widget from intruding outside the border? I know the twitter widget may be difficult to do – but I could not figure how to move the Subscribe-RSS icon to nudge to the left.
Thanks in advance!
Dss
Hi DS,
Love what you did to the Theme!
Can’t see the codes you added to make the sidebars disappear.
Do try again by wrapping the codes within the code tag.
Thanks for pointing out the problem with the no sidebar page. Seems like I missed out a line of codes.
Open your no_sidebar php. Immediately below this line:
<div class="nosidebar" id="no_sidebar-<?php the_ID(); ?>">ADD
<div class="format_text">Then close the div by adding the closing div tag
</div>before<?php endwhile; endif; ?>To change fonts and font size to your liking, do it in the custom css php. Add
.custom #no_sidebar {font-family: Verdana, san serif; font-size: 10px;}To nudge the RSS link and icon to the left, Open Stylesheet CSS, scroll down until you see the comment, [ top navigation menu ]
The last line which denotes the placing :
ul#nav li.rss aChange the margin’s second attribute to your preference. Should look like this.
ul#nav li.rss a { margin: 0 50px 0 0;In this case, the 50 px is the margin from the border to the RSS link.
Hope this helps.
Sorry for the delayed response. For some reason I do not get email alerts of updates so I did not know you had responded! And only just went to check this thread.
Thanks for the kind words. All of this due to the your efforts and assistance!
1- Making the sidebars disappear – this is what I did…
<div id="left_bar" class="sidebar">
<ul class="left_bar_list">
<br>
<?php
if (!function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar(2)) : ?>
<?php
endif; ?>
</ul>
</div>
2- Sidebar formatting – thanks for your update – it works and I can now format text.
3- Nudging the RSS.
While I could nudge the RSS using…
ul#nav li.rss a { margin: 0 50px 0 0;
I am still get a ‘break’ in my border edge. I thought that break would disappear when we moved the RSS icon to the left?
4- How can i add simple blocks of text to the sidebar. I want to add arbitrary things like a set of social media icons, “Add this button”, etc. I see a widget for ‘text’ but wanted to know if there was potential for multiple instances of text along the sidebar.
Sorry for all these questions!
DS
Hmm… try knocking down the whole width of the navigation bar and see it it works. At the same location find,
ul#navbring down the width to 800 and see if it works.You can use as many text widgets as you like in your sidebar. You can also add whatever you like inside those widgets, but you will need to add your own html formats.
No problem about these questions. It is actually good feedback!
Hello Costa
Thanks for the suggestion for the navigation width it worked!
http://www.shrikhande.us/
I went ahead and adjusted the RSS icon particulars we had adjusted earlier back to:
ul#nav li.rss a { margin: 0 0 0 0;
This way the RSS icon moved back sufficiently to the right and matched up with the nav on the left.
Have a quick question – how does one go about displaying tags with the posts. I have seen some WP-themes where one can display tags at the end of posts. Also what are “technorati tags” – are they tags that match a specific “technorati” lexicon?
Thx!
Devendra
Looking good.
If you mean all those fancy icons that you see after each post, instead of making your own, there are various plugins that you can use. One that is quite popular is called ‘sexy bookmarks’ . Jusy go to your dashboard, under plugins, add new, type in the term and install it directly from your dashboard.
Used it before, but I went back to basics here and am using the feedburner feedflare, which you can obtain from your feedburner account. Like it because it shows how many people are actually using the services.
For example, nine people have saved this post in delicious with the tags, wordpress themes. Which is really cool, because it means I got 9 extra links from a very reputable web 2 social bookmarking site. If this post gets stumbled, it also shows how many times it has been stumbled, so on and so forth.
As in all social bookmarking site, technoratic tags are tags that was used when you or your readers saved your post in those sites for easy reference. For example if you go to Technoratic and search for post with the tags “WordPress Themes” my site might turn up in your search.
So the gist is, when you claim your blog in Technoratic, make sure you tag them appropriately to make sure people who are searching for blogs of your niche can find you. .
Thanks for the insight Costa – much appreciated. Appreciate your approach of keeping things simple so folks can add things as needs as opposed to reverse!
Will keep you posted as I venture further.
Where do I go to download the theme? I can not find the link
Found and downloaded the theme. Looks just like thesis. I love it! However, my logo is too big and goes past the page onto the background I played around with the css but could not get it autofit. any ideas?
Do read the article please.
Especially the part which says, “To replace the header image.”
The height does not matter. The width is fixed at 820 px.
Oh, my…I really want to upgrade to this newer version, Costa! It sounds just awesome. The only thing that I’m dreading is having to go back and re-do all the tweaks with snippets of code for blog directories, meta tags, plugins and all that junk!
I use the limit-post plugin now to keep my home page looking neat, along with a bunch of other plugins that I’ve come to rely on. Is there anyway to make this easier? I know I’m a baby. I just hate the coding and tweaking…scared I’ll mess something up and then it takes forever for me to figure out what I did.
Oh, by the way….you’ll like this. My blog design (using your neoclassical theme) was featured on here –> Thesis Design Customizations You have to See to Believe http://www.artofblog.com/thesis-design-customizations/
I left a comment letting everyone know it was your theme, not Thesis!!
Hi Coree,
Well you don’t really need to as most of the improvements are just cosmetic. You already have done a good job with that!
There are codes to add in the functions php to automate the excerpt display in the front page if you don’t want to use a plugin, but then, I feel it’s not worth the trouble. The plugin you use works wonderfully. I am using the fancy excerpt plugin myself here.
About the mention in artofblog, thanks for the clarification! I really do not want people to use this as a ‘fake’ Thesis
Hi Dan,
That is really strange. Unless you have some plugins that makes them ‘nofollow’, all the kind of links you mentioned are ‘dofollow’.
Dan,
Maybe I was wrong as I just remembered something.
This theme is based on the Neoclassical Theme by Chris Pearson and all the core html files are the same original ones.
In designing the theme Chris Pearson has taken a lot of effort to plug any link juice leakage so the posts you publish, should it be be linked by someone else, will get to keep all the link juice and eventually gets ranked higher in SERPs.
If you have lots of outgoing links that are dofollow, even if it is internal, then the link juice from your inbound links will be greatly diluted and gone to waste.
That is also the premise that the present Thesis Theme is built on. That’s why most users experience a spike in search traffic after using the Theme for a few weeks.
Use the Theme for a month and see if your search traffic increases. You can always change themes later on.
No problem Dan,
What you asked is very subjective. Some SEO gurus swears that by linking internally, you are better optimized as your link juice gets spreaded out.
However another school of thought argues that this would amount to link sculpting which means you are trying to gain on Google by passing juices internally to rank for certain post that do not deserve to be rank so highly. Matt Cutts discussed about it last year and it seems it is something that Google does not take kindly to.
I tend to believe Mr. Cutts more. But then like I said, this is all very subjective. Just do what you think is right mate.
Hi Costa,
Excellent theme! It works perfectly at home (firefox browser), but in some place where the browser is IE 6.0, the white background doesn’t show up in the center doesn’t show up. I wonder if you know whether it is a specific problem with that computer, or it’s the issue with using IE 6.0.
Thanks, Stephanie
Sorry Stephanie, never tried it out in IE 6, so I really do not know.
I am surprise that there are still people using that dinosaur, or IE as a whole for that matter.
Thanks Costa… I thought so too, but my google analytics does show that 60% of my readers are using IE, and within that 15% are still using 6.0. That’s why I kind of have to look in to that. Cheers, Stephanie
Costa,
Thanks again for the time responding to my questions. Anyway I’ll just leave whatever is on my blog and I believe I will get the SEO benefits since I’m using your NeoClassical Theme.. So yeah I’ll leave it as it is right now and find out in few weeks time if I will gain good rankings…
And also since I started commenting on this blog and checked the backlinks of the blog I’ve included in every comment, I was shocked that I’ve gained more than 100s of backlinks from this blog just from a couple of comments I made here.. My question is, Is this good? And what’s the reason why I’ve obtained that heaps of links very fast from your blog? Sorry for all these questions. Just want to make sure I’m doing the right thing..
Cheers,
Danny
Hi Danny,
Don’t worry about it, you are always welcomed to ask. Only problem is sometimes I might not have the answers. Like those backlinks for example, I really can’t explain why.
One thing I do know though, bots gets quite excited when visiting this blog and they crawl everywhere. Post gets indexed almost immediately and at the slightest movements, like when a new comment is made. It is almost like they are waiting at the front door just waiting to pound on something that moves. So maybe that’s the reason why you see those huge amounts of backlinks getting indexed by those search bots again and again.
And as far as links are concerned, you can never get enough so be happy with it.
Costa,
Thanks again.. Can’t really complain about the inbound links I’m getting and I was really ecstatic … I just hope it will provide a good boost to my SE rankings…:)
DaNNy:)
Hi Nail,
WordPress 2.9 does not show the read more link by default, To add that function, refer to this article
My preference is the Fancy Excerpt plugin. It does not cut off words midway and also keeps all html formats in the excerpts.
Costa,
Wonderful work. I’m playing around with the theme to launch my website…using as a CMS, with a page as a blog.
Here’s my problem: The pages I have built so far are “Services”, “Contact” and “About”. These show in the pages section of the Admin console. But on the live site, I also have a “home” page listed within the tabs. I clearly WANT a “home” page, but cannot figure out how to access this page? Further, it also shows the 404 behavior.
I know it’s something simple…please help a newbie figure this out!
Greg
Hi Greg,
You should at least have left me a link so I can see what your actual problem is. Without having looked, here is just my assumption.
Did you create a new Home page? If you intend to use WordPress as a CMS, you MUST create a new Home page. You cannot use the default as it will contain your latest post. It is how WordPress is in it’s default form. You have to do this with any other Themes, not only this one. Or you can use any of the pages that you have created as your Home.
After creating your Homepage or setting one of your pages as Home, follow the instructions in this post to delete the “original” Home link.
http://blogigs.com/how-to-turn-your-wordpress-blog-into-a-cms/
Perfect, thanks. I missed that set of directions. That’s exactly what I needed.
Is it possible to name a page “Home” but not have that page’s name appear below the header image? I am digging into this myself but I expect you know the answer…
Thanks for all the help!
Greg
Again, I am confused, so again, I am assuming.
It is not compulsory to name a page Home. You can set any one of your pages to be the ‘Home’ page which in those sense is the page that opens when visitors comes to your site. For example, you can set your ‘Services’ page as ‘Home’ and if that is the case, you don’t even need to specially create a a page called ‘Home’ .
Hi Daniele,
You can, but then it will involve enlarging a lot of other things like your content column or your sidebar, your footer, your navigation bar and your header image. So it might be quite daunting and you might break something.
I see your problem is with the RSS subscribe link being pushed down because you have many pages showing in your navigation bar. My suggestion is to remove the RSS subscribe link which is the easy to do. You can then use a text widget to show the links in your sidebar like what you see here and what a lot of others do.
To stop the RSS subscribe link from showing in the navigation bar, simply copy and paste the codes below into your custom css file.
.custom ul#nav li.rss{display:none;}Hi Chopper tattoo,
Quick reply – paste this line of codes into your custom css file:
.custom .format_text a:visited { color: #2a65b5; background: none; text-decoration: underline; }Another quick reply – You can’t possibly put anything into something that is 5px high. If you do not want to use an image, go to your custom css file again and comment out these codes by adding a foward slash asterik in front and asterik forward slash at the end of the codes. Like this
/*
.custom #masthead #logo a { display: block; width: 820px; height:180px;background: url('images/header.jpg') no-repeat; outline: none; margin:5px 5px 5px 5px; }
.custom #masthead #logo, .custom #header #tagline { text-indent: -9999px; }
.custom #masthead h1, #masthead #tagline { display: none; height: 0; }
.custom #masthead { padding:20px 0px 0px 0px; } */
The header then will revert back to it’s original text form.
Hi Lynnette,
I just checked your blog with firebug and I think you have a closing “div” tag missing, though I cannot pinpoint where. Sometimes this happens when upgrading or when inserting extra codes like advertisements and so on.
What you can try to do is to copy the original singles php file and paste it over your existing one and see it solves the problem. Though some front-end WP3 features are not there, the theme by itself should not have any problems with WP 3.
Hopefully you can get it running like before.
Hi Ving,
As the Theme runs fine with WordPress 3, I don’t think I will do any upgrades for the moment.
Costa,
Is this theme still working?
Yes.