Andy Peatling on WordPress

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Durable v0.2: A New WordPress Theme

March 3, 2006 · 99 Comments

Version 0.2 now available!

The latest version of Durable is now availiable and includes many fixes and enhancements from v0.1a. Visit Durable’s Home »

Check out the Durable Forums!

Durable ScreenDurable puts site users in control of page colors, allowing them to create their own personal themes for the site. Each element of the page is editable in real time; the user can select the colors for backgrounds, text and links.

Administrators of the site can go a little further. Their color choices can either be saved as a personal theme, or saved as the site’s new theme so that all users will see their color selections.

The color selection is done via the “Options” menu, visible in the menu bar of every page, and colors update as soon as they’re selected thanks to the very cool ColorMod color selector.

Durable’s Features

  • On the fly color scheme editing for you and your users.
  • Live AJAX search for archives accessible on any page
  • Drop-down menu sections for Archives, Pages, Links and Search, removing the clutter and giving more space for your articles.
  • Dedicated archives page showing a “tag cloud” for Months and Tags/Categories.
  • Fluid design, meaning users with larger monitors will benefit from extended reading space.
  • The following admin options via the WordPress administrator interface;
    • Switching between the “Torn Page” effect or solid colors for page sections
    • Text alignment of articles (left or justified)
    • Number of posts to show on front page (3, 5, 7 or 9)
    • Switching color changing on or off

You can check out a demo of Durable by switching the theme of this site;

This will give you an example of Durable running on a real world blog, and not just filled with “ideal” information.

I’d love to hear your feedback (email: andy at cssdev dot com), , I am working hard to fix up any bugs in these pre version 1.0 releases.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

Categories: Design · Development · Projects

99 responses so far ↓

  • Bill // March 4, 2006 at 6:01 am

    Guess it does’t work with IE7? tried to do the live search.
    It just pushed the top banner down.

  • Polybuzz // March 4, 2006 at 7:55 am

    just downloaded it. :) will thoroughly test it in the next couple of days. :D
    this comment is made in durable preview. immediately noticed the difference on how the “Add A Comment” works from that of the original CSSDev theme. i like it better when the comment form simply pops up from below the page for better access. how can we make it to function as that?

    on another note, can you also provide also the CSSDev original theme for download?

    thanks and will wait for your reply! :D

  • Andy P // March 4, 2006 at 11:33 am

    Bill: I haven’t yet tested in IE7 as I spent most of my time fixing it up for IE 6 support. I am going to wait until the next IE 7 preview update (due in a couple of weeks) as there are quite a few CSS and DOM bugs in the current IE7 releases.

    I’m confident that apon the final release of IE7, there will be no problem with support.

  • Piggy // March 5, 2006 at 6:16 am

    Seems the theme competition was a big con.

    The site has vanished after some criticism of the stalling tactics.

  • Andy P // March 5, 2006 at 10:48 am

    Yeh Piggy, I’ve pretty much given up hope on the competition. It seems completely disorganized to me… the site actually got hacked and there were no backups (suprise, suprise)

    Nevermind, I’m still glad I made the theme, it’s something I’ve wanted to do anyway, the theme competition was just an added bonus.

  • stchatterbox // March 6, 2006 at 5:44 am

    Andy, Durable is very lovely. I really want to learn something about scriptaculous, I know it’s something which makes your site more dynamic, but I don’t have any concepts on how to use it……

    By the way, your current site’s look is very interesting and your live-comment-preview, coz it shows up the gravatar at the same time……

  • bolo // March 6, 2006 at 3:46 pm

    Not working very good for me

    http://www.independza.com/maMartinique/

    Bolo

  • Andy P // March 6, 2006 at 4:21 pm

    bolo: Looks as though the theme is working as intended but with the “bleached” bug I mentioned in my update above.

    Just follow those instructions and you will be good to go.

    BTW: This bleached bug should be fixed in the current download above.

    Thanks for all the feedback so far, I’m hoping to release a version 0.2 by this weekend address some of the major issues brought up.

  • bolo // March 6, 2006 at 5:28 pm

    andy
    the link doesn’t work
    ttp://www.cssdev.com/durable/durable_v0_1a.zip

  • Andy P // March 6, 2006 at 5:39 pm

    Woops, I mixed up the file names when uploading some updates. Should be good to go now.

  • yuzefaron // March 8, 2006 at 8:38 pm

    i got the error in durable when i clik the menu page and link here they are :

    Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/yuzef/public_html/wp-content/themes/durable/functions.php on line 96

    Warning: arsort() expects parameter 1 to be array, null given in /home/yuzef/public_html/wp-content/themes/durable/functions.php on line 101

    Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/yuzef/public_html/wp-content/themes/durable/functions.php on line 103
    :)

  • yuzefaron // March 8, 2006 at 8:43 pm

    whoa………….. ignore my message above . i solve the problem, that becouse i have no link created. after i create the link and link categorie its okey now.

  • Andy P // March 8, 2006 at 10:45 pm

    yuzefaron: Yep, thats a bug fix coming in v0.2 … I need to check that there are actually links before trying to loop through them ;)
    Thanks for downloading!

  • yuzefaron // March 9, 2006 at 12:38 am

    nice and quick answer.. your theme is very advanced among all themes i ever seen.

    Is there the themes that you have made with 700px wide?

    and i love your comment page here.

  • Santhosh // March 9, 2006 at 6:26 am

    A Lovely theme.. Look and feel is smooth and good..and all the ajax features just great. Will be testing out the theme on my blog soon..Thanks

  • Carlos Aquino // March 9, 2006 at 10:06 am

    Not working very good for me in http://www.duard.com.br/blog :cry:

  • Carlos Aquino // March 9, 2006 at 10:07 am

    :lol: … now work !
    but the font in categories is very big !!!
    No good :-|

  • Carlos Aquino // March 9, 2006 at 10:09 am

    I don’t see “Reset Original Colors” at the bottom of the options window.
    I’m using http://www.cssdev.com/durable/durable_v0_1a.zip

  • Andy P // March 9, 2006 at 11:25 am

    Yuzefaron: You can make the design stick to 700px wide by altering “cssstyles.php”.

    At the top of the file you will see this:

    body {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0 0 10px 0;
    width: 90%;
    min-width: 760px;
    Change it to this:

    body {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0 0 10px 0;
    width: 700px;
    min-width: 700px;
    That will keep the page width at 700px.

    Carlos: I am aware of the bug with category sizes, it turns out my algorithm for the font sizes is a little off when categories have a large amount of posts. I have made a note of this and will try and fix it for version 0.2. Also, to get the “Reset Original Colors” link, you must be logged in as an admin.

    Thanks for downloading guys!

  • derek // March 9, 2006 at 11:38 am

    great job on the theme. i diggin’ the comment form drawer.

  • orangeguru // March 9, 2006 at 11:55 am

    Sounds very yummy! Thanks for a great theme. There is a lot of great AJAX included - although I almost missed the ‘Addcomment’ button.

    I am just wondering when we will see a theme with LiveBlogging and LiveBlogging - so when new posts and comments are available they will be shown without the dreadful refresh.

    I could use such functions for my groupblog at http://www.meckermotz.de and of course my http://www.orangeblog.net!!!

  • monkeypup // March 9, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    HOLY FLUCKING SNIT! What a beautiful theme.
    Can’t wait to play with it.
    Well done, man. Well done.

  • monkeypup // March 9, 2006 at 6:50 pm

    Quick question: How can I get it to show images in the posts?
    Otherwise, this theme is fan-freakin-tastic.
    Thanks!

  • Andy P // March 9, 2006 at 7:12 pm

    hehe, thanks for the comments… monkeypup, it should show images in the posts just as any other theme would - with an <img /> tag.

  • yuzefaron // March 9, 2006 at 7:33 pm

    Andy P, thank you very much guiding me, now i chaned it to my desire 700px, great and work..

  • Beta Alfa 2.0 // March 9, 2006 at 10:05 pm

    Ett tema i tiden

    Andy Peating har gjort ett WordPress-tema vid namn Durable. Om jag inte hade snickrat ihop ett eget s?•pass nyligen hade jag testat det h?§r. Det verkar trevligtoch ligga r?§tt i tiden d?• mycket ?§r anpassbart av bes??karna. Dessutom Ajax-s??kning och…

  • Mickey J Barczyk // March 10, 2006 at 4:06 am

    I think…. that i found a “huge” bug. It made me laugh at least…
    Here is a screen shot of it.
    http://mj.barczyk.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/lol.gif

  • hhalloyy // March 10, 2006 at 7:54 am

    great!

  • Andy P // March 10, 2006 at 9:32 am

    Hey Mickey, I’ve got a fix for that “huge” bug coming in v0.2 .. my algorithm for resizing the category names was a little off when there are a large number of posts. I will be placing a limit on the size of category names in the next release which should fix the problem.

    Thanks for downloading!

  • Carlos Aquino // March 10, 2006 at 12:53 pm

    I don’t see “Reset Original Colors” -> http://duard.com.br/blog/mariadagraca/where_reset_colors.JPG

    I need change the default colors of the theme. I don’t like BLUE+Yellow … where I change ?

    ps. Sorry my english !

  • Andy P // March 10, 2006 at 1:14 pm

    Carlos: Log into your blog, then browse to your regular home page, click “Options/Colorir” and you should see the option at the bottom of the window.

    You can change all the colors in this popup window, just hit save at the bottom when you’re done.

  • Mario // March 11, 2006 at 3:18 pm

    A very interesting theme, I’m using it on my test blog. The only problem is that it loads slowly…One question: where is the good old feed subscription icon?

  • snowcastle // March 12, 2006 at 10:20 am

    how can the other posts aligned a line?
    u blog like this.
    i cannot how to do it.

  • Bruno // March 12, 2006 at 11:13 am

    Hi…

    I’m using your theme. It’s really, really great.

    But something strange happened. In one moment, first page was showing only the post tease (first paragraph), and then, without me doing nothing… it started to show the entire post :(
    Do you have any ideia of what happened?

    by the way, i’ve translated the entire theme to portuguese. If you wanna, i can send you the files

    best regards

  • Naseer // March 12, 2006 at 5:15 pm

    Great job man!

    These theme is just… beautiful!

    I got a small report. Have you noticed that one cannot view more than the 10 most popular categories in the footer?

  • Binusha Perera // March 12, 2006 at 7:38 pm

    Excellent theme Andy, using it currently in my blog site. I am testing things as I go, so far very well. Is there away that if JavaScript is turned off then the search stuff is still accessible making the site meet accessibility standards. I am thinking of developing a Rails CMS solution and considering using you theme as default.

  • Arturs, Jaffa.lv // March 12, 2006 at 10:21 pm

    Wery good theme, i would like to use it. BUT!!! Where is the ‘Recent Comments’? There are ‘Recent Posts’, but i can’t see ‘Recent Comments’, and this is also ‘must be’, i think.

  • Arturs, Jaffa.lv // March 12, 2006 at 10:23 pm

    + on first page picture is shown only to last one article. is there any trick how to make it visible to all posts on first page?

  • Andy P // March 12, 2006 at 11:09 pm

    Naseer: Thanks for the comments, you can alter the number of categories visible in the footer by altering line 20 of footer.php;

    category_cloud(8, 24, 'pt', 10);

    Just change the 10 on the end of that function call, to the number of categories you want to show. I’ll be adding an admin interface option for this in v0.3 of Durable.

    Binusha: Hey, this sounds great! I’d love to see this Rails CMS, I’m a big fan of the framework myself. As for non-javascript accessability, this is something I need to address. The issue right now is that the menus need JS to drop down. I may end up moving the search functionality out of a drop down menu, but this won’t be too soon. If you have any ideas, feel free to email me!

    Artus: Recent comments would be a nice touch, I’ll add that to my list of wanted features. As for showing an image in all posts on the front page - the mini posts are just showing the post “excerpt”, if you put an image in there, it should show.

    Thanks for downloading the theme guys!

  • momo // March 13, 2006 at 2:04 am

    excellent work! I’ll try this later…

  • Uri L. // March 13, 2006 at 4:57 am

    Wicked theme! Going to try it for sure. Great UI design and layout.

  • Carlos Aquino // March 13, 2006 at 5:47 am

    Andy,

    I want change in CSS the original colors of theme … where I change this ?

    I don’t like BLUE+YELLOW … I want change in original colors !

    thanks ;-)

  • snowcastle // March 13, 2006 at 9:18 am

    the other posts are not tidied. but in ur blog, they are tidied.
    how can i do that? short my posts?

  • John Wilson // March 13, 2006 at 8:21 pm

    I really like the function of the theme. I’m new to WordPress . . .

    Is there a way to customize the topmenu? I’d like to have a login button somewhere to go to admin.

    Also, is it possible to replace the colored area at the top with an image? I’m not a css programmer and the complexity of this theme makes it a bit difficult to guess how to do things.

  • stchatterbox // March 13, 2006 at 8:40 pm

    Thanks andy for the update about the competition. Strange that Justin’s site has disappeared!

  • alienlebarge // March 14, 2006 at 5:35 am

    Excellent theme

    great work !

    best regards from switzerlland ;)

  • alienlebarge // March 14, 2006 at 5:39 am

    check also Hemingway the administration panel and the “blocks system” for the sidebar are very great.

  • Giulio // March 14, 2006 at 1:35 pm

    This a really unique, useable, and well-design theme. Thank you so much.

    I wonder if it would be possible to have standard pages in the nav bar. I would like to have a link to “Portfolio” and have that wonderful drop down effect reveal my graphic design work. Is that possible?

    This is such a great theme that it needs a forum! How about starting a forum over at Flickr? :)
    Cheers!

    Giulio

  • mack // March 14, 2006 at 2:56 pm

    The categories dont look to have a uniform style! Can you fix that?

    Thanks!

  • Diego // March 15, 2006 at 4:36 am

    Excellent theme !!!!!
    Congratulations !!!!!

  • Jaimie // March 15, 2006 at 7:58 am

    Great Theme thanks for the hard work.

  • duard - Carlos Aquino // March 15, 2006 at 11:22 am

    Reset don’t work.
    I changed my default colors in functions.php … header is green now … but, it show my header in RED …
    :lol:
    ps. I want green+yellow because is the year of World Cup ;-) Brazil 6CUPS ! :-D

  • Polybuzz // March 15, 2006 at 12:07 pm

    hi andy. is this theme the same submission you have for wordpress arena? good luck. :)

  • duard - Carlos Aquino // March 15, 2006 at 12:41 pm

    Andy, I nedd help, with de default colors of theme.
    You can see my screenshot here : http://duard.com.br/adsense_position.jpg

    I need help with adSense position too :-|

  • Andy P // March 15, 2006 at 10:07 pm

    duard: Make sure you have deleted your cookies, and have selected “reset original colors” from the options menu. You can put the adsense in ‘index.php’ find this line (around line 18):
    <div class="postMeta">
    ** code **
    — put adsense code here, before closing div…
    </div>

    Polybuzz: Yes, this is my submission for the WordPress theme competition.

    Giulio: A forum for questions is a good idea, I’d like to get one started, anyone got any ideas on what the best software/site to use is?

  • Polybuzz // March 15, 2006 at 10:18 pm

    ei andy, forums would be nice. how about punbb (http://www.punbb.org/about.php)? maybe you can integrate it with wordpress? :)

  • snowcastle // March 16, 2006 at 9:16 am

    i have suggestion, in 0.3, we should have a option to control the other posts length.

  • fara // March 16, 2006 at 11:52 am

    love the look and feel of this theme - viewing it in FF

    will definitely try and use it on my site. been looking for something different from the normal themes and it shouldn’t be ‘heavy’

    kudos!

  • Andy P // March 16, 2006 at 1:11 pm

    Polybuzz: The punbb forums look good, I’ll try and get a Durable forum up and running for people to discuss within.

    I see that Kyle Neath who made ‘Hemingway’ has had some success with using this software, so I’ll give it a go!

    I’ll post the link when it’s ready.

  • Andy P // March 16, 2006 at 2:44 pm

    The new Durable forums are available at:

    http://www.cssdev.com/talk

    Go check ‘em out!

  • Michel // March 17, 2006 at 2:01 pm

    beautiful work…..

  • asasa // March 17, 2006 at 5:18 pm

    asasasasasasas

  • Hans // March 18, 2006 at 12:38 am

    Whoo! Too great your site and that theme of yours, I’m going to download it implement it directly. My blog is a new fresh one and I’ve many time changed from different theme as I could’nt find the one that fit me. But now surely find something rocking especially those nice colours splashing around. Think going to visit here more often since I would also love to be one of those web developers that truly rocks like you ;-) Thanks for the hard work you put in that theme making many people(including me) look at their blog with another eye: that of an enjoying, enthusiam and rocking one ;-)

  • ingsiang // March 19, 2006 at 6:34 am

    Hmm, I love your theme but I can’t play around with the top navigation bar. Not to mention gaining access to my links, archives or change the colours. By the way, I also love this cssdev theme. :D Great work!~ :D

  • duard - Carlos Aquino // March 20, 2006 at 7:41 am

    Bad error on durable after update to v0.02
    http://duard.com.br/faculdade/durable02_error.jpg

    My menus not open !

  • snowcastle // March 20, 2006 at 9:48 am

    now i unstand the optional excerpt is good,haha.
    it can tidy my posts.orderliness them.
    every post i dont write optional excerpt ,so my blog is very disorder.

  • Hans // March 23, 2006 at 4:02 am

    Hey Andy I’ve implemented the theme but do you have any idea how to implement the gravatar plugin successfully. It works very well when activated but the problem is with the layout stuff : the gravatar doesn’t show well on the blog. Do you have any CSS style that could fix this and work both for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Fox. Thanks ;-)

  • duard - Carlos Aquino // March 23, 2006 at 11:42 am

    The JavaScript create error messages on Internet Exploder !
    In console javascript of firefox too !

  • Dave G // March 24, 2006 at 3:07 am

    Hey all!

    Thanks for the theme!

    Have started a new project with it

    http://scruffynews.com

    Once the 0.3 version comes out I plan some developments on the theme, but going to run the basic until then. It fits the idea of my new site perfectly though so thank you!

    And hope you all enjoy the content on Scruffy News :)
    Dave

  • Dave G // March 24, 2006 at 3:13 am

    There is something odd with the comment system. I just left the first comment on a post on my ScruffyNews.com website and it said that it was posts 50 mins ago, when it was actually a few seconds.

    Is it perhaps going on the post date of the story rather than the comment? No clue.

    Dave

  • Dave G // March 24, 2006 at 3:14 am

    In fact, just after I posted the comment above your post on the theme reads:

    Last comment was posted 2 weeks, 6 days ago.

    Next to it :)
    Dave

  • Andy P // March 24, 2006 at 8:33 am

    Thanks for reporting this Dave, I will add that to the list of fixes for 0.3… I’m not sure why this wasn’t noticed before, strange, as it’s a taken straight from a well known and tested plugin.

  • Thinker // March 25, 2006 at 7:40 pm

    This is one of the best themes I’ve ever seen! :)
    I have it installed at http://www.fitnessfacts.org and it looks great! I was able to integrate Adsense very easily.

    Thank you! I’ll anxiously be waiting for the next version.

  • Hugo.Leen // March 25, 2006 at 8:36 pm

    Hi Andy P , I use it in my wordpress ,but it seems doesn’t work good with Chinese characters.

    When I post a long article,continue reading label doesn’t work.

    http://www.home4love.com/wordpress

  • Hans // March 26, 2006 at 11:34 am

    @ duard - Carlos Aquino : hey man is there any way to get in touch with you for the stuff of gravatar. I’ve visited your site but can’t find any contact page. Thanks for the help you are proposing ;-)

  • Hugo.Leen // March 26, 2006 at 5:40 pm

    In your Theme the more tag doesn’t work……

  • Stuart // April 1, 2006 at 8:39 pm

    Andy,
    I definitely think your theme should go into the WP 2.0 theme competition. At least this time we have Terry (Kineda) and a bunch of well knowns judging (and of course, nice prizes I donated… heheh…). Love your work.

  • Andy Thompson // April 5, 2006 at 8:25 am

    When I download and then upload this theme to my server — and activate it. I get a blank style and I can’t figure out how / why my CSS is not working. Anyone else having this problem?

  • Rick // April 5, 2006 at 11:48 am

    Are the Durable forums no longer working?

  • Andy P // April 5, 2006 at 3:02 pm

    Sorry Guys,

    Yes, the forums are still there, but I moved hosts to mediatemple as my old host couldn’t handle the extra bandwidth.

    The forums are at: http://www.cssdev.com/talk

    I’ll try and get the subdomain working again.

  • Fab // April 6, 2006 at 9:30 am

    Same problem as andy, everything is blank…

    Any solution ?

  • TDH // April 7, 2006 at 3:59 am

    Just checking for the ajax comments.

  • pan // April 7, 2006 at 10:24 am

    good

  • Jeremy // April 8, 2006 at 3:37 pm

    Hi, I apologize for not taking the time to sign up for the forums. I’m having a problem with Durable (which, in general, is a fab site, and I thank you for it, Andy).

    I don’t know how or why, but when I click on a permalink to access a single post, it always shows me my About page. Even if I try to click on an archive link, again it shows me the About page instead. It’s using the single post formatting (instead of the page template), but it’s accessing the About page content and links. I’m using the original single.php file. Any thoughts at all, from anybody?

    Thank you so much.

  • kioshi // April 17, 2006 at 1:49 am

    Loved the theme, been using it in http://freewaremac.net since the 0.2 release, but I still feel it’s kinda heavy, even on my 4MB connection.

    A great a original theme like no other! Kee up the great work!

  • hoyd // April 21, 2006 at 4:56 am

    How can i show articleimages in posts number 2 and three as well?
    right now it only show the image in the top article.

    hoyd

  • EgOiStE // May 4, 2006 at 6:28 am

    Nice, well designed, publisher friendly site! I think the only think that you could add to it would be to be able to resize text on the fly like the Lush theme does (small, normal, large main text fonts). Love the live commenting and the collapsed content button. Kudos.

  • duard - Carlos Aquino // May 31, 2006 at 6:59 am

    Durable continue SLOW !

  • Doug // July 8, 2006 at 9:04 am

    Awesome theme! Do you think it is possible to port this to movable type?

  • mc // November 5, 2006 at 1:42 pm

    hi, why i can’t access the durable forum at http://www.cssdev.com/talk

  • Andy P // November 6, 2006 at 11:16 am

    MC, the forums are at: http://talk.cssdev.com

  • downtr // November 21, 2006 at 4:06 pm

    can we use on serendipity?

    http://www.downtr.org
    http://www.grafikci.org

  • Patricia Martin // November 29, 2006 at 5:19 am

    Hi Andy!
    This is Patricia, from Brazil. I LOVED Durable and I developing a blog project from a local host using MAMP and translating it to Portuguese.

    The problem I found, though, is that the theme is only visible when accesing with Safari. I tried with Firefox 2.0 and an old version of Explorer for Mac and the content is there but with no theme.

    I asume you would not develop such an incredible theme that would be invisible for most users so I wander what could I be doing wrong.

    HELP PLEASE!!!!

  • sbs reddy // March 31, 2007 at 5:07 am

    i have installed durable theme. but it is not displaying the headertear.png image. now the page looks ordinary without main image. any instructions to upload properly?

  • Howtobewebsmart // April 30, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    Durable – Widgetized and ready to go:

    http://howtobewebsmart.com/durablewr/

  • eric // July 20, 2007 at 10:26 am

    good theme?

  • Yetkili Servisler // August 29, 2007 at 10:59 pm

    it’s very good. I’m added my archive thanks

  • andyou // January 6, 2008 at 8:10 am

    I Like This Theme Thanks Guy ;)

  • brett // February 5, 2008 at 1:55 am

    Is it possible to get the color selector to show up in the admin and not the front end?

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