Prebuilt Launch
As promised, we have launched our Wordpress theme to stand as our “finale” in the Wordpress Customization Series.
Prebuilt is a red / white / grey based Wordpress theme, coded in valid XHTML and CSS, which is now ready for download.
You can grab it from here.
This posts’ comments will remain open for discussion.
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I love this layout. I’m still messing around with it a bit, adding plugins and what not, but overall, great theme!
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It’s an interesting idea, but I feel the lack of sidebar and bottom bar elements to be a bit stark
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Love the theme! I’ve got it running on my blog, O’Flaherty, with a few minor modifications.
Thanks for the great work!
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Your theme is beautiful
Clean, round and RED (EEK!!) I was wondering if you can provide an empty header image on which to write our own “header text” 
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Yes, an empty header Image would be GREAT
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Hi there,
I love this theme and I’m using it, but I have one major issue.
I might be the only one in the blog community who does not like flickr, at all! I would like to remove it from that section, and use the whole of the space for something else.
I tried editing it myself, but messed it up a bit, so I was wandering if you could tell me how to remove the flickr box completely, and just leave one big box for my own content.
Thanks.
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I’ll post an edited version in a bit without Flickr.
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Matilda, here you go. I’ve edited out the Flickr portion. See if it suits you now.
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How can I control the number of posts that are shown on the homepage. I am a total WP newbie, so my apologies if this is a super simple thing that I should already know about.
I love the theme!
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Hi, a question, could create a translation in Spanish of Prebuilt and publish it for the community of WordPress?. Obvious, respecting all the credits.
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Sure, that’d actually be great because I see many Spanish blogs using it. If you want, send it to me once it’s done and I’ll add the download to this page, as well as add in credits to you for the translation.
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Ok, when the translation finishes I send theme to you. Thanks.
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On my website, using your theme, my posts over 120 characters shows a [...] after it. Can it be modified so that clicking the [...] would take you to the full post?
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I’d love this theme a lot more (and would probably ditch my current theme) if the right sidebar supported Widgets. Alas, it doesn’t.
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My previous comment above just resulted in error message:
Warning: Missing argument 2 for httprequest() in /home/devloung/public_html/wp-content/plugins/gravatars2.php on line 313
… probably because I don’t have a Gravatar image.
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… then the error message disappeared on this 3rd comment. A self-healing feature/bug.
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HI there,
Our plugin isn’t working for Recent Chatter. Any ideas? We’ve followed all the instructions. Also, no sign of flicker with ours either!
Tara Green
http://romancebuzzcom.setupmyblog.com/
Thanks!
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This guy recently released a lovely mod of Prebuilt theme called “Pictured Blues” which can be downloaded at:
http://www.theglasspeople.net/theme/pictured-blues/
I like the way he added comments to appear with the post.
Alas, it too has no Widget support. I’m fairly sure that adding sidebar Widget support would attract a lot more people to the Prebuilt theme. The lack of sidebar is indeed stark as one previous person commented and an easy way to add sidebar items would be a big boon.
I was able to easily widgetize the Prebuilt theme based on instructions copy & paste instructions on: http://automattic.com/code/widgets/themes/
(modify sidebar.php and create functions.php)
Pretty cool… having fun with Widgets.
… however, I have no knowledge of CSS whatsover and don’t have the first clue to style the presentation of the items appearing on the sidebar. Currently, the functioning of the Widgets work 100%… the sidebar just looks really ugly with the default Prebuilt styles.css that I’m using.
Oh well, I will forge on with my Widgetization obsession.
I guess I’ll have to force myself to learn CSS although I don’t have much time for stuff like that (my free time is taken volunteering at the hospital and crisis centres). I am taking up blogging because I volunteered to create info site for a community project.
I love the Prebuilt theme so much – it is clean and minimalist – fits my criteria).
Anyway, I look forward to future releases of Prebuilt theme.
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I’ve seen pictured blues, I thought it was great.
With the launch of DL2 will come an updated Prebuilt, with widget support and additional colors, plus a few more things, as well as an additional theme I’m going to begin working on soon.
Just wait a few more weeks
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Hello hello,
It’s John of The Glass People. I’m glad to be included on this page as well to be linked for the next up and coming release. As I have lots of experience customising Prebuilt, let me know if you would like any help getting stuff to work. I will probably update Pictured Blues to work with the new Prebuilt version, so I figure I can throw my time in as well!
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The D2 site redesign is great. Lovely, clean. I was really hoping though… that Prebuilt 2.0 (even a beta) would also launch today. Eagerly awaiting that.
D2 – nice. Congratulations.
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geez! i just missed the screenshots and demo! but i took a peek at some other sites which use prebuilt, looks promising – can’t wait for the release!
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Are we there yet Papa Smurf? Soon?
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I’m trying to get it out today or tomorrow Maria. Finishing stuff up now.
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Crisp, clean, and beautiful. I’m so GLAD I waited. The theme truly does not disappoint.
I’m in no way close to being proficient in coding (in fact, one day I was just Googling when I found the previous Prebuilt v1 theme and your online WordPress tutorials is what piqued my interest in WordPress and/or blogging at all)… but I’m not scared to learn… and your WordPress template is so easy to pull apart and understand. It is not bogged down with images and wow, it loads FAST!
I bought myself a couple of books covering HTML, CSS and PHP just so I could customize this theme.
Heck, I was able to rip out the flickRSS thing so far without breaking the theme. It seems easy to me so far to understand code.
You guys really pumped up the volume with Prebuilt 2! 3 colours/stylesheets, editable PSD template, Widgets support (YES!), Standard or Flexible Width. When I activated it, it didn’t break my previously installed Widgets in my previous TEST theme (just a filler until PB2 came out).
Now, I can start a blog. Cool. If I find any theme-specific issues, I’ll be sure to inform you guys. Now, I’m off to test and play.
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Glad to hear it
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Really great theme you guys have put up, sleek and cool and not too overloaded, yet functional…! But I still have a problems/questions…hope you can help me out here…!?
First — where did that Flickr-less footer disappear…?! I tried downloading it, but the file seems to be gone…!? Can you post it again, please…?!
Then, as some people stated before, a “blank” header would be great…! Not everyone wants his/her blog to be named ‘prebuilt’ after all…!
A German localization would be great…and although I can find my way through HTML, I seem to be lost when it comes to PHP code…!
Would it be possible that you guys send me the text strings that would need to be translated and after I’m done I return them to you so you can put them into your PHP files…?! And voila — we have a localized German version for Germany, Austria, Switzerland…
And last but not least — are there any other colour schemes available for download somewhere…? I like the red one, but it would be nice to have more choice…!
Sorry for bothering you and keep up the great work…!!
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Prebuilt 2 has the header psd included, you can download it from the prebuilt page. I’ll work on getting it into a few different languanges
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Yes, I just found the psd file and I’m editing it right now, thanks…! As for the localization — let me know if I can help with the German translation, okay…?!
But what about that Flickr-less footer…?! I get ugly error messages down there, either with the plugin activated or not…and since I’m not much of a Flickr fan anyway…
Anyway, thanks for sour support so far…!
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Look for “Begin Flickr” in footer.php. About 2 lines down there will be an opening div, inside will be < ul > < / ul > and flickr php code, and then a closing div. Remove everything between those two div’s, and flickr will be gone.
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Yep, found it, removed it, everything’s fine…! Thanks…!
One more question though…it seems that URLs are being displayed in different ways…!? Like within a post they are only recoginzable on ‘mouseover’, then in parts like “Previous entries” they have the classic look of blue and underlined text…and finally the WordPress line in the footer looks different again, bold and wit a dotted underline…!?!
Is there a way I can change or influence how the URLs are being displayed within prebuilt…?!
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To change the links, you’ll need to open up the base style.css or a scheme css file if you’re using one. Look for css with “a” included (for example #hppost a, #hppost a:hover). You can then change the link colors, borders, etc.
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Okay, found that…thanks…! Let’s see if I can manage to make all the links look like the ones in the footer, bold and underlined with a dotted line…
Actually I do have a bunch of other questions but I don’t want to bother you any further…for now…!
I’ll be back though…
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I prepare to run this theme on my site, but before doing it, I have to make some changes:)
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Marvelous theme. EXACTLY what I was looking for after about seven zillion false starts and too many hours with photoshop to count. Thank you so much for really giving the Wordpress community a sleek, simplified template with tight, conservative code. I look forward to additional modifications and I will recommend this theme to everyone I know.
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I’m using WordPress 2.0.5… when I select the prebuilt2 theme in the presentation section of the admin area and then view the blog, all I see is a blank page. When I return to the presentation section and choose a different theme, everything works fine. Any ideas what might be happening?
Thanks.
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You did not upload it right. Delete the prebuilt folder from your themes folder on your server. Next, find the readme and upload the “prebuilt” folder found alongside the readme keeping the structure in tack. This means the folder structure should be “…/wp-content/themes/prebuilt” not something like “…/wp-content/themes/prebuilt/prebuilt/etc”
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Thanks for the quick reply AJ. Actually, I do have the folder structure set up as you describe above: “…/wp-content/themes/prebuilt”.
When I select the theme from within the admin interface, I’m able to see the “Customize Prebuilt” tab and the options contained within for setting “prebuilt color combos” and “layout width design”… so WordPress recognizes the theme from within the admin interface, but it doesn’t want to display anything when I choose “View Site”.
I get the same results using Safari 2.0.4 & Firefox 1.5.0.2 on an intel Mac mini. (I’m viewing the site files locally at “http://localhost/~username…”
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I’m too afraid to update to WordPress 2.1 without asking this question first… Is Prebuilt 2 fully compatible with WordPress 2.1? Has anyone tested this with WP 2.1? Was everything OK or were there any problems encountered? If so, what were the problems?
Thanks for any answers.
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@fruityoaty – There shouldn’t be any problems. PB only uses standard Wordpress hooks, which weren’t changed in 2.1.
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I would love this theme, but all I got is
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘}’ in C:\wamp\www\wordpress\wp-content\themes\prebuilt2\prebuilt\header.php on line 83
It is an absolutely fresh Wordpress 2.1, the only non default thing is the Prebuilt 2.
The same happened with Wordpress 2.0 too.
What can be the problem?
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Plugins and or hosting issues would be causing the problem, as the theme is fine.
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Yes, it’s fine on WordPress 2.1x and up (2.1.2 tested). No problems.
Any plans of ever creating a 1024×768 3-column Prebuilt with widget support? Because that’d make this super duper template even more super. And I betcha I’m not the only person who’s thinking this.
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I, too, encountered the same problem as Roland.
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘}’ in /Library/WebServer/Documents/wordpress/wp-content/themes/prebuilt2/prebuilt/header.php on line 83
I have many other themes installed and they all work fine. I’m on an Intel Mac if that matters.
Also tried taking the “prebuilt” folder out of “prebuilt2″ and putting into the themes folder but still got the same result.
And in case you’re wondering, I don’t have any widgets installed.
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Still have the:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘}’ in C:\wamp\www\wordpress\wp-content\themes\prebuilt2\prebuilt\header.php on line 83
problem, and no answer yet.
Anyone knows what can cause it?
I tried it on several different machines, but no luck.
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Oh, sorry just saw the answer
As I said no plugins, no themes.
Fresh, empty Wordpress + Prebuilt.
So, the non-existent plugins and themes can’t cause problems.
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I’m having the same problem as ‘wp_guy’
I’m running the server on localhost, osx’s apache, and the latest php. Theme seems to install perfectly from the WP admin side, and all the other themes run great. But if I try to run Prebuilt, all I’m getting is a blank page, no source code comes across at all.
Prebuilt runs fine on my remote host. Any ideas of technology issues here that Prebuilt uses differently
from the standard themes?
By the way, I was having trouble with the flickr function call in the footer. It apparently couldn’t find the function, is there an issue with this?
Thanks for any ideas,
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Hi
Is this theme being actively developed?
Thank you! This is a nice theme.
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Love this theme… I’ve stuck with it since blogging (1.5 years and going and never removed the link credit).
But same question as above… Is this theme being actively developed? Would love a 3-column 1024×768 version. Well, no harm in wishing…
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Hello – I love PreBuilt2 – perhaps the best theme i’ve ever come accross (for now!)
Trouble is i’ve edited the header images to include my site name in the bottom right, but despite maintaining the same file name and format, and overwriting the original images – The new ones don’t display!!
Any help on understanding this theme a litle more in terms of why i can’t display my own header image?!!?
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Hey.
When i change the width for the hppost in the css, to anything over 500 it doesnt show the content at the top, it fires it below the sidebar, but like in the same position?
Any ideas?
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Sorry, its ok i fixed it