Fauna

Beta 2 introduced some useful new features, but became less stable because of it. Beta 3 is here to fix the stability issues, and add new features. Fauna is now nearly feature complete. I feel this is a stable release, and the remaining issues before this baby is final should only be a few tweaks and added plugin support.

Fauna Beta 3 (February 6th, 2006)

Among the biggest changes are:

Quote comment functionality
Right below a comment, click “Quote”, and it’ll copy the contents of clicked comment to the commentbox, ready for quoting.
Edit Comments functionality
My favourite plugin of late, Edit Comments, has builtin support, and a good one if I may say so.
Code cleanups and optimizations
Fauna is still in Beta, and so changes like these may come. I had hoped to minimize it, but it was necessary with cleanups, especially with regards to the commenting templates. On the upside, comment templates should now be extremely easy to update (compared to before).

The best way to keep your Fauna theme core simple, is to edit only the fauna-default.css style. It contains all fonts, colors, etc. and using !important you can override styles in the regular stylesheet.
New options
With a bugfix to the great themetoolkit by Ozh, I have added more options. Now you can flip the sidebar to the right with two clicks. You can also hide meta info, links, or show the calendar or categories on the homepage.

Be sure to view the full changelog.

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Comments

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Levi said February 6th, 2006:

Awesome work, It may take me a while to upgrade my site though as I’ve slowly been customising more and more of my theme. Much of it isn’t visible but I’ve still got more modifications planned.

Keep up the fantastic work Joen, I can’t wait for more stuff from you!
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Oyvind said February 6th, 2006:

Great! Maybe I’ll skip this update as I have, as Levi, tweaked a lot. Which is a credit for the theme - it’s easy to change.

Thanks for making a great theme!!
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Joen said February 6th, 2006:

The theme is intended to be highly hackable, so don’t feel bad for skipping this.

Usually, in my experience, comments templates are left fairly unhacked, so you could consider updating just those. The Quote Comments feature is really worth it if I may say so myself :)
If you do, remember to also update meta/scripts.js, it contains the JS for the quoting.
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Levi said February 6th, 2006:

I’m updating my modified theme now as I’m typing… but I just found that the page.php template hasn’t been updated yet. It’s still got the entry class.

Just so you know Joen, so you can update it before beta 3.1 comes out. I’ll be sure to post anything else I happen to find. :)
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Levi said February 6th, 2006:

page-archives.php also needs updating.

And if you want to get picky; search.php needs the end html quote for the closing ‘body’ div.
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Gio said February 6th, 2006:

Beta 3 has many significant improvements, thanks Joen. An issue: I can’t edit the sidebar.php. gives this message:

“Not Acceptable. An appropriate representation of the requested resource /wp-admin/theme-editor.php could not be found on this server.”

Let’s hope that this will be solved in beta 3.1….
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Oyvind said February 6th, 2006:

Great, Joen. I’ll have a look at that!
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Joen said February 6th, 2006:

Levi said:

page-archives.php also needs updating.

And if you want to get picky; search.php needs the end html quote for the closing ?body? div.

Keep the bug reports coming! I appreciate it.

The beta 3.1 is delayed for a day or two, though.. I’m waiting for an update to the themetoolkit which’ll really kick ass.

Gio said:

Beta 3 has many significant improvements, thanks Joen. An issue: I can?t edit the sidebar.php. gives this message:

?Not Acceptable. An appropriate representation of the requested resource /wp-admin/theme-editor.php could not be found on this server.?

Let?s hope that this will be solved in beta 3.1….

Ouch. Well, it kinda sounds like a Wordpress problem… Try searching the wordpress.org forums for that text string… Let me know if (or if not) you manage to solve it.
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Gio said February 6th, 2006:

Hi Joen,

So far, when using Wordpress’s Dashboard theme editor, only “sidebar.php” could not be edited. I suspect it has got something to do with the themetoolkit. Short term wise, this is no biggie, as i can still edit the theme via FTP, but long-term wise, hmm, could be a potential dread…

I shall start posting in the forum, and not here. Hope you’ll find time to do your rounds in the forum. Cheers.
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Joen said February 6th, 2006:

Gio said:

Hi Joen,

So far, when using Wordpress?s Dashboard theme editor, only ?sidebar.php? could not be edited. I suspect it has got something to do with the themetoolkit. Short term wise, this is no biggie, as i can still edit the theme via FTP, but long-term wise, hmm, could be a potential dread…

It’s not that I don’t want to fix it, trust me I do, the problem is I have no idea where to start because I can edit my own sidebar.php just fine in the three installations I have.
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erk said February 6th, 2006:

Hi Joen, nice update;) Have you considered integrating Brian’s threaded comments?
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Joen said February 6th, 2006:

erk said:

Hi Joen, nice update;) Have you considered integrating Brian?s threaded comments?

Yep. In fact, I made some heavy work with just that, a long while ago. Unfortunately, I pretty much abandoned the project, since the code was so overly complex that it did not fit with the Fauna philosophy.

However, I think an update may be on the way, and I would have no problem doing an “addon” to Fauna (i.e. a BTC ready comments.php file).
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Levi said February 6th, 2006:

They’re all the bugs I’ve found for the moment.

Oh and just wanted to say I’ve added the rounded-corners setting to my functions.php along with an option to change what link category is shown on the main side-bar, because I have other link categories in my blog that I don’t want shown there — maybe a useful addition.

Oh and finally, I think I’ll be working on a re-coloured (and darker) version of the theme for my other site; levibuzolic.com, so if that goes well I’ll be sure to send it over your way.

Love your work, Joen!

Oh, and which live-preview plugin does Fauna make use of?
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Joen said February 6th, 2006:

Levi said:

They?re all the bugs I?ve found for the moment.

Oh and just wanted to say I?ve added the rounded-corners setting to my functions.php along with an option to change what link category is shown on the main side-bar, because I have other link categories in my blog that I don?t want shown there — maybe a useful addition.

Oh and finally, I think I?ll be working on a re-coloured (and darker) version of the theme for my other site; levibuzolic.com, so if that goes well I?ll be sure to send it over your way.

Love your work, Joen!

Oh, and which live-preview plugin does Fauna make use of?

Fantastic work, Levi! Glad to have your support.

The link category is a good idea, probably. I’d appreciate it if you sent me the code you’ve done, and I’ll see how it works, and whether or not I want to include it.

As for the re-coloured version, even better. Tip though: if you can manage to keep ALL your CSS in a separate file, like fauna-default.css, then in Beta 3.1 which is delayed more than I want to, I’ll be making a text-field in the options page where you can type in your own stylesheet URL, and it’ll override the default. That might be a good idea in order to make it an “addon” of sorts.

I’ll send you the slightly re-worked fauna-default.css from the current beta 3.1.

As for the live preview plugin, I’m using this one:

http://www.noscope.com/fauna/2006/01/live-preview-w-textile-plugin

Upload and activate. Voila.
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Sarit said February 6th, 2006:

I really appreciate the ability to switch the sidebar to the right! It sounds great and I’m going to test it right now. =)
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Sadish said February 6th, 2006:

Found the following 2 things.

1. on the template-postloop.php

look at the line where you see the_author_posts_link().
if you un-comment it, it is not going to work.

2. template-sidenote.php

if there is only one comment, it should display ‘1 comment’ and not ‘1 comments’

Will let you know as I find anything new.

Thanks
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sternenlicht said February 6th, 2006:

thanks for this beatiful theme

at this moment i am up to localize it to german, youwill be able to download it from my website at feb., 20th 2006.
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sternenlicht said February 6th, 2006:

I am still working on customizing fauna… and i am absolutly happy about fauna.

please tell me, if there is anny oportunity to add sidebar-content also to blogcontents (like on pages).

this funktion will do very well for the related links-funktion.
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Gio said February 6th, 2006:

Joen said:

Gio said:

Hi Joen,

So far, when using Wordpress?s Dashboard theme editor, only ?sidebar.php? could not be edited. I suspect it has got something to do with the themetoolkit. Short term wise, this is no biggie, as i can still edit the theme via FTP, but long-term wise, hmm, could be a potential dread…

It?s not that I don?t want to fix it, trust me I do, the problem is I have no idea where to start because I can edit my own sidebar.php just fine in the three installations I have.

No worries Joen, it has all got to do with my host’s implementation of mod_security, as i recently found out.
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Sadish said February 6th, 2006:

did you get a chance to look at the issues i mentioned in my previous comment ?
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Joen said February 6th, 2006:

Sadish said:

did you get a chance to look at the issues i mentioned in my previous comment ?

Yes, thank you. I have fixed those in beta 3.1 (or 4, which it’ll probably be)
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Beth said February 6th, 2006:

Great theme-I had been looking for a simple, easy to hack theme for quite some time. The only issues I have found are these-if using a plugin, for instance, the ‘more-smilies’ plugin, only a logged in user can see the smilies in the comments section. Once I log in-I can see the images. I also noticed this with the gravatar plugin-if I wasn’t logged in, I couldn’t see the commenter’s gravatar. Any ideas?
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Joen said February 6th, 2006:

Beth said:

Great theme-I had been looking for a simple, easy to hack theme for quite some time. The only issues I have found are these-if using a plugin, for instance, the ?more-smilies? plugin, only a logged in user can see the smilies in the comments section. Once I log in-I can see the images. I also noticed this with the gravatar plugin-if I wasn?t logged in, I couldn?t see the commenter?s gravatar. Any ideas?

I’m not quite sure how that works … perhaps it’s some side-effect of your blog requiring login to comment?
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Logan Leger said February 6th, 2006:

Great theme and another great release…
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sengha said February 6th, 2006:

good!!
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Levi said February 6th, 2006:

Hey Joen, just noticed another bug while working on my ‘darkfrost’ theme.

style.css on line 404.

border-left: 1px dotted #C2C76D;

That belongs in the fauna-default.css, not in the style.css.
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Joen said February 6th, 2006:

Levi said:

Hey Joen, just noticed another bug while working on my ?darkfrost? theme.

style.css on line 404.

border-left: 1px dotted #C2C76D;

That belongs in the fauna-default.css, not in the style.css.

Thanks Levi, beautiful work. I’ll fix it of course.
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Levi said February 6th, 2006:

.inputbox:focus, #commentform textarea:focus, .searchbox:focus { /* Show yellow input backgrounds to cool browsers */ color: #424240; background-color:#FFFFF4; }

That was also found in style.css — not where it should live!
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Shane said February 6th, 2006:

I love this theme and I really want to use it, but I’m getting a weird error message:

Precondition Failed

The precondition on the request for the URL /shane/wp-admin/themes.php evaluated to false.
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Simon said February 6th, 2006:

I’m a beginner at this with my PHP manual in one hond and out of date text editor experience with HTML and CSS in the other.

I’ve had a terrible time finding the right files to edit. What I really need is a kind of split screen tool that will show me exactly where to edit when I press on the browser display. Someone suggested that I use Dreamweaver, but I can’t see how this would work with so many contributing files.

Should I try this or have you a better method?

Best wishes

Simon
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Levi said February 6th, 2006:

Joen,

Email me (loadedreality at gmail.com) your email address, I think I’ve pretty much got ‘FrostDark’ finished for you now. It looks pretty good, Fauna was beautifully simple to edit upon. :)
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Levi said February 6th, 2006:

I saw in the forums about the ‘One Author’ bug.

In-case you haven’t done it yet here’s the fix.

In sidebar.php on line 137 there is a line which reads:

if (sizeof($numauthors) > 1) { ?>

This should simply be changed to:

if ($numauthors > 1) { ?>

As you’re not fetching an array but instead directly querying the number of author rows.

Sorry for posting all these code fixes here, once I get your email I’ll be able to stop spamming your fauna blog! :P
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Joen said February 6th, 2006:

Shane said:

I love this theme and I really want to use it, but I?m getting a weird error message:

Precondition Failed

The precondition on the request for the URL /shane/wp-admin/themes.php evaluated to false.

It sounds like a problem either with your webserver or your wordpress installation. Fauna is not using any PHP headers that could cause a precondition failed message.

Simon said:

I?m a beginner at this with my PHP manual in one hond and out of date text editor experience with HTML and CSS in the other.

I?ve had a terrible time finding the right files to edit. What I really need is a kind of split screen tool that will show me exactly where to edit when I press on the browser display. Someone suggested that I use Dreamweaver, but I can?t see how this would work with so many contributing files.

Should I try this or have you a better method?

Best wishes

Simon

The problem with Dreamweaver is that it would require you to have a personal webserver setup. This is possible, i use it, but it’s not really easy to do.

The thing is, when we’re talking PHP, you need a server application to “render” the code, as opposed to HTML which can be read by the browser itself. Since Dreamweaver cannot render the PHP code you can’t split screen there.

I use Xampp for my personal web server, but it might be a bit hard core for what you’re looking at. I think maybe just editing online, live, is your best bet, unfortunately.

Levi said:

I saw in the forums about the ?One Author? bug.

In-case you haven?t done it yet here?s the fix.

In sidebar.php on line 137 there is a line which reads:

if (sizeof($numauthors) &gt; 1) { ?&gt;

This should simply be changed to:

if ($numauthors &gt; 1) { ?&gt;

As you?re not fetching an array but instead directly querying the number of author rows.

Sorry for posting all these code fixes here, once I get your email I?ll be able to stop spamming your fauna blog! :P

I emailed you, and thanks for all your fixes. I really have to get a credit page going.

Fauna Beta 3

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