hyalineskies

Gridlock is a grid-based, XHTML-compliant WordPress theme for use on serious blogs and webzines. It is one of the few WordPress themes that allows for sorting WordPress data by category and priority on the front page. Gridlock has built-in support for sIFR, del.icio.us social bookmarking, and an About Page.

This WordPress theme is released under a Creative Commons By-NC 2.5 License. See the contract for more information.

Before you upload Gridlock, it is best to do some customising of the template's design yourself in Photoshop for a unique blog. Two .psd files are included in the design folder of the theme package; one of these is about.psd, the about blurb graphic on the right column of Gridlock; the other is logo.psd, which is the upper logo at the top of the page. By default, this logo says "Gridlock"; however, this image should be edited to reflect the name of your blog.

The stock typeface used throughout Gridlock is Helvetica Neue Ultra Light; many Mac OS X computers have a variant of Helvetica Neue installed. If you do not have Helvetica Neue, and still want to use it, you can purchase the Helvetica Neue Ultra Light typeface for $21.95 USD from this site. If you do not want to purchase a typeface, the best stock typefaces generally installed on Mac OS X and Windows are Helvetica (Mac OS X) and Arial or Century Gothic (Windows), respectively. If you want some more character, it's best to check out DaFont for a free typeface; generally, very lightweight sans-serif typefaces will look best with Gridlock.

Once you are done editing the images to your liking, use Photoshop's Save for Web dialog and save the images as GIF images. The logo image is gridlock/images/logo.gif; the about image is gridlock/images/about.gif. Saving over these images will replace the existing images with your newly-edited ones. It is best to backup your .psd files in a safe location in case you wish to make later edits.

Gridlock is very simple to install. Simply upload the gridlock directory to your WordPress themes directory (generally wp-content/themes/). Once Gridlock is finished uploading, navigate to the Presentation Tab in the WordPress Administration Panel. You should be able to click on the Gridlock screenshot and activate the theme.

If your blog is on WordPress.com, you cannot use Gridlock from this package. If you'd like to use Gridlock on WordPress.com, you'll have to request that WordPress.com administrators add it to WordPress.com.

Once Gridlock has been installed and activated, a tab named "Gridlock Options" will appear in the Presentation section of WordPress. Clicking this tab will lead you to the Gridlock configuration page.

Because of this page, you will probably never have to edit the code of Gridlock. Nearly all of the theme's functionality can be modified from this panel. Below is a list of the functionality in the panel:

• Featured Category The primary category, to be used in the main section of the Gridlock index page (and spill down into the left secondary story box.) This is selectable from the drop-down list. This category must contain at least one post to be selectable.
• Featured Section Head The section head to the featured location (the heading in blue). Leaving this blank will reset it to its default of "Currently Featured".
• Past Feature Section Head The section head to the secondary location for features in the left centre box. Leaving this field blank will reset it to its default of "Previously Featured".
• Use secondary category for third post Unchecking this box will make Gridlock perform a one-category list, instead of in a webzine-like structure. If you want Gridlock to behave like a normal WordPress theme, simply uncheck this box and set the Featured Category to All Categories.
• Secondary Category The secondary category. This category is displayed in the right centre box. This is selectable from the drop-down list. This category must contain at least one post to be selectable. If "Use secondary category for third post" is unchecked, Gridlock will ignore this setting.
• Secondary/Tertiary Section Head The section head for the secondary location. Leaving this field blank will reset it to its default of "Secondary Feature"
• About Page Post Slug This is a post slug for the full biography page, as defined in the "Post Slug" field when writing a page. This currently requires pretty permalinks to be in use on your site. This slug will rewrite the About Page links to http://yoursiteuri/post_slug, where yoursiteuri is your WordPress site URI and post_slug is the Post Slug you enter into this field. Leaving this field blank disables the About link in the head navigation bar as well as the "read more…" link in the about blurb in the sidebar.
• About Page Sidebar Blurb The blurb that appears in the "About" section of the Gridlock sidebar. Leaving this blurb blank will disable the sidebar About blurb. When writing this blurb, keep in mind that it should be short, no more than four or five sentences. Currently, HTML is not allowed in this field.
• Photos Link URI A URI for the "photos" link in the head navigation. Placing a URI to a photo page in this box will enable a "photos" link in the head navigation. You may link to any valid website. I used this to link to Flickr.
• del.icio.us Username A username for the del.icio.us social bookmarking system. Entering a username here will allow Gridlock to build a linkroll on the index page. Leaving this field blank will disable the del.icio.us linkroll functionality.
• del.icio.us Section Head The section head to the del.icio.us linkroll, if the linkroll is enabled. Leaving this field blank will reset it to its default of "del.icio.us Links".
• Display Options These options are fairly self-explanatory checkboxes.
  
  
  • Disable sIFR Typography Checking this box will turn off the sIFR system. All sIFR'ed typography will be rendered in their CSS values (Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif).
  • Disable Internet Explorer 6 Warning If the user is running IE6, a warning will be displayed across the top of the page to alert the user that they should upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 or Mozilla Firefox. Checking this box will disable this warning.
  • Disable integrated favicon Gridlock forces its own favicon, a black square containing a grey asterisk, into the template using a <link> tag. If you do not wish to use this favicon, checking this box disables it.
  • Disable logo Checking this box will turn off the upper logo.gif and simply render the background in its place.

Gridlock contains sIFR support for the Cyrillic character set; however, it is not turned on by default and is not included in the administration panel. In the gridlock/sifr directory, there are some Cyrillic typefaces for the sIFR system; these faces are suffixed by _cyr.swf instead of simply .swf. To use one of these typefaces, edit header.php to reflect the Cyrillic type file instead of the original helvneue.swf.

If you don't know what Cyrillic is but decided to read this section anyway, Cyrillic is the character set used by most of the ex-Soviet countries, primarily Russia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria, not to mention countries like Kazakhstan, Belarus, and the ex-Yugoslavian states (Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, etc.) Since you've been patient and learned something new (or were just interested,) you get a bonus — Gridlock comes with a bonus sIFR typeface, Avant Garde Gothic, in the gridlock/sifr directory for the Latin alphabet.

If you find a bug in Gridlock or would like to request a new feature be added, drop me a line at eston@hyalineskies.com. I generally try to reply to all of the e-mails I receive, and any bugs or features will be considered for repair (or addition) in the next release.

If you're a WordPress developer yourself and would like to fix some bugs or build some functionality into Gridlock, feel free to send me your changes (either a diff for a bug or your additional code in case of a feature.) If I find your changes beneficial to the Gridlock codebase, I'll roll them into the next version and contribute you with its development.

I'd like to extend a special thanks to:

• The WordPress community. You guys rock.

If you'd like to thank me for developing this, please link to my blog at http://hyalineskies.com/. Being a student myself, I'm also partial to gifts on my del.icio.us wishlist. Or a job offer.