GS Steps theme

[richardpd]

I have uploaded my first Get Simple CMS theme named: GS Steps

This has taken me several weeks to produce (I had hoped to do it more quickly to enter it in the March-a-thon theme competition).

I have been a fan of GetSimple for a while now but have only used it in my localhost server. Creating this theme has been interesting as I have designed & developed it!

Doing this has raised several questions for me. I would have liked to add functions to change header & footer images and body background from the admin page (in similar way possible with WordPress). As yet I do not know how to implement these functions but look forward to trying to find out. So I look forward to more designing and developing with GetSimple CMS.

I look forward to seeing GS Steps in GetSimple theme directory and to all positive feedback with it.

Best wishes

[yojoe]

A link to demo page would be nice

[m1k3y]

Implementing features like changeable Backgrounds is not to difficult, you may want to have a look at the default innovation theme which has a plugin to insert the links to your social media, adapting this to fit you needs shouldnt be to heavy

[richardpd]

Thanks for your replies yojoe & mIk3y.

yojoe
I didn't have a demo page but I have just installed GetSimple as a sub site of my blog site. It runs GS Steps & can be seen at:http://www.richard-dickinson.com/GetSimple_3.1/

Is this secure? I really do not want an unsecure backdoor into my blog!
I will publicise it IF this is safe and secure?! Do let me know what you think....

mIk3y
I rather like hard coding features in as much as possible and using as few plugins as possible.
Perhaps you could help me with the coding for changing backgrounds? Most things are easy when you know how-but finding out can be hard! :-)


Thanks

[yojoe]

Thanks for your replies yojoe & mIk3y.

yojoe
I didn't have a demo page but I have just installed GetSimple as a sub site of my blog site. It runs GS Steps & can be seen at:http://www.richard-dickinson.com/GetSimple_3.1/

Is this secure? I really do not want an unsecure backdoor into my blog!
I will publicise it IF this is safe and secure?! Do let me know what you think....

Default GS installation is well secured, as long as you host it under apache webserwer.
If you are going to design and develop more GS themes, I'd go with subdomains like
gs.richard-dickinson.com/theme1
or
getsimple.richard-dickinson.com/theme2
This way you can separate GS completely from your main website.
Just like the way I do it with my bluebusiness theme


And as it goes to your theme, I've got a feeling that colorful background stripes overwhelm page's content.
Too many font faces and colors don't raise readability as well
But I like page header, and you could consider making the slider a bit bigger

[richardpd]

Thanks yojoe

I'm pleased to hear you are confident about GetSimple security.
Blog/website security is so important & critical.

My blog at www.richard-dickinson.com is a subdomain itself so I'm not sure how your suggestions would work for me but it is good to know the setup you use to demo sites.

What screen size & resolution are you using? The background wood image looks fine to me on my desktop monitor (I have 17" monitor and 1280 x1024 res). I hoped my color scheme was complimentary and with good contrast for the text areas (seems clearly readable to me!). Probably I should stick to one font face (sans serif).
The header and footer areas are customisable by the user (including the user editing Sliderman.js slider or even using another slider!). I should probably post the ReadMe.txt here somewhere to help users.

Glad you liked the header! Thank you very much for your constructive criticism. As I said earlier I found the whole exercise of designing & developing this theme fun & interesting & challenging and it all adds to my design and development experience and gives a different type of theme to GetSimple repository!

[richardpd]

I have just checked GS Steps theme in Safari on my daughter's Mac and the theme Header font is changed and the sidebar is broken (displays to the right)!
I also tested GS Steps on my wife's desktop with 21" monitor and 1920x1080 res and is fine in both IE & Firefox.

Apologies to Mac users- I will fix this for Safari & reupload GS Steps theme when complete. I hope to get this done by the end of the day & will post my updates here.

[richardpd]

Strangely in Safari browser on my Win7 Desktop the theme GS Steps appearance is fine.
My daughter is out for the afternoon/evening so I cannot now recheck it on her Mac but I will try & check it out on her Mac sometime after her return. I wonder if she has other settings on her Mac vs PC?
If anyone sees problems with GS Steps on Macs I would be grateful of input & help-thanks

[yojoe]

Thanks yojoe

I'm pleased to hear you are confident about GetSimple security.
Blog/website security is so important & critical.

I'm using this CMS for almost 2 yrs. If it wasn't good enough, I wouldn't
From other pov don't forget GS main purpose: simplicity.
This is a nosql, flat file driven CMS for small<>mid weight(if somebody got skills) websites.
And there's not many things to secure. Mostly user data, and page files - not to find out one day, a huge "enlarge your penis" link on your homepage

My blog at www.richard-dickinson.com is a subdomain itself so I'm not sure how your suggestions would work for me but it is good to know the setup you use to demo sites.

It can't be a subdomain since you host the same content under richard-dickinson.com (with and without www prefix).
gs.richard-dickinson.com would be a subdomain.
As it goes for demo purposes, it's just that I hold mine template in a subdirectory.
I'm planning to develop at least one more theme, and the subdomain address will hold a small splashscreen with links to those templates.

It's just a matter of taste. Some users offer demo sites under theme.domain.tld, but I need to keep order in my web_attic, and it's full of wierd things

What screen size & resolution are you using? The background wood image looks fine to me on my desktop monitor (I have 17" monitor and 1280 x1024 res). I hoped my color scheme was complimentary and with good contrast for the text areas (seems clearly readable to me!). Probably I should stick to one font face (sans serif).

There are 3 some kind of borders counting from woodden background till page content.
Those "borders" have different width, and their size isn't decreaseing the nearer the content they are.
That distracts a bit.
But! Those are my personal feelings

btw. did you notice that sidebar's left border is shorter than on the right side ?
Is this intentional ?

The header and footer areas are customisable by the user (including the user editing Sliderman.js slider or even using another slider!). I should probably post the ReadMe.txt here somewhere to help users.

Try with placing slider above page's content (same width), opposite to its current placement and width of sidebar.This way user can set up a page's excerpt above the sidebar, and whole main page structure (slideshow + page content) will stay in one column.

Glad you liked the header! Thank you very much for your constructive criticism. As I said earlier I found the whole exercise of designing & developing this theme fun & interesting & challenging and it all adds to my design and development experience and gives a different type of theme to GetSimple repository!

I've also learned couple things while developing a theme.
And as you said, every constructive criticism shreds new light on things we do.
Of course only if we want to listen