New To Solostream Themes? Here Are Some Tips For You

If you have just bought a theme, there are a few helpful things you need to know before you start setting up the theme, and discover that you can’t get it to look as nice as the demo you saw.

Make sure you upload the theme correctly to your server

When downloading the theme, it comes in a zipped file. Unzip the file with appropriate software. I use the inbuilt unzip functionality in Vista, but there are programs for unzip as well.

Look at the unzipped folder. Some of the themes will after unzipping have a two folders with the same name i.e. /wp-smooth_ basic/wp-smooth_basic/ Make sure you upload the theme from the lowest level folder. If you upload with two folders, one inside the other, the theme will not be functioning properly.

Read the posts on the theme demo site for your chosen theme.

You will find all the basic information you need to start setting it up. There are a few things common on the demo sites. A get started post, listing any additional plugins you need, and how to do the basic things you need to do to get it working, and information about Featured Posts, Banner Ads, etc.

Reading those posts will get the theme basics up and going (and with Solostream themes, it’s not hard!)

Search the forums

You can either search the whole forum (if you are at the top level) or any of the underlying theme forums (if you are in one of those). What you are struggling with will most likely have been encountered by other Solostream theme users.

Ask in the forums

If you have read the theme demo site, and searched the forums, but still haven’t found the answer, you can ask in the forums. The Soloteam and associates (Martin is a big help) are very helpful and can pretty much solve almost everything. Or maybe other forum users have had the same issues and know the answers.   Be patient and you will get an answer, at least that’s my experience.

Avoid editing php and css files inside WordPress.

Download for instance PSpad editor, it’s freeware and makes working with theme files a lot easier. Download here: http://www.pspad.com/en/. Now all you need to do is to play around with colours in your theme settings page (for the themes that have those) or dive into your CSS.

Thanks Iskwew for the great contributions on this topic.  It is greatly appreciated and helpful.

WP-Vybe has been a much-loved theme for many customers but there were some concerns about the changes in functionality that were made with the version 1.1 release. Our goal with this 2.0 release was to restore components that were missed by our customers and fix some bugs that have been found along the way. To accomplish this, we returned to the original theme code from 1.0 and rebuilt from there.

The most important changes that you will find with this release are:

• Restoration of original control panel feature controls (fonts, background colors, etc.)
• Revised color schemes built into the control panel
• Integration of the “Recently Popular” plugin to replace “Popularity Contest” (too many customers were having issues with this older plugin)
• Updated FeedBurner code to allow URI instead of ID
• Updated get_the_image code in features.php and post-thumb.php (from 1.1)
• Updated archives and search pages to show excerpts regardless of theme settings (thanks, Iskwew!)
• Updated “Older Comments” and “Newer Comments” boxes to only show up when needed (thanks, Ben and Martin!)
• Added “If you want a picture to show with your comment, go get a Gravatar.” to comments template (thanks, Martin!)
• Added option to turn auto-scroll on/off for Featured Articles
• Added option to hide author bio on single post page
• Added RSS icon/link back to comments template (thanks, Drew!)
• Plus a bunch of bug fixes to improve overall performance

Again, we welcome your feedback (as this release proves, we do listen and respond to what you have to say).

Must admit Terra is a very nice theme. Very stylish and does not even make the site look like a WordPress powered site.

This in a nutshell described our goal for this new theme.  We would like to push WordPress themes in new directions that change the notion of how people use this platform.

We believe that WordPress is a powerful publishing tool that can help business owners and non-techs harness the power of managing their own web site.  Instead of deploying a standard blog styled theme, we believe there is tremendous potential to create easy to manage web sites that use WordPress as a simple content management system (CMS) solution.

• One color/background choice - It gives the theme a very light and clear (Hah!) feeling.
• Lower price - It’s $20 cheaper than WP-Smooth.

Be sure to let us know what you think of it.  And, keep the ideas coming because it is our goal to be responsive to your needs.

Here are some initial reviews from our previewers:

I think the theme looks like exactly what I have been looking for with the boxes suitable for a homepage.  It’s not that I don’t like my other Solostream themes (I use them across my sites, and they look really good).  But Smooth is more what I would like for a web site homepage.

Nice work on WP-Smooth. The 2 column in the posts with the included single column underneath is what a lot of people like nowadays in a theme. Looks like a good cross between Vybe and Magazine! I like the new featured section also!  Well done.

Feel free to check out the WP-Smooth demo site and share your feedback.

Here’s some feedback from our early reviewers:

• Looks and feels like a cross between WP-Vybe and WP-Magazine - love it.
• It’s great to have the static 300×250 window back to the right of the featured glider and glider controls that are now at the bottom of featured window.
• Having the featured article max with an option to 10 is much better.
• The new split right/left feature for the bottom of the sidebar is a great addition!
• Love that all the page control elements are back in the admin panel!
• Really appreciate the 468×60 banner options for the traditional space plus in the header. - A great selling point here is to use that for special announcements etc.
• Nice to have the article and comment RSS feature in the tabbed widget

I must say I’m impressed! I think you guys will have another very popular theme on your hands.

Let us know what you think of WP-Jazz.  We’d love to hear your feedback.

Inspired by the light and classic feeling of Kubrick, we pushed our team to find new ways to explore the popular magazine concept.   Our team focused on developing design features that quickly style the header and sidebars to create clean designs that can easily incorporate the creativity of our customers to create unique sites.

We hope that you enjoy this new theme and look forward to seeing how it can be used to express great ideas on the web.

WP-Vybe 1.1. Highlights:

10 New Lighter Colors — In response to overwhelming feedback, we have added a new collection of colors including aqua, blush, cardinal, lime, midnight, news, orchid, peach, sage, and timber.  There are now a total of 20 default colors ready to go with the click of a mouse.

Threaded and Styled Comments — WP-Vybe now supports this feature which was released with WordPress 2.7.  Be sure to enable them on your site (Settings -> Discussion).

We also modified parts of the WP-Vybe Theme Settings page to give users more control over the look and feel of the theme.  We attempted to keep it similar to the original look and feel as the WP-vybe 1.0 dashboard.  For advanced users (and only for advanced  users), you can explore the nuances of making changes in the new style.php files.

We thank you for your patience through the process of creating this new release.  While it may seem like it would be quick and easy to just update a few theme files or colors, the fact is that it takes time and careful effort to produce the type of high quality product that you expect from us.

Finally, we are hard at work compiling a list of customer requests and new ideas that we intend to incorporate into a WP-Vybe 2.0 release in the next few months.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Customers who update to WP-Vybe 1.1 will need to carefully note all of the customizations they may have added to their site.  These modifications will need to be added to WP-Vybe 1.1 files before uploading.  Also, be certain to back up all files before attempting any update.

In observance of the holidays, we will be closed on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.  In addition, we will be operating with a limited support team through the end of the year.

Please be patient in awaiting support responses during this period as we will be spending time with our families.

Warm wishes,  The Solostream Team

My site displays perfectly in Firefox but when I open it in Internet Explorer 7 it is all scrambled. How can I resolve this problem?

First and foremost, we want to let you know that we make every effort possible to quality check our templates before they are distributed for sale. We test them in different browsers and operating systems to ensure that they display properly.

You can test this for yourself by going to the many demo sites that we host and view them in different browsers for yourself:

WP-Vybe - http://www.wp-vybe.com
WP-Magazine - http://www.wp-magazine.com
Zeke 1.0 + Widgets - http://www.themes.solostream.com

If the demo site displays properly and your site doesn’t in the same browser, the most likely causes are:

1. Plugin Incompatibility - You have incorporated a plugin to your site that has created a compatibility problem. It’s like mixing ice cream and steak. Both of them can be very good by themselves but they are not the type of ingredients you want to mix on your plate at one time.

To resolve this situation, we recommend you deactivate the plugins one by one until you isolate the specific plugin that is causing the problem.

2. You may have mistakenly modified the code - This can be a true pain in the neck since there are so many places to look within the site’s code.

Our best advice in these moments is to try the following tools:

- Go to http://validator.w3.org/ to validate the HTML and check for errors
- Go to http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ to validate the CSS and check for errors