I have just released Breathe version 2.1 which includes a lot of changes under the hood.  The most exciting thing is that there is a Breathe Option page located under the Appearance tab.  The options page will enable admin change the site more easily without having to know CSS and PHP.  Have a play around an see if you like it.

If you are a Google Adsense affiliate you can add you adsense code straight into the Options page boxes.  You also have the option of showing ads at the top and the bottom or only ads at the top and not bottom or vice versa. Get it very versatile…

If you need help are get stuck I have whipped up a Help Forum so take look or add a question to get help.

The Style-2.css page is to make changes to your CSS if you want without altering the original code. Neat stuff…just find the CSS that you want to change in the original stylesheet then copy it and paste it into the style-2.css.  Make the changes, delete the things that stay the same and viola the change has been made but can be undone as easily as deleting the style in the Style-2.css.  I have an example already where I make the ads at the top of my page centered.  Delete the top ads text align:center; and it will be positioned left.  Give it a go it is awesome….

What else can I tell you! Just get your hands dirty and give it a go see how it goes for you.

Enjoy the theme  and let me know what you think.  I love positive feedback…

Read this Post first to help set up your Breathe Theme.

Version 2.1 is my latest release and there have been big changes.  The best part is that there is a Breathe Options page located under the Appearance tab in the admin section of your site. This gives you ease of use for changing the look of the theme.  It also supports Google Advertising and much more…

CLICK HERE for the Breathe Test Site

This is the working site of my free WordPress theme Breathe.   I have put a lot of time into the design and adding some features that I think make the site more functional and are the kinds of thing I wanted when I first started using WordPress.  To make your theme work like this one, you will need to download and activate two plugins at least. “Get  the image” and “Multi Level Navigation“.

The Blog title and the Tag line is situated at the top of the page. Change these in your General Settings.

The top bar is a page directory.  All the pages will be listed here. There is however no support for child pages. Don’t worry as there is heaps of navigation below. V2.1 I have added drop down menu for the pages.

The main picture is 950px x 200px. It is called header.jpg and can be changed by making a new picture at these dimentions and uploading it to wp-content>themes>breathe>images. V2.1 You can add your picture anywhere in your directory and then just add the url in the Breath Options panel.

The bottom navigation uses the Multi Level Navigation plugin which needs to be downloaded to make it work like this theme does. I have also changed the default CSS for this plugin. See the post that outlines what you need to do to intergrate this into your theme.

The main content on the front page and in the search page use the Plugin Get the image. If you choose not to download and use this its o.k. but it in the script if you want to use it.  This plugin takes the first picture for the relevant post. If there is no picture for the post it will insert a default image. Read the “changing the default thumbnail” post for more information. (removed in version1.7)

The Main page uses an excerpt call for the text.  The wordpress defaut is 55 words. If you want more get the plugin Advanced Excerpt. Set the plugin to 70 words and it ust gives a little more text on the front page.  The hitch is that if there is an image inserted into a post within the first 70 words it will be included on the front page and it upsets the design asthetics.  So just dont put a picture in the first paragraph.

The side bar is 300px wide.  It is big so it can handle long titles and even Google adsense ads.

The post pages have an Author section is taken from the User menu. Just add your information there and it will magically appear in each article you post.

Comments can be seen below. I have put in a couple of dummy ones. They also support Gravatars

This is what the 404 Error page looks like.

Do a search to view what the search page look like.

I think that is it. Hope it works for you.

Enjoy.

I have a database of clients on my Outlook email.  I can import them directly into SendBlaster (which I can’t do in the free version).

The layout is great, easy to navigate and work out without reading a hefty manual.  There is even a little video tutorial that runs through the basics in 7 minutes to view the first time.

They have a great Spam Checker feature which incorporates all the SpamAssasin rules and gives you a spam score. If you have too much spammy stuff it will let you know so you can fix it before sending it, thus more emails in the inbox rather than the junk filter.

Sending and tracking is also really good.  Sendblaster will check bounce backs and remove them from the list. It is also able to display charts of how many people opened the email, how many links were clicked etc.  This is part of a beta testing product that is offered to Sendblaster users through Track Reports.  They do say that in the future this will be a charged subscription service, but if you are running a business and these stats are important, it could be a great feature.

SendBlaster is also desktop software which means once you pay for it, its yours with no ongoing subscription costs.  You then control your mailing list and everything is kept private, so there is no way that your information and that of your clients or reader is being distributed to other 3rd parties.

The features list goes on and on, but if you are looking for something to send your email marketing, take a look at SendBlaster and try out the free version.  If you need a little more grunt upgrade to SendBlaster2.

This is the comparison table between the free version and the paid if you were looking.

Any comments are welcome.

]]> http://www.paulcracknell.net/284/sendblaster-email-marketing/feed 0 http://www.paulcracknell.net/269/moving-the-seach-box http://www.paulcracknell.net/269/moving-the-seach-box#comments Wed, 07 Apr 2010 02:59:31 +0000 Paul Cracknell http://www.paulcracknell.net/?p=269 The seach box is conviently located in the top right hand side of the top navigation bar, however some people would prefer to move this to another location so this a quick guide to help those that want to move it.

1. Login to the adminsition area of your site.
2. Go to the Appearance tab (on the left side of the screen).
3. Click on Editor
4. The page that appears should be style.css, if not go to…

The default settings for the image in the head section (mountain range) is width = 950px and height = 20.2em.

To change the height it is a simple matter of changing the height in the Style.css page.

1. Under the Appearance tab click on Editor.
2. The page that appears should be style.css, if not go to the right side of the page and find Styles heading and under there is Stylesheet (style.css) click on this.
3. Scroll down the page to find this  #header
4. Change 20.2em beside height to whatever you would like e.g., height:100px; Don’t worry about spaces and make sure that the ; is at the end as per the example.
5. Click Update File at the bottom of this page. A bar at the top pops up “File edited successfully“.
6. View your changes on your site by opening another browser window and press the refresh button or F5 key on your keyboard to make sure that the changes are like you expected.

UPDATE: I am having issues with the menu working in IE. So until this is fixed I will not be releasing the update.  Damn IE…

The header image is 950×200 pixels.

The header image can be located in the images folder within the breathe folder. It is called header.jpg

Alternatively if you have already added the theme to your wordpress it is now located at wp-content/themes/breathe/images

A comments count has been added to the front page.

I have removed the default thumbnail for posts without images, but it will still display images on posts that have images.

If you have made modifications to your Breathe theme and don’t want them over written the best way is to download the theme then upload the index.php, styles.css, search.php and functions.php files to over write the old files.  Also upload “comment-grey-bubble.png” into the images folder and that is it, you will have the latest version working for you.