Welcome to h4x3d.com. Click the menu items above ↑ to access the most recent category posts. Another click resets the menu.

Rainbow Feather v3 Manual

10^th February, 2008 | Last modified on February 10, 2008

Rainbow Feather ^v3
a milestone for me and many

This manual is included in every new Rainbow Feather v3 theme folder for quick help, YOU CAN VIEW/DOWNLOAD IT HERE

1. Introduction
2. Lightbox Choice
3. Recommended Plugins
4. Possible Problems and Solutions
5. Credits

1. Introduction
This Wordpress theme is the third version of the all-time famous and beautiful Rainbow Feather theme.
Rainbow Feather is a fluid one-column wordpress theme. As the name suggests the colours in this theme are rainbow-ish. From blue, baby blue, to yellow, orange, white, blue gradient and pink, barbie pink to evil pink. Cool features include: Fancy web2.0 like headings (wet graphics), custom badges “read on” and “continue reading”, matching color scheme/palette, Login area that shows logged in users (well it shows you and gives you options).
This version includes many bug fixes and modifications, specifically it can now boast with unmatched cross-browser compatibility in regard to such a complex design and piece of Wordpress code: Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 6 and Safari render the site identically. Another great feature is the added widget-support. This version of Rainbow Feather is now 100% widget-ready. This means you can drag & drop most widgets into the pink footer.
Improving the usability of this theme was a major goal that is why in addition to the changes described above, I have contacted many people to help me out with the localization of the theme. As by the time of writing this manual the Rainbow Feather v3 theme is available in German, English, Portuguese (Brazilian), French, Turkish and Romanian. Plans to release Dutch, Italian and Danish localized versions are in progress. I need to thank everyone involved and the 100+ mails I have received to date as well as the 70+ comments on the theme itself. It is you, the people, who have motivated me to put extraordinary amounts of time and love into this project and to love ‘designing and programming’ again.
Thanks everyone!

2. Lightbox Choice
If you want to use Lightbox (Modal overlay box greying out the background) to show your images you should get:

Add Lightbox Plugin by Mdkart
What does it do: Adds rel=”lightbox” to links/images and groups them so that you don’t have to do it manually and every time you post a picture.
Download: http://mdkart.fr/blog/2007/06/14/plugin-add-lightbox-pour-wordpress/
Now you can choose to either go for
Lightbox 2.3 (built on prototype, scriptaculous)
+ looks fancy, wordpress plugin, easy install (rename header.php, get wp-plugin, activate, go)
- fat framework (big files) 100kb additional to your files (site might load slow), disables ‘moo.tools smoothscrolling’
Download: http://www.stimuli.ca/lightbox/ (By Rupert Morris)

OR

Slimbox (built on moo.tools)
+ already built in support, just need to get Add Lightbox Plugin mentioned above, little file-size (30kb), shares library of moo.tools for smoothscrolling
- nothing really, it works and is small
Download: http://www.digitalia.be/software/slimbox/ (By Christophe Beyls) - already included actually

3. Recommended Wordpress Plugins
Slickr Gallery + Slickr Widget (Flickr Gallery and Flickr Widget so to speak)
Download: http://www.stimuli.ca/slickr/ (By Rupert Morris) - works out of the box with my theme (use default style)
Twitter widget (if you are into Twitter)
Download: http://www.velvet.id.au/twitter-wordpress-sidebar-widget/ (By Sarah Isaacson)

AJAX Calendar +AJAX Calendar Widget (An Ajax-powered Calendar for your Widget footer)
Download: http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/ajax-calendar/ (By John Godley)
Every plugin by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming.php)

The built-in RSS (Magpie) Widget plugin for Wordpress (does what it should - include external RSS-feed in the footer) and every other built-in Widget for Wordpress (I tested them all on Firefox, IE7, IE6, Safari, they all work and don’t destroy the layout)
http://guff.szub.net/2005/02/26/the_excerpt-reloaded/ by guff to change the excerpt at top (yellow area), you might want to do backups before and try locally!

4. Possible Problems and Solutions
General information regarding the theme, quick help in case something breaks:
Problem: Yellow-area on top DOES NOT SHOW except on front-page.
Fix: Look at single.php, respectively the other files and locate the line at the very top that says:

It mentions ‘cat=5′ there, which means that it pulls posts from Category with the ID of 5 only.
In case you do not have five categories or no category 5, change the number ‘5′ to an ID that does exist.
You can see your categories and the IDs at /wp-admin/categories.php (manage->categories within Wordpress Admin Area)

Problem: The yellow area is too big / breaks.
Fix: The top yellow area uses the function the_excerpt(); which means it shows only the beginning of a post (first few sentences or words) and not the full content. Sometimes if you are unlucky and use many line breaks

< br />

or several paragraphs

< p>..

it breaks funny. You can use the tag

< ! - - more - ->

in the post to break the content and define your excerpt. This should help!

Problem: The yellow area contains no images and/or full post.
Fix: Read above, it is an excerpt, a possible fix would be to use the plugin “excerpt_reloaded” (by guff - http://guff.szub.net/2005/02/26/the_excerpt-reloaded/
Download: http://guff.szub.net/downloads/the-excerpt-reloaded.zip) I have used it before it works out of the box, parameters I used were:

< img />< div>‘, ‘excerpt’, true); ?>

which shows the first 200 words and allows all links, images and divs. Everything else is filtered out.

Problem: The text warps (sticks) out of the blue area, it looks ugly.
Fix: Please review the following things: did you paste from word or another program or site and used the visual editor in wordpress? If so, don’t: You can disable the Visual Editor at /wp-admin/profile.php (Users->Profile in Wordpress Admin Area). Or you can use the “code” tab to paste your content. You should never copy&paste content of another site or application into the visual editor, it will break badly. If you still get breaking boxes or it looks out of place, I would suggest to get the plugin “Word-wrap” By Jim Wigginton (download link is gone/disappeared, hosted on my site now (http://static01.h4x3d.com/plugins/word_wrap.zip), all credits to Jim though!)

Problem: I got scrollbars, what gives?
Fix: Increase your screen resolution to 1024x768 pixel, a six month survey of over 1,900,000 visitors to my site showed that over 95% of all visitors have a resolution over 1024x768 pixel. If this is out of question for you or your audience is rather untech-savvy you might want to get a much simpler and less joyful theme. (There are some at http://www.h4x3d.com/themes)

Problem: I spotted a translation mistake. How to fix this?
Fix: Please contact me, I will thankfully help you out and fix it (also for future releases)

Problem: Lightbox does not work.
Fix: Did you check the individual sites and versions out? There are many Lightbox/Slimbox versions. I can help you out if you did not manipulate the code as crazy.

Problem: My theme looks different/breaks/looks horrible in Internet Explorer.
Fix: Please download the most recent version of this theme, everything should be fixed. Unfortunately http://themes.wordpress.net has been closed to updates and submissions for the past months (June 2007 to February 2008) and many (over 25,000*) people downloaded and still do download the outdated old version. (* counter reset January 2008 for some reason). Matt at http://ma.tt(former photomatt.com), head of wordpress can be mailed for updates on the themeviewer.

5. Credits
In no special order I would like to thank:

For German translation and validation help: Burkhard Mudrick / www.spielraumdesign.com
For Portuguese / Brazilian translation and motivation: André Bartholomeu Fernandes / www.samba.net.br
For Romanian translation: Codrut Alexoaia / www.zeroweb.ro
For French translation and a beautiful modification of RF: Gilles Aubin / www.gilles.aubin.free.fr
For Turkish translation: Arman Acar / www.armanacar.com
Many others that sent me mails asking for help or offering improvements, such as Søren Mastrup / www.exus.dk, Jonathan Cox / http://rts.thermomods.com , etc. Also I’d like to thank Jose Mauricio Duque of www.snap2objects.com for inspiration, as well as www.bittbox.com for resources and inspiration, but also the folks at www.zone.net. I took every mail and comment of improvement into consideration to iron out all ‘known’ bugs.
If you find any, please let me know; thanks for using and working on this unique Wordpress Theme. Julian ‘jez’ Klewes (February 2008) / www.h4x3d.com

There is a lot to discover on h4x3d.com, browse through the Archive, consult the Sitemap or take a look at the categories below:

About the Author

C. Julian jez Klewes is a 22 year old student from Germany. Living in kempen, nearby duesseldorf, he studies International Business and Management Studies at Fontys in Venlo, the Netherlands. In the past years he published different kinds of work on the web and did freelance designing, as well as consulting and researching. Care to donate some spare money to h4x3d.com? | Thanks