19 Oct, 2008
Fervens Remix, a free, clean, two-column Wordpress theme for wide photos
Posted by: brb In: Tech ()
Fervens is a great three-column Wordpress theme from the guys at Design Disease and Smashing Magazine. With fresh colors and simple typography–and with three different versions to choose from–one could hardly hope for a better theme to use for a Wordpress blog.
I have one problem with it though: the post column is too narrow. I use flickr for my photos and because the original fervens theme only allows a maximum of 450px-wide photos, posting the default 500px-wide flick images inside my posts wrecks the whole layout. So I decided to ditch one of fervens’ sidebars and make the post column wider. Now, with the new two-column version, up to 600px-wide photos can be posted without a problem.
Screenshot of the Fervens Remix theme
Small changes
Except for the elimination of one of the sidebars, I tried to keep the new theme as close to the original as possible. However, I did change and add some things here and there.
- Changed default font to Lucida Grande; visitors without this font will see the original Verdana.
- Changed navigation text to CAPITALS from the original lowercase.
- Added an H3 tags for headings inside posts.
- Changed the padding of blockquotes.
- Added an “Edit this entry” link to each blog post.
- Changed the default number of flickr rss photos from 4 to 16.
A 600px-wide photo
Public release
I get emails asking me about the theme and after getting the permission of Design Disease and Smashing Magazine, I am releasing it for everyone to use in their own blogs. The new version is dubbed “Fervens Remix” to distinguish it from the original theme. You may modify it to your heart’s desire but, as with the original theme, you need to ask the permission of both Design Disease and Smashing Magazine before you can distribute your modification.
As with the original theme, Fervens Remix works with Wordpress 2.6.
Also from Smashing Magazine’s fervens release page:
The Fervens Theme is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. This means that you may use it for your personal and commercial projects and you may also make any changes — just don’t remove the credits from footer.
Installation and customization
Steps 2 to 4 are optional.
1. Unpack the zip file.
2. Open the “sidebar-2.php” file inside the “fervens-remix” folder.
3. Change the number 16 inside the phrase “get_flickrrss(16)” to the number of photos that you want your flickrrss to display.
4. Change the default text under the “About” tag and write something about the content of your blog.
5. Upload the fervens-remix folder into your wp-content/themes folder on your server.
6. Upload the “flickrrss.php” file located inside the “plugins” folder into the wp-content/plugins folder on your server.
7. Select the new theme from the Administration panel of your blog.
Note: do not put any widgets inside the 1st sidebar of your blog (because it’s gone); use only the 2nd sidebar. Additional instructions are found at Design Disease’s official fervens release page.
Demo & download
Demo (the demo is this post)
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