Reflection

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Download Reflection 1.1.1 (21026 downloads)

Reflection is a simple, clean and elegant theme for use with the YAPB photoblog software that is currently in use on my photoblog. Due to popular demand, you can now download it and use it on your own YAPB-enabled photoblog!

There is now a forum to help you get Reflection running. Please read down for more information. Please don’t e-mail me, use the forum instead!


Changes in v1.1.1 (20/5/09)

  • Fixed bug where image dimensions less than the desired width would cause a misdisplay of image.
  • Added json_encode function for those that don’t have PHP 5.2 or greater.

Changes in v1.1 (15/5/09)

  • New admin interface to allow for easy customisation of basic features – copyright info, image sizes, and more.
  • New Mosaic page for browsing pictures by date and tag (finally!)
  • Fixed top navigation menu so hard-coding inside the template file is not necessary.
  • Created a new forum to offer better support option for people having problems.
  • Upgraded to mootools 1.1 for better/faster JavaScript performance.
  • Simplified CSS and fixed many animation bugs.
  • Added a theme image.
  • Many other bug fixes, including the extremely irritating PHP4 bug fix!

Installation

Before you begin, make sure that:

  • The Yet Another Photoblog plugin is installed and works properly. Reflection will not work without it!
  • Go into the YAPB control panel inside the WordPress admin console and make sure that all of the automatic image insertion options at the bottom are turned off. Reflection will not display properly unless this is done.
  • All of your posts contain images. If this is not the case you will get strange errors and things will break.

Then, follow these simple instructions:

  • Unzip the downloaded file and upload it to your WordPress themes directory.
  • Select the theme in the Presentation tab of the admin console.

Fixing Problems

Reflection is by far and away the most popular thing I’ve written so far, and naturally some people will have some problems. As many people will attest to, I can sometimes be extremely slow to respond to problems by e-mail. Also, it’s not much help for those that have problems which have already been solved.

So I am asking everybody not to e-mail me regarding Reflection. Instead, please use the new forum I’ve set up. You’ll need to register with a valid e-mail address, but hopefully this should help you guys out a lot.

Customising Reflection

Reflection comes with some basic administration options which you can control through the WordPress control panel. The panel is available under the Appearance tab. This section briefly outlines all of the settings which are available.

General Settings

  • Copyright holder/year: to change the copyright notice at the bottom, enter your name in this field. The results appear at the bottom of every Reflection page.
  • Image width: Some people commented that they’d like portrait images displayed using a larger width, so you can now change that here. Don’t enter more than 800px here otherwise the display will break on the front page!
  • Show Random page: If you want a link on the navigation bar to random photos, then check this box.

Mosaic Configuration

  • Taxonomy display: If you want to browse photos by tags through the archive, then you need to select the tags radio button here.
  • Mosaic image size: This controls the size of images found in the archive.
  • Show mosaic tooltips: By default, when you hover over each image, it displays the name and date of the post. To turn this off, deselect the tick box.
  • Post order: This allows you to order posts either by ascending or descending date.

Handling Pages

In Reflection 1.1, any pages you create which are published will automatically appear in the navigation menu at the top. Since WordPress 2.5ish, you can change the order in which the pages are displayed, and Reflection observes this order. So you can now customise the navigation menu any which way you want.

Reflection also includes a template for your post archives, which is a nice way of showing your visitors your archive of photos and a bit more interesting than just a list of the posts. Here’s how to create it:

  • In your administration console, create a new page.
  • On the right hand side, select the Archives template from the Template attribute.
  • Save and check to make sure it works.

Any content you add to the text body will, in this case, be ignored for design purposes, but this may change in the future. Depending on the speed and processing power of your webserver, the first time you load the mosaic it may take a while to generate the thumbnails.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks go to the following people: