Going “Elemental” … in 70 Minutes!

A very happy new year to all you faithful readers, if you happen to be "Google noise" or not. For me, personally, 2009 was a good year in regard to getting some excellent new releases, reissues and awesome boxed sets and I do certainly hope that 2010 won't fall far behind. If you are reading this via your feed reader of choice you should maybe drop by quickly to have a look at the new livingwithmusic.com. Yes, new (once again).

Shortly before the Christmas holidays, which I spent with my parents in our rather cold and rainy former capital, I was literally tripped up by "Elemental". Sounds mysterious, but it wasn't. While desperately searching for a WordPress theme that is updated regularly, has a rock-solid base and good support, "Pro Theme Design", the makers of "Mimbo Pro", suddenly popped up on my screen and, to be quite honest, a small 454px x 284px partial screenshot of "Elemental" hooked me before I had a chance to breathe.

But, let's take a step back for a second.

Preliminaries:
Selling a product like a WordPress theme must surely be getting more and more difficult, with pro themes proliferating right and left like the swine flu, and the elegance and efficiency of the "Pro Theme Design" homepage as well as the detailed information available on their as yet relatively few themes convinced me within the blink of an eye that I might have finally landed on the right page.

To be quite honest, just about every theme (both free and pro) had fallen short in the few minutes I had spent on setting them up (and I did pay for some), and I was a bit weary of hitting site after site only to come up short ... again.

There are tons of great themes out there to be had, but, when it gets down to the nitty gritty, this didn't work, that wasn't browser compliant, the code sucked, the documentation was lacking, the support was limited to some virtual person regularly stating "I'm updating the theme" (for weeks and months on end), every new WordPress update would break something, etc. A pain in the rear end, to say the least.

So, it was with a bit of apprehension that I dove into the concise information, the online demo and documentation of "Elemental". I was ready to be disappointed, once again.

Prerequisites:
See, I had a rather specific set of must-have properties in mind. The theme I wanted to have was supposed to

• avoid all these useless bells-and-whistles that detract from the core functionality;
• have a rock-solid foundation (framework);
• enable me to set up a child theme to tweak separately from the main theme;
• allow me to freely add widgets and plugins without overriding too much pre-designed stuff;
• not take more than one single day (in total) to set up my site;
• offer somewhat consistent support and
• be updated immediately if anything breaks because of an all-too-often WordPress update.

It's that last point, especially, that enraged me these past months. WordPress, as good as it might be, is being updated and expanded - sometimes needlessly so - at such a rapid pace that most themes are blown to smithereens when one of those updates is installed. So, I hit the as yet rather quiet forum over on "Pro Themes Design" and saw that (small) issues that had arisen with the last megalomaniac WordPress update were fixed and updated on that day.

Secondly, although there are lots of exceptions I could cite, some of these pro themes out there use so many irremovable functions and tweaks to get to where they want to be that it has become almost impossible to sift through the millions of core functions, templates and style sheets to find what you need to do in order to tweak said theme into submission. On top of that, some of what was programmed into those themes would almost certainly collide with some plugin or widget that was a must-have and, in the end, it was often a choice between using a selected theme or the essential add-on.

To cut matters short, of the seven or so themes I paid for (I run more sites than this one), "Elemental" is the first theme that delivered on all points.

"Elemental" (Basics):
Before I tell you about my setting-up of my site with "Elemental", here is what it in fact has going for it:

• Animated multi-level dropdown menus.
• 12 custom page templates for contact forms, sitemaps, image galleries, blogrolls and much more.
• Breadcrumb options.
• Custom control panel options to control column size, typography, navigation and more.
• Four widgetized regions for flexibility.
• Dashboard widget for upgrade reminders.
• Custom masthead image and logo controls.
• Image thumbnail resizing.
• Support for gravatars, author comment highlighting, threaded comments and paged comments.
• Full localization and translation support.
• Custom widgets for popular posts, social networking, Twitter updates, related posts and more.
• Additional customizable content areas via action hooks.
• Custom admin bar for dashboard shortcuts.

Although all of that, excerpted from their "Elemental" page, sounds great, I had heard it all before. Besides, I didn't really need half of that (yet).

But, in the hope that I might have found the right theme, I sent off a mail to Ben (sorry, Ben) ... and didn't even wait for an answer. I just bought the theme right there and then ($59 for a single license and $149 for a multi-license), also because I had a few hours before New Year's Eve to set it all up. If that ain't an acid test, I don't know what is.

Going Elemental:
Want to go my way? Here's how it works.

Step 1: Purchase
Buying the theme, which is handled by Plimus in an extremely efficient manner, took me a few minutes. A receipt from Plimus and the log-in information from "Pro Themes Design" for me to download the theme and access their various support points (Help Desk, Forums and My Account) arrived within a minute or two.

Step 2: Download
A log-in takes you to a "My Account Page", which is as easy as pie to use (albeit "removed" from the rest of the site's layout. I guess they use separate software to run that part of their site). You can download whatever you have purchased, you can see an excellent and extremely helpful line-by-line changelog for the product you purchased (each code fragment changed or updated is listed here!), you can access the Helpdesk and Support Forum and, of course, you can contact the owners for help if something should go wrong. On top of that, there's a prominent link to the "Basic License" I had purchased.

Step 3: Installation
After an ftp-upload had caused some problems at my end (mea maxima culpa: I found out, by chance, that I was using a PHP version from the middle ages), I updated my PHP version to the current stable one and installed the downloaded zip file via the WordPress theme install page. Took a few seconds and went without a single glitch.

Step 4: Playing around
To get to know the theme, I simply tweaked just about every setting on the detailed "Elemental" options menu (with its own clearly-visible icon) that is appended (in my case) to the end of the WordPress sidebar. That new menu is subdivided into two main parts, the "Options" (Theme Options) and "Extras" (Action Settings) menus. The latter allows you to place content (via so-called "action hooks") at the following locations:

• Page Top
• Page Bottom
• Before Header
• After Header
• Before Main Sidebar
• After Main Sidebar
• Before Footer Content
• After Footer Content
• Before Center Homepage Column
• After Center Homepage Column
• Before Main page content
• After Main page content

In effect, what you get are 12 extra areas that you can tweak to your desire.
Very nifty, that.

The main options menu lets you tweak just about every aspect of the theme:

Step 4.0: Basic Blog Settings

• Set the homepage link;
• Switch top navigation between "Off", "Page" and "Category";
• Switch bottom navigation between "Off", "Page" and "Category";
• Choose between 5 different column sizes (ratio between main and sidebar columns);
• Choose between 5 different font combinations (headings and body);
• Enter your Google Analytics Code;
• Set your site's favicon;
• Set the first year of copyright;
• Exclude certain (also multiple) pages from the generated navigation;
• Exclude certain (also multiple) categories from the generated navigation;
• Hide footer widgets.

Step 4.1: Header settings

• Hide header logo and text (only use background image);
• Use a custom header image;
• Display header as text.

Step 4.2: Search Engine Optimization

• Display site name in page title on all pages;
• Display Breadcrumbs.

Step 4.3: Homepage Settings

• Choose how many, if any, large featured items you want.

Step 4.4.: Post Settings

• Display comment date (instead of "time since");
• Display "allowed html" under text input area.

Step 4.5.:Contact Page Settings

• Enter an e-mail address for the contact page;
• Enter an e-mail subject for the contact page.

Step 4.6.: Reset

• Screwed anything up? Reset everything to the default settings.

Step 4.7: Tweakable Templates, Style Sheets and Functions
Of course, you also have access to all of the template and function files via the "Appearance" editor:

• 404 Template (404.php)
• Archives (archive.php)
• Attachment Template (attachment.php)
• Comments (comments.php)
• Footer (footer.php)
• Header (header.php)
• Main Index Template (index.php)
• Page Template (page.php)
• Search Results (search.php)
• Sidebar (sidebar.php)
• Single Post (single.php)
• Theme Functions (functions.php)
• archives.php (archives.php)
• author.php (author.php)
• captcha.php (captcha.php)
• gallery.php (gallery.php)
• home.php (home.php)
• init.php (init.php)
• pageTemplate_archives.php (pageTemplate_archives.php)
• pageTemplate_authorList.php (pageTemplate_authorList.php)
• pageTemplate_blank.php (pageTemplate_blank.php)
• pageTemplate_contact.php (pageTemplate_contact.php)
• pageTemplate_gallery.php (pageTemplate_gallery.php)
• pageTemplate_links.php (pageTemplate_links.php)
• pageTemplate_loggedIn.php (pageTemplate_loggedIn.php)
• pageTemplate_noSidebar.php (pageTemplate_noSidebar.php)
• pageTemplate_redirect.php (pageTemplate_redirect.php)
• pageTemplate_redirectFirstChild.php (pageTemplate_redirectFirstChild.php)
• pageTemplate_sitemap.php (pageTemplate_sitemap.php)
• pageTemplate_tagCloud.php (pageTemplate_tagCloud.php)
• postTemplate_commentSidebar.php (postTemplate_commentSidebar.php)
• postTemplate_leftSidebar.php (postTemplate_leftSidebar.php)
• postTemplate_noSidebar.php (postTemplate_noSidebar.php)
• singleMoreDetails.php (singleMoreDetails.php)
• timthumb.php (timthumb.php)
• wide_page.php (wide_page.php)
• layout.css
• print.css
• rtl.css
• style.css

Step 5: Setting up livingwithmusic.com
If you look at the above-listed options and possibilities, it should be clear that any blog can be run successfully without having to do anything else. Enter the data, hit "Go" and you're off and running.

Because I'm anally retentive about some aspects of my site, I did things a bit differently and, to say the least, it was the smoothest ride I've ever had with this kind of theme. Here's what I did:

I set up a child theme. Yes, I'm the total noob in that regard, but "Pro Theme Design's" video tutorial and (thank God for that) downloadable example file, entitled "Blue Sky", by Darren Hoyt had me up and running in approximately five minutes.

• I integrated a simple site header (1 minute).
• I got rid of the featured larger-sized post and made it look like the rest (1 minute).
• I increased the number of words for each subsequent post displayed on the home page (4 minutes because I had to check where to do that).
• I rearranged the page order via the WordPress "Edit Pages" screen to fit the new site (2 minutes).
• I changed the various sidebars (main sidebar, center homepage column (not needed at the moment), footer content (hidden) and home sidebar (20 minutes of experimenting)).
• I got rid of threaded comments, which I don't like (30 seconds).
• I set up a contact page via a provided template (30 seconds).
• I got rid of images. "Elemental" pulls out an image within your post and automatically resizes it and includes it on your homepage for that post. Nifty. Nevertheless, months ago I decided to forgo any images in my posts in order to not have to invest more time into making them (10 minutes for deleting past custom fields via SQL).
• I changed some spacings in the sidebars via my child theme style sheet (3 minutes)
• I changed the background image/color via my child theme style sheet (1 minute)
• I checked/changed all the theme settings to accommodate my site (3 minutes).

Done.

Extending and Tweaking:
At this point, my site would have been running smoothly. As mentioned above though, I wanted a bit more and took "Elemental" for a real spin:

• I integrated "Clean Archives Reloaded", which was already present on my site (10 seconds).
• I fought with the Twitter widget (my fault ... old PHP version) for a while and got it to run smoothly (10 minutes).
• I set up a "Tags" page via a provided template (1 minute).
• I integrated "del.icio.us for WordPress" by Ricardo González to display my latest links (literally only 2 minutes ... download, set, go ...).
• I reactivated all my plugins, all of which worked without a single glitch (Google XML Sitemaps, No Self Pings, Semmelstatz, Spam Karma 2 (a life-saver), Subscribe to Comments, and Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. The latter integrated nicely without me having to tweak a single thing (2 minutes).
• I installed "NextGEN Gallery" to finally have my galleries as part of my site instead of hosting them elsewhere (not a single glitch; 5 minutes only because I already had a few galleries available on my host server from a ZenPage installation).

That's all folks:
A simple addition of the time needed for each step brings us to about 70 minutes.
If you are anything like me, 70 minutes is absolutely nothing. Let me repeat that please:
70 minutes!

I had never spent less than a day - often several days and sometimes weeks - to get things up and running and/or fighting with incompatibilities.. This time I was finished before the drunks could assemble on the old town hall square I live next to to celebrate New Year's in their "style" (puking and making very loud noises).

I can't stress this aspect of "Elemental" enough. It's really a breeze to set up and tweak into submission within a fraction of the time needed for other themes I previously "owned" (most pro themes you buy don't let you own anything).

To-Do:
Yes, there are several things that aren't quite right yet. I will hit the "Pro Theme Design Forums" to try to clear those up, but not until the people there have had a chance to recuperate from their various New Year's Eve hangovers. I'll also add an addendum here to let you know how that turned out.

• The "Post Author Details" does not appear on single pages, although I want them to. Needs fixing.
• My 404 page does not work. Needs fixing.
• The NextGen Gallery (not a part of "Elemental") isn't doing what it is supposed to do yet. Needs fixing.

Conclusion:
Darren Hoyt and Ben Gillbanks of "Pro Theme Design" recommend using a child theme to rellay bring forth the power of "Elemental". They suggest, for example, to use "The Local", an add-on for "Elemental" with "custom widgets for "Google Adsense, Maps, YouTube, local Twitter updates, weather and more."

All I can say is that the basic "Elemental" framework was more than enough for me. I admit to being a traditionalist and "Elemental" does forgo all these flashy site details so common to all the Web 2.0, 3.0 and whatnot sites that use huge background graphics and each users' bandwidth to hide behind a nice outfit. "Elemental", in it's basic outfit, suits me nicely, thank you very much, and although I might add one bell and two whistles along the way, in an age of dying weblogs and dissipating "live streams" with users hitting your site via a feed reader or some other gadget, "Elemental" is still nice and rock-solid enough to get my motor running, ready to go.

"Elemental" comes highly recommended by me.

Finale:
And, for all of you music freaks and geeks, regular programming will continue after this message. Just wanted to add my 7 cents to promote a product well-done.

P.S.:
This entry was written to the blast that is the "Led Zeppelin: Definitive Collection Mini LP Replica Boxset". It was sent to me by an (unknown) avid reader of this site.

Thanks a million, whoever and wherever you are !!!!

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