Built for the next big online magazine, WordPress theme Aparatus is available for free!

Published: Mar 12, 2011

Thinking of a sharp, clean magazine layout for your website – then Aparatus is for you. Aparatus is a two column design complete with all the bells and whistles of a high content news website. A large featured carousel slider sits in the homepage that cycles through your latest posts. Post thumbnails for articles, photo galleries, videos, threaded comments, pagination, custom menus – all of these are built in Aparatus.

UPDATE 5/16/2012 – I’ve recently updated this theme. Numerous bugs were addressed, additional seo updates, added more theme options More Information

Some Theme Features

The theme utilizes Cufon – but only for select areas of the theme such as the Logo and the footer. The logo now has an etched and gradient look – which compliments the header quite well. Google fonts is also used for the post and comments headings. A few CSS 3 code is also used to improve the presentation of the text a little bit more.

A new post thumbnail handling for the feature images – so it will work with custom fields. The feature image also appears in the single post page – something many users have requested for.

The theme now supports the new WordPress menu system. You can now customize the menu with drag and drop abilities.

Theme options is also integrated. Advertising and Twitter handles are controlled from this section.

How to Use:

Installing the theme is just like any other WordPress theme. Simply go to the “Appearance” > “Install Themes” section in your admin panel. Click the “Upload” link – browse to the theme .zip file and “Install Now“.

Adding Post Thumbnails to your Posts:

To add images to your posts you can use the Post Thumbnail feature of WordPress. Simply go to the post in “Edit” mode. On the right side of the page – click on “Set Featured Image“:

This will trigger the image uploader. Upload your image and as soon as that’s done, click the “Use as Featured Image” link:

Note that you should keep the file sizes to a smaller size. The resizing script has a maximum size limit.

How to Use the Slideshow:

The slideshow automatically pulls your most recent posts (5 maximum). You can change this to pull from a specific category by going to “Appearance” > “Aparatus Options” and putting the category slug in the field: “Category Name for the Content Slider“. You can also take out the slideshow or choose to not automatically slide – by checking the appropriate boxes in the theme options.

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Also, if you see the slider with the “Oops…Looks like” message (shown below) – that means you haven’t assigned a post thumbnail to your post. Read the section above called “Adding Post Thumbnails to your Posts“.

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How to insert a Photo Gallery:

Adding a photo gallery into Aparatus is as easy as pie. Simply go to the post / page you want in “Edit” mode and click on the image uploader. Navigate to your local directory and highlight the images you want and click “Open“.

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As soon as the images upload, click on “Save Changes” and additional settings will show. Select your options and click “Insert Gallery“.

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Update your post / page and preview it. You should see your gallery in place.

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How to Customize the Navigation Menu:

Go to “Appearance” > “Menus” and start by creating a new menu. Enter a menu name and click “Create“.

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This will create a blank menu panel in the right side of the page. The idea is to select categories, pages or custom links from the left side, click the “Add to Menu” button – and it will appear on the menu panel in the right. In this panel, you can drag and drop the links so you can design the menu hierarchy. Links that are staggered underneath become the drop down links from the respective parent – you get the drift.

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Once the menu is done – hit “Save Menu” and in the top most left column box called “Theme Locations“, select the menu you just created from the drop down called “Header Menu”. Click “Save” and view your website. You menu should now be in place.

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Switching Stylesheets

Aparatus comes with 4 different color styles – also known as stylesheets. Go to “Appearance” > “Aparatus Options” and in the top most section is a drop down called “Style Sheet”. Select Maroon, Black, Blue or Green and “Save Changes“.

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Adding the Twitter Badge and Latest Tweet:

Still in the theme options, right underneath the Style Sheet drop down, is the Twitter account field. Enter your Twitter user name in this field.

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Save your changes and view your website. You should see a nice Twitter Badge in the Header – and your latest Tweet in the sidebar area.

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Advertising Blocks:

You can ad advertising blocks in the sidebar area right in the theme options. You can do 1 large 300 x 250, and 4 small 125 x 125 squares. Go to the theme options page – and see the “Advertising Blocks” area. Enter the image source of the ad (where the image is coming from), and the destination (where the link goes when the image is clicked).

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Save your changes and view your site. You should see the ad blocks in the sidebar nicely lined up:

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How to Add an Image Logo

The theme is not equipped with an automatic image logo placement feature. But many have asked me how to replace the existing text header into an image instead. *Note that I will be working on this feature soon. For now, here is a workaround:

Upload your image logo using the media upload (Go to “Media” > “Add New” > “Select Files” and find your image, then upload. Grab the File URL for your image. Open stlye.css (or whichever style sheet you are using) – go to “Appearance” > “Editor” > style.css. Look for:

a#logo

Inside the curly braces, enter the code below:

background:url('ENTERTHEURLFORYOURIMAGEHERE');
text-indent: -9999px;

Save the file. Now open header.php (Still in the Editor section) – look for

Cufon.replace('a#logo', {
    color: '-linear-gradient(#cccccc, #000000)',
    textShadow: '-1px -1px black '
});

And delete it. View your website with the new header logo. Note that you may need to adjust some CSS positioning or padding to accommodate your new logo.

Frequently Asked Questions:

I’ve gathered a several most asked questions in regards to Aparatus. Read below to see if your question is one of them.

Modify the Twitter Badge Image

Many want to modify the large Twitter Badge in the header. Please note that the font I’ve used in this badge is called – League Gothic, and you need to download that in your Fonts folder to twiddle the .psd file.

Slideshow is not showing images

If you’re using custom fields – make sure you have GD library installed. You also have to make sure that the cache folder inside scripts (themes/aparatus/scripts/cache) is fully writeable. In addition, you need to enter at least a couple of posts to kick start the slideshow.

How To make posts in the slideshow appear below the slideshow

By default posts inside the slideshow does not duplicate underneath – where the rest of the post are. Many like it this way – but some have asked how to make them show below as well. To do this look for this line of code inside gallery.php and delete it:

$saved_ids[] = get_the_ID();
How to fill the Author Box Information

The “About the Author” box right in the single posts page grabs information from your profile. Go to “Users” > “Your Profile”, under Biographical Info – enter your stuff there.

The Header Text takes too long to convert into the logo

Sometimes Cufon takes a bit of time to do its thing. Aparatus uses this to use your site name and automatically convert it into a decent looking logo. But sometimes – due to client browser constraints, it performs poorly.

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For this issue it would probably best to use an image for your logo. If you really like how it looks with Cufon – just take a screenshot and convert the image into a jpeg and replace it inside the header.php.

Conclusion:

Additional documentation can be found from this series of posts. You can download the theme from this link. Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

This article is written by Michael Soriano. Michael is a Front End Developer based in La Crescenta California. He specializes in CSS, JavaScript and UI. When not developing sites, Michael likes to play handyman and wrestles his kids.

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408 thoughts on “Built for the next big online magazine, WordPress theme Aparatus is available for free!

    Mel Campbell says:

    Thanks for making this nifty and versatile theme. I’m using my tag cloud as a secondary navigation system on my site. How can I increase the height of the MooTabs panel so that all the tags in the cloud are visible? It’s currently 364px tall and I reckon I’d be fine if it were, say, 500px. I have only the most rudimentary CSS skills and have already tried various minor edits:

    – increasing the height of the tabbed container, which makes the background taller but the panel itself remains the same height;
    – inserting “height” values in .mootabs_panel, .mootabs_panel p and .mootabs_panel.active (none of this made a lick of difference)
    – deleting overflow: hidden so that my hidden tags are visible but spill over the edges of the container, which obviously is not what I want.

    I’m at the limits of my own knowledge, and both Google and the Aparatus documentation are giving me no more clues. I feel as if this should be easy to do. Can Michael or anyone else here help me?

    Michael Soriano says:

    Sorry for the really late reply. You’re in the right track. It should just be css. Do you have a url I can look at?

    Michael Mora says:

    Is there a way to get the Read More or … text to show up in the summary of the texts on the front page?

    read more in the home page – you can do it manually. open home.php – look for the_excerpt(), then underneath it – add this code:

    <a href="<?php the_permalink();?>">read more</a>

    Michael Mora says:

    I entered the code so that it looks like this now:

    <a href="”>read more

    It’s still not showing up, I have a break in my text with Post editor.

    Michael says:

    How did you get your them to say ‘Next Page’ on the bottom? I do not see a setting for this anywhere in the options menu and my page scrolls down forever!

    Chris Rys says:

    Is there anyway i can direct the ad blocks to a outside site? Instead of it trying to direct to a page with my own website?

    enter the url in the theme options page.

    chris says:

    hi michael,

    my slideshow isnt showing? i have tried 5 test posts to get it to work, nothing. check and unchecked the setting for the slideshow in the appearance options…any suggestions?

    dan says:

    Hi does anyone know how to change the favicon?

    Markus says:

    Any chance of this theme turning up on wordpress.com? Thanks!

    steve says:

    Also, how can I make a custom colour CSS? Obviously we can change from maroon, blue, black etc… but I would like an orange one, how do I do this please?

    Thanks

    steve says:

    michael, any ideas my friend?

    hi steve. i’m thinking – maybe you have wp to use a static page as your home page? and you have a page called “home”? the slideshow works in a normal blog setup where you have latest posts as the home page. try tweaking your settings in wp and comment back please.

    steve says:

    yes that worked thank you! also, I like the coloured options, how do I make an orange theme option?

    steve says:

    hi,
    great theme! how do I remove the ‘top’ menu . where you have the menu pages in simple white text, above the fancier menu buttons? I don’t want to have 2 menus that are the same. I want the menu in the light grey not the dark grey…hope you can help

    thanks

    calin says:

    My posts are not showing… what gives? They show in the slider but not in the normal “posts” area.

    by default, posts in the slideshow won’t show up in the section below. but you can modify the code to allow posts to show up underneath. go to “appearance” > “editor” > gallery.php – look for this line of code:

    $saved_ids[] = get_the_ID();

    and delete it.

    calin says:

    Thanks!

    I have another dumb question… I can’t seem to find how to change the logo in the style sheet. I don’t see “a#logo”.

    What am I missing?

    Esha Putra says:

    Hello there, thanks for a such great theme… I used in my site http://netterpreneur.net
    but the popular post have not show any post yet.
    is there any issue or something related to this?
    Thanks.

    the popular post pulls posts that have the most comments.

    Scott says:

    Love the wp theme—thank you for such a great template…I am trying to replace the header…I am a bit of a wp novice, so can you tell me which line(s) in the header.php that I need to replace with a graphic…and do you have any instructions on how to do this w/o screwing it all up. ;0)

    Hi Scott – I’ve updated the post above to include some directions on how to replace the header text with an image logo

    Matt says:

    Hey, I bought this theme the other day and I’m really pleased with it but would like to make a couple of changes. I would like to replace the logo at the top of each page with an image logo that I have created myself, and remove the highlighting from links in blog posts. I’m not great with CSS/HTML but I’ve followed your advice above^ and a couple of other tutorials and as far as I can see I’m doing it correctly but it’s not having any effect! Would really appreciate any advice, cheers!

    Ryuzaki says:

    Ive just bouht the Theme- Its great-
    but I still have some questions:
    1.How can i use a Logo instead of the Title?
    2. Can i turn off the bevel effect of the Title?

    greetings

    Hi Ryuzaki – I’ve updated the post above to include some directions on how to replace the header text with an image logo

    Dael says:

    Hi,
    I’ve been using the same template but over blogger for few years, and I’m considering moving to WordPress now.
    How easy/simple is to change your template it to LTR (Its’ in Hebrew blog)? (checkout my blog to see). If easy, I’m in! thanks

    Ryuzaki says:

    Im testig the free 1.0 version at the moment and I fail at creating a widget with the wordpress function. Is this possible?

    Ryuzaki says:

    Hi- I’ve just bought the V.2 (0570-3217-7416-3281) and the calender works but now i have another Question, sry 😉
    1.Can i somehow use a logo, instead of the Title?
    2. or can I hide the Title text and just edit the header? – When i dont use a title, the header space dissapears
    3. Can i remove the Gradient from the Titel- its nice and fancy and all but it doesnt fit into my style 😉

    1 – you can edit the css and set a background image on the a#logo element
    2 – when you don’t use a title – you can add a height on the div that contains it
    3 – to take out gradient and shadows: look in header.php and look for:


    Cufon.replace('a#logo', {
    color: '-linear-gradient(#cccccc, #000000)',
    textShadow: '-1px -1px black '
    });

    replace with:


    Cufon.replace('a#logo');

    james says:

    Hi Michael, my popular box is not showing any post. how do i activate it? i’ve deleted the theme and install again but it still not showing.

    the popular posts only pulls post with the most comments.

    james says:

    hi michael can you help me? my popular box post is not responding to new post.

    the popular box only pulls posts w/ most comments.

    Hello,

    I’ve been using this theme since last July without any problems and now, suddenly, all of my right side widgets are appearing UNDER my posts.

    The home page looks fine, but when you click into the post it will show the post and then under the comments area are all my widgets that are normally displayed on the far right side.

    I haven’t added or removed any coding/widgets in the past few weeks, so I have no idea why this is happening. PLEASE HELP!

    i’m not sure = but i ck’d out your site and it looks okay?

    That’s weird. It seems to be working fine now. Thanks for the quick response, I hope it doesn’t happen again lol.

    Dario says:

    hi, there is a way to don’t have character limit in the articles preview? cuz I like to add more information on the articles to after link to the article page…but the number of characters for the article in the home seems fixed…ty

    Philippe O Marchand says:

    I would love the option of being able to display the full post right on the main blog page, is that possible?

    Nico Bazan says:

    Hi Michael, my template just freaked out: http://clubjawa.com.ar/
    I added a new post and the home collapse, the elements are mixed up. I tried a sort of things but I can´t make it work properly again.
    Can u help me? Thanks in advance.

    Nico Bazan says:

    I had the same problem as Andrew, I deleted in the header:

    window.addEvent('domready', init);
    function init() {
    myTabs1 = new mootabs('myTabs', {height: '320px', width: '300px', changeTransition: Fx.Transitions.Back.easeOut, mouseOverClass: 'over'});
    }

    and the template went back to normal.
    Thanks!

    Nico Bazan says:

    Hi Michael, there will be some way to change the “Twitter badge” to point to another url besides twitter?
    I downloaded the Twitter badge .psd and modified it, I need to point it to a Facebook Group. (Sorry for my bad english)

    Thanks!

    yes you can edit header.php – look for the div with id “twitter-badge” and change the href value of the anchor tag to point to your facebook group.

    Alberto says:

    Hi i have a problem, when a create a menu it is not drag and drop so i can’t design the menu gerarchy.
    thank you

    Andrew says:

    Hey Michael

    Thank you for the reply, I found the problem it was when I removed the tabbed-container from the side bar, do you know of anyway to get rid of the tabbed-container from the sidebar with out affecting the slide show? i tryed removing
    from sidebar.php, this effectively got ride of the tabs but also affected the slide show.

    If you have any tips that would be great

    thanks

    Andrew

    try deleting this code in header.php –


    window.addEvent('domready', init);
    function init() {
    myTabs1 = new mootabs('myTabs', {height: '320px', width: '300px', changeTransition: Fx.Transitions.Back.easeOut, mouseOverClass: 'over'});
    }

    let me know it this works.

    RL says:

    Hi Michael,

    Andrew is away for a couple weeks so I just wanted to let you know that your fix worked.

    Thanks!

    Brian says:

    I cannot add menu items.Runnin WP 3.3.1. Message is The current theme does not natively support menus, but you can use the “Custom Menu” widget to add any menus you create here to the theme’s sidebar.

    In the how to above, there is a difference. Is it possible to add menu items to the header bar as in picture at top of page.

    Brian says:

    I can add pages.On the lower bar, with the headings;
    About, Page No Three, Whatever, Category 3, Page No Four, Yolk, Contact, Purchase
    I have tried to add these, but have not mastred this yet. I assume tey can be added to the lastest WP release. Thank you.

    it supports it. i’m not sure why that message shows up. let me look into it.

    Brian says:

    Hey Michael, did you find anything out?

    Andrew says:

    Hey Michael

    Love this theme. Have come into a little problem I can not fix. For some reason the slider no longer works. It now shows all the picture in a row on the home page.
    Do you have any suggestions on how i might be able to fix this.

    thanks
    Andrew

    it look like you have javascript errors (line 31) . Im not sure if a plugin did this or it was manual.

    Ryan says:

    I get this message when trying to leave a comment
    ” Error 1: Click back and type in the password. ”

    There is no code on the page to be found.

    i don’t know what’s causing that.

    Ryan says:

    I deactivated all plugins…. I still have the problem. Could a widget cause this problem?

    Pierre says:

    Hey Michael!
    I’m very happy with this theme so far.
    The only annoying thing for me with this theme is the motortools which seems very slow to display the big picture and makes the site buggy and not very nice for a few seconds when loading (especially with chrome).
    Any advise, plug in which could make it better?

    You’re right, there is a bit of lag. There should be plenty of options as far as plugins.

    Ryan says:

    When I install this theme on godaddy servers for testing it lets you edit the “search” “popular” and other default widgets in the widget editor. But on the server I am using actually use the site I can not. Any reason why?

    Ryan says:

    I would still like to know how

    ckclarke says:

    Hi,
    Thanks, but as I noted, I *have* a custom menu set, but I don’t know how to get rid of the grey area menu links.

    to get rid of links in the grey area – open header.php (appearance > editor > header.php) look for this code:

    <?php wp_list_pages('title_li=&depth=1&sort_column=menu_order'); ?>

    and delete.

    ckclarke says:

    Perfect, thanks!

    Ryan says:

    When a put a picture of a person in the “featured image” section it cuts off the head. Basically only shows their chest. Is there a way to make the default do a portrait as apposed to a landscape?

    portrait images won’t look good – the slideshow is landscape by default.

    Ryan says:

    I do not want the slider portrait just the thumbnails that go with each post.

    the slider will crop resize the portrait images by default. the thumbnails in each post are the same image that go in the slider. so they all look best landscape.

    Ryan says:

    I am not talking about the slider. I am talking about the thumbnails that appear with each post on the home page under the slider.

    the thumbnails weren’t designed to be portrait images.

    Thanks for the updates..

    Ryan says:

    How do I increase the amount of posts that show on the home page?

    that should be controlled in settings > reading

    ckclarke says:

    Like the theme in general, but having trouble with the menu, because the menu repeats twice in the design… once in the dark area, and again in the silver buttons. My goal is to have the nav in the silver buttons, and the dark area blank. Is that possible? Also, the silver buttons are out of order. I have a custom menu set, and it’s in the right order for the grey area, but not on the silver area…

    you can customize the menu by going to appearance > menus.

    Elliot says:

    Michael, I truly love your Aparatus theme and, as a newbie to coding websites, I really would like to ensure I have the skill to customize (and fix my mistakes) version 1 before I dive into version 2 (which I will soon).
    My question is; How do I insert my own object into the side-bar (either another ad or perhaps an opt-in form) in place of the twitter post above the big ad block?

    I have no problems using the widgets but I would ideally like to have an opt-in form appear higher in the side bar (above the fold).

    Thanks in advance.

    you can open sidebar.php and move things around – or even insert your own form. just look for the section where its calling the widgets – and insert it above.

    Steve says:

    great theme!
    just few queries 🙂
    need wider drop down menu areas? how can this be achieved?

    also twitter id like to swap out with faceboook? where is code to edit twitter link out? then just add fb user in backend etc

    andrew says:

    Hello one quick question

    “If you really like how it looks with Cufon – just take a
    screenshot and convert the image into a jpeg and replace it inside the header.php.”

    Where and what do I need to replace in the header.php to add a custom header logo.

    you don’t have to edit header.php. in styles.css (or whichever stylesheet) look for “a#logo {” and add a background property that leads to your image logo.
    for example:


    background:url('urltoyourlogo');

    temson says:

    Hello. Can i by this beauty theme in webmoney?

    Jeremy says:

    Any idea how to add a favicon?

    David Dorr says:

    I downloaded this theme, but the featured block is not working like it should. I have tried multiple posts, but that doesn’t work. What might I be missing?

    Hi Michael
    Fantastic design, thank you.
    There’s a couple of things I’m trying to do which I hope you might be able to help with
    1. Is it possible to turn posts into pages? So that, when you click on a post you are linked to the page (where it is permanently hosted).
    2. Can I use the ad blocks as links to pages? Or remove them?

    Appreciate any advice you can give
    Katharine

    Pasan says:

    Hi,
    this is a AweSome Wp Templet & i have a Question
    What is the Font of HEADER i want a QUICK REPLY..Please Email
    me about the font and the Download link
    my email is ; pasannissanka@gmail.com
    Thanks

    Dorothy says:

    Is there a way to remove the ad blocks or put them farther down on the template? Thank you for the above fix on the featured image! That was making me crazy too.

    Yes. You should open sidebar.php and look at the code. I commented it pretty well.

    Craig says:

    The Featured Image thing is really bugging me. I want to adjust the alignment and put it in certain places in my posts, but this does not seem like an option. What is the deal with this?

    is it the resizing of the images? send me your url.

    Craig says:

    Basically, I guess I am looking for a way to not automatically have the “Featured Image” be displayed on post pages — If I can’t manipulate the alignment or location of them, I don’t want them included on the post page. I do still want them for the thumbnail on the homepage however — get what I am saying?

    http://66.147.244.80/~instafli/2011/11/26/1732/

    You have to take out the block of code below from “single.php”.


    <?php if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) { ?>
    <?php the_post_thumbnail(array( 580, 268 ), array( 'class' => 'full-in-single' )); ?>
    <?php }elseif(get_post_meta($post->ID, 'image', true)){ ?>
    <img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/scripts/timthumb.php?src=<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'image', true); ?>&h=268&w=580&zc=1&q=100" class="full-in-single"/>
    <?php } ?>

    go to appearance > editor – select “single post page” from the right side and look for the code above and delete. Make sure you make a backup of the original (copy and paste in notepad)

    Craig says:

    Thanks. That works perfectly. I really appreciate that. It was driving me nuts.

    Virginia says:

    Hey, nice theme especially for the price! I would like to know if you can include more than just the latest tweet on the sidebar. I found the Twiiter portion of sidebar.php and cannot see anything obvious.

    Hi there,

    Just brought your theme – really nice!.
    I would really like to change the text logo, but i’m not sure what to delete in header.php, and how big a picture I can use.

    Can I insert a picture with this code (and size)?: echo “”;

    Looking forward for your response 🙂

    /Karsten

    I really hope that you can help me with how to change the text logo with a image.

    Don says:

    Hi Michael,
    Love, love this theme, and I’m in the process of upgrading my blog. But I also would like to change the logo header, and am struggling. Please help!
    Thanks, and keep up the great work.

    Primo Creative says:

    I should’ve browsed the theme more before purchasing but I really needed the image within a post to show on the homepage as it will be used as a Picture blog. Currently your thumbnails for the post are very small. Where within the coding can I find this to change it? I can’t seem to find it.

    the homepage is home.php, the rest of the pages are index.php

    Craig says:

    I am having an issue with the Author Box on post pages. I want to insert an avatar in the space provided. How can this be accomplished? I installed the USER PHOTO plug-in. That allowed me to fill the avatar space provided, but the avatar was then moved to the top of the author box, out of position. Thoughts?

    you don’t need a plugin for that. update your avatar at http://gravatar.com – make sure the email is the same as your author email.

    Neil says:

    Hi,

    I’ve just bought the theme, and the slider doesn’t appear to want to show my image. I’ve set it as the featured image, is there anything else I need to do that I might not realise? Also it flicks up like a normal article first, before it loads the slider. Any help would be great!

    try adding a couple more posts with image. the script likes more than 1 post

    Neil says:

    Thanks for the help! That fixed it! The script here is really similar: http://www.studiograsshopper.ch/dynamic-content-gallery/ but it has a “Read More” option on the excerpt / caption. Is it possible to do this too? If not how easy would it be to swap the default script for Dynamic Content Gallery? I tried installing the plugin but I think they clash!

    Really love the template / theme though so thanks! I’m pleased with it!

    Well done! I love it. My question though is if a Facebook share button will be added to the other default social buttons in this theme? I wonder a wee bit why you wouldn’t have added a Facebook button?
    Sincerely, James

    Eric says:

    This theme frustrates me. Finally got the slider working on the homepage, but only if I save the images to the server then within a post, make it a featured image. Now that is tedious. It doesn’t work if you insert the image from a URL.

    Also, is there a way to auto add a “more post” or a “read more” on the homepage posts? Right now it cuts off sentences and most average web users don’t know to click on titles or photos to get a full story on a post. “Must be told what to click…must read… must push button,” with a robot voice.

    wilmer says:

    The theme Aparatus Version 2, is very professional, so nice to be alone I do not like the line with the edges, do not know how to remove it.
    See if someone tells me how I can remove those lines on the edge, thanks for help.
    I like your theme of your blog is very good.

    Eric says:

    You’ll have to pull this image: wp-content/themes/aparatus-V2/images/header-bg.gif

    Then modify it yourself and overwrite the default image on your sever.

    Brandon says:

    I’m having some issues. First, the large twitter badge on the top isn’t linking to my twitter. I’ve tried every variation of the web address and nothing is working. Second, are we really only allowed one menu tab? How do we get more? Any ideas?

    Uli22 says:

    Hi there! love the theme, although I just bumped into a bit of a problem… I just can’t seem to erase one of the drop down menus. That page does no longer exists, yet it keeps on showing right there as part of the menu. The name of the page is “Limitaciones del derecho de autor”… hope you can help me to get rid of it. Thanks in advance!!!

    Uli22 says:

    nevermind… I figured it out, thanks anyway!!!

    wichon says:

    Is this compatible with WordPress 3.2.1 ??

    ken says:

    im having trouble with the main navigation bar,..The page button links run off the black area of the menu into the white of my page where its hard to see them to click them. how can i fix this, also it repeats the links twice (example: home page is named lastest news, it is a button on the menu bar twice) how do i fix that. and also on the right hand side the popular post area, toward the bottom of it, shows through when I open any media pictures to a full view. Its wired, but please look at my page and let me know how to fix these problems please .. thank you

    ken says:

    also one more thing….in my post page the pictures on the right of the posted blog are not appearing, how do i fix that as well?

    Tyler says:

    I installed this theme, but for some reason the search box in the top right corner is not clickable. I can’t type anything in the search input box for some reason. Any ideas?

    EdgeMan says:

    Is there any way to remove the FOLLOW MY UPDATES ON TWITTER badge at the top right? Or perhaps change it to follow OUR updates?

    Dave H says:

    Does version 2 support custom post types?

    Devin Black says:

    I bought this theme a few days ago and all has been great except for one problem that just randomly came up today. I hadn’t made any changes at all, but when I opened the site today, the place where the Twitter feed would show up is now showing this:

    “Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to twitter.com:80 (Connection timed out) in /home6/bayhawkh/public_html/wp-includes/class-snoopy.php on line 1148
    Twitter API not responding.”

    Can you tell me what’s going on? I’m not too tech savvy, but I can follow simple instructions. I don’t know what the above error means, and I don’t know how to fix it.

    I appreciate any help, and thanks again for providing such a nice and reasonably priced theme.

    Ivo says:

    Hello Michael. Congrats for your excellent work/themes.
    I have an issue with my Aparatus’s theme and after a few days trying to find out whats wrong I finally gave up.
    I can only see one Post at the home page even one at least I have five or more posts.
    While doing my tests I have changed the value of “max posts to show” at reading settings, I set it to 2 and the “next page” button appeared, this made think that the query was finding all the posts but, for some reason, they were not been shown by the theme.
    I’ve also placed a little bit of code with an accumulator at home.php right after “if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();”
    so I could realize how many iteractions were taking place within the bucle, this is my code:
    $counter
    echo $counter.””;
    the $counter variable showed me up to four iteractions however, like I said before, just one post is shown.
    Any ideas about what can be wrong??
    By the way the slider works properly (is it related?)

    Hi Ivo,
    i believe the slider takes the first 5 posts – so if you set wordpress to show 15 posts – it grabs 5 then shows 10 in the bottom. check you wp settings.

    Ivo says:

    I hope these images will help
    http://i1113.photobucket.com/albums/k503/ivorious/fiestaBrava01.jpg
    Next page view
    http://i1113.photobucket.com/albums/k503/ivorious/fiestaBrava02.jpg

    As I told you the slider works OK, the issue comes with the posts list wich is only showing one post.
    I was wondering, do I have to select a category or some other feature to show them?

    Ivo says:

    Well, I finally realize about was going on 🙂 your last message gave me the clue.
    I’ve just added a few more posts and that made the difference. There weren’t enough posts.
    Thanks for your help.

    LT says:

    I just purchased and am playing around with the theme, and I think I’m missing something. Is there documentation available somewhere? I’ve worked through a lot of my issues by reading the above posts, but still have a few big ones. First, I cannot get anything to show up in the slider area of the home page, I’ve added 8 posts to the selected category…and nothing. Also, how to do you add in the twitter button to the upper right? I am actually using a shopping cart with this – could that be the problem? Appreciate the help!

    the slider images – add “featured image” for the posts. there is also “aparatus options” under “appearance” – add your twitter handle and the button will appear

    LT says:

    Thankyou for the response, but “solution” is working. On the posts showing up on home page – that is exactly what I have done, set the image as the feature image, it is still not showing up, I have made to sure select the category name in the Theme options and have none of the boxes checked. ON the Twitter bug showing up – it is the but itself that is not showing up, there is just a blank space where it should be. I have edited the art so it is a little call to action rather than a twitter link, but the .png itself is not showing on the pages.

    Gabe says:

    Great template. How do you remove the Login field and also remove the right hand side widget that displays polar,recent and tags?

    Uli22 says:

    Awesome theme, I’m loving it!!!! Anyways, as you may know, a major vulnerability has been found in the TimThumb image resizing script, so 1) you plan to modify aparatus to either remove TimThumb or patch the vulnerability? I’m asking because my web host is Dreamhost and they have some security measures that are making pretty difficult for me to use timthumb… 2) is there any way I can go around this??? Because I’d REALLY like to use Aparatus!!!!

    Thanks again for the great theme!!!

    I already updated the theme files to have the latest timtumb -> http://fearlessflyer.com/2011/08/updated-themes-to-the-latest-timthumb-please-reinstall/

    Uli22 says:

    I got it working now! Thanks, you’re the best!!!

    Cory says:

    First off, excellent work on the Theme! I searched for days for one that I liked and kept coming back to aparatus. Im wondering if you can tell me how to disable the slideshow?

    Thanks!

    it should be under “aparatus options” under appearance. theres a check box to disable.

    Cory says:

    Ahh, dont know how i missed that. Thanks! One other thing that has been giving me trouble all day. When i try to put the Links widget on the sidebar it does not stay. I save it, refresh my page to see if it shows up, (which it doesnt) then go back to my Widgets page and its been taken off the sidebar automatically? I cant figure out why, it worked fine when i was using V0.1

    Thank you in advance!

    Karthik says:

    Is this compatible with WordPress 3.2.1 ??

    Lisa Chamberlin says:

    In trying to remove the small Ad Blocks only (just what Mickey is talking about above), I did something bad… (I’m sure you’ve heard that before)…I removed the small ad block section from the sidebar.php but I also removed the array from the function.php. (probably shouldn’t have done that…). Now I can’t even get the site open, and I’m getting this error: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /home1/flexdesi/public_html/index/wp-content/themes/aparatus-V2/functions.php on line 199

    Any chance you can give me the small ad array to put back in on the function.php page so I can make my site work again…

    Thanks

    Is there an easy way to manage the Ad Blocks?

    The site owner would like to remove the Four-Block and in that location have the Big AD. I haven’t really dug into the code yet to try to reverse engineer. (I’m off an another project right now)

    I hoped you might nudge me in the right direction for when I get back to do so.

    Chris says:

    Hello,

    Paragraph breaks seem to not work in my comments section (I have purchases the premium theme). If you put in a paragraph break, it shows in the comment form but once posted it just drops the text down one line instead of two. How might I fix this?

    go into the stylesheet and add code below:


    .comment-body{
    padding-bottom:5px;
    display:block;
    }

    Gabi says:

    Finished customizing now – great looking template, thanx!

    One problem is remaining, though – as AlvinC and Thor mentioned above: In Internet Explorer and Chrome the top navigation bar elements and the slide show are layered chaotically, so you can’t click them. That is resolved when you hit the button “compatibility modus” in IE, but most users don’t know about that feature. Somehow the theme’s code must be IE7 tailored – any idea where to look for that?

    Greetings from Germany – Gabi

    I just downloaded version 2 of your theme. Great theme!

    Unfortunately the slideshow of the new version doesn’t take post thumbs from nextgen (the former version did). What do I have to change to get the slideshow working with post thumbs integrated by nextgen?

    Best regards from Berlin -Germany,
    Phil

    Takehiko says:

    I bought the new version of the theme, I have some doubts,

    I need to remove the four “ad blocks” or change position is possible?

    The “outstanding image” I do not work well, always makes the same size.

    And now gets into the post .. may not appear in the post? ¿is posible?

    If you want to download the theme as I do?

    By the way internet explorer I get the yellow triangle
    with error in loading the web. (I think there is a problem with
    javascript) error on the page..

    Sorry for my English is very bad.

    Thanks!

    Theo says:

    Simply delete (don’t try to comment out) the following lines from the sidebar.php and it will get rid of the four small ad blocks.

    <a href="”><img src="”/>
    <a href="”><img src="” />
    <a href="”><img src="” />
    <a href="”><img src="” />

    OwNathan says:

    Hi, just some questions about this theme (I apologize for my english :D)
    – it is possibile to use a background image instead of the light grey background color?
    – it is possibile to change the content color, in order to write white on black/grey instead of black on white?
    Thank you!

    they’re all possible. it would take some time to code.

    Justin Lai says:

    I’m using Aparatus v1. For some odd reason, when I switch on the slider for the homepage, the articles in the gallery’s category will overlay across the entire homepage and mess up the entire homepage, rather than shifting into the slider.

    i’ve seen this before. you have a javascript conflict somewhere. turn plugins off and try again.

    Paul says:

    Michael, the issue with the slideshow resolved itself (as you’d suggested it would). Now, though, I’m having an issue with the advertising blocks. The destination URLS work fine, but when I enter the picture URLS (I uploaded the photos on Flickr), all I’m getting is x’s where the photos ought to be. What am I doing wrong?

    Maciej says:

    Hi.
    How many external links are included in the footer after I purchase this theme (ain’t counting the WP.org link)?
    Only one?

    I believe so. My design credits.

    Brad says:

    is it possible to have the main menu items to function as drop down menus? got some child items and need drop down functionality .. got code to make his happen?

    The menu supports drop downs. Simply edit “menus”.

    amir says:

    hi, thanks for the great theme. bought & customized it to my needed with the guide from all the comment posted. love it very much!

    do visit my blog : iblyszael

    Megan says:

    Hi, I recently purchased the v2 aparatus theme. Love the theme. I have been working with the graphics and code to fit my needs but have ran into some trouble. I designed my logo to be on the actual header graphic and not the header logo. So to avoid the title lettering to show up, I uploaded a completely empty .gif as the logo. The website looks great in my Firefox and Chrome browsers but in Internet Explorer and my AOL browser, the navigation bar floats up onto the header graphic. I have played around with the CSS to try to figure how how to keep it in place but can’t seem to figure it out. Can you give me a clue as to how to do this or what coding to change?

    Also, the footer navigation pages… I centered them on the page but instead of them staying in a straight line, they went one below the other. How do I straighten this out so they are all on the same line.

    I appreciate your help if you can. You have some really great reasonably priced templates.

    sometimes you just really have to play with css to fix such things. whats your url?

    Megan says:

    My website is http://www.thejeweledlizard.com

    I finally got the header figured out but have played and played with the footer to get center it as I want the footer to show up and my border becomes black in the corners. If you take a look, you can see what I mean. I would like to center it and bring it to the top section of the footer. I know the float center won’t work and have tried messing with margins and text-align but nothing..

    Advaith says:

    Hi Michael,

    I’m really liking the theme so far, but I’m still not certain about one of my previous questions. The “read more” shows up now, but only when intros are a few words long. If I want to read more to show up on my homepage after a longer introduction, what should I do?

    Thanks,
    Advaith
    applecentric.com

    Dave H says:

    Has anyone else had problems with post titles containing apostrophes? For some reason, the letter after an apostrophe is always capitalized: Like ” Who’S got the Keys?” or “Don’T Let Your Dream Get …”

    See here: http://warriorshepherd.com/blog/keys/
    or http://warriorshepherd.com/blog/dont-let-your-dream-get-outflanked/

    Thanks Michael (or anyone else) who can help…

    thats a known bug. i took out cufon in the new version because of that reason.

    Steve says:

    How do you modify and/or enable personal avatars on the comment section?

    Paul says:

    Michael, I figured out two of the three questions I posted last evening, but the third (slideshow not working) remains an issue. Looked at my plugins, and there’s nothing active for caching (which you had mentioned could cause issues). Suggestions?

    try adding a couple more posts with images. that jump starts the slideshow a bit.

    Paul says:

    Thanks for replying. Will see what happens once I’ve got more posts up.

    Paul Bogan says:

    Michael, love the theme, but I’m having three issues with it:
    1. Any way to get rid of the sharing buttons that Aparatus puts at the bottom of posts? I’m using a widget that has a ton of sharing options (in a smaller format) and it looks kinda odd having two sets of a lot of the buttons.
    2. Finally figured out how to get the most recent articles to display in the slideshow, but while it’s showing the article titles, it’s not showing the featured images that go with them. Help?
    3. Not sure if this is an Aparatus issue or a WP issue, but is there some way to get rid of the little bio thingy that shows at the bottom of each post?

    PS: I’m not exactly the most literate in PHP, but I follow instructions well enough that hopefully I won’t set anything on fire. 🙂

    Jeremy says:

    Hey man,

    any feedback on my last post? It came off a little wordy, but I was talking about the HELP SPREAD THE WORD Twitter icon. When you click on it, you get linked to a Twitter box with the post URL. I was wondering if I could do it so that when you click on it, it will open up A NEW WINDOW with the Twitter box.

    Thanks!

    open single.php – look for this code:


    <a id="twitter"

    change to this code:

    <a id="twitter" target="_blank"

    Jeremy says:

    Alrighty, one more question. Sorry for the bother in advance.

    But I have been running into an error. When you click on an authors name, it brings you to a page where it has all of the articles they wrote. At the top it says “Below are ‘s articles:”

    My question is why doesn’t it say the authors name? Can I change that so it does display the correct authors name?

    example: http://thedailyrotation.com/author/anthony-stofferahn/

    make sure in your profile (wp admin) – you fill in the first name field

    Jeremy says:

    Hey Michael, I was wondering if it would be hard to add the Google +1 button somewhere near the rest of the SHARING icons? I got the code, any idea where I could plop it in?

    plop it in single.php – look for “post-title-big“, paste it below that div.

    hadlee says:

    I figured out everything except for the subtitle!

    (go to appearance > menus and adjust from there).

    Cheers,
    Hadlee

    the subtitle is not included with the theme.

    hadlee says:

    Another important one!

    Although I have published 3 posts so far, only one of them shows up on the home page. In the demo, snippets from the last 7 posts show. Can you tell me what I am missing here?

    Thank you!!

    hadlee says:

    Just purchased Aparatus v.2 Great looking theme!

    Would love some help with a few things:

    1) Any possible way to see the categories listed in the side bar, or somewhere more prominent? This is important for the structure of my content and ease of use to reader.

    I would love a drop down category list (similar to your page drop downs)! At all possible?

    2) Please, how do you add a child page to a parent page, so that it drops down in the menu?

    3) Is there a way to add a subtitle, just under the name of the blog?

    Thank you in advance for your help!
    Hadlee

    hadlee says:

    Do you have any documentation explaining the way that the pages and the drop down categories can be shown on the top menu?

    I have created 2 parent categories and multiple child categories, but they don’t show up on the top menu, which is what I think they are supposed to do, from the demo.

    Also, please how is the top menu bar determined? In the demo it looks like it is showing both pages and categories…and then categories as children of pages. Any documentation about how to create this?

    I have tried, but just can’t figure it out!

    Thank you!!!

    Jeremy says:

    Hey man, just wanted to let you know that this is one AWESOME theme. Only question I have is the Twitter button in the actual post.

    Whenever I post something and I click on the Twitter Icon, it just brings me to Twitter.

    Most sites pop up a box that auto fills it with a link to the page and you just hit post.

    Why isn’t it doing that? Or is that not what the Twitter button does?

    Philip says:

    I recently purchased aparatus V2; when I try to upload the theme, I get an error: Unable to create directory /home/users7/tuwebacct/public_html/taylor-science/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06.

    My server admin swears that the folders are writable. Thoughts?

    The folder in the error is not within the theme folder therefore, not a theme error.

    Danny says:

    Well I thought I had everything working but I found a few things that I have a concern about now. When I click on more articles from this author it brings me to a page and the title is “Below are ‘s Articles:” I know it’s suppose to have the authors name.

    Below are first_name; ?>’s Articles:

    That’s the coding for it however I have authors who have their username their first and last name ie: “John Smith” and it’s not recognizing it. Is there a way to fix that? One last issue that I’m finding, is that when you are on an article and you click the Twitter Share button it’s just bringing me straight to the Twitter home page instead of giving me an option to tweet the title and the link. I see where the coding is, I’m just not understanding what coding I need to add to have the small popup window with the title and link plus tweet button…

    Any help would be awesome. Thanks. Awesome Layout by the way!

    Danny says:

    div class=”title-area”>
    Below are first_name; ?>’s Articles:
    </div

    was the coding for it. I think.

    make sure the authors profile is set correctly (First Name field). the Twitter button is working fine in my end. post your url

    Advaith says:

    How do I get it so that it shows the entirety of the post until it says read more? If you look at my website you will see what I mean. Thanks a lot!

    to enable read more – you have to change the_exceprt() to the_content() in index.php.

    Nate says:

    Hi Michael, hopefully you can assist me with a couple issues I’m having on the Aparatus 2 theme.
    First being the slideshow, not sure why nothing is displaying. We should have more than enough posts. It worked briefly when there was one post but nothing since then.
    Second problem has to do with the thumbnail images in the bottom right. For some reason the upper left one shows a cached version of the file (or a miscolored version) and I can’t figure out why. It varies from computer to computer.

    Thanks for the awesome layout!

    the slideshow – i’m not sure why. try another category in the options. the thumbnails – do you have some caching plugin?

    Nate says:

    Well got the slideshow kicking, thank you!

    As for the lower thumbnails/ ad blocks I am not aware of any caching plugins. Here is what I have (all in one SEO pack and WP audio) and that’s all. I’ve even deleted the image off the server and replaced it and it still displays a cached (or screwed up) image. So bizarre.

    Anthony says:

    First off I wanted to say how nice of a job you did on this! Looks excellent. Also I’m having an issue with the Featured Image option. Is there a way to have a featured image that pops up on the image slider and not have it pop up in the actual article? It seems that each time you have a featured image it automatically gets put into the top of the post.

    You’d have to delete a chunk of code in the theme files. U ready to do that?

    Anthony says:

    I’d prefer to see it that way. Therefore we could add a different picture at the top of each post that is different than the featured image. The one issue that I have is that I have no idea where to start with deleting the coding.

    open the file single.php from the theme folder. look for the chunk of code below and delete it:


    <?php if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) { ?>
    <?php the_post_thumbnail(array( 580, 268 ), array( 'class' => 'full-in-single' )); ?>
    <?php }elseif(get_post_meta($post->ID, 'image', true)){ ?>
    <img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/scripts/timthumb.php?src=<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'image', true); ?>&h=268&w=580&zc=1&q=100" class="full-in-single"/>
    <?php } ?>

    Anthony says:

    Awesome! Thanks much!

    Raphael says:

    Thanks for the great theme. If I purchase the updated version can I remove the credits link in the footer?

    No. All my work is under Creative Commons Attribution Type of licensing.

    Thor says:

    Hi,
    I just bought this theme, and the first post (or slider box if enabled) overlaps with the navigation on Chrome. Is there a fix for this?

    Let me look into it.

    Hey Michael,
    I must say amazing theme @ an amazingly amazing price. But before i go ahead, I had one question… There isn’t any footer bar in this theme.. Right?? as in the footer where you can place widgets, etc…

    No widgets in the footer

    Ravi C says:

    Oh.. Then I cannot go ahead with this theme.. Thanks…

    Is there a way to put in widgets in the footer??? How difficult is it to do that??

    Babal says:

    I have downloaded the free version before but would like to upgrade now. You deserve the little money.

    My question: on the free version, the Admin Bar did not visible even tough I already checked the ‘Admin bar: when viewing site’ option. Is it visible now?

    you should upgrade your wp version.

    Babal says:

    I already have the latest version of WP but the Admin Bar still not visible from posting page (not from dashboard) when using your free theme. Will it be visible if I use the new version of Aparatus?

    Advaith says:

    How do I get it so that it shows the entirety of the post until it says read more? If you look at my website you will see what I mean. Thanks!

    Here’s a note: When you remove the mootabs tabbed container from the sidebar, the slideshow doesn’t function properly on the front page.

    Still really impressed with what you’ve done here and am getting rave reviews from peers on the look of the theme.

    i addressed that issue in one of the comments

    Josh Coffy says:

    Michael, can you pleasee tell me how to remove the mootools slideshow in the editor or how to get it to work? Nothing shows but a loading bar.. And for some reason, when I check the box to “not show mootools,” nothing saves..

    there is a theme option not to show the slideshow – under appearance, aparatus options. to get it to work – try adding at least 2 – 3 posts.

    Andy says:

    for some reason posts arnt showing when i add them. is there something i need to do to get them to show?

    Now I have an issue I can’t quite get my head around.

    When I create a new post, the permalink defaults to an post that I deleted when I first installed the theme, and… there is no way to edit the permalink. So when I click on the photo link or the post title, I get a “Page not found” error. I know the post is there… I can see it under the proper categories.

    Any ideas?

    Never mind…. I found it.

    too many hours in the machine today. :-s

    Steve says:

    Michael,

    Great theme, just downloaded it a few weeks ago. First thing I noticed is no Facebook in the share menu. Is there a reason for this? Could you supply code to add in a Facebook share button to match your styling like the other buttons?

    Thanks for the help!

    Steve

    Bought V2 yesterday. I love the potential of this theme although it challenges me to go places in the CSS and PHP I rarely go. I’ve been breaking down the coding looking for something.

    Rather than try to explain it, you can see my screen shot with notes here: http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a70/MickeyHD/topbar-1.jpg

    How do I get that small spacer out at the top of the page?

    Great work on this theme. It’s almost perfect for what we want to do.

    you don’t have to edit the code to remove that background – you do need Photoshop though. What you do is grab the background image in the images folder called “header-bg.gif“.
    Now – with the current background that you have – you have to replace the grey area with your brown background – make sure it lines up to the pixel. save the file and you’re set.

    The same goes with the footer – file name is “footer-bg.gif

    You may be wondering why it was done this way. Why I didn’t use a transparent .png instead? That’s because the theme is actually a bit complicated – its already using 1 small repeating image for the body, and another repeating image for the main container. The header and footer area will need a non-transparent gif so the main container image doesn’t bleed through.

    Yeah, that makes sense. Should be able to knock that out pretty quick.Thanks.

    I did notice your repeating images but I guess I didn’t drill down far enough. (Got lazy and figured it was easier to just ask.)

    I really appreciate all the help on this forum. Let me push my luck and ask one more question.

    Has anybody ever taken away the twitter circle on the top to replace it with an advertising block. Does anybody know a straight forward way to do that?

    Advaith says:

    Is there a way I can get the preview on my website (applecentric.com) to show until the “Read More”?

    “read more” is disabled by default in this theme. the reason why i did this is because i am using a function called “the_excerpt()” which outputs just the right amount of text for the theme. the_excerpt() is easier to work with in magazine style themes such as aparatus.

    Advaith says:

    Is there a way I can enable the read more?

    yes you can. by changing all instances of “the_excerpt()” to “the_content()”. Change these in files: home.php, index.php

    Advaith says:

    How do I get it so that it shows the entirety of the post until it says read more? If you look at my website you will see what I mean.

    Mike says:

    What line of code changes the comment text style/decoration from italic to something else. I’ve tried everything, from the style.css to blue.css (the one I’m using). No luck. Please help. This is a great theme and I’m very happy using it. If you could just let me know where to change it so the comment text is not in all italics.

    open style.css (or whichever you’re using) and look at line 178 (.comment-body ) – delete the property:

    font-style: italic;

    Pierre says:

    Is it possible to have the nofollow attribute in the slideshow to not have any duplicate content for Google? I would like to have both posts inside and below the slideshow but I fear it might be very bad for the SEO.

    Sure. You need to add the code inside feature.php

    francis says:

    please ignore my last comment, found the logo section in style sheet, didn’t see how I missed it

    Advaith says:

    Hi Michael,

    Thanks for the quick reply on my other comment. I was wondering how I can increase the length of the preview shown so that it will show up till the break. If you go to my website at applecentric.com, you can see that one of the articles is cut off, and the break isn’t working.

    Thanks!,
    Advaith

    You have to adjust the code in styles.css. inspect code in firebug. u should see which class it is and height.

    Advaith says:

    Is there a way I can get the preview on my website (applecentric.com) to show until the “Read More”?

    Francis says:

    how do I make the logo smaller, Cufon makes it look humongous,
    any suggestions will be appreciated

    Josh Coffy says:

    Michael, I couldnt seem to get the mootools slide to work.. Here’s my site: http://www.joshcoffy.com Or can I get rid of it in the editor? (not in the aparatus options screen because for some reason it wont let me save any settings in that to get rid of it..) Thanks!

    Danyelle says:

    how can I add a background image

    Danyelle says:

    I meant how can I change the background to an image

    Mike says:

    Have been working on the theme for a few hours now. It’s great. Thank you so much for building it. But I have a question now about the ‘popular posts/recent comments/tags’ section. How do I change the ‘popular posts’ part of it to only display posts that have received a lot of comments LATELY, not simply all-time? I have posts that WERE popular, but aren’t any longer, but are showing up as still popular due to this. Just asking. Would be a big help if you know of a way for this to be modified to better reflect what’s popular more recently on a site.

    You can modify the sql statement to exclude posts – ie. WHERE ID <> ‘post id’, or even BETWEEN specific dates.

    Shaun says:

    How can I make it so that the tag cloud section of the side bar is the first to display, not popular or comments?

    I will officially become the best friend of anybody who can help me remove the tabbed-container from the sidebar. On the previous versions comments I was able to use display:none in the css to make it go away, but in this version I’m okay with that in most browsers – but in internet explorer the javascript scroller no longer works. Has anybody solved this issue?

    the theme is looking for mytabs1 – if you take it out of the sidebar – the rest of the script halts.
    in header.php – go to line 80, remove this code:

    window.addEvent('domready', init);

    you may also want to remove the mootabs inclusion in line 54:


    <script type="text/javascript" src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/scripts/mootabs1.2.js"></script>

    then remove the code in sidebar.php

    Thanks, Michael. That worked!!

    Can I pepper you with one more question? Is there any way to EXCLUDE a certain category in the featured slider?

    you have to add a new parameter (cat = ) inside the wp_query function with a “-” minus sign before the category id.

    $query = new WP_Query( 'cat=-12,-34,-56' );

    more information here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/WP_Query

    Sharon says:

    Hi Michael,

    This is hands down the best theme I’ve ever used, and am loving it, so thank you for creating it AND making it so affordable!

    However I’m now having a couple of issues which I can’t seem to find in the comments above:

    1. The slider is no longer working (even though I followed your instructions to remove the tabbed sidebar – it worked and then this morning stopped working).
    2. I’ve had a couple of friends test it, and for everyone (including me now) – the site works first go, and then if you try and reload, it scrambles up and nothing is displayed right.

    Please let me know if it’s something I’ve done wrong, and if it can be fixed? I would greatly appreciate it!

    Thank you,
    Sharon

    glad you like it. i’m not sure what’s going on with the slider. do you have some sort of caching plugin?

    Sharon says:

    Hi Michael, no in fact I’ve disabled all plugins and still it’s not working. Do you know how I can restore the original code so the tabbed window comes back on the sidebar? (maybe then i can try doing it again). Thanks for your advice. Any ideas on why when I activate the slider it scrambles the entire page too?
    Sharon

    Sharon says:

    Hi Michael, an update – I’ve actually deleted and re-installed the theme in case it was due to any code changes I made, and it’s still scrambling. Has this ever happened before?

    hi sharon. this scrambling of the slideshow image can only be a conflict in javascript. its javascript that puts all of the images contained inside the slideshow box. and you said that you’ve disabled all plugins right? have you tried viewing it from different browsers? otherwise – i’m not sure what can be causing this

    Mike says:

    I really want to download this theme. But I have a two-part question first: 1) What does the ‘blue’ version look like, exactly? and 2) is there a plain black-n-white version?

    I ask these because I’m not super-savvy editing css, so I figure if I buy your theme, then I should know what options I have in terms of color schemes? My site is a Penn State sports site, so color scheme is important, as you could imagine with any sports team site. Is there any way I could see a screen shot or something of the other color options?

    Mike says:

    Never mind. Found a shot of all four (the one where they’re fanned out like newspapers over one another)…

    Advaith says:

    Hi Michael,
    I really like the theme so far, but I had a question. How do I make some things not show up in the black bar near the top? The hierarchy is confusing, and I need some help with that. My website is applecentric.com

    Thank you!

    in header.php – look for this line of code

    <?php wp_list_pages('title_li=&depth=1&sort_column=menu_order'); ?>

    and remove

    Danyelle says:

    I was able to put my own logo into the site, but it threw off the site layout. Why is that?

    You must have deleted a closing div tag or something. What’s your url.

    Danyelle says:

    my url bigfanbase.com/uposers

    Danyelle says:

    How exactly do you make a logo appear, I’m doing something wrong in the header.php

    julien says:

    Hi, i bought aparatus theme v2, and i have a problem with twitter bird, when i write a twitter account name in functions settings, nothing seems appears in twitter bird, is there something to modify in sidebar.php?

    No. It should all be in the theme options.

    Justin says:

    Love the theme. Is there a way to take off the “Login To Site” on the right side of the menu?

    go to appearance > editor > header.php
    look for this code:


    <span id="login"><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/wp-admin/">Login to Site</a></span>

    and delete

    Tanya says:

    Hi, I love this theme! Thank you for making them so affordable. I am confused by the page menu (black background). I can’t seem to figure out how these are being pulled so I can modify the menu. Also, is there a trick to getting the drop down menu to work? I can’t seem to get that to work either. Thanks

    the grey menu (below the black menu) is using the wordpress menu system. go to appearance > menus. http://digwp.com/2010/08/using-menus-in-wordpress-3-0/
    add the menu to the “header menu”.

    the black menu automatically pulls your top level pages – no hierarchy is supported.

    Terence says:

    hey michael, really liking this theme… I’m in the testing stages of a new site, and I’m pretty green on website building in general… Could you please help me figure out a) how to replace the grey background of the site with a static picture (the picture is http://test.pancakesandbeer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/crowdbackground.jpg) and b) how to remove the dashed lines surrounding the whole body
    Thanks in advance!

    a) static picture you have to edit the styles.css and replace the html background. b) the lines for the main container replace the body and main container backgrounds

    Gabi says:

    Using Aparatus for two weeks now and I like it a lot. But now I have to add some custom fields to pages for a special plugin – but I can’t find the form fields! How do I add them to my write article / write pages forms in the backend? Usually they are there without any necessity to do something – did you maybe disable them somewhere?

    Greetings from Germany – Gabi

    Gabi says:

    Sorry to bother you, just delete my comment above – this bug is actually a feature 😉 From WP3.1 on custom fields are hidden by default and only show up when you activate them under “more options”, tss tss…

    this is an update to my comment earlier today – as I saw the post about putting it in the div header. After i saw that i went to try again. Here’s what it appears that you are referring to:
    (right above that it says “header wrap”)
    OK- so i took the uploaded url for my img. – and inserted it like so after changing the word header to logo, and this changed the page but not like it was supposed to , and i didnt see my img anywhere on the site:
    <div id="logo"
    >

    Maybe you can see what i did wrong. I have successfully seen the img show up on the page when putting the img in place of the cufon language, but it showed up above the entire page online – but all other attempts have not ever put the img. on the page at all. Might I make a Suggestion (to help folks espec. when we are almost illiterate with HTML and the process and lingo related to inserting ‘code’ into your template, when you are telling us where to put something in the ‘code’, i think it would help me (and likely others) if you would copy/paste the exact section of code so we can tell what it looks like, and if there are similar sections, it will take the guesswork out of it. Thank you for all your replies. I really hate that i see so many questions for you- i am sure you are very busy too! Looking forward to your response.
    Cindy

    To add a static logo to aparatus:

    create your image, place the jpeg inside the images folder – inside the theme folder. *take note of the file name.
    Also – image size is approx 730 width x 118 height.

    open header.php

    replace this line:

    <a id="logo" href="<?php bloginfo('url');?>"><?php bloginfo('name');?></a>

    with:

    <a id="logo" href="<?php bloginfo('url');?>"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/IMAGEFILENAME.jpg" /></a>

    Bryan says:

    Great theme, Michael. Bought and paid for it, but I’m having trouble figuring out how to replace the auto-generating blog title with my own JPG logo. My logo is in the ‘images’ folder of the theme, and I tried inserting the code mentioned above, but all I get is a teeny-tiny version of the auto-generated blog title made by Cufon. Fantastic theme, but I need your help doing some surgery on the code while avoiding killing the theme’s functionality in the process.

    Bryan says:

    Michael, never mind on my query. I managed to replace the code and affect the desired change.

    Dirk says:

    Hi, I haven’t been redirected to the download page. Can you please send me the link.

    Thanks

    @Dirk – I just emailed you the download link. I’m sorry about this system. I’m working on a better one.

    sorry about this. i emailed you the link

    MarkBooya says:

    nevermind I solved….if u delete the cufon to avoid the menu go in the top of the page loosing ur header u need just to set the distance from the top with the function in #nav…post it…can be usefull for someone 🙂

    MarkBooya says:

    Man, plz provide us a guide to don’t use cufon…I’m trying all but if I remove codes from css all site go mad…and the suggestion I found in the upper comments don’t help…ty

    MarkBooya says:

    the down one is very easy to delete but the upper one is hell…plz if u can’t answer here gimme a contact…I’m able to give u a temporary password for the site too but fix this plz :/ I payd for the theme and I want to use it 🙂

    Alvin C says:

    I LOVE the theme! You did a fantastic job! I’m currently using Aparatus V2 but when using Safari 4 or Chrome the Blog Titles and menu seem to overlap and clip. Is there a fix for this yet?

    Thanks Alvin for pointing out. will fix.

    Eric says:

    I saw where you can swap out the Cufon type with an image and I saw where you state that you’d replace it in the header.php. Where the heck would I put my file in the gobbly gook of the header.php page, or should I just replace the header background image in the style sheet?

    Eric says:

    Wait… I figured that out. But now the default serif font is humongous! How can I reduce that size?

    MarkBooya says:

    Hi, sorry to bother u again but I spent the last 2 days tryng to figure out why the command “more” not working properly on ur theme…something I can fix it? plz let me know…ty again

    its most likely that it is getting hidden below the allotted space for the content. whats your url.

    MarkBooya says:

    the site is still not online cuz I’m workin on it. But i saw ur demo versione and neither there u can see the read more button

    Dave H says:

    Michael-
    I’m currently using v1 Aparatus and having trouble integrating Disqus. Disqus works on each post, but on the Front page the post summaries say “By Dave with View Comments” instead of “By Dave with 2 Comments”… any ideas?

    thats still pulling data from wordpress comments – not disqus.

    Love the theme. I’ve been using version one but would like to upgrade to version 2. Question: Will removing the tabbed widget from the sidebar still cause problems on the homepage banner like it did in version one?

    i didn’t know of that problem. i don’t see any correlation. also, i checked your blog – sweet updates!

    I bought and checked version 2. It does the same thing. When the tabbed widget is removed, the flash banner on the homepage does not work. I’m a bit puzzled as to why myself.

    hi Jeremy, the theme is looking for mytabs1 – if you take it out of the sidebar – the rest of the script halts.
    in header.php – go to line 80, remove this code:

    window.addEvent('domready', init);

    you may also want to remove the mootabs inclusion in line 54:


    <script type="text/javascript" src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/scripts/mootabs1.2.js"></script>

    MarkBooya says:

    Hi Michael! I’m really having a good time working on this template. Now my problem is: I want to remove the automatic creation of the site name on the header and on the footer but I can’t find the code…I already removed the “a#logo” string at line 38 but still the script works in header and footer :/ help me plz 🙂

    in header.php look for cufon.replace() – inside that will be a#logo – remove that string.

    Lisa Chamberlin says:

    Hi Michael,

    Great theme. I’ve got it up and installed and have been getting it all laid out. I would like to not use the page links at all in the dark gray header bar and only use the light gray ones. I don’t know squat about code – but I follow directions well. Can you help a girl out to get rid of the top links?

    Thanks!

    open header.php and delete this code:

    <?php wp_list_pages(); ?>

    MarkBooya says:

    Hi, I just payd for the template but…what now? XD

    I’m sorry but it should have redirected you to a box.net download. I emailed you the link.

    I have to be doing something wrong. I can only get the slideshow on the front page and no other posts. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks.

    change the number of posts displayed from wp settings. the slideshow takes 5 posts – plus however many you want below it.

    Gabi says:

    Hi, Michael – liked the theme so much that I bought it spontanously 😉 But probably too early because now I’m running into problems:

    – I do not need the top menu with pages (I would prefer the lower one for that). Where do I change the options of the top pages menu (exclude some, for example)?

    – How can I use your twitter badge (after restyling it, of course) as a logo for my website? I do not want a twitter link or the twitter box in the sidebar…

    – Is your theme translation ready, do you maybe have a .po-file for it?

    Thanx for any assistance, greetings from Germany – Gabi

    @Gabi – you have to edit the file header.php for the top menu – add some parameters to the function that calls the pages. the twitter badge – after you style it, you need to adjust some code inside the style.css file. translation – no, not ready for that.

    send me your url and i’ll try to give you a hand

    Gabi says:

    Hi, Michael – thanx for answering so quickly 🙂 Maybe you could send me your email addy – I would like to talk with you about custom work – I would need some special category and “dictionary style” templates, because I’m planning to convert my website to WP… Greetings from Germany – Gabi

    Robin says:

    Hi! Great theme!

    I am struggling with replacing the default header title with my logo. If you’d be wiling to provide the actual code for the header.php, (and/or style.css) etc. I would greatly appreciate it. 🙂 My logo is in the images folder of the theme and is called logo.png, but I can’t get the code right. Please help!

    Thanks in advance!

    @Robin – this is an easier way: open blue.css – go to line 38 – where it says “a#logo {” – inside the parenthesis enter the following code:

    background: url("http://www.yorollerderby.com/wp-content/themes/aparatus-V2/images/logo.png") no-repeat;
    text-indent: -9999px;
    position: relative;
    top: -25px;
    width: 650px;
    height: 126px;

    Robin says:

    Thanks, Michael! I think we are getting closer. Check out what is happening to the logo with the code you provided. It’s like someone sprinkled voodoo dust and shrunk it!

    I double checked to make sure my logo.png was in the correct directory. Maybe there are other specs on the logo itself? Not sure.

    Any other tweaks you think I should try?

    Asier says:

    Hi man.
    I’ve paid 10$.
    What’s now? How can I get this theme source?
    I need the +.zip

    Paypal should’ve redirected you to a download page in box.net. I know this is really janky – but i’m working on a better system. please bear with me at the moment.

    Asier says:

    Everithing’s OK now.
    Thanks for support.

    Rick says:

    can you please explain how to replace the header with an image with a little more detail? I don’t see how to adjust the header.php

    inside header.php there is a div tag with the id of “header”. insert the image you want in there and replace the anchor tag with the id of “logo”. the image dimensions should not exceed 693w x 210h.

    Tyler says:

    I can’t figure out at all how to replace the logo with a simple image. I tried and it messed up the formatting of the page, specifically the search box ended up getting covered up by the nav bar. Can you provide a code example of how to sub out the logo for an image logo, please?

    Caleb says:

    and so… after searching high and low for a solution, I finally found a solution to get the tagline to appear after the blog title for the Apartus Theme:

    1. Find this code in your header.php:
    <a id="logo" href="”>

    2. Add this code immediately after:

    The good thing is, it works. Appears with the default Times New Romans font which doesn’t fit well to the Caprum font and the whole site.

    Bad thing is, i still need a fix to have better fonts for the tagline.

    Robin says:

    Hey, Caleb… Did you leave off #2’s code? Man, I’m really struggling with this. Thanks.

    Marcel Veldhuizen says:

    I cant´t seem to get any products in the square on the right hand site of my website, with: popular, recent comments and tags. No products apear in the section popular. What am I doing wrong.

    the popular tab will pick up posts with the most comments.

    Is there a code fix to have the ‘Popular’ box list posts with most pageviews, instead of most comments?

    The popular posts query is a simple select ordered by comment count. U need a mechanism to capture pageviews and store it in the db. Then do a query against that. So its more than a fix that you want. I’m sure there are plugins for that.

    Can you tell me where I can adjust the size of the excerpt on the posts on the front page? I’d like them to end with the ‘Continue Reading’ (more) cutline, but they seem to cut off automatically after the 4th lines.

    Thanks! I love this theme.

    Thanks for the updated theme. It’s great. I noticed you paid attention to detail and made changes accordingly and that is appreciated. And at $10, it’s a great deal!

    Is there a way to put the slideshow on the front page if my front page is static? I like the slideshow and still want it on my home page as sort of an enticement for people to go to my blog section. I went to the Motools website but couldn’t find anything about it there and couldn’t really find an alternative plug-in through WordPress.

    Thanks!

    -Teresa

    P.S. – The website I have listed in this post currently has the old version of the theme. I have version 2 on another site since I am moving my site over to a new server. (Just FYI in case anyone looks at it before I make the move).

    open home.php – add the slideshow code in there plus other static material > make it into a custom page template. then, create a new page – apply the template and make it your home page – under settings > reading > home page.

    Ross Hawkes says:

    Have just bought the theme – liking it. Just wondered if there’s a way to stop the headline on the posts having a capital letter at the start of every word? It seems automated?

    open styles.css (or whichever stylesheet) go to line 162 take this value out: text-transform: capitalize;

    Ross Hawkes says:

    Brill – thanks!

    Caleb says:

    Hi Michael,

    Just bought your theme recently. Was trying to include the blog tagline under the title. Can this be done?

    yes – some additional code which was not part of the header.

    Caleb says:

    Cld you provide the code pls?

    Adam Cohen says:

    I’m down for $10 – few things I’d like to see in 2.1 – FACEBOOK SHARE is a must at the bottom of the post, option for comment form at the top of the comments instead of the bottom, option for comment count display, I’ve been having a bug in v1 with the twitter feed displaying @1 once in a while for usernames (not sure why). Display/Css breaks when you try to use W3 Performance and use minify in v1 hope thats worked out in V2

    i have a problem with the theme. I´d make de instalation 3 differentent times because I can´t see the post in the index. Please help!!

    i’m not sure if i’m understanding the question – but try adding more posts. the featured gallery takes up at least 5 posts.

    Pablo Gallardo says:

    when I publish a new post, the latter is shown twice, and the tabbed-container, the test post does not disappear in the popular

    the new post showing 2x – that’s unusual. send me your url. the test post – this is your the post with the most comment. that’s why it shows up.

    Luis says:

    could we use this for blogger.com?

    James says:

    Is there a way to integrate Facebook into the share links section of posts? I see Twitter and others are there, but wasn’t sure if you created a Facebook icon as well.

    Thanks! Great work by the way.

    D says:

    Great looking theme – I just downloaded an installed, but am having problems with the menus. Maybe I’m doing something wrong – but WordPress seems to be pulling the menus from the pages and not my custom menus. I can put the pages in parent pages/categories and the menus work off of that, but then I have difficulties differentiating between the two menus (ie. the dark gray one and the lower drop down menu) they both come up as the same. Help?

    make sure you assign the theme locations in the menu page. Appearance > Menus > Header Menu – in the drop down, select the menu you just created.

    Pierre says:

    Is it possible no having the featured image in the post as before?
    Otherwise I will have to delete the pictures manually or going back to the old aparatus..

    open single.php – look for code in lines 20 – 24 and delete it (see screenshot: http://fearlessflyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/single-apa.jpg) – make a back up of the file first just in case.

    Pierre says:

    Thanks a lot Michael !!!
    It works very well. I really like this upgrade

    Angel says:

    On the same vein, I don’t want to delete the featured image in a post, but would prefer it extended to the full width of the space. Any way to make that happen?

    Angel says:

    Still requiring some assistance here. I’m really stumped on where to add the image link in the header.php to replace cufon with a .png I created. Help!?

    it looks like u got it. good work.

    I decided to try to make a custom header, and you said just insert it into the ‘header.php’. I am a HTML/website/blog novice. But i have an html bible and a daughter that got me started down the path to hopefully understanding. I tried copy pasting the image (after uploading it to my files on my wp dashboard), into multiple locations in the header hp, most of the time NOTHING happened, until i replaced the stuff that said cufon(sp?), then that part stopped wking. Otherwise no change. Where in the header.php should it go, and what line should it replace? thank you.

    Jonas says:

    Hi Michael

    I love the theme and I just upgraded to v2. I’m however experiencing some trouble with it. Many of the features such as side images, the slideshow and the blog name don’t seem to want to load anymore and I’ve tried disabling plugins and changing the settings to no avail. Do you have any thoughts on what might be the problem? Thanks for your help.

    its probably got to do with that thinglink javascript button in the sidebar. try taking that out.

    Jonas says:

    Thank for the tip. I deactivated the plugin but it is still not working. Do you have any other tips? Does it have anything to do with non-accessible folders?

    @Jonas – i’m investigating your website and can’t figure it out. the code is there – just somehow hidden from the browser. try this – go into the theme options and clear everything. see if that works.

    Jonas says:

    Hi Michael

    I found the problem. I’d forgotten to turn off one plugin “wp-jquery-lightbox” and now it works. Thanks for the help. Love the theme!

    /jonas

    Michael,

    Great job with the updated site. I upgraded recently but am having one problem, the archive size thumbnails of my pictures are being cropped at the tops and bottoms. You can see the last few posts are cropped differently than the others. All the images I use are 592 x 280 but are now being cropped to be 195 x 65.

    Can I fix this and even control the archive thumbnail size?

    http://robhasawebsite.com/category/blogs/

    http://robhasawebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/episode4-195×65

    there’s a plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/regenerate-thumbnails/ see it that helps.

    Thanks, Michel, but that didn’t help. Has anybody else found a way to change the thumbail images to be cropped to a size of 195×65. The tops and bottoms of all my thumbnails are cropped off.

    @Rob – the default behavior of the image resizer script does a “hard crop”. this makes sure the image doesn’t lose its proportion. the downside is that some parts will get cut off.

    Dave H says:

    Michael-
    I was lucky enough to get this amazing theme when it was free. I don’t need to upgrade just yet (I’ve had it for about 3 weeks) but I will absolutely… you’ve done great work here and deserve a little pocket money for it!
    (And thanks for the hint on how to make the latest posts show below the slideshow…!)
    Best wishes–

    Angel says:

    Thanks for the awesome theme, sir. I just installed this evening and am having a few problems I’m hoping you can help me troubleshoot.

    First, I created a .png file for the header, but I’m not too sure how/where to upload and install it so that it’s visible.

    Second, I created the menu, but would like to reduce the clutter with the categories. Is there anyway to make subcategories work as drop-down menu?

    For example, I have a ‘Kicktography’ category for pics of sneakers, with two subcategories named ‘Laced Up’ and ‘Fresh Out the Box’ — could one hover over Kicktography and have those two subs appear for them? It’s especially crucial for sharing all of my freelance writing work and reducing menu clutter.

    Thanks for all the help you’re offering here. It’s been huge thus far.

    Angel says:

    Nevermind the subcategory portion of my question. I hate myself for asking that one.

    Still trying to figure out how to get my header up, though.

    chris says:

    thanks for making Aparatus – I was glad to pay for it. Great theme.

    Talon Hampton says:

    How can I get the top menu to show just pages and the menu just bellow it to show just categories?

    the top menu is already just showing the pages. the menu below u can manipulate by following the directions here: http://digwp.com/2010/08/using-menus-in-wordpress-3-0/

    Amazing blog, just bought it 🙂 I was using it to learn WordPress with v.1 but now I’ve got some great CSS3 to learn. 🙂 Question, can you have a certain amout of post show below the slider? Also how would I go about adding a retweet button aligned right on the same line as the (added under) categories in a post? I’m also on Twitter 🙂 @Startmywebpage

    I’m also not understanding why my created pages are only showing as categories now?

    the number of posts is still controlled in the “settings” > “reading” in the admin. 5 posts in the slider + however many posts you want underneath. the retweet btn – add in the theme, floated right.

    Great stuff, thanks a lot Michael, also thanks to Talon for getting my other question answered. This is a great premium-like theme to help learn wordpress, definitely retweeting.

    The only thing that hasn’t worked out is having the images/style match up in the dropdowns so they resemble “buttons”. They are just plain text (and not the right color, despite my numerous attempts). Can you offer a suggestion? If you are not able to, I understand… but I’m SO close!

    I hope I’m not being too much trouble. I paid for and downloaded the new theme, and have been pouring over the coding. Really -because we customized Aparatus 1 we don’t really want to fully upgrade. What I want to do is simply incorporate drop-down menus for the PAGES area menu. Is there a way to do this by copying a bit of code from the new download and inserting into our older theme?

    My first guess is some of it is found within functions.php and some in the header.php files.

    Kindest regards,
    StacyN

    you’re on the right track – also in styles.css. the files should be commented. *although – if u mean the pages area (black background) – that remains single level even in the new version. its a bit too much for 2 drop down menus on top of each other.

    I did mean the Pages area (black background) but I could live with this if I could swap and have the blog Categories appear in the single level instead. Is this possible?

    Never mind! I actually got this working now. Swapped the pages / categories – got the dropdowns working now 😉

    Juan David says:

    I love this theme too.
    Thanks!

    Ps: I have the old version with modifications.

    Anderson says:

    I am having problems with the slideshow in the first version of the theme– some featured images only display the middle of the image, not the sides. I know that the sizing of the image is correct (590×278). Only happens to some images, not all.

    Great theme, thanks for the construct!

    Excellent. I love this theme and will purchase the upgrade soon!

    Danny says:

    I love this new aparatus but I’m currently have a problem with the old one, and the problem is that I can rid off the date label underneath the post title (“added 6 Jan,2010”). Is there any way I can fix it?

    thank you

    you need to go inside the template files: index.php / archive.php etc and look for Added <?php the_time('M j, Y');?> and delete it

    Danny says:

    What should I change?

    Danny says:

    hai, I just realized that my second page isn’t look the same as the main page. I don’t know what I erased but somehow look like version 1 (full article with no preview picture nor preview text). What should I do to fix it?

    thank you

    Marc says:

    Hi Michael,

    We’ve been using a version of Aparatus, that we’ve made some modifications to, for a while now and absolutely love it. And the new version looks even better. I’ve had a look at the demo in IE8 though, and it still shows the same error message that the last version of the theme had. Do you have any plans to fix it?

    In the first version, we’ve also had a problem with the right-hand-side of justified text disappearing (this is especially bad when the text is italicised and often obscures the final letter to the point where it is illegible) under the side-bar. There’s an example here in the fourth paragraph:

    http://7reasons.org/2011/01/18/7-reasons-the-darren-bent-transfer-rumours-are%E2%80%A6er%E2%80%A6-just-a-bit-strange/

    Given that our site is based around the written word, this problem is particularly frustrating as it’s distracting to the reader and breaks up the flow of our sentence structure and the rhythm of our words (which we often work very hard on). Is there a fix for this in Aparatus 2?

    We’d love to upgrade our theme – and to pay you $10 for it, it would be nice to reward you for your sterling work – but there’s no way that we can go ahead with it if the second issue is still a problem in the second version. Please tell us that it isn’t!

    Marc.

    I’m curious to what error show in ie 8. if you’ve already done plenty of modifications in the original, you may want to stick with it.

    JSEL says:

    Hi Michael,
    thanks for great theme. i have a theme showcase site, i showcase free themes, Aparatus on my list still. can i redistribute Aparatus v0.1 on my site? if you dont accept, please let me know.
    i will delete it on my lsit.

    Thank you for asking. Please remove.

    Tim says:

    Michael: Love the look of this theme! Page links look great but struggling with posts from the category menu pages. I get the “Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in…on line 297”. I tried putting the suggested code into footer.php but still don’t see the footer or the right hand column. Reinstalled theme but didn’t fix the error. Using 3.0. Thanks in advance for any help.

    i thought i fixed that error. let me look into it.

    Steff says:

    This is a great theme and I have been playing around, mostly translating it to french to adapt it for my website.

    I have a couple of problems though:
    1- Like many people, the images in the slider do not show. I have setup the images using the image key with the image path and it’s still a no go. I’m using IE8 and when I go to my website, I see a black box with a line that actually shows that the image is currently loading…except it stays that way. Everything is setup properly with my host (both GD and timthumb), so I’m not quite sure what to do from here.

    2- How do I change the character set so that the accents on letters will show? (é, à, è, etc…)

    3- How can I reduce the font size for the name of my website? I know my name is long, but I’d like to fit it all in there…unless I change for a banner…I tried looking in header.php but I couldn’t find anything there…

    Thanks for helping out!

    @Steff
    1) try adding more posts with images. also, make sure the cache folder for timthumb is writable. lastly – i was inspecting your page – the path is not resolving right. ck the key and value once again.
    2) the theme is using cufon which uses the font league gothic. im not sure if it can support other chars. maybe take cufon out
    3) in the css file – look for a#logo – reduce the font size property

    Steff says:

    I’ll try posting a couple new articles with images to see if it works out.

    Just curious though, do the images need to be in a specific folder in order to display properly? I have a folder on my website in which I put all my pictures and the link to it in the custom field for the post is correct. Does it have to be in the images folder of the theme or any folder is ok?

    I also figured out how to change the font size. As for the characters, it’s weird because the posts will accept the accents, but it’s just the theme itself and the css that won’t accept them.

    Thanks for the help, let me know about the picture folder.

    Michael says:

    @Steff, all images need to be local to your server in order to resize by the script.

    Noah says:

    Okay. Thanks. I figured out the images, but my tweet bird will not post my current tweets. The twitter badge works when clicking on it, but my bird won’t tweet. Any help would be great. thanks.

    Noah says:

    Michael,

    I just uploaded your theme but cannot figure out how to show the images on the opening page. Ideas?

    @Noah – you can either add a post “feature image” or create a custom field: set the “key” to “image” and “value” to the absolute url of the image.

    Hi Michael, first of all, fantastic theme. The look is very professional, the code is very clean and organized, and the options for customization are endless.

    Now, I’ve read through this whole list of comments and couldn’t find a solid answer to my question. The mootools slideshow (which I love) hangs awkardly for a few seconds on the page load, then assembles itself correctly. When the page first loads, all 5 of the images contained in the slideshow appear vertically down the page, then they seem to snap together. Do you know what might be causing this? If you need a look, the site is http://filmisyoung.com.

    Thanks for sharing this amazing theme.

    Hi Johnson – yes i notice the delay. this is a mootools slideshow thing which i don’t know how to debug. its the same way with the other themes that use this same plugin.

    Ok. One more question. In my titles on single post pages, the ‘s’ is always capitalized after an apostrophe. Like “Sylvester Stallone’S.” Check here for an example: http://filmisyoung.com/2010/07/preview-of-george-clooneys-the-american/

    Any ideas about that?

    Thanks again.

    Hi Johnson,

    In the style.css (or whichever one you’re using) look for this code: .post-title-big, look for this line underneath and delete: text-transform:capitalize;

    Comment back if this works so others can see.

    This fix worked. Thanks for your quick response Michael.

    Jza says:

    I LOVE this theme. Great, great work. 🙂 People like you keep the world going!

    Mel Campbell says:

    Thanks for making this nifty and versatile theme. I’m using my tag cloud as a secondary navigation system on my site. How can I increase the height of the MooTabs panel so that all the tags in the cloud are visible? It’s currently 364px tall and I reckon I’d be fine if it were, say, 500px. I have only the most rudimentary CSS skills and have already tried various minor edits:

    – increasing the height of the tabbed container, which makes the background taller but the panel itself remains the same height;
    – inserting “height” values in .mootabs_panel, .mootabs_panel p and .mootabs_panel.active (none of this made a lick of difference)
    – deleting overflow: hidden so that my hidden tags are visible but spill over the edges of the container, which obviously is not what I want.

    I’m at the limits of my own knowledge, and both Google and the Aparatus documentation are giving me no more clues. I feel as if this should be easy to do. Can Michael or anyone else here help me?

    Sorry for the really late reply. You’re in the right track. It should just be css. Do you have a url I can look at?

    Brad says:

    Is there a way to ad my own logo? I love the current text and size of the title of my blog, however, I would like to add some color to the word “SOUL”. If there is a way to accomplish this by simply adding a color code I would rather do that. Thank you!

    Maybe you can make this word static instead of calling it through php. I would open header.php and look for this code: <a id="logo" href="<?php bloginfo(‘url’);?>"><?php bloginfo(‘name’);?></a> – take out the text in bold and replace with your site name – in your case “resurrectionsoul”. if you want to make the “soul” part a different color – wrap it around a “span” tag and apply a different color.

    Brad says:

    As always Michael…THANK YOU! But I have to laugh because I don’t have the slightest clue about what you’re talking about.

    Could your provide me the code for the “span” tag and the color RED (same color red as the ‘Submit Comment’ button at the bottom of this form).

    Thank you!!!

    Brad says:

    Regarding the ‘Popular’ / ‘Recent Comments’ / ‘Tags’ box on the right of the theme…..

    I have been killing myself trying to figure out how to work this box until someone left a comment on one of my blog…PRESTO!

    What about the ‘Tags’ tab, though? How does that get filled in. Do I enter tags? Where?

    Thank you!

    That is automatically filled with the “tags” from your posts.

    paishin says:

    I love this theme but I dont want to use it with wordpress….is there an HTML version available??

    Brad says:

    Michael…HELP! I took your advice for changing the color of just some of the text in the title by wrapping part of the word around span tags. IT WORKED! Thank you! But now when I click on the name of the blog it takes me to a page that reads: “Sorry – The Page You’re Looking For Doesn’t Exist Try Going Back Home”

    This is the code I used: <a id="logo" href="”>RESURRECTION[SOUL]

    How can I fix this so that when I click on the title it goes to the home page?

    Brad says:

    Here is the code I used

    <a id="logo" href="”>RESURRECTION[SOUL]

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