boldy-theme
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WordPress 3.0 and the Boldy Theme

Site5 put together a pretty sweet theme when they created Boldy. I’d been considering it for this blog for over a week and decided to give it a try. Alas, in the end, I ditched the idea. But, only because I couldn’t quite massage it to meet my needs. However, for someone putting together a portfolio, this theme should be near the top of your short-list.

While working with the theme, I ran across a quite a few confusing problems that I would like to address / fix here.

Logo

Pretty straight forward, as this can be changed easily with Boldy’s built-in configuration page. The only draw-back, is your logo will have to fit the 291 x 51 px dimensions. Anything much bigger and the header starts to take it in the shorts… so to speak.

Top Menu

Yeah… I should have started with this. Unless your WordPress installation is 3.0+, you’ll have a hard time with the Boldy theme. Boldy takes advantage of the latest menu system, in the Appearance -> Menus page of WordPress 3. This gives you complete (and I mean complete) control of your top navigation, along with any navigation you want to throw into the sidebars. If you look at Boldy’s Demo Site, you’ll notice they’ve taken advantage of using Categories in the menu as well. Something to consider.

Image Rotator

The image rotator is built into Boldy, so you won’t have to find a JQuery plugin to make it work. But, this one works rather… oddly. Rather than specify images from your Media Library, Boldy wants all your images dropped into a particular page (which you select from the Bold Options). Don’t worry about adding other content, just drop pictures into the page and Boldy will simply parse all the pictures. But, to make those pictures look nice, you’ll need to add them as 960 x 370 px. Anything smaller and they start to look… yucky (if that’s a technical term). A word of caution: Leave the Captions Blank! The captions are parsed from the Title of each graphic. It’s NOT intuitive, but that’s what Site5 decided.

Oh, since you had to add a page just for the Image Rotator, make sure not to add that page in the Top Navigation. It’ll just look… weird.

Home Boxes

This one will make you crazy. Guaranteed! Boldy contains 3 containers for “featured” posts… or at least that’s what I originally thought. Actually, those 3 containers are for “featured” PAGES! Ooof! What?

The problem with using Pages, is that pages do not utilize the “more” tag. Which is what it looks like they’ve accomplished when you see the Demo. You see “Read More” highlighted under each container, what else can it be…but, a Post… NOT a Page. No, it’s not a post. This completely drove me up the wall. Even the “docs” don’t mention this properly.

Here’s how to make your site do exactly what Boldy’s Demo Site does. Create two pages: One will contain the actual content. The 2nd will contain the Excerpt. To fill the home page with the “Excerpt” version, select the “Excerpt” page from the dropdown on the Boldy Option page and fill-in the text box with the “complete” URL for the page containing the actual content. If you are like me, you will have given the SAME title to both pages. So, the problem is selecting the correct title from the dropdown menu. It took me three tries to get it right… the dropdown shows the “Title”… not the permalink/shortlink. Oooof! Is right.

Graphics in Posts

Hmmmm. Why / How did they miss this? If you have installed Boldy, then you have undoubtedly discovered that aligning your graphics left or right has proved ineffective; everything keeps aligning left. GAAAH! Why?! Calm down, please. If you would like the ability to left or right align your graphics, then you’ll have to perform some editing to Boldy’s CSS file. The best way to fix this will be to grab the WordPress Generated Classes and drop them into Boldy’s style.css file. Copy them into the bottom of the file and separate them with a good comment, to help you recall WHY you added the styles. More than likely, you’ll want to add better margins (which are ZERO), so add margin-left and margin-right styles to alignright and alignleft CSS Classes and you’ll be happy.

.alignleft { float: left; margin-right: 5px; /* add some margin */ }
.alignright { float: right; margin-left: 5px; /* add some margin */ }

Those PRE elements just don’t look right

You’ll notice that any code or PRE elements will look awfully small. So, I decided to (at a minimum) add the following to the “Typography” section of the style.css file:

pre{font-size: 1.2em; line-height: 1.5em} /* pre is TOO small */

Conclusion

Outside of all the issues that I had, Boldy is still an awesome theme. You just have to work-around those kinks.

If you can’t find what you need here, then please take the time to read the comments below. There, you will find IE9 Cufon issues, header graphic upload problems, Portfolio Page graphic alignment craziness and many others.

Running the Boldy Theme v2.0.2?

You may wish to check out the tirade I’ve brought forth regarding the NEW version of Boldy. πŸ™‚ Check it out here: Boldy 2.0.2

Don’t know which version? If you see “Boldy Options” in your Dashboard, then you are running an “older” version. If you see “Theme Options” in your Dashboard, then you are running Boldy v2.0.x.

That should do it. πŸ™‚

96 thoughts on “WordPress 3.0 and the Boldy Theme

  1. Hey, i just installed this and the headers(Page Titles) aren’t showing up in IE9. Any idea why? They show for half a second and then disappear

    1. IE9 (for some reason) does NOT play well with this theme. One solution that I’ve seen around the forums is to FORCE IE9 to use “compatibility mode.”

      You do this by heading to Dashboard -> Appearance -> Editor

      From there, choose the “header.php” file and enter the following JUST before the [title] tag: [meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=EmulateIE7″ /]

      Change the left and right “bracket” to the left and right “carrot” symbols. My comments do not render either “carrot” symbols properly. πŸ™‚

      Others have mentioned that Boldy uses the Cufon font-replacement script… and that it needs updating. You can grab the latest version here: http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/

    2. This theme uses Cufon font replacement, which had an upgrade in order to render in IE9, so you need to update the Cufon JS file to their latest release in order for the titles to appear.

      1. Having to deal with updates to the Cufon JS file is one of the reasons why I’m looking more and more into @web-fonts. Although not fully supported in all current browsers, @web-fonts do not have the “refresh” issue that sites using a LOT of Cufon replacements do.

        However, I appreciate the tip… as well as anyone dropping by this post looking for solutions for their Boldy Theme implementation.

        Thanks. πŸ™‚

    1. The Home Boxes were probably the most frustrating aspect about this WP Theme. Other than that particular headache… it’s a pretty snazzy theme. πŸ™‚

  2. thanks for these notes. I was just getting around to dealing with the front page box drama, after dealing on my own with the logo drama. I thought it was just me because I dont know coding and have only just begun designing templates. was doubting my ability to coherently read a sentence. Now I realize the sentence was not there. πŸ™‚

    1. It took a while, scrounging through forums and the code, just to wrap my head around those issues. I was amazed at how “non-intuitive” the solutions were. πŸ™‚ Glad I could help.

  3. I really like this theme. but I cannot get the slider to work. I have followed the instructions, just as you outlined, but it does not work. (If you visit my site, the large image you see is one that I inserted into the home page until I can get the slider figured out.

    Also, I cannot get the home boxes to show up. Would appreciate any help.

    1. Dump all of your “slider” images into a new page. I called my page “Slider Images.” But, to make those pictures look nice, you’ll need to add them as 960px X 370px. The “slider images” captions, are pulled from the image’s Title… not from the Caption. So, whatever caption you want for the slider image, place it in the Title of the image… and NOT the Caption. Leave the Caption blank.

      The other thing to learn about the “slider images”… these are supposed to link to either posts OR pages… mostly Pages. So, when you insert the “slider image” into the page, make sure to modify the “Link URL,” to point to the Page or Post you want it to point to; something like: http://joyfulheartdesign.com/blog/Name-Of-Page or http://joyfulheartdesign.com/blog/Name-Of-Post.

      You appear to have mastered the “topmenu,” from what I’ve seen. The thing to remember is to NOT add the new Page you created to house your images TO the menu.

      The Home Boxes are by FAR the biggest head-ache with the Boldy Theme. The aspect to remember is to realize that all posts or pages get their OWN unique ID… even if they have the same name. So, the trick with the Home Boxes, is that you will have one post to house the image… and a separate post (with the same name) to house your content/text.

    2. You did an amazing job on your site, hopefully mine will look half as good. How did you get your logo to be 841×106? Dennis had mentioned something about a max of 291×51 before it poops itself?

      This is my first time creating a web site and I feel like I should have chosen a better theme with more backend stuff…

      1. I am a VERY flaky blogger and move from WP theme to WP theme with the attention span of a gnat. πŸ™‚ I’m no longer using Site5’s WP Boldy Theme… which is why the header graphic is no longer the same dimensions… Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that… but, I kinda figured people would notice it themselves.

        …and yes, no larger than 291 x 51… if you do, you’ll have to start messing with CSS styles to put everything back into shape.

  4. Put the site up in about an hour with the Boldy template. Don’t mind a lot of the formatting of graphics, but the two contact forms (one on the home page and one as /contact) have no captcha — so you get a lot of spam. Message boards at Site5.com (Boldy creators) shut down threads that talk about it, and there’s one mention of them improving this. However, nothing follows as the thread closes. Any help? Also, no tutorial on the portfolio page template – any one doing that successfully? Thanks, Adrian

    1. Personally, I never had much problem with Spam while using the Boldy theme. But, I’d been using the Akismet plugin and kept a firm grip on “commenter’s” by forcing all comments to be moderated. Most theme developers do not incorporate “captha’s” into their theme, as this can most easily done with a plugin. However, Boldy uses a separate “contact” template, so Site5 kind-of forces your hand. You could get by this and still use a 3rd-party Captcha plugin by NOT “casting” your contact page using the “contact” template… and use the “default template”, instead. Then again, you still have the “mini-contact” in the footer. The “mini-contact” section in the footer could be commented-out in HTML so that it doesn’t display… I don’t think that would do much harm. πŸ™‚

      As for the Portfolio page, you’ll need to assign a “main” category… one with sub-categories as well… and ones with “Featured Image” set. The Boldy “Options” page will allow you to select your main category. The Portfolio page is similar to a typical “blog” page for posts… but, this time it’s pegged to a particular “category” of posts.

      1. Dennis, thanks – really appreciate the notes.

        Anyway, btw, is there a way to drop in two rows of home boxes? Love to show off more detail on newmedici.com.

        Thanks! Adrian

        1. I’m sure there is a way to do that… but, that’s gonna be a LOT more involved than a simple WP API change or CSS tweak. We’re talking some re-writing of the Boldy Admin Panel and the main index.php file.

          I can take a look at it, but you would definitely have to pay me. πŸ™‚

  5. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. Ive been creating test pages to see what fields display what after that whole caption title mix up.

    How I got here: I googled ” 960px x 370px” — i was looking for sample pictures to put up bc the current pictures in my slidebar are god awful.

    Thank you, by reading this you may have deterred me from just giving up entirely

    1. Glad I could help. As I’ve stated before, Boldy is a pretty slick WP Theme… just wish I didn’t have to jump through so many hoops, just to get it up on its feet. πŸ™‚

  6. Hi Dennis,

    Thank you very much for this fixes.
    I also made some fixes on the fly (html validation, missing images etc.)
    Is it possible to emulate IE8 instead?
    Let me also recommend WP-minify plugin for this theme.

    Thank you

  7. Hi,

    This article has helped me so much. Those annoying home boxes were driving me crazy. I am though, having another issue I was wondering if you can assist me with. I am new to wordpress and I was wondering how they managed to make the portfolio page (you know, with three columns like that) like they have on lightbox popping out.:

    http://wordpress.site5.net/boldy/?cat=24

    I could really use help here. Thank you,

    1. These are very much like the three (3) Home Boxes on the index page. All three images “pop out” because each large photo is linked to its own image, so they “pop out” using the lightbox JQuery function. The “worded” links actually link to Article from the portfolio page. It’s kind of weird, but is exactly the same concept as the Home Boxes on the front page. It’s really non-intuitive. It’s like the photo and the Article don’t point to the same place. It’s really annoying, but I think the developers were trying to be “cute”.

  8. At first boldy seemed to be the perfect theme. When IΒ΄m using firefox everything looks great. Changing to internet explorer and every page appears to be aligned to the left.

    Any Idea how to change this?

    1. This really has more to do with the fact that Boldy does not play well with IE8 or IE9. It is so severe, that I have found little time to actually troubleshoot this issue. Usually, one needs to update the Cufon script used to make the pretty fonts or force the Boldy Theme to use “compatability” mode. But, I’ve already discussed this solution in an earlier comment. I suggest you learn to READ.

  9. Hi there,

    We decided to use this theme for our company as it is so great…but we are facing many problems trying to localize it.

    Indeed, we are using WPML to translate all the website in french and portugese…but for example the theme does not apply the “portfolio” template to the translated categories.

    To explain better, the page : http://www.franceoverseas.com/category/products/wines/loire-valley-wines/ is well displaying as a portfolio…

    But its traduction is not : http://www.franceoverseas.com/fr/category/produits/nosvins/vallee-loire/

    And we cannot choose more than one category as portfolio can we?

    Thanks for you help πŸ˜€

    1. You are correct. The Boldy Theme does not allow for more than one category to be assigned to “Portfolio”. My guess, is that the category is being pulled by its “slug” name; the small-caps version of the category name. If this is the case, then it will take some coding to change its behavior. If it were called by its ID#, then it should work. But, transposing an ID to its category is not a simple task… and one that would defeat the back-end Admin features.

      I suggest you ask help from Site5. If they can’t help, then let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

      1. Thanks for your answer Dennis, I’m afraid it seems difficult to contact Site5 directly.

        It look’s like you need a client account to send them an email or to post in their community forum…

        Any help with that?

        1. It looks as if you may already have fixed this problem. Am I mistaken? Let me know either way.

          On another matter, you will want to make use of the “Widgetized” footer and place Recent Posts, Recent Comments and Pages in that area… and remove the “Meta” widget. I know that it makes “logging in” much easier, but its not very professional looking.

  10. Hey there,

    You seem really helpful and I realise this is your own time, but would MASSIVELY appreciate your help as I am learning, when trying to create a static page for my home page I obviously rejigged the pages on my site,

    I was 2 days thinking my slider didn’t work and it had been all along, just not on my homepage …. How do I attribute:

    http://ianstannard.com/homepage/

    to be just ianstannard.com ??

    Also how do I re-jig the header categories in a different order, sorry for being a novice, I did this the weekend for a colleague and am stuck?!!

    Gary

    1. It looks like there is a disparity between “Home” and “homepage”. My guess is that you’ve created a page called “Home”, whose permalink points to http://ianstannard.com/home/. If not, then it lies in your Appearance->Menus, where you’ve listed it as a Custom Link.

      If it’s a Custom Link, then go to “Appearance->Menus” to change the URL to http://ianstannard.com/, and everything should work.

      If you’ve created a page called “Home”, then edit the page’s permalink so that it uses only the “http://ianstannard.com/” URL.

      As far as the “header” categories… those can be moved in “Appearance->Menus”… it’s all drag-n-drop. πŸ™‚

  11. Hi Dennis,

    Job well done on your site as well as your work with the Boldy theme.

    I have a quick question for you. I am developing a site using the Boldy theme and I have the front page slider set up perfectly. I was curious how I might change the rotation speed for the images. By default, they rotate just a tad too quick for my tastes.

    Any insight into this problem would be very much appreciated.

    Thanks.

    1. The Nivo Slider (JQuery) is bundled with the Boldy Theme… unfortunately, its JavaScript has been packed & encoded to the point of being nearly impossible to decipher. Unfortunately, that means you MAY have to ask for help from Site5 to be able to adjust the slider.

      However, The Nivo Slider is offered as a download-able plugin. There may be a way to edit the home.php file to utilize the plugin instead… I’ll look into this. No guarantees. πŸ™‚

    2. Aha! It’s easier than I thought! The Nivo Slider options are embedded into the home.php file. You’ll find them at the bottom of home.php and they are pretty well documented. You’ll want to take a look at: animSpeed:500 and pauseTime:3000…

      animSpeed: determines “how fast” the slider transitions, so increasing it to 1000, would slow the transition to 1000msec (1 second).
      pauseTime: determines “how long” each slide is displayed, so increasing it to 4000, would increase the how long the slide is displayed to 4000msec (4 seconds).

      You should be able to make these changes easily, using the WP WYSIWYG editor: Dashboard -> Appearance -> Editor -> home.php.

  12. The insight is extremely helpful. I have been playing with this site and getting frustrated, like putting together a puzzle without all the pieces and a picture to go off of). Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

  13. I am having trouble locating where to change the color of the top menu itself. I’m guessing it’s an image but I just can’t find it. Any help would be much appreciated

    1. By “color”, I’m guessing you mean the background image. It’s part of #header style in the style.css file. What you want to change, is the “bk_header.png” pic located in the “images” folder. You can keep the original, as long as you upload your new background in the “images” folder AND point to the new image in the style.css file. Just make sure the new background is 805 X 85 pixels (px).

      If your background becomes too light, you may wish to edit style.css and alter the color of “#mainMenu ul li a” to something darker than #CCCCCC.

  14. Well, I am not alone. I really like the Boldy theme but it is sure frustrating. I was attracted to it for it’s supposed “simplicity” but now I am not so sure. My question: in your opinion, what is the easiest and fastest theme for a quality looking affiliate and adsense site. I have the idea to do a lot of them for the bits and pieces of revenue and frankly cannot decide between a # of simple sites, each with their own domain, or an e-commerce site where I could have 50 subdomains all pointing to the same central site. I have been on Boldy all day and don’t seem to be going anywhere. Thanks!

    1. First, I read your follow-up posts… and deleted them to save you some embarrassment. You may want to lay-off the caffeine or take a breather before pressing “Submit.”

      Second, as far as the “Boldy” Theme, your question is too general… as I am unable to decipher exactly what you are having problems with. I need specifics and I’m sure you don’t wish waste my time.

      Third, if you wanted an easy WP Theme to utilize… you picked one of the worst themes. πŸ™‚ I’m guessing you liked the JQuery Slider and that it was Free., so you could search Google or Bing and find several that will work. There’s a WP Theme called “Androida” that is very similar to “Boldy”, but it is heavily branded with Google’s Android Mobile OS… so, you’ll need some Photoshop skills and create your own graphics.

      You should be able to search for “Adsense” or “Affiliate” capable WordPress Themes. There’s more than “Boldy” out there, but I don’t know what you’re looking for… so, it’s tough to recommend just one. Know what I mean?

      I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I’m sure it was frustrating. I do this in my free time and am not always available to respond promptly. So, next time… be specific in your question and allow a good 48 hours or so for me to respond. Fair enough? Excellent!

      Now… how can I help? πŸ™‚

  15. VERY professional reply – thanks! – MUCH appreciated. I think you are right about the caffeine and will take your advice.

    I want to cookie-cut the basics with a theme…just have a template that is essentially: fill in the content, add the affiliate link, add a couple of photos from the library, and publish. SEO by plugins. My goal is to have 50 or so of these mini-sites all linking to each other for ranking BUT not spend any real time on the site creation other than the first one. These will be only Adsense and Affiliate sites using Domain Samurai for KW’s. I can use OptimizePress – is this a viable solution?

    The alternative to the above – and if you could tell me if this is viable or not – is to use an e-commerce theme like Themeforest’s WP Flexistore ($35) and create a “wheel” of category specific affil. products directing all the SEO efforts to this one site. Individual pages (1 page per product category) would be subdomains with links to the other pages and to the home page. It sounds doable but am not sure.. LOTS of stuff so I apologize – will make up for it by linking to you on these zillion sites if you like!

    Thanks for taking the time. You are clearly a PRO and that is extremely difficult to find online nowadays!

    1. Mike,

      Your request is simply beyond my expertise. I’ve not worked with Adsense or Affiliate sites, so I have nothing to recommend.

      As I’ve done, you’ll simply have to try some WordPress Themes and see what works. Buy a good book on WordPress development and read it. The simple act of activating themes, discovering what you like and don’t like, working them, massaging them… will yield you a LOT more useful information than I could with some haphazard recommendations.

      I’m sure it’s not what you wanted to hear, but that’s what I’ve got for you. πŸ™‚ Let me know what you figure out. I’ll love to hear what you learn. πŸ™‚

  16. Hi! What a great page to solve boldy’s bold problems!! I’ve got a trouble with the logo: it appears only on the home, but not on the other pages. I think I’m getting dizzy… Could you help me? Thanks

      1. Finally I got loading it, but I don’t know why the only way
        to do it was loading the logo on a draft, and use this link.
        All my attempts to load the logo via ftp did not work. Thanks
        very much for you interest. Excuse my delay in replying.
        Cheers from Mallorca Dennis!

        1. As far as the “link” is concerned, the logo should best be uploaded separately from any “Blog” post… which you obviously figured out. Uploading stuff through FTP is good, unless you can provide the full URL for the logo… which can be difficult to determine through FTP. Occasionally, read/write permissions get “messed up”… so, it’s best to simply upload your logo through the “Media” link and not worry about “linking” the graphic to a specific post.

          Glad you were able to figure it out. πŸ™‚

          1. I didn’t realise that I could load through “media”
            instead of creating a draft! Now I’ve got another problem:
            I don’t know why, but in my portfolio page thumbnails
            appear disorderly. My web is written on spanish and
            catalan (my native language). If you look at the spanish
            web portfolio looks fine, but if you look to the
            catalan portfolio it looks messy and with less items.
            You can see it here:
            Spanish portfolio:http://andreu-art.com/es/category/portafolio/
            Catalan portfolio: http://andreu-art.com/category/portafoli/
            Thanks again Dennis!

          2. Andreu,

            Here’s what I THINK is happening to your Catalan portfolio page: There is an extra “paragraph” containing the HTML non-breaking space element in the decoded HTML for several of your Portfolio entries. Namely, the “Serp”and “Disseny interfΓ­cie web” posts. This is most likely coming from the “Excerpts” or extra “spaces” at the of the content for each post. Because of this, those two posts have a “height” greater than the rest of your posts, which is causing the mis-alignment.

            Since you are not using “Excerpts” for any of your portfolio posts, I suggest deleting ALL “Excerpt” content from each post. Just edit each post and completely clean out the “Excerpt” section… even if it LOOKS empty. There could be a carriage-return or several spaces in there that you will not physically “see”. After that, take a hard look at the rest of the posts and compare the content of the two “offending” posts and remove any extra “spaces” following your final inserted graphic. Make sure that their settings are completely identical… except for the picture, of course. πŸ™‚

  17. Hi,

    I have a problem that I hope you can help me with. I’m trying to delete the hosting link from the footer. In my case it is ‘Magento Hosting’. I’ve looked into the editor and cannot find anything that relates to this. I’ve deleted some stuff with regards to footer info and it hasn’t changed anything.

    I am very new to this and any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

    1. Rob,

      I suspect you have already tried this solution, but I’ll post it here anyway.

      Check out the section in the footer.php file:

      [!-- BEGIN COPYRIGHT --]
      [div id="copyright"]
      ""){
      echo stripslashes(stripslashes(get_option('boldy_copyright')));
      }else{
      echo 'Just go to Theme Options Page and edit copyright text';
      }?>
      [div id="site5bottom"][a href="http://www.site5.com/p/php-hosting/" rel="nofollow"]PHP Web Hosting[/a][/div]
      [/div]
      [!-- END COPYRIGHT --]

      You can remove the Web Hosting link by removing the ahref link to http://www.site5.com in #site5bottom DIV. Personally, when I was using the Boldy Theme, I used it as another link to my home page.

      However, since it appears you’ve tried this already, then I would suspect that your Hosting Provider is automatically adding its own Web Hosting link to the bottom of your site. Typically, this would be the case if your Hosting Provider is hosting this site as a “freebie.” Then, you would have to talk to your Hosting Provider to remove that link. To check this, switch your WP Theme to “Twenty Eleven” and see if the same Hosting Link appears at the bottom again. If you see the Web Hosting link at the bottom again, then most certainly your Hosting Provider is adding it automatically.

  18. Hi Dennis

    Thanks for your direction.
    But do you have any idea how to create the excerpt pages in wordpress as I am not good in programming

    Would appreciate your help
    thanks!

    1. Joyline,

      Please re-read the section on Homepages. πŸ™‚ Or view Site5’s instructions here.

      To fill all three (3) HomeBoxes beneath the JQuery Slider on the Home Page, you’ll need to follow those instructions. They may very-well NOT be as transparent as I’d like to think, so I’ll try again to explain how these work…

      To fill each of the three HomeBox “Excerpts”, you will need to create two (2) pages: One Page will contain the ACTUAL content… text, pictures and all. The 2nd Page will contain ONLY the Excerpt and a Featured Image. The “trick” is selecting the right page from the Boldy Options page. πŸ™‚ The Homepage Box “Dropdown” will show ONLY Page Titles, so if you give the same Title to each page, it’s tough to choose which one will be the “Exceprt.” One way around this is to give a shorter “Title” to each “Excerpt” Page. However, you WILL need to use the “Shortlink” when you type the Homebox “Read More” link. The “shortlink” for each page looks similar to how it is presented in the Boldy Doc’s: http://www.mysite.com/?page_id=xxx. If you don’t know how to find the “Shortlink” version of a Page, the do a Google search for WordPress, Page ID, How to find.

      I hope this clears some things up for you… πŸ™‚

  19. Hi Dennis,

    I have the same Site5editor problem..
    I’m trying to remove it, but this is my php code:

    Any help?

    Jeff

    1. Jeff,

      Sorry, but my “comments” section doesn’t do well with PHP code. Here’s what I do with my site to get around this: substitute ‘{‘ and ‘}’ with ‘[‘ and ‘]’.

      Try again… I’d love to help.

      ~Dennis

  20. Hey Dennis
    I have a problem with my boldy theme.
    If you can help me that will be great.
    When I try to make a new page for some reason above the page name appears Uncategorized and i wonder why?
    I tried to delete that category,to make a new menu but i was unable to make that Uncategorized to go away.
    If you can look at it and tell me what is the problem i will be very grateful.
    By the way the website is 1clickoffer.com
    Thank you

    1. I doubt that this is an issue with the WordPress Boldy Theme.

      You may have set the WordPress custom menu to automatically add pages to your menu.

      Check out “Appearance -> Menu -> Automatically add new top-level pages” and verify that you have NOT checked that box.

      As far as removing “Uncategorized” from the list of categories… good luck. There really is no good way to remove it. It’s built into the WordPress core. I suspect you are adding “Posts” to your custom menu, without checking a better “category” for your posts. They all will default to “Uncategorized” if a different category is not selected. I suggest you creat some categories first, before adding your posts.

      This is not a Boldy Theme issue, but rather a lack of experience with WordPress on your part. It’s not a big deal. πŸ™‚ It happens to everyone getting acquainted with WordPress.

      ~Dennis

      1. Thank you again for your help.
        I solved my problem.
        Indeed i didn’t check that box.
        I’m still learning wordpress.
        Thank you again and have a great day.

        1. I’m curious as to what ultimately solved your problem. The more I know about everyone’s experience with the WordPress Boldy Theme, the more I can help others.

          ~Dennis

  21. I’m toying around with the Boldy Theme and so far I think it will meet our needs. However, I am running into issues trying to figure out how to get the Portfolio pages to display in full screen (full width mode).

    So when you come to the Portfolio items page (demo: http://demo.s5themes.com/boldy/portfolio-3/) and click on an individual item, this case item 1 (http://demo.s5themes.com/boldy/portfolio/369/) it takes you to a full screen view. My site has the side bar in it.

    Do I have a different version of the theme or am I missing a step? Your time and assistance is greatly appreciated!!

    1. Building a Portfolio Page within Boldy is a rather tedious, but simple process. Follow this process and you’ll get really close to what you wish to display.

      1) Create a Category for your “Portfolio”. You could name it “Portfolio”, but it really should be named something more specific about what you’ll be displaying.

      2) For every post you wish to be displayed in your “Portfolio”, make sure you tag your post with the “Portfolio” Category you’ve created.

      3) Every “Portfolio” post will need a photo you wish to display… so, make sure you’ve added your photo as a “Featured Image”. This will ensure that it is displayed on the front of the Portfolio Page.

      4) You may also wish for that photo to be displayed when users click on a specific post, so be sure to not only use the “Featured Image” option… but, add that photo left/center/right aligned into your post. Just because a photo is “Featured”… does NOT mean it will be added to each individual post a user will select. Yes. It is a two-step process… but, that’s just how it is.

      I hope this process works for you.

      ~Dennis

    2. Dennis, thank you for your reply. The issues I am coming
      across is when a user clicks on a post from the “Portfolio”
      section, that post displays with a sidebar versus a full width
      template. How do I get those posts to display in the full width without
      the sidebar like the demo?

      I know you are way beyond this theme and you are using something else,
      I appreciate your time. This is driving me nuts…haha.

      Here is my portfolio section: http://j4cr3w.com/wordpress/category/coverage

      When I click on an individual post: http://j4cr3w.com/wordpress/custom-1994-ford-ranger

      Boldy demo with full width: http://demo.s5themes.com/boldy/portfolio/369/

      P.S. this is our test site.

      1. Ah. I have an older version of “Boldy”. It looks like Site5 has moved their demo and the latest version is 2.0.2 to a different site. I’ve got a sandbox for testing WordPress Themes… so, let me grab the latest version and give it a whirl. I’ll let you know what find. πŸ™‚

          1. I downloaded the latest Boldy theme 2.0.2 and now my main issue is trying to figure out how to get the portfolio to display, period. fun stuff!!

          2. Yeah. Site5 is asking for “registration” to download their latest version of Boldy. You are NOT the first person to ask this question. Right now, I don’t have an answer. When I have the time to try out Boldy 2.0.2… I’ll probably start a new post JUST for it. Stay tuned.

            The new 2.0.2 version of Site5’s Bold Theme has now a special place to add Portfolio items… Dashboard -> Portfolio -> Add New.

            The BAD part of this, is that previous users of the Boldy Theme may very well have to redo their portfolio entries under the new system. BLARGH! It’s not pretty, but once everything is moved over to the new system, you shouldn’t have any issues with further upgrades of the Boldy Theme. They now have a space to add your Portfolio photo “Add Media” just underneath the blog entry. It insists that the photo be 960px wide (which they will resize), but they do not state just how tall (high) the photo should be. πŸ™

            Let me know how things turn out.

            ~Dennis

  22. Hi Dennis and thanks for the tips which helped me get the theme
    working. I was wondering if you could help with another problem I am
    having? I have setup the home page and all is working fine. The
    trouble is I have split the home page logo so that 1/2 the logo lies
    in the slideshow area and the second half is above the slideshow area
    where the logo is supposed to sit in it’s entirety. Do you know of a way
    that the sub pages can use a different logo to the home page. I don’t
    mind if the logo is scaled smaller on the sub pages but due to it’s
    round shape it needs to have a larger area on the home page. Any help
    much appreciated.

    1. Well, that’s certainly one way to skin a cat. πŸ™‚

      You might have gotten away with editing the CSS to give your home page image some “z-index”, so that it would automatically hover above the slider images… instead of splitting it into two pieces. But, I must admire your tenacity for getting those images to align properly. πŸ™‚

      The Boldy Theme didn’t provide a lot of room for header images, which has been a common complaint. Since the Header Image is chosen from the Options page, we’ll have to figure out to modify the header.php file to “check” if the current page is NOT the “home” page… and then tell it to look elsewhere for the secondary image. If you are adept at editing the header.php file, then we’re in business.

      Find this section under BEGIN HEADER…

      [img src="[?php echo get_option('boldy_logo_img'); ?]" alt="[?php echo get_option('boldy_logo_alt'); ?]" />

      Consider these changes:

      [img src="[?php if( is_home() ) { echo get_option('boldy_logo_img'); } else { bloginfo('template_directory'); ?]/images/aaaa.bbb[?php } ?]" alt="[?php echo get_option('boldy_logo_alt'); ?]" />

      You will have to upload your secondary image to the Boldy Theme’s images directory… and substitute it’s full name with “aaaa.bbb”.

      As always, please replace the left “[” and right “]” brackets with the left & right arrows. I do not allow active code in my comments. πŸ™‚

  23. hi there,

    any idea how i change the colour of the menu navigation bar on Boldy??
    I want to change the default black colour to something lighter…

    thanks!
    R

    1. R,

      There are several PNG graphics to alter to change the navigation background color. These are ALL PNG files, so as long as you keep the same file format AND filename, you’ll be in the clear. These graphic files are:

      • bk_header.png
      • bk_main_wrapper.png
      • bk_main_wrapper_home.png
      • bk_top_search.png

      You’ll find these graphics in the boldy/images folder.

      Hope this helps.

  24. Hi Dennis,

    You have provided some awesome in depth help here, and I for one am very grateful.
    We paid a ‘professional’ company to build an updated website for us, and they built it with Boldy, left it incomplete and with lots of problems. I created a blank page template for our info pages, (by trial and error), which, I guess is similar to the portfolio oages that you wrote about, and we have been working to bring the site further up to scratch for the last couple of months.
    My question for you is a repeat of a previous post, but we are prepared to ‘donate’ for your time as we feel that we have benefited greatly just from this post. We would also like to have two rows of home boxes if at all possible?
    Please let me know what you would need from us.

    Many, many thanks for this page with all the insight

    Hans

    1. Hans,

      Well, I’m glad it helped.

      Two rows of “Home Boxes” is not beyond the realm of possibility. Do do it right (and make it easy on you), we’ll need to modify the back-end Admin page to accommodate an extra row and modify the home/index.php file to utilize those modifications.

      The only caveat, is that when a “new” version of the Boldy Theme is pushed, we’ll need to take extreme care as to not over-write the pages we’ve modified. If the creators of the Boldy Theme make an underling change to how those additional boxes are extracted, we may need to visit this idea again to take advantage of those changes. Either that, or we simply do not upgrade the Theme. I prefer the later. πŸ™‚

      ~Dennis

      PS – Which version of the Boldy Theme are you currently using?

      1. Sorry to take so long, but I can not find the version in
        admin. I am assuming that it is the latest as there are no
        update notifications. It was installed in May of this year.

        Thanks
        Hans

        1. Hans,

          Well, ONE of the ways to determine which Boldy Theme version (old vs. new) you are using, is to take a look at the Admin Sidebar. Does it state “Theme Options” or “Boldy Options”?

          “Theme Options” indicates the newest version of the Bold Theme (2.0.X), whereas “Boldy Options” indicates the “older” version of the Boldy Theme. The version of the Boldy Theme you are using DOES matter, as it determines which files need to be edited to get those “Home Boxes” arranged in the order you are looking for. πŸ™‚

          As far as “taking so long”… πŸ™‚ It’s cool. Life does have a way of getting in the way of things… doesn’t it? πŸ™‚

          ~Dennis

          PS – Let me know, as I’ve got a good idea as to how to make that work for you…

          1. Thanks!
            That was easy, it’s the old version. I downloaded the newer version, is there anything to look out for when upgrading?

            Hans

          2. Hans,

            First and Formost, make sure that the new Boldy Theme is uploaded to a different Themes folder. I forget exactly what the name of the new Boldy Theme ZIP file is named, but just make sure it is named something OTHER than “boldy.zip”. I used “boldy2.0.2.zip”.

            Second, Site5 (from user complaints) re-worked how Porfilio Items were to be added. This is probably the biggest issue when transferring to a different theme. It IS more user friendly to administer, but the manual conversion to the new style does take some time.

            ~Dennis

  25. Hello Dennis,

    I’m having issues with my website meta description. I was wondering if you could help me out.

    I thought adding a description would be as simple as going to boldy options and filling our the meta description box. However, when I do a search on google, it lists my pages and sub-pages instead of my meta description.

    Help?

    -Rocky

    1. Rocky,

      The WP Boldy Theme does not grab the Settings -> General -> Tagline as most Themes do. It relies on the user to enter their own “Meta Description.” You would be amazed at the number of complaints I’ve seen when people look at the “Page Source” of their Boldy site and found that the “description” was simply left blank aka meta name=”description” content=””. πŸ™‚

      From examining your “Page Source”, I am left wondering if the Yoast SEO Plugin you are using is providing multiple instances of the meta name=”description” content=”…”

      Have you tried de-activating the Yoast SEO Plugin, adding some content, and waiting a week to see how Google is presenting your site in Search?

      I have also determined that Google appears to grab the Boldy Homepage “Blurb Text” as a further description for the site. Have you left this blank? It’s certainly something to look at.

      ~Dennis

  26. Ouch!

    I loaded the upgrade as Boldy2, but the sliders were gone as were the home boxes, so I quickly changed back to the old theme.
    We are willing to pay for your time if you can help with the boxes?

    Hans

    1. Hans,

      Well, I kinda figured that would happen. It doesn’t matter which version you utilize. Although, I would suggest upgrading to the latest version when you can. Version 2.0.2 has a more user-friendly back-end. Either way, I’m sure I can get this to work for you in either version.

      And, yes. I can help with providing more Home Boxes on the front page.

      I’ll start working on that this weekend. Maybe I’ll have something for you by Monday.

      ~Dennis

      PS – I had a little more time on my hands this evening than I had initially thought. Took me ~ 4 hours, but I think I’ve got exactly what you are looking for. I’ll be sending you an email to your “members” email with a link to the site I use to examine/develop WordPress Themes. Hopefully, you’ll like what you see.

      PPS – Well, it looks like you’ve taken my advice/code and I am now feeling rather stupid for sending those updates without any guarantee of compensation. Shame on me. Perhaps I should SHAME you for taking advantage of my coding/kindness… Not cool, Hans… NOT cool. πŸ™

  27. I Danny! Thank you for you great work! I’ve a problem with the slider in home page. I want display some posts (new articles) but in menu slider there are only the possibility to set four fiels: title, slide caption, slide image link and add slidere image. I use boldy 2.0.2
    tnx for replay in advance!

    1. Danny,

      Yeah. That’s a common complaint with the Boldy Theme. Boldy’s slider is only a photo slider. It really doesn’t do “articles” or “posts”. One way of getting around this would be to manually insert a Post Excerpt in place of the Slide Caption. Just copy/paste the text from the Post. I forget just how much text you can add to the Slide Caption, though. Remember, JQuery Sliders are normally meant as a “Preview” to Posts… to get people interested into reading more of the article. So, there is really is no need to render the entire post/article in the Slider.

      I suspect this is not exactly what you wanted to hear, but hopefully this will give you an idea of why it won’t work the way you are intending.

      ~Dennis

  28. Hello! Twitters new api updates have caused the built in twitter footer in the BOLDY theme to not work anymore. Any idea how to fix this? Thank you!

    1. Jen,

      It looks like Twitter has altered their API’s a bit, so the “hard-coded” link to Twitter Updates has ceased to work.

      If you take a look at the footer.php file, you will find a section that reads:

      script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/[?php echo get_option(‘boldy_twitter_user’); ?]

      Replace (http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/) with (https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/)…

      You SHOULD be in business. Let me know if this fails…

      Actually, if all else fails, you should grab/register with Site5 and download the 2.0.5 version of the Boldy Theme. It contains all the Twitter API fixes, as well as a MUCH better Admin Interface to make better use of its features.

      ~Dennis

    1. So, if I understand you correctly, you wish to remove the Top Navigation menu from the top of the site?

      Sure, you can do this easily. There are a couple ways of doing this… all with various results.

      1. Go to Dashboard -> Appearance -> Menus -> Theme Locations -> The Main Menu and leave this option ‘blank’. The caveat… you’ll still have the black strip at the top with the “Search” box still available at the top right of the page.

      2. Another option would be to add to the style.css file: div#mainMenu {display: none;}… after that, add div#topSearch {display: none;}

      The only problem with Option 2, is if you upgrade the Boldy Theme… you may very well over-write the style.css file… and you’ll have to add those items back into the style.css file.

    1. Lauren,

      Good question, and one that has flustered MANY Boldy Theme users. Assuming your Portfolio page is INDEED named “Porfolio”. The best solution is to re-name the Permalink into something that does NOT end in “portfolio”, i.e. “portfolio-1”, “mystuff”, or “thecompaniescoolshit” or something. The Boldy Theme cannot handle the page properly, even when “Portfolio” is selected as its template… it’s stupid (I know), but that is what needs to happen. πŸ™

  29. I have used the Boldy theme (version 2.0.5) for several years on a site that I am keeping on the WordPress version 3.4 since it is working very good.
    But I just recently installed Boldy on a new WordPress site using the latest WP version 5.1, and Boldy basically works, but I can not attach slide images in the slide menu. I put the images in the Media directory, but can not attach the image. I’m thinking that Boldy ver. 2.0.5 is not fully compatible with WordPress version 5.1.
    Have you run into this, or maybe found a work-around?
    Thanks,
    Lew

    1. Lew,

      I would suggest installing the “Classic Editor” plugin and activate it. I have run into several instances where the WP 5.1 Block Editor causes issues with rendering the Page/Post content. Just an FYI… let me know if this helps. πŸ™‚

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