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 B0ldy, 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. 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.
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
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.
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/
Thank you the home boxes dilemma was doing my head in. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You
The Home Boxes were probably the most frustrating aspect about this WP Theme. Other than that particular headache… it’s a pretty snazzy theme.
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.
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.
Glad I could help.
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.
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.
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…
I am a VERY flaky blogger and move from WP theme to WP theme with the attention span of a gnat.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
[...] Site5 was chosen, the documentation was flaky but had a good active support forum and a review by Dennis Lambing helped through the ‘not-so-easy’ [...]
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
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.
you saved my night. Thank you
[...] WordPress 3 and the Boldy theme – An excellent blog post on the Boldy Theme, this one from DennisLambing.com [...]
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
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,
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”.
At first boldy seemed to be the perfect theme. When I´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?
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
I noticed that there are some remaining problems with /home/ and /homepage/…
You getting everything figured out?
~Dennis
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.
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.
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.
Thank you very much sir, you are a life saver!
You are welcome!
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!
You are more than welcome…
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
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.
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!
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.
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?
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!
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.
Let me know what you figure out. I’ll love to hear what you learn. 
Thanks for taking the time to look this over. Much Appreciated!
No problem…