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Dilectio: A Smashing Wordpress Theme

By Smashing Editorial, December 21st, 2007 in Design Showcase, Freebies | 321 Comments | Forum

Update (22.12.2007): the theme had some comment errors; Elena has just fixed them. Please download the new version, you’ll find the links below.

Over the last year Elena Gafita, the creative mind behind Design Disease team, has designed a number of free WordPress themes, as the Smashing WordPress Theme we released as a present for our readers during our One-Year-Anniversary in September’07. Afterwards we’ve contacted Elena and asked if it’s possible to design another Wordpress theme for our readers. Elena agreed.

After we’ve discussed the details of the design and the main aims we wanted to achieve, Elena started to do her magic. The result is a fresh, clean, user-friendly and playful Wordpress theme “Dilectio” — a smashing Christmas present for Smashing Magazine readers. In the following, Elena describes how the design was created and what the theme has to offer.

Please notice that all images are clickable and lead to the demo-version of the theme. You’ll find the preview- and download-links in the end of the article. There you’ll also find a bonus present for our Smashing readers.

Dilectio: A Smashing WordPress Theme

Dilectio Wordpress Theme: an overview

This new theme was a quite different challenge for me, because the guys from Smashing Magazine asked something and I quote “simple, beautiful and user-friendly”. I don’t know whether I succeeded in meeting these requirements or not, but what you have in front of you is what came out of it.

Dilectio comes from the Latin Language and it means “love, solicitude, esteem”. It’s a rather atmospheric theme and to achieve this effect I started my scratch from with something that might be identified with this kind of feeling. The element I am talking about is the rounded shape that is repeating randomly, creating a beautiful and original rhythm. I’ve created “About this Blog” area just to give this identifiable element that a site needs, an area that many will remember.

Main content area and horizontal navigation.

Unordered bullets, headers and comments in the content area.

The comment area.

Being a designer, it’s not very common to me to write too much; it’s better to present what this theme offers and how one can use it.

Main Features

3 Column Theme
Widget-ready – two sidebars (both sidebars are supporting widgets, but I recommend to use the second one from the right margin.
The data of the section “About this blog” is stored in the file about-blog.php, which is located into the main theme directory (see the screenshot below).
The theme is using 5 plugins; 4 of them are integrated into functions.php, so there is no need to install them. These plugins are WP-PageNavi, Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Gravatar and FlickrRSS. You can use the last one to present your Flickr images in a Flickr Photostream (see the screenshot below).

“About this blog”-section includes an Intro, search, links to RSS-feeds.

This is how Flickr Photostream may look like.

Support queries are only answered on my blog and not in this release post. Please don’t e-mail me or contact with support requests.

Preview and Download

Blog entry regarding the release of the theme, on DesignDisease.com
Preview Dilectio Theme (DesignDisease.com)
Download Dilectio Theme (0.18 Mb)

The Dilectio Theme is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. This means that you may use it for your personal and commercial projects and you may also make any changes — just don’t remove the credits in your footer. ;-)

A Happy New Year to everyone!

Elena — Design Disease

Bonus: Dilectio Wallpaper

[Editors:] Elena has also designed a wallpaper dedicated to the Dilectio theme. We’re genuinely happy to offer a Smashing Dilectio Wallpaper for our readers as bonus of the Wordpress theme. You can also download the wallpaper (see the rescaled version below) in a .zip-package (0.1 Mb).

Dilectio Wordpress Theme: Wallpaper, .png, 1024×768, 96 KB

Thank you for your work, Elena.

Smashing holidays, folks!

Published in Design Showcase, Freebies, December 21st, 2007
Tags: showcases, themes, wordpress

1.

Muhammet Sevim (December 21st, 2007, 6:35 pm)

That’s really great! The minimalist details make the theme perfect… Thanks!
2.

Chris Vincent (December 21st, 2007, 6:38 pm)

Sweetness!!! Free stuff it raining from heaven!!!!
3.

Ozzie (December 21st, 2007, 6:38 pm)

Looks great! Really good looking. Happy holidays everybody!
4.

Sacha (December 21st, 2007, 6:53 pm)

Really nice ! I love the colors. I think a “lite” version without the swirly things would look great too. Although I love those swirly things, I even used them on my own site !

By the way, I noticed something weird. When you google for “smashing magazine”, this site doesn’t appear in the results ! Anybody else experienced this ?
5.

rzepak (December 21st, 2007, 7:07 pm)

fantastic :) really inspirating
6.

Eli (December 21st, 2007, 7:14 pm)

Holy moly… now that’s a beautiful WordPress theme!
7.

stewe (December 21st, 2007, 7:23 pm)

Cool!
8.

Kevin (December 21st, 2007, 7:37 pm)

Very ugly theme, standard creation of DesignDisease. I’m getting sick of this.
9.

Ian (December 21st, 2007, 7:39 pm)

This theme is truly gorgeous! I absolutely love it.

I noticed in Firefox, however, that when the screen is maximised, the bottom scrollbar appears. Nothing major, but one of this annoying niggles that drives an OCD addict like me insane!

Truly great theme though! :)
10.

Blogging Magazin (December 21st, 2007, 7:41 pm)

This theme looks awesome. Great christmas gift for the community.

Are you plan to offer other color schemes as well?
11.

Lucian Lature (December 21st, 2007, 7:47 pm)

Felicitari Elenei!
12.

arnaud (December 21st, 2007, 7:52 pm)

Nice work.
13.

Paul Ehrenreich (December 21st, 2007, 8:31 pm)

I really like the layout on the theme and the colors that you used. I also like how you made it clean but also have a some artsy elements to it.
14.

tux86 (December 21st, 2007, 8:55 pm)

I’m with you. I think this theme looks like all the other “wow holy s*** uber-smashing” WP themes. I’ve seen much better ones during my web experience. But thanks for this post anyways, it showed me what “smashing” means for some people ;)

Happy Holidays!
Cheers,
– tux.
15.

Shane (December 21st, 2007, 9:23 pm)

Definitely one of the nicest themes I’ve seen. Thanks.
16.

deniar (December 21st, 2007, 9:52 pm)

It’s nice, i will use it on my blog
17.

gdiaz (December 22nd, 2007, 12:31 am)

beautiful work, thanks!
18.

mikemike (December 22nd, 2007, 1:26 am)

Wow, Smashing has really taken a trip down the drain.
19.

Open English (December 22nd, 2007, 2:39 am)

This is so BEAUTIFUL! Thank you!
20.

damien (December 22nd, 2007, 3:10 am)

It is a nice theme! Not as nice as babawaba.com will be though! Muhahaha.
21.

Manuel Escamilla (December 22nd, 2007, 3:49 am)

gratitud, Elena y a Smashing Magazine, un gran obsequio de Navidad.
22.

Jon Pape (December 22nd, 2007, 4:06 am)

I keep getting the following error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function the_title_attribute() in /home/omthrus/public_html/seoul/wp-content/themes/dilectio/index.php on line 13
23.

Chatmandu (December 22nd, 2007, 7:04 am)

Really like the look of this theme…

I’m trying to use it on my site but can’t view comments posted by my users. The error i’m getting is - Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_wpuser_comment()

For an example of what I talking about see - Link [www.niallwalsh.net]

Any ideas anybody?
24.

Razvan (December 22nd, 2007, 7:19 am)

The theme looks great, thanks.
25.

Mike Panic (December 22nd, 2007, 7:40 am)

It’s nice, but such a wide theme that has such a narrow area for content is a bit of a waste in my eyes. Great graphics though.
26.

ilovegames (December 22nd, 2007, 7:55 am)

Seems great! But I met the same situation like “Chatmandu” ,the 23rd upper.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_wpuser_comment() in /home/……./wp-content/themes/dilectio/comments.php on line 32
27.

daustralala (December 22nd, 2007, 8:28 am)

I don’t like the font. but that can be arranged. thanks.
28.

Giovanni (December 22nd, 2007, 9:20 am)

really cool… i love it
29.

Sir Pavlow (December 22nd, 2007, 10:00 am)

that is so cool.
30.

Dale Cruse (December 22nd, 2007, 10:51 am)

I’m having the same problems with comments that others have reported.

Also, the descriptions says, “The data of the section “About this blog” is stored in the file about-blog.php, which is located into the main theme directory (see the screenshot below).” There is no about-blog.php file. That info is editable in sidebar.php

This theme looks terrific but feels like it’s about 99% baked.

Thanks!
31.

Matthew (December 22nd, 2007, 11:39 am)

Could someone show me the code and where to place so that I can add an image to the top of the theme…in the header.

Thanks,

Matthew
32.

Ian Wootten (December 22nd, 2007, 11:53 am)

I too was impressed with the look of this theme until I found that my comments were getting all screwed up when I tried to make use of it. It looks like another plugin, “Official Comments” by Brett Taylor is also in use here. Bretts “Inner Geek” site seems to be down at the moment, but I believe you can still get hold of the plugin via the Link [wp-plugins.net].
33.

Richard Bushnell (December 22nd, 2007, 3:28 pm)

Superb theme! I love it.

I’m having the same problems though - the post page is broken because of the is_wpuser_comments bug, and about-blog.php is missing.

Thanks.
34.

Elena (December 22nd, 2007, 3:48 pm)

I will fix the errors and announce it here. Sorry for all the bugs. :(
35.

workingondreams (December 22nd, 2007, 4:03 pm)

wow cool theme….
36.

Elena (December 22nd, 2007, 4:45 pm)

I have updated the version so download it again. No comment error.
37.

Brajeshwar (December 22nd, 2007, 4:48 pm)

Just superb. Awesome theme. I know I’ll be shifting some of my sites to this theme.
38.

Van (December 22nd, 2007, 5:44 pm)

Cool.Thx!
39.

Fath (December 22nd, 2007, 8:06 pm)

OMG, I just love it!!
40.

Chatmandu (December 22nd, 2007, 8:08 pm)

Thanks for the quick fix… Working like a dream now!
41.

Connie (December 22nd, 2007, 10:17 pm)

just absolutely kitschy

a theme for people who have nothing to say but need decoration

and one hint: don’t link the screenshot of the commentform with that design-disease, people who want to comment mix that up and are directed there all the time
42.

Richard Bushnell (December 22nd, 2007, 10:31 pm)

Just downloaded the update. No problems now.

Thanks a lot for a great theme.
43.

Jeff (December 22nd, 2007, 11:19 pm)

I love this theme. My only issue is with the FlickrRSS. The one in in the demo & screenshot is not what is showing up on my page. Any ideas to make the images smaller so I can show the background behind them?
44.

Jeff (December 22nd, 2007, 11:20 pm)

I love this theme. My only issue is with the FlickrRSS. The one in in the demo & screenshot is not what is showing up on my page. Any ideas to make the images smaller so I can show the background behind them?

Site: Link [read.rambls.com]

Thanks!
45.

tAlpA (December 23rd, 2007, 2:07 am)

O.o WOW!!! I love it!!! thank youuuu!!!!
46.

zoeg (December 23rd, 2007, 3:17 am)

Pretty theme but it kills WP when I try to activate it. I get {url}/wp-admin/themes.php?activated=true in my address bar and then nothing. No admin panel, no site. Just blank. I have to remove the folder from the /themes/ directory to get my site to function. Bummer.
47.

Kunal (December 23rd, 2007, 4:33 am)

Now i know Christmas is here !!!

Thank you santa :P for the amazing free bies

i will be a good boy next year too :D
48.

Creative (December 23rd, 2007, 5:44 am)

Thank for the early present!

I specially like how functional the layout is — gets everything right up top without wasting space (column width).

Great stuff!
49.

David (December 23rd, 2007, 7:55 pm)

I never used WP but this theme is very nice, I like the details..very well done! Thanks!
50.

Burak Emre (December 23rd, 2007, 8:40 pm)

great work! thanks…
51.

7h30ry (December 23rd, 2007, 10:36 pm)

Thanks for the Theme! I really like it!

I`ve found a (little) Bug and fixed it and here is my (little) present to all who have the same problem!
The Message: “Call to undefined function: is_wpuser_comment()” can be fixed by replacing a code-snippet in the comments.php.

It worked fine for now by replacing
” to
52.

7h30ry (December 23rd, 2007, 11:08 pm)

Sorry for the last Post!
I didn`t saw that HTML is not allowed. So here is my second try:

It worked fine for now by replacing the class-attribute in the li-Tag!
Just replace the PHP-Code of the class-attribute with Comments (class=Comments)!
">

Hope this was helpful!
53.

Avasilcai Daniel (December 23rd, 2007, 11:39 pm)

I agree, it’s beautiful but try increase the text size, some parts of the design will break.
I believe in functionality not only in beauty. Design must be flexible. We are not tacking about print here where you have fixed units, on the web units can change, a good design must resist to small changes like increasing the text size.
54.

Kez6 (December 24th, 2007, 6:16 am)

Very very cool template , Look very nice
55.

Nikka (December 24th, 2007, 9:38 am)

Can someone help me?

I haven’t got the slightest idea how to change my wordpress theme to this.

Thanks!
56.

Kate (December 24th, 2007, 2:47 pm)

Awesome Theme! Thank you, SM and ELENA these are a great gift for this holiday. Happy Holidays everybody!
57.

Ara (December 24th, 2007, 4:53 pm)

Nice looking theme…. but it did not work at all…. kept getting php errors… couldnt even run admin section cuz it ruined everything had to log in through ftp to get rid of the damn thing.

i would expect a big blog like this to make sure a theme works before it gives it out
58.

ibnoe (December 24th, 2007, 5:05 pm)

i will use this theme.. very nice
59.

madfozi (December 24th, 2007, 6:14 pm)

I get WHITE blank screen when I tried to use this theme? Any idea?
60.

Mike (December 25th, 2007, 1:10 am)

Theme looks very good!

there is a tiny horizontal scroll for 1024px screen resolution. It is a bug I assume.

other than that, looking great!

Thanks,
Mike
61.

skarld (December 25th, 2007, 3:06 am)

Thank you for the early Christmas present. You can vote for Dilectio as your favorite theme on Link [wpthemez.com].
62.

Michael (December 25th, 2007, 9:09 am)

I already used it on my site and I translated it into German. So if anyone is interested… feel free to contact me.

@ Elena: Could you make the PSD-Files available so that I can change the “Search”-image to present the word “search” in German?

Another bug: In the search-form there should be written something, but there isn’t!
63.

ehsan (December 25th, 2007, 5:44 pm)

very nice theme. just it seems that it’s been designed for screen with higher resolution than 1024 pixels.
Anyway, Merry Christmas guys.
64.

celmaihotz (December 25th, 2007, 10:06 pm)

It`s nice, but not that nice to be worth this post on smashing magazine. This theme is for 2-3 weeks only, after that is boring :)
65.

Prasanth (December 26th, 2007, 8:20 am)

Nice theme. :) Cheers! Happy holidays everyone!
66.

Tom (December 27th, 2007, 12:00 am)

This is my first post ! Thanks for this amazing worpress theme.

Link [perso.aladora.com]
67.

Ivan (December 28th, 2007, 5:24 pm)

Congratulations for this amazing year, and thanks for all your excellent work, this is my day-to-day-first-visit site!
My best wishes for all the team behind Smashing!
68.

Keral Patel (December 29th, 2007, 8:48 pm)

Very nice theme the ornaments design is really looking very nice.
69.

Suraj Sharma (December 29th, 2007, 11:26 pm)

someone port this to blogger, please!
70.

Kim (December 30th, 2007, 2:06 am)

Love it! It’s obvious that a lot of time and thought went into this design. I looks like every detail was thoroughly pondered. The trebuchet font has become popular and I love the way it makes sites look stylized! Beautiful! I can’t wait to use it on one of my sites.
71.

Tayzar (December 31st, 2007, 8:47 pm)

Really Cool =)
72.

plejeru (January 2nd, 2008, 4:35 am)

I’ve ported it for Jogger and use it as my theme. Totally awesome.
73.

khairul (January 2nd, 2008, 4:50 am)

Hi there,
I got this error “Fatal error: Cannot redeclare wp_pagenavi() (previously declared in /home/khaiicom/public_html/wp-content/plugins/pagenavi/pagenavi.php:58) in /home/khaiicom/public_html/wp-content/themes/dilectio/functions.php on line 59″

when using few plugins(pagenavi , gavatar and recent comment ) in this theme.Others theme seem fine with those plugins.

dload latest ver of the theme and plugins, wordpress using 2.3.2
thanks in advance
74.

dan (January 2nd, 2008, 6:33 pm)

got it! (check my site eheh)
75.

imaginepaolo (January 3rd, 2008, 2:22 am)

Beatiful theme, very nice… i append this link to my webDesign blog.
76.

Jackys (January 3rd, 2008, 3:03 am)

this is the Link [www.jackbook.com]
77.

Gift Seeker (January 5th, 2008, 12:26 am)

Hi. My search form on Link [coolgift-seeker.com] is not working. Could anybody help me please?
78.

selfaccess (January 5th, 2008, 1:08 am)

i started to use this theme. it is very nice
79.

oyu (January 5th, 2008, 9:01 am)

It’s nice, but such a wide theme that has such a narrow area for content is a bit of a waste in my eyes. Great graphics though.
80.

Esme Vos (January 6th, 2008, 5:27 am)

Search Results Problem:

I have a problem similar to Gift Seeker. When I enter a word in the Search box and the search page shows up, when you click on page 2 or 3 or 4, it sends you back to an Index page. You do not get the second, third or fourth page with search results.

Try it. Go to Link [www.rosecantine.com] and type in the word: apple.
81.

nadie007 (January 6th, 2008, 10:06 pm)

nice! downloading!
82.

Yana (January 10th, 2008, 3:11 am)

The theme is wonderful, thank you for such a great work. I will use it on of my future projects.
83.

rappel (January 15th, 2008, 10:07 am)

I get an error when I select the theme:

there is nothing to see - only white sites in my blog and also in the admin interface. I must delete the theme from my webspace, then I can select another one…

I have the same problem with the smashing theme… :-(

What can I do?
84.

DivaGeek (January 20th, 2008, 11:44 pm)

Thank you it is incredible and perfecto!
85.

Dhyar Irdiansyah (January 24th, 2008, 6:15 am)

Excelent Theme, I’ll Try it but i will change background coz it’s looking “kampungan”. Thanks
86.

DivaGeek (January 26th, 2008, 8:13 am)

I tired to use this theme but it messed up my feeds…said there was an extra space somewhere but I could not find it.
When using this theme my feeds were unavaibale, switched to another theme and they were back online. Strange and lame because I really like this theme.
87.

Emanuel (February 8th, 2008, 6:38 am)

maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seems to me that the site blogday.org was the inspiration for this theme
88.

icehero (February 10th, 2008, 12:53 pm)

for the search pagination to work the search form must use GET method. :D
89.

yusu (February 17th, 2008, 5:06 am)

i love this theme and i am using an customised version of it.
90.

Sergey Morozov (February 28th, 2008, 3:38 pm)

You can try to adjust following settings in wp-content\themes\dilectio\style.css:

#bgcontainer - width: 999px
.Header - width: 999px
.CON - width: 969px
.Footer - width: 969px

I quickly tried that on slightly modified theme at Link [www.shoethatfits.com], but can’t guarantee that it will not mess up alignment of various elements someplace else.

Thanks.
91.

珞珞 (March 2nd, 2008, 2:16 am)

It’s the greast theme that I’ve used and I like it very much.Thank you for your great work!
92.

Mode Girl (March 17th, 2008, 10:47 pm)

It’s all about making the right modifications to the default theme. I’m using it for Link [www.modedujour.com], and I’m perfectly happy with it.
93.

Kurye (March 18th, 2008, 9:03 am)

thanks for your subject guys it is v
94.

notyournews (April 12th, 2008, 11:26 am)

To anyone that wants to fix the horizontal bottom scroll bar issue:

Open styles.css, change the width for .Header and .Footer to 975px.
95.

fitra (April 18th, 2008, 6:36 am)

nice theme…..
96.

Hweiss (April 20th, 2008, 2:58 am)

Can anyone please tell me how to make this switch to my old theme when accessed through Internet Explorer 6?
Thanks :)
97.

leo fernandes (April 20th, 2008, 8:09 am)

very beautiful!
usarei ele no meu site!
parabéns
98.

Rachael (April 24th, 2008, 9:54 pm)

This will be just perfect for my scrapbooking blog. Beautiful, gorgeous, lovely!
99.

Zyama (May 13th, 2008, 5:25 am)

Hello, thanx for great theme.

There is small bug: there is no pagination appears after pressing any tag. It lists only 10 (or defined number) of related posts even if there are much more posts fot this tag.

For example Link [hinkal.ru]
There are 24 posts for tag “daghestan” at the moment but shows only 10 of them. Is there any idea how to fix this?

Thanks a lot.
100.

keepitmassive (May 31st, 2008, 11:51 pm)

And this theme is NOT xhtml valid ;)
101.

UMPCWAG.com (June 19th, 2008, 8:02 am)

I’ve seen this on so many sites…
102.

debt help (June 29th, 2008, 2:20 pm)

excellent theme, for any uk personal debt help and advice contact lewis alexander
103.

HL (July 23rd, 2008, 12:20 pm)

This is a great theme!
104.

ferre cinq (August 1st, 2008, 7:23 am)

greatest theme of all time!
105.

rumahseni (August 7th, 2008, 1:01 am)

the flickr photostream not working..why?
106.

^Angel^ (September 1st, 2008, 4:51 am)

Nice theme! I love it!
107.

9000birds (September 13th, 2008, 9:48 am)

I love this theme, thank you!
108.

been (October 13th, 2008, 7:51 am)

how to configure post replay for this themes.
Thanks
109.

Sam (December 9th, 2008, 4:39 pm)

Oh… I got it! Here’s how you enable the flickr goodness in the sidebar: download the flickrRSS plugin, install and activate it (duh!), then go to its setup page. There’s a section called HTML Wrapper. Put (line item) in the before field and (close line item) in the after. Save. Reload the blog. Rejoice!
110.

Dennis (December 12th, 2008, 7:06 am)

Is this theme compatible with WP 2.7?
111.

Halil (December 16th, 2008, 6:32 am)

At first testing it’s compatible with WP 2.7.

Only threaded comments are not supported. And the comments are based on the gravatars2 plugin instead of the new native gravatar functions.
112.

Walter (January 4th, 2009, 7:56 pm)

Do not order from Design Disease!!! - they owe me projects for months and they simply do not communicate, or refund payment or nothing at all. Buyer beware!! Now, going to report them to Better Business Bureau and other sites….
113.

Eva Vesper (February 1st, 2009, 4:55 am)

404 not found

Guess the theme is dead :(
114.

tanya (February 19th, 2009, 2:34 am)

it looks very nice, thanks.
115.

Fips (February 20th, 2009, 4:38 am)

The link in the post doesn’t work, but it looks like you can find the theme under:

Link [www.designdisease.com]
116.

Jeff (February 28th, 2009, 8:19 pm)

Beautiful theme.. The only part that really bugs me is the way the 2 tabs (recent comments, recent articles) work. In IE, it jumps to the top of the page by clicking either. If your ‘About’ section is long at all (as mine is), it completely takes the reader away from where they were reading. Many people will lose interest and leave your page if they have to scroll back down and search for where they were!
117.

Carmen (March 11th, 2009, 8:37 am)

I haven’t been able to download, perhaps the link not working? Any other link available please?
118.

Lisa (March 28th, 2009, 1:09 am)

I was using this for my Link [thebingofinder.co.uk] and then all of a sudden it completely seized up.

Gonna try to download it and start again…Just hope it doesn’t happen again
119.

z (April 4th, 2009, 12:12 am)

Try their original website:

Link [designdisease.com]
120.

cmp (April 21st, 2009, 9:09 am)

Love this theme, but after installing there are problems with pictures embeded, text always wraps no matter how many spaces, breaks, etc. are coded in the post. And, it does not work well AT ALL with IE. Does not even line up correctly! Sorry I spent so much time with it.