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Dilectio: A Smashing Wordpress Theme
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.
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!
The team here at Smashing Magazine. Mostly Sven & Vitaly.
- 337 Comments
- 1
- 2December 21st, 2007 6:38 pm
Sweetness!!! Free stuff it raining from heaven!!!!
- 3December 21st, 2007 6:38 pm
Looks great! Really good looking. Happy holidays everybody!
- 4December 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 ?
- 5December 21st, 2007 7:07 pm
fantastic :) really inspirating
- 6December 21st, 2007 7:14 pm
Holy moly… now that’s a beautiful WordPress theme!
- 7December 21st, 2007 7:23 pm
Cool!
- 8December 21st, 2007 7:37 pm
Very ugly theme, standard creation of DesignDisease. I’m getting sick of this.
- 9December 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! :)
- 10December 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?
- 11December 21st, 2007 7:47 pm
Felicitari Elenei!
- 12December 21st, 2007 7:52 pm
Nice work.
- 13December 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.
- 14December 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. - 15December 21st, 2007 9:23 pm
Definitely one of the nicest themes I’ve seen. Thanks.
- 16December 21st, 2007 9:52 pm
It’s nice, i will use it on my blog
- 17December 22nd, 2007 12:31 am
beautiful work, thanks!
- 18December 22nd, 2007 1:26 am
Wow, Smashing has really taken a trip down the drain.
- 19December 22nd, 2007 2:39 am
This is so BEAUTIFUL! Thank you!
- 20December 22nd, 2007 3:10 am
It is a nice theme! Not as nice as babawaba.com will be though! Muhahaha.
- 21December 22nd, 2007 3:49 am
gratitud, Elena y a Smashing Magazine, un gran obsequio de Navidad.
- 22December 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
- 23December 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 – http://www.niallwalsh.net/2007/11/08/stardust/
Any ideas anybody?
- 24December 22nd, 2007 7:19 am
The theme looks great, thanks.
- 25December 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.
- 26December 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
- 27December 22nd, 2007 8:28 am
I don’t like the font. but that can be arranged. thanks.
- 28December 22nd, 2007 9:20 am
really cool… i love it
- 29December 22nd, 2007 10:00 am
that is so cool.
- 30December 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!
- 31December 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
- 32December 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 wp-plugins database.
- 33December 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.
- 34December 22nd, 2007 3:48 pm
I will fix the errors and announce it here. Sorry for all the bugs. :(
- 35December 22nd, 2007 4:03 pm
wow cool theme….
- 36December 22nd, 2007 4:45 pm
I have updated the version so download it again. No comment error.
- 37December 22nd, 2007 4:48 pm
Just superb. Awesome theme. I know I’ll be shifting some of my sites to this theme.
- 38December 22nd, 2007 5:44 pm
Cool.Thx!
- 39December 22nd, 2007 8:06 pm
OMG, I just love it!!
- 40December 22nd, 2007 8:08 pm
Thanks for the quick fix… Working like a dream now!
- 41December 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
- 42December 22nd, 2007 10:31 pm
Just downloaded the update. No problems now.
Thanks a lot for a great theme.
- 43December 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?
- 44December 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: http://read.rambls.com
Thanks!
- 45December 23rd, 2007 2:07 am
O.o WOW!!! I love it!!! thank youuuu!!!!
- 46December 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.
- 47December 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
- 48December 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!
- 49December 23rd, 2007 7:55 pm
I never used WP but this theme is very nice, I like the details..very well done! Thanks!
- 50December 23rd, 2007 8:40 pm
great work! thanks…
- 51December 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 - 52December 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!
- 53December 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. - 54December 24th, 2007 6:16 am
Very very cool template , Look very nice
- 55December 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!
- 56December 24th, 2007 2:47 pm
Awesome Theme! Thank you, SM and ELENA these are a great gift for this holiday. Happy Holidays everybody!
- 57December 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
- 58December 24th, 2007 5:05 pm
i will use this theme.. very nice
- 59December 24th, 2007 6:14 pm
I get WHITE blank screen when I tried to use this theme? Any idea?
- 60December 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 - 61December 25th, 2007 3:06 am
Thank you for the early Christmas present. You can vote for Dilectio as your favorite theme on wpthemez.
- 62December 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!
- 63December 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. - 64December 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 :)
- 65December 26th, 2007 8:20 am
Nice theme. :) Cheers! Happy holidays everyone!
- 66December 27th, 2007 12:00 am
This is my first post ! Thanks for this amazing worpress theme.
- 67December 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! - 68December 29th, 2007 8:48 pm
Very nice theme the ornaments design is really looking very nice.
- 69December 29th, 2007 11:26 pm
someone port this to blogger, please!
- 70December 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.
- 71December 31st, 2007 8:47 pm
Really Cool =)
- 72January 2nd, 2008 4:35 am
I’ve ported it for Jogger and use it as my theme. Totally awesome.
- 73January 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 - 74January 2nd, 2008 6:33 pm
got it! (check my site eheh)
- 75January 3rd, 2008 2:22 am
Beatiful theme, very nice… i append this link to my webDesign blog.
- 76
- 77January 5th, 2008 12:26 am
Hi. My search form on http://coolgift-seeker.com/ is not working. Could anybody help me please?
- 78January 5th, 2008 1:08 am
i started to use this theme. it is very nice
- 79January 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.
- 80January 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 http://www.rosecantine.com and type in the word: apple.
- 81January 6th, 2008 10:06 pm
nice! downloading!
- 82January 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.
- 83January 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?
- 84January 20th, 2008 11:44 pm
Thank you it is incredible and perfecto!
- 85January 24th, 2008 6:15 am
Excelent Theme, I’ll Try it but i will change background coz it’s looking “kampungan”. Thanks
- 86January 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. - 87February 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
- 88February 10th, 2008 12:53 pm
for the search pagination to work the search form must use GET method. :D
- 89February 17th, 2008 5:06 am
i love this theme and i am using an customised version of it.
- 90February 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: 969pxI quickly tried that on slightly modified theme at http://www.shoethatfits.com, but can’t guarantee that it will not mess up alignment of various elements someplace else.
Thanks.
- 91March 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!
- 92March 17th, 2008 10:47 pm
It’s all about making the right modifications to the default theme. I’m using it for Mode Du Jour, and I’m perfectly happy with it.
- 93March 18th, 2008 9:03 am
thanks for your subject guys it is v
- 94April 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.
- 95April 18th, 2008 6:36 am
nice theme…..
- 96April 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 :) - 97April 20th, 2008 8:09 am
very beautiful!
usarei ele no meu site!
parabéns - 98April 24th, 2008 9:54 pm
This will be just perfect for my scrapbooking blog. Beautiful, gorgeous, lovely!
- 99May 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 http://hinkal.ru/tag/dagestan/
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.
- 100May 31st, 2008 11:51 pm
And this theme is NOT xhtml valid ;)
- 101June 19th, 2008 8:02 am
I’ve seen this on so many sites…
- 102June 29th, 2008 2:20 pm
excellent theme, for any uk personal debt help and advice contact lewis alexander
- 103July 23rd, 2008 12:20 pm
This is a great theme!
- 104August 1st, 2008 7:23 am
greatest theme of all time!
- 105August 7th, 2008 1:01 am
the flickr photostream not working..why?
- 106September 1st, 2008 4:51 am
Nice theme! I love it!
- 107September 13th, 2008 9:48 am
I love this theme, thank you!
- 108October 13th, 2008 7:51 am
how to configure post replay for this themes.
Thanks - 109December 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! - 110December 12th, 2008 7:06 am
Is this theme compatible with WP 2.7?
- 111December 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.
- 112January 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….
- 113February 1st, 2009 4:55 am
404 not found
Guess the theme is dead :(
- 114February 19th, 2009 2:34 am
it looks very nice, thanks.
- 115February 20th, 2009 4:38 am
The link in the post doesn’t work, but it looks like you can find the theme under:
- 116February 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!
- 117March 11th, 2009 8:37 am
I haven’t been able to download, perhaps the link not working? Any other link available please?
- 118March 28th, 2009 1:09 am
I was using this for my online bingo blog 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
- 119April 4th, 2009 12:12 am
Try their original website:
http://designdisease.com/portfolio/dilectio_wordpress_theme/
- 120April 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.
- 00
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That’s really great! The minimalist details make the theme perfect… Thanks!