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.
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!
HL
July 23rd, 2008 12:20 pmThis is a great theme!
ferre cinq
August 1st, 2008 7:23 amgreatest theme of all time!
rumahseni
August 7th, 2008 1:01 amthe flickr photostream not working..why?
^Angel^
September 1st, 2008 4:51 amNice theme! I love it!
9000birds
September 13th, 2008 9:48 amI love this theme, thank you!
been
October 13th, 2008 7:51 amhow to configure post replay for this themes.
Thanks
Sam
December 9th, 2008 4:39 pmOh… 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!Dennis
December 12th, 2008 7:06 amIs this theme compatible with WP 2.7?
Halil
December 16th, 2008 6:32 amAt 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.
Walter
January 4th, 2009 7:56 pmDo 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….
Eva Vesper
February 1st, 2009 4:55 am404 not found
Guess the theme is dead :(
tanya
February 19th, 2009 2:34 amit looks very nice, thanks.
Fips
February 20th, 2009 4:38 amThe link in the post doesn’t work, but it looks like you can find the theme under:
http://www.designdisease.com/download-manager.php?id=6
Jeff
February 28th, 2009 8:19 pmBeautiful 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!
Carmen
March 11th, 2009 8:37 amI haven’t been able to download, perhaps the link not working? Any other link available please?
cmp
April 21st, 2009 9:09 amLove 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.
Yunus KALDIRIM
December 18th, 2009 11:47 amExcellent theme, I have been using dilectio for 2 years.Amazing :)
serhat ergün
January 2nd, 2010 12:31 ami like it but it couldnt work for buddypress subblogs with buddypress admin bar…
bojan
May 23rd, 2011 1:21 pmlink not working…any mirrors?
Adam
September 25th, 2011 1:35 amThis is just the kind of detail I was searching for. I wish I’d have discovered your web site earlier.
Gersonise
May 1st, 2012 6:41 pmDid
is good work