This theme, is not only elegant, but easy to use. Associated with the TPB plugin, it allows any users to add and manage personnal photos at breaze.

I pulled up my socks and made changes within the code to adapt theme to my wishes. Here are all the changes I’ve made through.

Code fixing

• Open short tag replaced
• All open short tag have been replaced with full tag (standard form)
  <? xxx ?> –> <?php xxx; ?>
  <?=xxxx?>  –> <?php echo xxx; ?>
• Reorder SQL statements
  Mostly for readability purposes, and maintenance.
• Rewrite <a href> dynamic clauses
  To have a proper formatting under (php) text editor, the delimiter “, initially within ‘if blocks’, has moved outside.
• blog.js, browser.js: bug fixing on panels srolling, code improvements.
• Code reorganization (new directory structure)
  All Ajax stubs are put together.
  CSS is splitted, and match the page hierarchy.
  global code reorganization.
• Archives.php
  Add the get_header() standard call.
  Image overflow bug corrected (conflict with browse-load.gif).
• Header.php
  Javascript object initialization (occured for blog.js and browser.js).
• page.php “templated” for all usage.
• Support of WordPress 2.9.2, Mootools-Core 1.2.4 and Mootools-More 1.2.4.4
• Tested on WampServer 2.0i
• Code correction to pass the HTML Validator!

Features changed

• Change Overlay panels usage (on both Home and Single pages)
  The change occurs inside index.php, I like to activate the scrollable panels upon both home and single pages.

New Features

• Keyboard support
  You can navigate with keys, open or close panels and advance or return to shots. See ‘About’ page for all keys.
• Dynamic comments content
  Comments are loaded thru AJAX, and displayed as a scollable panel. Like notes and exif panels.
• Optional Register and Login pages (Activation through the theme admin page)
  You can add to the upper menu, a link for Register and a direct link for login. Usefull if you want to open your blog for registration, and if you often change you blog configuration.
• Add tags and Taxinomy Categories. With the admin theme panel, you can select the following combination:
  → Year
  → Year + Tag
  → Year + Categories
  → Year + Tag + Categories
• Keep track of selected page, append a bold underline segment under page title (CSS+index.php).
• Footer
  The footer now details all sub-components and their release. It includes both post and comments feeds, and include the new copyright URL field.

So, you can download the modified theme here: Reflection Theme Extended (285), and see it in action there.

No wait, here the list:

SEO

• All in one SEO: Just the best plugin for all SEO purposes. Everybody use it!
• Google Analyticator: Interconnect with your Google Analytics account. It suits perfect to track your site with this Google service.
• Google XML Sitemaps with qTranslate support: Help the google robot by indexing the site. I use a qTranslate modified version of the Google XML Sitemaps.
• Enforce www. Preference: Are you www.yourdomain.com, or yourdomain.com? I’ve chosen (2). www. prefix is no more relevant nowadays.

Optimizing

• Cleanup WordPress: A very useful plugin to strip the database. It can remove all old post revisions, that are completly unusefull for a personal blog. Can help to save space on the database.

Performance

• WP Super Cache: Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.
• WP Minify: combine and compress JS and CSS files to improve page load time. Does not work on all theme; but when it does, it’s amazing!

Backuping

• WP-DBDatabase: Manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

Survey

• StatPress reloaded: No, Neo is not here . Improved real time stats for your blog. Simple and synthetic.
• WassUp: WordPress plugin to analyze your visitors traffic with real time stats, chart and a lot of chronological informations. It has sidebar Widget support to show current online visitors and other statistics.

Multilingual

• qTranslate: Adds userfriendly multilingual content support into WordPress. I think the best approach for multilingual blog.

I use many other plugins, including two of mine . But I don’t consider them as essential!

• Plugin: ‘backtype_tweeter’ support.
• Plugin: ‘Related Posts’ support. Including the CSS
• GUI: change ‘qTranslate’ flag bar position
• Fix: Author link.
• WP2.8: body_class() added in header.php

The Arras Theme 1.3.3e (370).

• body_class() function inside the BODY tag (header.php)
• automatic_feed_links(true); (functions.php)
• minor changes in style_xx.css
• Multi Sliding Panel plugin support (My 2nd plugin )

You can find here the complete archive.

Due to the famous web browser from Redmond. The best approach is to have 2 separates favicon files located at the site root directory. 1. The first favicon file (favicon.ico) is either a 16×16 or a 32×32 icon. Nowadays, all modern browser supports both size. 2. The second favicon file (favicon.gif) is a (reasonable) free size, and can be an animated GIF too! The .gif version have precedence over the .ico. So, if the browser support animated favicon, the animated will be displayed, else the static .ico will be used instead. Note that both favicon.ico and favicon.gif can be different pictures.

You can download the plugin here.

• Code has been optimized, and mostly rewritten. The theme is now compatible with WordPress 2.8 platform (2.8.1-beta1).
• Support for translation: Compatible with qTranslate plugin. The theme now includes localization for English, French and Spanish langages.
• Enhanced thumbnail support: Include a “thumbnail” and “lead image” custom fields.
• CSS localization: 2 localized CSS files are included. They adress all graphical part of the theme in English and French.
• Sidebar & widget support: Widget can now be added on the right sidebar, to extend your website functionalities.

Further description in the readme enclosed within the archive.
You can find here a complete archive of the modified theme.

The fixes:

• ‘Edit this post’: The link now, points at the post itself.
• page.php: The Author link and thumbnail are now correctly displayed, same as single post does.
• default.css. If you’ve selected ‘Pages’ for the Top Navigation, then the a background is correctly displayed under sub-menu items.
• POfile: Missing keys in default.po,
• style.css: The import URL to load the ‘default.css’ was missing a sub-directory.

The Improvements:

• Plugin: ‘qTranslate’ support. Added in the navigation bar.
• Plugin: ‘WP-mail’ support. Added in the Postbar. A fix comes by upgrading to WordPress 2.8. The internal function ‘add_menu_page’ has been fixed, and no more interfere with the current top menu.
• Plugin: ‘Tweet This’ support. Added  in the Postbar.
• Plugin: ‘TweetMeme’ support. Added in the postbar.
• Plugin: ‘Maintenance Mode’ support. Added in the header.php.
• Plugin: ‘Co-Authors’ support.
• Plugin: ‘picDonkey’ support. Added in the Author page.
• Theme: fr_FR.po. 98% Complete. 3 Keys string must remain intact (untranslated) else Arras widgets don’t work any more.
• Theme: en_US.po: Minor changes on date format.
• Theme: Highlight the selected menu item. Just change the color of the selected menu item. Help to remind where we are.
• Theme: Click on the gravatar picture now link to the ‘Author’ page.
• Theme: The posts and comments RSS feeds now follow the graphical chart.
• Theme: Add the date within the ‘Head News’ panel (on the left).
• Theme: The ‘Featured #2′ remains displayed upon navigation thru ‘Page Navi’.
• Theme: Author page. List all posts per author.
• Theme: Authors template page. Display all authors and/or co-authors.
• Theme: date & time are now well displayed using different languages.
• Theme: Add Categories Links. When you browse a single post, it display all post’ categories by links. A quick way to bounce from post to category, and vice versa.
• Theme: The ‘Navigation Menu’ now supports both Categories AND Pages! You can set under theme->options.
• Theme: Display posts by date (from a current post).
• Theme: Display author link (from a current post).
• Theme: Page.php; The author description now supports translation (qTranslate).
• Theme: The category name in the ‘News Headline’ now supports translation (qTranslate).
• Theme: The ‘Home Link’ now supports translation (qTranslate)
• Theme: Add a customized user-Orange.css, if you want a different look & feel.

Note:

• Fully support WordPress 2.8
• Take care to ‘time no response’ what sometimes occurs with ‘Twitter This’. Not 100% reliable for now.
• Don’t forget to clear the RSS2 feeds URL in the admin panel, in order to have translated RSS feeds computed by ‘qTranslate’ plugin.

You can discuss in the forum about the customization.

Scribefire Tutorial:

A great blogging tool for WordPress

Click here to view the embedded video.

The fixes are:

• ‘Edit this post’: The link now, points at the post itself.

• page.php: The Author link and thumbnail are now correctly displayed, same as single post does.

• default.css. If you’ve selected ‘Pages’ for the Top Navigation, then the a background is correctly displayed under sub-menu items.

• en_US.po (+en_US.mo compiled): Minor changes on date format.

• style.css: The import URL to load the ‘default.css’.

The Improvements:

• Add fr_FR.po (+.fr_FR.mo compiled). 98% Complete. 3 Keys string must remain intact (untranslated) else Arras widgets don’t work any more.

• Highlight the selected menu item. Just change the color of the selected menu item. Help to remind where we are.

• Add “Tweet This” in the Postbar. If you’ve installed this plugin.

• Add “WP-mail” in the Postbar. If you’ve installed this plugin.

• Add “qTranslate” flag panel in the navigation bar. If you’ve installed this plugin.

• Add Categories Links: Under single post, display all post’ categories by links. A quick way to bounce from post to category, and vice versa.

• Add Navigation Menu with both Categories AND Pages. You can set under theme->options.

• Add a customized user.css: colors changed

The solution comes from a new service BackType! This service can gather all your comments into an unique syndication. Then, you just have to use the “My Comments Elsewhere” WordPress plugin to display this stream using the included widget. That’s all!

Of course, you’re able to publish a digest message of all your comments.

So all my bookmarks, other blog publications, and many others web sources are gathered into a unique twitter syndication.

I’ve proceeded to these modifications. You can find here a patched release of the qTranslate 2.2.1 plugin.