Kickass-Squawk! Wordpress Theme Installation Notes http://kickasswebdesign.com 80% width three column centered layout with header and footer stretching full width of the content. Flanking right and left columns are fixed width, middle content column is fluid. This theme is xhtml/css valid, has been vetted by the css-discuss group, and, in its current unaltered form, has been tested and found to work in FF, O, IE6 on windoze platforms, in FF, Safari, Camino, and IE5.X on Mac, and has even been found to work in moset recent versions of Konqueror and FF on Linux. It adjusts fairly well to user-defined large font sizes. Though it's been tested pretty extensively, no guarantees or warrantees are implied and no support is offered, though if you have a problem and post on wordpress support, chances are I'll be one of the folks helping. If you change any widths or floats in the layout it is guaranteed to break- this layout is very sensitive to alterations. Things you shouldn't change unless you have a REALLY good working knowledge of css and you're also changing the images- the width of any div or float, the height of the headerwrapper and the header, the width of any column or wrapper, the width of the mainlayout box. I offer the Kickass-Squawk! WordPress theme for use under the following Creative Commons license- You are free to use this theme as long as the comments at the top of the style.css file remain unaltered, and the link back to http://kickasswebdesign.com remains at the bottom of the sidebar and is visible on your pages. You are free to alter this theme, however I am not responsible for problems you may create in doing so. css file-- I prefer having all css styles in one file and don't use embedded css, which can be hard to find and can override exterior stylesheets- this is a personal preference because it works for me. I do recognize that some people might find my method of working to be counterintuitive and not the best for them. I've heavily commented the stylesheet for that reason. You will find pretty extensive explanations for what and where things are and what they do. The file is arranged by sections, with most structural stuff and related children up top, and most wordpress related stuff and within the divs visual add-ons down bottom. Header area (header.php)-- The header image uses the font Samba! in #2b5400 on a transparent background and saved out as a gif. This font is capital letters only, and doesn't work well at small sizes. Font available here: http://www.anke-art.de/e_alle.htm Maximum dimensions of any image used as header image-- 440px wide by 75px high. Anything larger may "break" the layout. Save your image into the /images directory and simply change the image filename in the header.php file (or, conversely, save your image with the image filename I currently use, which is "squawkhead5-440.gif". Other background header graphics are from old wallpaper catalogs, and reprinted in the book "127 Authentic Art Deco Patterns" by Thomas and Darcy, Dover Press. The header is currently set up to "display" the normal header info offscreen- this is a text-replaced-by-image technique, and is somewhat questionable with the search engines, though they don't seem to penalize any of my sites for it. What this does is allow the search engines and screen readers access to the title you have displayed in a graphic. I use the javascript minmax.js which is available here: http://dev.punbb.org/file/trunk/upload/style/imports/minmax.js?rev=66 The call for this script is in the header.php file- you'll need to save a copy, upload it and make sure the path to your version of the minmax.js file is defined properly in header.php. This script allows IE to support the minwidth and minheight declaration in the stylesheet. Though this script is not completely necessary, it keeps IE from borking at small browser widths, and is highly recommended. Minheight keeps the footer from floating upward in IE. I hate that damn browser. Links areas-- The traditional "sidebar" has been broken in half. The archive part is in the #leftcol div(leftcol.php) and the rest is in the #sidebar div (sidebar.php) In leftcol I've customized the archive list so it displays the latest ten posts by title. The leftcol also contains a call inside the pullquote class for the witty text plugin, available here: http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/archives/2004/05/27/wordpress-random-witty-text-plugin/ This plugin generates random quotes. There's a text file that needs to be either built or altered that comes with the plugin, though you're welcome to use mine. I've included it in the zip file. You MUST upload it into the wp-content directory in order for it to work! The leftcol div also currently has two links at the top to home and bloghome, which presently are set to my urls, so you'll need to change them to reflect yours. If you use WP totally, you might want to delete one of these, and just link to your bloghome. The rest of the traditional sidebar info is in the actual #sidebar div (sidebar.php) This is your category list with posts linked underneath, also all your blogroll and other links, as well as your meta links and the required link to http://kickasswebdesign.com Post area-- All posts are in the #maincolumn div(index.php). Three columns and footer-- All three columns and the footer (leftcol.php, index.php, footer.php) at the bottom are contained in a div called #wrapper. Notes about my css method-- Some purists will say I have too many divs, but in order to "layer" the different background elements I need as many hooks to hang styles on as I can get. This layout uses a faux column method that puts the background image for the header or column not on the header or column div that contains content, but on the wrapper or layer before/underneath it. I also find that floats behave better when enclosed in floats-- they then don't require so much clearing and hacking for IE to work. This three column layout with any column longest is my own work, though certain methods I used to make it work were taken from many different sources. alistapart.com/articles/fauxcolumns/ comes to mind immediately, though there are many more sources upon which I depend for css information, the biggie being css-discuss.org, the best bunch of people on the face of the planet.