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Last week, Gawker Media launch a full-blown re-design to all their blogs including Lifehacker and Gizmodo. Rather than going for a traditional post-above-post blog layout, their designers tried to reinvent the wheel. Although the new layout has received plenty of criticism from readers, I actually found the revamp quite refreshing. A handful of bugs, some compatibility issues, and slow speeds are partially to blame, but I’m sure developers are working to make improvements quickly as possible.
I was a little bored and had some free time on my hand this weekend, so I decided to code an equivalent theme for WordPress users. Within about six hours and a few breaks, I had a nearly perfect replica without having to look at a line of their code. Like the original, my template features a two-pane interface with a full article on the left and a list of scrollable recent posts on the right. With a little jQuery magic, I managed to even get all the instant loading features working without having to force users to refresh pages. I also threw in support for comments and search.
Although I scrapped most of the code together rather quickly, I managed to get it working with the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari. Be warned about bugs since this is only my second venture into building a website aside from designing Skatter Tech 3.0 late last year. I released this WordPress template, which I appropriately named Qawker, into the official theme directory. My code is entirely open source, so feel free to make changes or improvements.
Links: Qawker Demo
Download: qawker.zip (v0.1.6)
Notice: I submitted Qawker to the official WordPress Themes Directory and it is awaiting approval.
Quick update to everyone. The biggest challenge has been figuring out the URL updates to the address bar. I learned a lot at a recent HTML5 session at Google I/O earlier this week. It turns out a new “history API” makes that possible without sacrificing any features. Unfortunately, not all browsers are compatible. Only a handful of the most recent ones will support it. I’m trying to come up with a backwards compatible solution. Alienating too many browsers is never a good idea.
Hey Sahas,
Any chance of you creating the Old version of Gawker? Have been looking for a similar theme everywher but cannot find one.
Sorry, nope.
Great job on the theme, using it for my site now.
However anything that is loaded from the sitebar and requires javascript to execute doesn’t seem to work.
Most importantly recaptcha, facebook comments. Only stuff in iframes get loaded. I’ve tried hacking the theme straight (I’m a php dev) and pretty much the only way to make the javascript stuff come out is to go to the permalink (and reload the page). Still trying to figure out how to get non-iframe stuff to execute :)
You could go into my Javascript and add calls for the functions of the scripts you are trying to run after a new page loads.
When I click on the links on the sidebar, the post gets loaded on the single.php but it doesn’t renders the Facebook Like button for that post. This works only when the user clicks on the post link directly from the home page. How do I fix this?
The comments box plugin from facebook doesn’t load either on the single.php when user clicks post link from the sidebar.
Sahas great job, really.
Can you explain why the images are not showing on the main site?
Is it possible to set a “featured video” instead of a image?
Hello, I LOVE the theme… Do you happen to have the PSD or font name for the logo? I think the default logo is awesome, I would like mine to look exactly like that. A PSD would be greatly appreciated.
-thanks
I think I may have replied to someone else with the same message, but it’s along the lines of this:
I made this theme rather quickly and initially had no intent on long-term.
Therefore, I never even bothered to save the PSD and simply exported a PNG.
Hi Sahas, May I know when will we get final version with Adsense support and feature video support..
It does not look as though Adsense support is possible at this time since Google specifically prevents dynamic loading to prevent abuse.
I honestly have no timeline for final release at this point as my work schedule is currently 7 days a week.
Hi Sahas, first many thanks for your theme.. But without adsense support we are unable to use it..Could you please add this?Thanks!
I have Qawker installed on two wordpress blogs, on the first one it works perfectly, but on the other I’m facing a problem with the “Load more stories”-it doesn’t load the next posts after the first ten…but it repeat infinitely the first ten…Firstly “load more stories” didn’t do anything, but after replacing the .hataccess file with the one from the the “no problem” blog of mine, it just changed to repeating the first ten posts. What can I do and what is to be done?, help me!I’m using Qawker on lapiatza(dot)co(dot)cc(and it works fine) and on lipova(dot)unlimitedtree(dot)com(and it doesn’t work).
Why does it repeat the firs 10 posts? look here: http nemaipomenit unlimitedtree com
Switch to Month and Name Permalinks in the WordPress settings. You should be fine!
GOD BLESS YOU! YOU ARE A GENIOUS
How can I make embeds(youtube videos, and others) work on Home page? And how can I make a second page button like “about”? And what sharing/bookmark buttons plugin do you recommend me? And so what other plugins are to fit this theme?
Thank you so much! Your work is great as the theme is!
Embed feature for the homepage or header item is not yet available. You would need to add that feature by yourself by adding a little code. Custom fields should help make that possible. I am not really sure which plugins will or will not work. I would just suggest testing one by one. If something does not work right, you will know. Just don’t activate too many at once or you will have a hard time tracking down the problematic one if something goes wrong.
P.S. I did a little bit of HTML5 History API development recently. I have not yet released the source, but you can actually try the Qawker theme with URLS changing in the address bar on the demo website! Yes, it almost works! Still a few bugs to work out though.
Sahas, I just wanted to thank you for continuing to develop this theme in addition to your other work. I’m looking forward to watching it develop and hoping to use it for a site that will launch in early 2012.
No promises just yet, but I will try my best. Hopefully will have a chance to re-skin it as well to reflect the new look of the Gawker Media network blogs. I also met with some WordPress Core Developers at WordCamp SF 2011 who said they should be able to help me get it pushed through the theme approval process.
If the changing URL works with the demo, why don’t you actualize the download link to the new updated version. Please post the changing url feature, this would be a remedy for all those who are having problems with bookmark buttons, which aren’t loading on accessing. Could you please update the theme with the url feature working on the demo site?!
Is the URL changing in the address bar feature available in the 0.2.0 theme pack? If not, please post the code, to add, and modify the actual theme! And if you could give me some advices with the embed feature, what custom fields should I use.
Thank you!
Mike — There are still several bugs with the URL changing feature not to mention several browsers are still lacking support. When I have a chance to work out some of the critical bugs, I will definitely release it. After all, I am making it for you folks. I don’t use the Qawker theme myself.
The URL changing feature would not solve the problems people are having using bookmark buttons. The URL changes “virtually” thanks to the push state feature of the HTML 5 History API. The page actually never refreshes.
You would need to write a custom function to display an oEmbed video when users paste a compatible URL into a custom field. This is something that is on my “todo list”.
Anyways, before anyone asks. I once again would like to say I have no timeline for when I will have a chance to release a more polished version.
Salas, I just want to say I understand your restrictions and am not expecting updates by any particular timeline. Thanks for your work!
Thanks for great Theme Sahas.
How can i add the widgets to right side bar, instead bottom? I want to add some features just like search and tag cloud under the last most recent post at right and not only at the bottom of the page.
Regards
Great theme. nice,neat and beautiful. One question — How come URL updates to the address bar is happening on the demo site
That feature is work in progress. I’ll make it available on the download as soon as I work out some bugs!
It passed a lot of time and you still didn’t post for download the theme with URL changing feature. When it will be available? Or specify what line code should it be added in the CSS stylesheet or main index file. Cause I think there is a conflict between two jquery positions in the index.
Anyway we all expect a little help, and more than that we all expect you to post the demo to download.
Thanks!
Hey Sahas,
nice work, I love this theme, just started recently to have a blog and I decided to take your Theme, Thanks for that.
I see that many people asking the same questions, maybe it would help if you update your article with the top ten things what are missing on this Theme.
Thanks again for the hard work
Hey,
I just downloaded this theme, great job by the way. Anyway I have a few questions which mainly have to do with advertisements, the first is: Can I add ads inside posts, above and below, and how? Also can I add Widgets of my choice to the right sidebar.
Thanks again, great theme,
Nicholas Griffin
Anything is possible. The theme does not specifically include an option for advertisements, but it is something you can do yourself. There are several advertising plugins available. You can also edit the theme and add your advertisement code manually.
Also I forgot to add this onto the last message but is there any way I can show more than 4 posts on the page too
Looks like you got the URL issue sorted out in the demo! Any news on that front? Would love to hear how you did it. Thanks!
Me too!
Hey I just wanted to know is there any way to add pagination to the home page, so you can view more than the specified amont of posts, could someone help me out with some codings, would be much appriacted
BTW by pagination I page navigation sorry lol, also I am having a few troubles uploading a header image I have alrready made it etc, and upload it as a PNG but then WordPress will change it to a JPEG file making to transparent background black, any help please
I noticed that on the demo the “Qawker” icon and the links on the homepage seem to load content via jQuery, but on my install the full page refreshes when these links are clicked. Is there an easy way to make every link load content via jQuery, or will I have to wait for a future release?
BTW, thanks for creating such a great template!
Enable “month and name” Permalinks in the settings. That should do the trick.
I just installed the theme, love it. Big problem is that when I want to add a post it just doesn’t format it correctly. The text doesn’t show up as in the text editor, the picture is not where it should be. Not sure if I’m doing something wrong or whats going on here.
Also can I use ad sense on this theme?
Thanks
You can use adsense you just have to code it in yourself, I did it with this theme on my site http://technutty.co.uk by editing the header, footer, page and sidebar files and coping the adsendse code where i wanted the adverts.
Since this is an open source theme, perhaps a developer reading this might fix the few issues, add in ad-banner support, and put this theme for sale on themeforest.net. I’d bet you’d sell quite a few at $30 each. I know I’d buy a copy immediately if it fixed the YouTube video embedding issues and provided easy solutions for advertisements.
Could you post the updated version with the URL changing? I am using your theme for a long time, and waiting for you to post it. Please post the updated version. Because I am afraid of losing my patience and change theme with another one.
Thank you.
I agree with you, doesn’t seem to be kept updated though if the theme had the url changing feature it would be almost perfect for me as most of the other issuers I have fixed myself, but this one I simply dont know how to , if he could post some help or even a download it would be great.
What not just take a look at the javascript code (using Firebug or view source) and then update your own version of the theme. Assuming of course that it’s been a javascript rather PHP hack that was applied to the demo site.