In Praise of WordPress Theme Atahualpa
If you want an outstanding WordPress theme, you would be hard pressed to improve upon Atahualpa. This theme from BytesForAll.com is the most flexible I have worked with from a sample of about 30.
What I appreciate most about it is the relative ease with which you can customize the design. Atahualpa sports a very cool options panel accessible from with the WordPress administration page (see: Access Atahulpa Theme Options).
Almost any feature (if not all features) of the theme can be modified within these options panels. Though not exactly WYSWIG, it is far superior to modifying theme layout and design in the style sheet or making changes to PHP pages. So far widgets work just fine in either side panel.
I am impressed enough that I plan to make this the default theme for my blogging/web site clients. I’ll continue to report my experiences with it. I am interested to know how easily a person who is not a web-geek can pick up a few simple CSS concepts to make mroe advanced changes to the site design.
Vegas-Elvis
I like Atahualpa too, and use it on my site ( Vegas Blog ). The flexibilty is great and you can really do a lot. But have you noticed all the crazy code it adds to the top of each page? css and javascript looking stuff – several hundred lines of it. I’m a little worried that this will interfere with search engine scans and might water down the content with all the code at the top. What is your opinion on that?
Thanks
Vegas-Elvis
Posted 5-30-2009
Tim McNabb
All the extra lines of code worry me too, but when I accidentally deleted a post, a search on site:timmcnabb.com stlscooterguy allowed me to pull up a cached version of that page and re-create it using the HTML in the source.
The takeaway seems to be that Google had no trouble spidering the pages despite the extra gunk.
Posted 5-30-2009
Vegas-Elvis
FYI – I was just looking at the readme file for Atahualpa and found this bit of related info.
The actual CSS styles for Atahualpa3 are located in style.css and header.php
After you’re totally done with all your customizations, you could view the source
code of your site, cut the CSS rules from the header section, and paste them at the
bottom of style.css. That would save around 8-12 kbyte per pageview.
I don’t really understand how that would help, unless you deleted all of your theme modifications (hit the scary looking “Reset ALL theme options” button). That might mess you up for upgrades though. Hmmm
Posted 6-6-2009
Tim McNabb
We could test it out I suppose. Maybe you could comment out the line of code that grabs the CSS dynamically?
Posted 6-6-2009
Maeve
Vegas-Elvis,
I looked at your site. How did you change the background colors of the columns?
Posted 6-27-2009
Tim McNabb
Under Appearance> Atahualpa Them Options I went to “Body Text & Links” and updated the background in the “Body Style” section.
Under the “Center” button I updated the background style under the “Center Column Style” section (making it White in this case to contrast with the body background). Hope that helps!
Posted 6-27-2009
Mark
Hi, I’m brand new to wordpress and discovered the atahualpa theme. I like it. I’ve already figured a lot out, pretty intuitive after some trial and error, however, I can’t figure out how to load my header image. The default image was an image with 3 boxes. I took that out. Now I want to put in my own image. To what folder do I upload my image to and then what do I do in the atahualpa theme options panel?
Thank you.
Posted 7-10-2009
Mark
Hello, I’m trying to figure out how to add the logo images to facebook, twitter, etc. I want them in the right column. Do I need to download a widget or do I use a “text box” widget and then, somehow, get the images in? What’s the best way to proceed?
Thank you.
Mark
Posted 7-10-2009
Tim McNabb
You have to get into your theme folder on your actual web server to do this (probably the biggest thing I’d like to see updated with this theme). If you have FTP access, go to the root of your wordpress site.
If you click on the “Header” button under Atahualpa theme options, you will see instruction right at the top. Here they are from my version of the theme (It’s up to 3.4 now)
Posted 7-10-2009
Tim McNabb
I use HTML within a text widget to do this. There is probably a widget you can use to add banners, but the ones I checked out were lame.
Posted 7-10-2009
Vegas-Elvis
Hello Time McNabb, it looks like this has turned into a good discussion.
I haven’t had time to try anything new with my css yet, but I think when I do I might try to update the code that saves the config changes and make that code build a new css file. Then change the page building code to bring in the new css instead of writing all the styles into every page. I wonder why Atahualpa doesn’t do something like that? Maybe it’s harder than I think.
Have you upgraded your Atahualpa theme yet? There’s a newer version but I have never upgraded before. Any advice?
Vegas-Elvis
Posted 7-18-2009
Tim Jones
Hi there. I have begun using Atahualpa as a theme on one of my blogs (see link), and so far I love it. I’m thinking of using it for a proper site that promotes digital marketing services. Does anyone have experience using it as a CMS?
Posted 7-23-2009
Tim McNabb
I use WordPress as a content management system (CMS) for all sites for small to medium businesses. If you don’t want a blog, you can make that change in the preferences in WordPress.
On this site, the blog is not the default home page, and you can use the Parent function on pages to make sub-pages and sections.
Atahualpa is an excellent theme to use for a WordPress site where you wish to have it function like a CMS. Visit the guy’s site, and if you have 20 bucks or so to toss his way, make a donation.
Posted 7-25-2009
Tim McNabb
Vegas Elvis – I am still getting WordPress 2.8.x running. I figure I’ll do one thing at a time. That said, I am using BackUp WordPress to make a restore point before I run any major updates like a WP update.
Posted 7-25-2009