Another 3-Column WordPress Theme : Mike Little’s Journalized

Mike Little’s not-quite-so-daily thoughts, babblings, and random synapse firings!

A collection of random thoughts and links. Nothing too exciting. ;-) -- Mike Little

Monday, 14 March 2005

Another 3-Column WordPress Theme

by mike @ 00:40. Filed under

Whilst I’m in the mood, here is another three-column theme for wordpress. This one is ‘Journalized Sand’ and is almost the same layout as Journalized Blue.

Clicking the thumbnail below will show you a full size screen shot of the theme in action.

You can download the files from here: journalized-sand-theme-1.0.2.tar.gz (tar ball for unix or similar users) or journalized-sand-theme-1.0.2.zip (zip file for Windows users).

To install simply expand the archive on your local machine. You should have a directory called ‘journalized-sand’. Upload the directory and the files within it to your wp-content/themes folder on your server. Login to your blog’s administration pages and go to the Presentation page. The new theme should be listed there ready for you to select. If not check the permissions on your uploaded files.

You will need to tweak it a little. Not least to change the link categories in the calls to wp_get_links().
Enjoy! The theme is licensed under the GPL. So you may modify it and distribute it. Please let me know if you use it, modify it, etc. If you have any questions leave a comment on this post with your question. Comments are moderated so you won’t see your comment immediately.

Update: The permanent home of this theme is now http://zed1.com/journalized/themes/journalized-sand

[link]

The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://zed1.com/journalized/archives/2005/03/14/another-3-column-wordpress-theme/trackback/

90 Responses to “Another 3-Column WordPress Theme”

Alex Says:
March 14th, 2005 at 02:51
Awesome, thanks Mike.
Mysk Says:
March 14th, 2005 at 05:44
Simply dropping a note here to say that I like the look of the new 3 colum theme. There’s something about the simplicity and colors that I appreciate. My first impression was a positive one.

After looking about a bit the second impression is, “Where are the Pages?”. It doesn’t look like there’s an area in the menus for it, but, the design seems to support enough room for simple changes.

G’day,
~Mysk
mike Says:
March 14th, 2005 at 10:31
Hi Mysk,
The pages are in the internal links box near the top of the left column.
Thanks for your compliments.

Mike
Ruby Says:
March 14th, 2005 at 13:54
This is very nice. It gets a lot of information in without feeling crowded or cluttered. You should add it to the theme contest over at AlexKing.org.
mike Says:
March 14th, 2005 at 16:29
Hi Ruby,
Thanks for your compliments. I have sent it over to Alex.
He should be including it in the contest.

Mike
Blogging Pro » Blog Archive » WordPress Theme: Journalized Sand Says:
March 15th, 2005 at 00:00
[…] WordPress Theme: Journalized Sand Three-Column WordPress template or theme called Journalized Sand. Posted by John in WordPress Themes and […]
John Hicks Says:
March 15th, 2005 at 00:08
Great theme, Mike. I just installed the sand version on a new, and experimental, WordPress, blog that’s not pubic yet and may never be. I’m using the Blogger and Movable Type blog engines on the family Blue Heron site. Since the philosophy and attitude of the Word Press folks appealed to me, I put it up in a folder on the web server. The experience of installing it was slick and clear. And I’m also impressed by the ease of changing themes. If I ever get around to re-organizing the website, I think I’ll use WordPress to run it.
Thanks.
Roy Schestowitz Says:
March 15th, 2005 at 03:16
Ruby:

It gets a lot of information in without feeling crowded or cluttered

I cannot say that I agree…
Johan Adler Says:
March 16th, 2005 at 10:22
Nice! Looks like you basically made the very theme I was looking for. Good three column design, low on graphics, readable.

I installed it five minutes ago, and the one thing I noticed on the negative side is that you forgot to call the wp_footer stuff. (I keep some important links there.) I just added the <?php do_action('wp_footer'); ?> to index.php to get it right.
mike Says:
March 16th, 2005 at 12:55
Hi Johan,
I’m glad you like the theme. It was originally a pre-1.5 theme (in fact it came from my b2 days), so it didn’t have that call in there. I’ll update it the next time I get a chance.
Thanks,
Mike
jimmy Says:
March 18th, 2005 at 02:12
hi, mike, great theme, im new to the blog world. anyways, i decided to use yours. my question is this, in FireFox it looks great, but in IE the center boxes overlapp all the righ column boxes, how do i correct this?

thanks for your time.

jimmy.
Creford Says:
March 18th, 2005 at 07:06
Nice design! Mike, how long did you design for it?
I feel it’s also difficult to design the page that includes much information on the page.
Really nice!
mike Says:
March 18th, 2005 at 08:52
Jimmy,
I can see the effect you see. I’ll have a look at it later today.

Mike
mike Says:
March 18th, 2005 at 13:05
Jimmy,
I’ve discovered what is wrong. You site meter image is forcing the right hand column to be too wide. If you remove or reduce the width of that image the problem goes away.

Mike
jimmy Says:
March 22nd, 2005 at 02:49
hey, mike thanks. your advice corrected my problem. youre great.
How To Blog Says:
March 22nd, 2005 at 20:03
Comprehensive list of 130 WordPress 1.5 Themes / Templates available for download

(Last updated: 3/23/05
PigPog Blog » Blog Archive » PigPog’s New Colours Says:
March 22nd, 2005 at 22:39
[…] ke the colours match everywhere, and we decided to match the one’s from Mike’s excellent theme that we’re using in WordPress. All seems […]
J Says:
March 23rd, 2005 at 20:34
Hi! I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks for Journalized Sand! I make my living as a typesetter and pre-press production person, and I wanted a layout that was “newspaperish” in keeping with my print publishing bent. Sand was just right and it was also in colors that I liked, so I loaded it up. I made a few moves of items but basically I’ll keep it just the same–it’s the blogging I’m interested in doing and not messing around with the layout and such. Of course now that I’ve been tweaking at it, I haven’t actually written anything yet. :/ Keep up the good work and thanks for making exactly what I was looking for.
mike Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 01:44
J,
I’m very glad you like the theme. Good luck with your site.
Mike
david Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 02:56
Great design — my favorite WP 1.5 Theme — very much appreciated!
mike Says:
March 24th, 2005 at 23:52
Update: A minor update to the zip and tarball files. (I added a link in the copyright notice).
peninah Says:
March 30th, 2005 at 14:41
very nice. already doing some tweaking. this is exactly what i was looking for. thank you! cheers.
Edwin Says:
April 14th, 2005 at 11:18
Thanks, Finally a theme I really like. Everything nicely grouped. Maybe I will install the other Journalized themes too.
mike Says:
April 14th, 2005 at 12:00
Great Edwin! I’m really glad you like it.
Tim Says:
April 20th, 2005 at 05:43
Hey Mike,
Thanks so much for the hard work that I’m guessing went into designing these themes. They’re unique, clean, and they look great!

I’m a kind of a dummy and was at a loss as to how to create more space between paragraphs in the content area. Any advice would be greatl appreciated.

Cheers…
Tom Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 19:10
How do you insert space between the columnns for your three-column theme? Is it with the “Rap” in the CSSS? Or somewhere else? Thanks for your response.
mike Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 22:33
Hi Tom,
You need to adjust the margins of the h2, headerblock, centreblock, and navigation rules.

Mike
mediaguru @ http://www.hookedongolfblog.com Says:
April 26th, 2005 at 14:49
JS was my first and only choice when I swtiched from blogger to wordpress. I’ve made a greenish gray theme out of it and my views like it MUCH better.

I do have an issue with photos though. The blocks in the center don’t seem “smart” enough to size themselves for photos. In other words if there is a bunch of text in the block it works fine, but if there is just a photo the photo extends to outside of the block and is cut off. Is there a fix for this?
Aaron's cc: Says:
May 6th, 2005 at 01:04
Still tweaking my JS.

1) I got the header to display a masthead graphic but the graphic doesn’t appear on the individual post (comment) pages.

2) MSIE messes up “img src align=” commands which I like to use to wrap text around images in my posts. It briefly displays the image but then hides the image behind the grey of the post body. Works fine in FF. I’ve tried style=”float: left;” stuff and that doesn’t work, either.
mike Says:
May 6th, 2005 at 02:14
Aaron,
Another user, Kevin, solved that problem (which only happens in IE) here.

Basically add
.storyContent img { position: relative; }
to the style sheet.

Mike
Aaron's cc: Says:
May 6th, 2005 at 06:01
Solved the align problem (yay!), but not the masthead image vanishing.

http://aarons.cc/2005/05/05/2388/ for example. Compare to http://aarons.cc/

Does MSIE not do transparent PNGs?

Thanks Kevin & Mike.
Aaron's cc: Says:
May 10th, 2005 at 05:08
Fixed the masthead problem. Had to hardcode the masthead image instead of using a relative address.
PigPog Blog » Blog Archive » WordPress Upgraded to 1.5.1.1 Says:
May 22nd, 2005 at 17:37
[…] ains that there only was one step, and you just did it. Very easy - nice work, Matt. The Journalized Sand theme we’re using seems to work fine - h […]
blogats » | Plantillas para Wordpress 1.5 [Wordpress templates, styles] Says:
June 1st, 2005 at 17:17
[…] NEW Impressionist Iris NEW Jakarta Journalized (Blue) […]
Steve Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 18:40
I need some help please.
I have been trying to use some css to have text wrap arround images, then in IE, the images do not show at all. Does anybody else have those problems? What can I do to get this to work?

Thank,
Steve
GeekTavern.com
mike Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 21:47
Hi Steve,
This is a bug in IE, but there is a solution: add

.storyContent img {
position: relative;
}

to the style sheet.

I’m very close to releasing updated version of all my themes with this fix and several others. Look out for them over the next couple of days.

Mike
Steve Says:
June 8th, 2005 at 15:44
Thank you very much Mike, I will try that soon, and I can’t wait on your updates. By the way, how do I get the searchg to work?

Steve
http://www.GeekTavern.com
mike Says:
June 8th, 2005 at 23:30
Hi Steve,
I’ve now released all three of my updated themes here

Mike
Banklocater Says:
June 21st, 2005 at 03:43
Thanks for the theme man. Check out how I incorporated it into my website.
Don Singleton Says:
June 29th, 2005 at 23:05
I love your Journalized Sand, and am trying to modify it, but am having problems. Basically I would like to remove the left column, expanding the content to cover both areas, and then adding the former left column to the right of the current right column, such that the viewer has to scroll right to access that column.

Is that possible, and if so can you give me some pointers? I have gone through UrbanGiraffe’s procedure for modifying a theme (http://www.urbangiraffe.com/2005/04/12/themeguide1/1/) but he uses float:left or right, and you use position:relative and position:absolute.

I dont understand how relative/absolute work. When I try making the columns float, they drop to the bottom underneath the content
mike Says:
June 29th, 2005 at 23:56
Hi Don,
I’m glad you like the theme.

The positoning of the three journalized themes is done with absolute positioning for vertical location and mostly left/right margins for horizontal positioning.
I know it’s not ideal, but at the time I think it was the only way. The original was created when IE5.0 and NN4 were current!

Anyway, I had a quick play and it’s pretty easy to do what you want. Starting with the latest Journalized Sand make the following changes to style.css

line 264, rule #leftside
change
left: 20px
to be
right: -178px

Then change all the 190px to be 10px in the margin settings:
line 38, rule h2
line 121, rule #headerblock
line155, rule .centereblock, .navigation
line 169, rule .navigation (hmmm… duplication here)
line 215, rule .navigation (more duplication!)

Hope this helps,
Mike
Don Singleton Says:
June 30th, 2005 at 16:36
Fantastic. Thank you very much.

Should I remove or consolidate the duplicated .navigation areas?
Don Singleton Says:
June 30th, 2005 at 18:28
If you are interested, http://www.bushsupporter.org/wordpress/ is the current work in process. I still have a lot more to do on it. One thing that currently has me stumped is that I can’t seem to change the size of type for the title of a post. I don’t know whether case is significant or not. One place it seems to be storyTitle and in another case storytitle, but I have tried making it consistent, and it still does not change.
mike Says:
June 30th, 2005 at 20:48
Don,
I would consolidate the last two rules, allowing the last to take precedence where there is duplication of attributes.

Mike
Don Singleton Says:
June 30th, 2005 at 21:51
Done

Still cant change font size of storytitle
mike Says:
June 30th, 2005 at 23:07
Hi Don,
There isn’t a specific rule for story titles, so they are inheriting the generic setting for links.

Rather than change that setting, I think it would be better to create a new set of rules for these. Try these:

h3 a:link { font-size:16px; }
h3 a:visited { font-size:16px; }
h3 a:hover { font-size:16px; }
h3 a:active { font-size:16px; }

Mike
Don Singleton Says:
July 1st, 2005 at 16:19
What is
.storytitle {
font: bold 28px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
margin: 0px 0px 5px 0px;
padding: 0px;
}
.storyCategory {
font-weight: 400;
margin: 0px 0px 5px 0px;
padding: 0px;
}
.storyAuthor {
font-weight: 600;
margin: 0px 0px 5px 0px;
padding: 0px;
}

Notice I increased your 14 pt in storytitle to 28, but it did nothing
mike Says:
July 1st, 2005 at 16:47
Don,
.storytitle (it should be lowercased) is applied to the h3 in which the story title sits. However for font sizing, the fact that it is an anchor brings in the anchor rule.
So the rule for ‘h3 a’ will override font settings for h3 with class storytitle. But the margins, for example, of the whole heading are still dictated by the .storytitle rule.
This ambiguity stems from the fact that the title of the post didn’t used to be a link in my original theme. I changed this to be more WP standard after 1.2, but didn’t follow everything through.

.storyCategory is no longer used in the theme and can be removed.

.storyAuthor is still used by the span surrounding the author name.

I’ll have to fix all these issue in all three themes and re-issue them soon.

Thanks,
Mike
Don Singleton Says:
July 1st, 2005 at 19:43
[edit]

I moved class=”storytitle” to between “a” and “href” and it let me format the title
The Politburo Diktat Says:
July 8th, 2005 at 14:32
Carnival of Journalized Sand

Talk about variations on a theme!
Let’s start with Aaron’s cc:. Aaron loves to load up his sidebars, and his blog still loads in 1.640 seconds. His thoughts on Britain.
Here’s the blog the theme designer Mike Little. Mike designe…
The Politburo Diktat » Blog Archive » Carnival of Journalized Sand Says:
July 8th, 2005 at 14:38
[…] Here’s the blog of the theme designer Mike Little. Mike designed a whole “Journalized” family. […]
Palmdoc Says:
July 20th, 2005 at 13:16
Hi. I am puzzled why the Cobweb GIFs on my page show up in weird positions in IE but they are OK in FF???
mike Says:
July 20th, 2005 at 14:17
Hi Palmdoc,
it looks the same to me on the medical centres page. Did you fix it?

Mike
Palmdoc Says:
July 20th, 2005 at 14:51
No Mike I really don’t know why its so weird in IE..
phil Says:
August 10th, 2005 at 16:45
I am not a very smart programmer, but i would like to add family links and favorite links on the right side. Could you help me get started? I think the theme is awesome!
phil Says:
August 11th, 2005 at 20:35
never mind, i was trying to hard to figure it out!
mike Says:
August 11th, 2005 at 21:50
Hi Phil,
it looks like you got it sorted out. Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner.

Any more questions just ask.

Mike
http://www.abdrohim.com » Blog Archive » Ganti Themes Says:
September 3rd, 2005 at 03:59
[…] Pilihan selanjutnya jatuh kepada themes yang tiga kolom yang cukup mewakili kepentingan saya dalam menyampaikan informasi pada web pribadi ini. terakhir saya pilih themes tiga kolom dengan judul ” Journalized Sand” versi 1.0.2 Released 7 Jun 2005 yang dapat di download pada website http://zed1.com/journalized/archives/2005/03/14/another-3-column-wordpress-theme/ [link] […]
Alejandro Says:
September 28th, 2005 at 03:38
Hi!

I have been using you theme for a while now, but I made some modifications (some are a little but stupid…) and wanted to know where can I change the “(more) tag when using <!–more–>

Other thing, in the “archives” part, the points before each mnth are outside the column (mine is in the left) BUT in only happens in FireFox :S is there anything I can do?

Thanks for the theme
Alejandro

PS: If you dont aprove the changes in your theme, let me know I will undo them
mike Says:
September 29th, 2005 at 01:54
Hi Alejandro,
To change the wording of the more link you need to change the call to the_content() in index.php. You can use something like:

<?php the_content(’read more of this article…’); ?>

Your site is down at the moment, I can’t diagnose your archives problem.

As for changes you are welcome to make changes, as long as you keep to the terms of the GPL. See the licence.txt file for details.

Mike
pob Says:
September 30th, 2005 at 05:24
How do I add a picture to my header for your theme. What does the size neede to be ? Great job on the theme.
pob Says:
September 30th, 2005 at 05:29
Also, how did you add the sub header where we see links to “blog hosting”, “blog online”, etc.

PO
mike Says:
October 1st, 2005 at 19:53
Pob,
take a look at this comment for details on adding a header image to the theme.

I’m not quite sure what you mean about the sub headers unless you mean the link category headings in the right sidebar. If so make sure you have the latest version of the theme and it should automatically work.

Mike
Matt Says:
October 8th, 2005 at 07:12
Hi Mike,

I added the following to my stylesheet, but am still having issues seeing images in my posts when viewing with MSIE…any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

.storyContent img {
position: relative;
}
mike Says:
October 8th, 2005 at 09:57
Hi Matt,

It may be relevant that you have don’t have the latest version of my theme. The newest version has several bug fixes including that one.

Let me know how you get on,
Mike
jack Says:
December 8th, 2005 at 09:43
hi mike thanks for theme i just use it in my site great joob
Don Singleton Says:
December 13th, 2005 at 22:51
I am trying to figure out how to alter my version of your journalized sand for the holidays.

Is your current theme (with Santa, etc) available?
Greater Falls, Montana! » Site Update Says:
December 24th, 2005 at 11:41
[…] A few changes here at GreaterFalls.com that you may have noticed…first, I modified the background color to what I think is a rather nice shade of blue. Second, the sidebar columns have been re-arranged somewhat, and I added a Google search box and some links to Great Falls radio stations. I also added another Design Theme, which may remind some of you of certain other websites (what can I say? it looks cool and is very functional!). It’s called “Journalized Sand” (via) and you can view it by clicking right here. If you don’t like it, you can switch back to the regular “Bionic JIve” them by clicking here. Still a bit more tweaking to do, but I’m pretty comfortable with these two designs. Comments or complaints…? [Comments: ] […]
Brian C Says:
December 31st, 2005 at 04:08
Hey Mike, will you be updating your theme for Wordpress 2.0?
mike Says:
December 31st, 2005 at 09:45
Hi Brian,
As far as I know, my themes are compatible with 2.0, at least they were with an earlier beta I tested.
The next version of the themes will incorporate some new functionality based on 2.0. I’m working on those now.

Mike
Dan Says:
January 2nd, 2006 at 21:13
Any idea when you will be done with the WP 2.0 versions?
mike Says:
January 7th, 2006 at 02:10
Hi Dan,
It’ll probably be another week before the new themes are ready for release. Remember though that the current ones do work in version 2.0.
Mike
Aaress Lawless Says:
January 23rd, 2006 at 20:38
Thanks for designing a great theme - I use it on my site www.onthebaseline.com/tennisgear
Alan Kellogg Says:
March 28th, 2006 at 20:39
Download, installed. Looks good. BTW, any advice regarding editing, placement of tags, code, javascript, html, or any thing of that sort. Or do you have general guidelines applicable to most any Word Press theme.

Warning. My new edition of Mythusmage Opines is going through playtesting, so it may have problems from time to time.
Jacques Says:
April 20th, 2006 at 04:22
The columns on both sides have crept into the middle part way down my blog. They were fine and then boom, they went nuts. Help!!!!!
Jacques Says:
April 20th, 2006 at 04:42
OK–I deleted the post that screwed it up and have reposted it without any problems. If you have any more suggestions, I’ll take them as I am new to all of this. Right now, I’m all right. Thanks
Jacques Says:
April 20th, 2006 at 12:23
Now they are back again. I’ve determined that one post screws it up and it’s not the same post. It is about the same subject, but I don’t know what I am doing to force this to occur. Even if I straighten it out this time, I need to be reassured, it won’t happen again.
mike Says:
April 20th, 2006 at 21:00
Hi Jacques,
The problem is in the “enron trial” post. Part of the way through is there is the paragraph which starts
Berky eventually “passes the witness”
Just after that there is some really weird HTML which starts a script tag and then an open comment tag.
Just before that there is, I think, an extra div tag which messes up the rest of the page.
Also in Firefox the content appears twice in the post.

I presume you are using copy and paste to paste your stories into the blog from somewhere. Basically the HTML your are copying is pretty poor, and if you copy just the wrong bit, e.g. missing a closing tag or something, you get the problems you are seeing.
Jacques Says:
April 21st, 2006 at 18:13
Mike
I wish I could clone you and have you move in. Thanks loads. As you can see, not knowing html is the pits.

By the way, I think your layout is the best.

Jacques
mike Says:
April 21st, 2006 at 23:28
Jacques,
thanks for the comments. I’m glad you got it fixed. Any more problems? just ask.

Mike
Richard Harlos Says:
May 15th, 2006 at 00:33
Hi, Mike.

I found your journalized-sand theme via alex king’s site a few months ago. Since I started using it, I’ve received many compliments on the layout.

I thought you’d appreciate knowing there’s another satisfied journalized-sand blogger so I found my way here to say ‘thank you.’

That’s when I discovered that I’ve been using v1.00 and you’ve had a v1.0.2 out for sometime! I downloaded the more recent version and have started porting my older version over to the newer one.

Not many things to do, really, but I was concerned because I’ve moved some of the left- and right-column elements around a bit. I’ve also added just a bit of color to the h2 and h4 backgrounds; not enough to lose the essence of the ’sand’ theme but enough to give it a certain eye-appeal.

Expect to be finished with my port before daybreak tomorrow and have already realized the benefit of your navigation tweak to distinguish between single-post navigation and regular navigation.

Thanks again for all the time and energy you’ve invested in this theme!
Wat ta Blog! :: Some themes .. 3 Columns .. :: September :: 2006 Says:
September 3rd, 2006 at 20:47
[…] So some themes I personally like are :: + Anaconda Theme + Isulong SEOPH + 3K2 + A Blog Beyond 0.7 English + Green boqpod + Jounrnalized + Sea Beast - Man .. not sure of the customisability of this theme + BBRose […]
Staffan Malmgrens blogg » Blog Archive » Switched over Says:
October 24th, 2006 at 09:11
[…] For some nice layout, I used the theme “Journalized Sand” from Mike Little with some minor tweaks. One particularly nice touch with this theme is that even though it has a left-hand navigation bar thing, it places the main content first in the HTML file, which means the interesting stuff comes first when browsing with lynx, on a cell phone, etc. Good stuff. […]
Don Lapre Watcher Says:
November 3rd, 2006 at 18:39
Hey mike thanks for the updates with bug fixes. I appreciate the help you post gave me.

Ken

ken@j-ams.org
Wordpress Column Themaları Önizlemeli 30 Adet & LugatSoft Says:
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:38
[…] Journalized Winter – Sand colors. […]
WORDPRESS GOD:300+ Tools for Running Your WordPress Blog Says:
August 17th, 2007 at 04:32
[…] Journalized Winter - Variable width, great for someone that likes lots of info on their pages. Also available in Sand colors. […]
300+ Popular Plugins for Running Your WordPress Blog Says:
September 26th, 2007 at 15:05
[…] Journalized Winter - Variable width, great for someone that likes lots of info on their pages. Also available in Sand colors. […]
Web Design Blog » 30+ WordPress 3-Column Themes Says:
November 2nd, 2007 at 13:42
[…] Journalized Winter - Variable width, great for someone that likes lots of info on their pages. Also available in Sand colors. […]
30+ WordPress Beautiful 3-Column Themes for wordpress | INtellionics - Seo Services Company India Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 08:57
[…] Journalized Winter - Variable width, great for someone that likes lots of info on their pages. Also available in Sand colors. […]
dyohanan.com » Great Tools To Use With Your Wordpress Blog Says:
December 13th, 2007 at 16:21
[…] Journalized Winter - Variable width, great for someone that likes lots of info on their pages. Also available in Sand colors. […]

Please note: Comment moderation is currently enabled so there will be a delay between when you post your comment and when it shows up. Patience is a virtue; there’s no need to re-submit your comment.