I was doing my early rounds, checking my emails and replying to a HeatMap theme user who was having a few problems (in the end completely unrelated to Heatmap theme) when, during the search for the non-existent bug, I found a different bug altogether…

HeatMap Theme 2.2 coming soon (sort of)

I had recently upgraded all my sites to HeatMap Theme 2.2 (beta) (no you can’t have one yet…its not ready) and when I checked my sites using Internet Explorer I found to my complete horror, dismay, chagrin (cue gnashing of teeth) that my carefully constructed sites had exploded; CSS boxes all over the place. Aack! But ONLY on Internet Explorer (all versions – including the brand new exploder, version 8).

Normally I check and check things until they can be checked no more, but this one completely got by me. Maybe its because I secretly harbour a longing for a world where Internet Explorer does not exist (possibly this world, possibly around 1985, except that I’m still the age I was back then, but I know everything that I know now).

Why Internet Explorer exploded my WordPress

From a couple of hours of fossicking about, I now know that he problem was thus…

I had somehow managed to place a HTML comment right above the php call to get_header();

I don’t know why I got it into my head (no pun intended) to put the comment there, but I did do it, and it did explode my XHTML and CSS when viewed through the less-than-thrilling-to develop-for Internet Explorer. For those XHTML-o-files who like to nitpick, yes, I know its not really very good practice to put a comment there anyway, but it is easy to forget that the very top of your WordPress index.html file is actually the very top of your XHTML output in WordPress (because index.html calls header.php in the normal course of events – and not the other way round as might seem logical).

Anyway, the long and short of it is – don’t allow anything to appear in your code above the DOCTYPE (accidentally or intentionally) or you will incur the wrath of an exploded website on IE. All things being equal though, all the other browsers should have exploded too, but they were being very kind to my code, in a similar way to your friends politely ignoring your fart at a quiet afternoon tea.

This is as much a message to myself, as any other hapless WordPress / XHTML debuggee. Doh! Doh! Doh! (cue slapping of forehead).

Fortunately when it comes to HeatMap Theme, this checking compulsion does seem to be working though, and working rather well. The quality control department in my brain is giving itself a pat on the back of the synapses. I do check new HeatMap Theme stuff on a least three different blogs before I release it to you, dear HeatMapster (yes I now have invented a new word for HeatMap Theme users).

10 days in and we’re up to …let me ‘check’ … 2597 downloads and I have over 600 referrers in my stats. 10 days ago these stats were 0 and 3 respectively.
This means that there are a lot of bloggers trying out HeatMap Theme for the first time, and a goodly proportion sticking around a while.

The important thing for me is that nobody’s blog blew up when they installed HeatMap Theme (as far as I know) and no small animals were harmed during its deployment. With the above stats I surely would have heard cries and moans (possibly with some biblical style gnashing of teeth) if those fearful things had happened. Actually there are seven 5 star ratings for HeatMap Theme sitting on http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/heatmap-adsense-theme/stats/ as I type, plus some nice compliments and some sensible questions.

So 10 days into HeatMapTheme.com the world did not end. In fact it’s a brand new shiny world. I’m expecting that someone will come along soon and spoil the party by saying “I hate HeatMap Theme because it exists – 1 star” after looking at my three-months of solid work in 5 seconds flat and passing instant judgement. It’s bound to happen, but right up to this point HeatMapTheme is doing its things as I expected it would.

…so a compulsion to check can sometimes be a good thing.

First person to post a comment saying “naa-naa na naaaaa-naaaa, you missssed thii-isss!” will get a custard pie in the face.

Yes, in most cases themes need to be prodded, poked and modded into something that resembles the thing you were imagining in the first place.

“I still, haven’t found what I’m looking for…” (U2)

Hence the birth of HeatMap Ads Theme. I just couldn’t find the theme I was looking for and so set off on the journey of making a Theme I could call my own.

Uber Theme anyone?

At first I thought I wanted to make a Theme Framework; an Uber Theme that would enable me to make lots of different themes and would do absolutely everything. So HeatMap Theme 1.0 was born, but never released into the wild. It still lives happily today on PaintPJ.com where it earns its keep admirably.

“You were always on my mind…”
Pet Shop boys (by way of Elvis)

In the back of my mind though, I always had the thought that what I really wanted to do was create my content and then experiment with the placement of various elements (as inspired a Google post about the blog and website heatmap).  So I set about creating a Theme (as opposed to a framework) which would allow me to experiment with all Google’s toys to my hearts desire.

I had a shopping list of things for it to do…

• In built Adsense ad manager
• Widget based
• Abundant amounts of widget areas
• All the Google toys built in (Google Analytics, Google Feedburner, Google Custom Search)
• Relatively plain – as a canvas for further creative imaginings
• Child Theme ready – so I can upgrade a the core theme easily.
• Built for SEO
• …plus a few other useful tricks that I like things to do (the list would be too long)

So, off I went, to complete my mission to make the all-in-one-Google-Adsense-theme-no-plugins-required.

Recursively Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

The more observant of you might notice a slight nod in the styling towards the early Revolution Magazine Theme by Brian Gardner of StudioPress fame. That’s because when I first started to seriously get into blogging I was impressed by his Premium themes enough to buy his all-in-one-all-inclusive developer package, and used Revolution Magazine theme (modded to my own taste) for my other blog CreativityPro.com (where I occasionally like to have a rant about the world of art). When I designed HeatMap Ads Theme for Creativity Pro I wanted to retain the ‘brand’ I had developed using it, and so default styling was set and the child theme ‘Purple People Eater’ was born.

Pushing the design (a bit)

You’ll notice that on HeatMapTheme.com I’ve pushed the design a bit further all using the power of Child Themes. I’ve even added extra functions into the Child Theme, all of which will  not be affected when I get round to upgrading the core HeatMap Adsense Theme.

If you want the ability to change things around in HeatMap Theme but still be able to upgrade when new HeatMap Theme versions come out you really have to get into child themes. At the moment I distribute the Purple People Child theme to those who donate to the project. If you want one just ask. It does make the job a heap easier.

I designed the ‘framework’ of the theme to potentially be able to do something really fancy such you see on webdesignerwall.com. That’s something to work towards.

So what’s next?

In part that’s up to you. I know what I want, but what do you like in an Ads Theme? Feel free to make suggestions.

Its Alive!

When the WP theme team emailed me to say that HeatMap Ads Theme was live on the directory I was quite excited. They only knocked my submission back once to me, on the tiny technicality that it had a thumbs.db file. I quickly eradicated the pesky extraneous file, uploaded it and Ads Theme was released into the wild.

Vanilla-ice-ice-baby

I was a little concerned at first that the WP Theme Directory preview looks a little bit underwhelmingly vannila-ised to say the least when compared with the all singing and all dancing demo on HeatMapTheme.com. Stripped of its widgets, the WP theme directory preview is nothing to get overexcited about. All that awesome power is well hidden under the hood.

I guess WP do this to make it an easy to administer level playing field, for all themes. Just the standard test file applied to every theme and nothing else.

Obviously, most of you who are now downloading it must be seeing past this, as it doesn’t seem to be hurting the download count right now.

The First Thing on my Ads Theme to do list

So, having seen what it looks like on the WP Theme preview the first thing I’d like to do is update the code to build in some ‘fresh from the zip file’ widget position presets, so all the widgets are set up as soon as you install the theme. Once you’ve seen them you’ll be able to just go to the widget admin and rearrange them to your own liking. I’ll bundle that in with a few more goodies on the next version update.

Hmm…lets have a look at the download count so far… 350(!). Can we reach 400 by the end of the day?.