Starting a Themes Suggestions thread?

[Prisca]

Hello

May be we should start a section for themes suggestions?

Anyway, I am starting that with my own suggestions. That would be for all themes but Luminescence.

1) Make secondary menu sticky (stay at top always) – not on mobile of course – normal menu on mobile.

2) Option to change font size in customize.

3) Option to get rid of fonts google //fonts.googleapis.com/css? – I have 6 of them in the head and it slows down the load time of the site – just make it a choice to not use them?

4) An option to add a nice shadow below header/banner/showcase – I mean at the junction of the header and content on all pages does not matter what’s in the header (slideshow or not) – love those shadows..ha..

5) A way to put the title of pages inside a sort of a narrow (in height) banner with color or background between the secondary menu and the breadcrumbs?

6) Back to the secondary menu – a way to add some decoration to it like a gradient background – change height etc.. also a way to center the menu and the dropdown (important) – may be (I am pushing it here) an option to add some icon on the left of each links like Home – Contact etc.. I mean just to make the menu a bit more fun eye-catching.

7) Also please could you add the CSS you have for the “extras” of Encounters to all the others? I love using your “boxed image group” to post 3 or 4 boxes on the homepage but they don’t work on the other themes so I have to copy the whole row/span stuff to the new theme so the boxes can work there also.

8) Finally what we talked about on Sunday about option to add 100% sections in the middle of the page with background or color but you said you were working on it. Hope that will not be a buiilder again because it does not look good in the source code – the word “builder” for my clients – does not look serious for a web designer to show we use a “site builder” ..

It’s mainly decorative stuffs – love everything else on your themes and mainly all the widgets and the easiness to customize and clean code. For the widgets you are very unique for that. Most of the themes I am testing have like 2 or 3 widgets! Ridiculous.

Hope I am not upsetting you again.. haha..

Anyway, everything else I absolutely LOVE! That’s why I am asking for those details if possible – I would like to use only your themes so that would make more options to change the design for each client.

Thank you so much for listening 🙂

Cheers

[Prisca]

Forgot – for the menu I managed to position it below the slideshow: http://www.theportwebdesign.com/ – it is sticky and you see I have icons for home and contact. But it’s a plugin that I added to your menu system – if you had those options that would be great.

Please don’t hate me..

Thanks again 🙂

[Prisca]

FORGOT AGAIN!!! Aggrrrrhh – I used “Encounters” on the link above.

So sorry..forgot to say that.

[Sushil Adhikari]

Someone is definitely thinking about future themes….I will follow up per point below:

1. Sticky menu…depends on the theme mostly, but it appears to be a trend in themes and I do have plans to implement that on some themes.
2. Font management built into a theme is actually not as easy as one might think….perhaps I can do a theme option section with some options added. The only thing I cannot really do is add fonts to a selection because there are literally 1000’s of fonts and how a font displays is dependent on what is on the viewers computer or embedded into the stylesheet.
3. The Google fonts css is not used in my last few themes, but if you use a font plugin, they will load in that method. If you see this in any theme of mine after Encounters, please let me know. Basically there are 2 main methods of loading a font….the google fonts link, or embedding into the stylesheet.
4. Shadows…this will of course be dependent on the theme’s design, but for those that do not have it, this is where the end-user would need to create their own.
5. Background based headings for pages….I’ve done something like that in the past on an older site I had once and looking to do this on my next theme once I finish this current one I am working on.
6. I will be honest about menus….they are the one thing in theme design I do not like coding because they are very finicky, but will try my best
7. As for the CSs for the “Extras” from Encounters, the one thing I am planning to do is to create a standard across all themes. I also want to try and get these snippets into a plugin, but the only thing that would change slightly is the style of elements so that they work with the theme’s design.

Regarding the 100% sections…again, to achieve this without a builder concept, is extremely difficult. In a nutshell, how this works is that you have a blank template where a page builder creates the layout of the page beginning with the blank template as the foundation. I agree, page builders are horrible with code and it’s one of the reasons I have been trying to avoid using them. I am considering it for the odd theme, but I am also trying to figure out how to do it without the need of a page builder plugin. Basically I have to purchase a few themes that use them and some that have a parallax concept to reverse engineer and to try and come up with something easier to use. As I’ve mentioned before, this functionality is very complex and not easy to implement. When you create a page or post, it gets added into a template that has a predefined structure, and most often has a specific width for your content to go into. These wide sections requires the container to break out of the fixed container it has to go into and needs to stay put and not scroll. Think of it this way….you have a container that is 1000 pixels in width, but inside that you need another div that goes 100% of the browser window which means it needs to break out of that 1000px container.

I appreciate your ideas, so don’t feel bad or feel like you have to apologize. My goal with each new theme is to try and improve on things, or to add something new, but at the same time, make the functionality more efficient, less bloated, easier, and to try and develop a theme that requires less support 🙂

By the way….a forum for new theme suggestions is an interesting idea…I just re-activated the “Suggestions” forum category, which I had before.

[Prisca]

OMG!!!Thank you SO much for the new Theme suggestions forum! Hope it will not be a nightmare for you but that should be fun and interesting for us to exchange ideas 🙂

1) For the menu – why don’t you just add to your zip/themes a menu plugin so your client can choose between yours or the included plugin? You know some themes include one or two plugins – either already paid for or just the lite version. NOO menu is cool – I hate that they have the css – 2 miles long – in the head though but it has a lot of fun options – sticky – colors – gradient – icons for menu links and a lot more.. and big plus: they are adorable for the support (one HUGE detail I love with you also). I am sure they would be really happy to allow you to include it in your themes – as I said – may be a lite version and then your clients would have the option to buy it if they like it? That way people could just play with the menu without you having to code all the options.

The way I set up mine: I added NOOmenu inside the class of yours so it uses it’s own css – added the NOO widget below my widget slider in banner and voila – my menu is below the banner – and I unchecked all your menus positions – if I wanted it in one of your position then I would just check the menu position I want and it would use that position. Seems that would be a good solution for you without the headaches?

2) Fonts: I did not mean option for font selection – I meant font size – several clients told me the content font is too small so I have to digg in the css to change it and make it a wee bit bigger. Just a simple (or not simple..?) option to choose like 10px – 12px – 14px – just for the content would be a good start. It’s easier to find the h1-h2 in he css than the general font size for the content. I know you have to convert the px in relm or elm for responsive..may be that is where the problem is?

3) My mistake: that’s the NOO menu which has the font: //fonts.googleapis.com/css? – sorry about that. I think you are right – none on your recent themes has those 🙂

4) Great news for the “extras” – thank you 🙂

5) Finally those 100% sections. As I said on Sunday, both layerslider and revslider does that like a breeze – just enter the shortcode where you want it on the page and..voila..full 100% gorgeous section – either just a static image and you put your text there (instead of slides) or slider or even just text and color – it just fits full width anywhere you put the shortcode on the page and the number of sections you want so you easily can end up with a theme like the one I mentioned the other day WITHOUT a builder. No parallax but I don’t care about that.

I understand that to do that they have to break your container but..hey..they have the trick to do that without a glitch and fully responsive – can’t you just..er..like..found out how they do that? Must be somewhere in their css or js files? Cost like $17 on Code Canyon. May be you will find the secret and then implement it on your themes? No builder there.

Who am I to tell you what to do..ha.. but since you are very nice and open, I dare 🙂

Thank you so much for your reply and your time – I am so excited to see your future themes!

Cheers.

[Sushil Adhikari]

I prefer and try not to include plugins with the theme because not everyone wants to use a specific plugin that I choose. I leave the plugins to the decision of the user, but I will make recommendations to select plugins. Also note that plugins that I use and recommend are not required for my themes which is important to not tie a theme to a particular plugin as it creates restrictions.

Regarding font sizes…I can and do plan on adding that, but it probably won’t be for “everything” in a theme.

As for the 100% sections and you mentioning the sliders, the difference here is that these are sliders and not “content” based elements such as you would have in a page or post. They often contain a lot of jQuery scripts to achieve those results. Long story short on this one is that sliders are very different from the content section method. It’s like using a fork to eat soup instead of a spoon. In some cases a fork works, but the spoon is better.

[Prisca]

Fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for playing with me and for your time. I am sure you will find your own way 🙂

Cheers.

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