Dragonskin WordPress Theme

Wrap your blog in the skin of a dragon! This is a dark theme that has a nice look for RPG and gaming sites. I originally developed this theme to go along with my D&D fan site. It features CSS-drive drop-down menus, support for multiple authors, and fluid width for flexible resolutions. (See below for full list of features and details.)

Download Dragonskin 3.0

dragonskin screenshot

Example Site Using Dragonskin

If you like this theme please rate it at WordPress!

Downloads

Features

  • Author profile pages that feature the authors as well as their posts.
  • Navigation bar with drop-down menus
  • Support for multiple colors
  • Header image support for site logos

Integrated Support for Plugins

Image Credits

If you like this theme please rate it at WordPress!

http://dragonskin.googlecode.com/files/dragonskin-3.0.zip

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 1:28 am and is filed under Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • http://www.aindir.com indir

    This theme is perfect. Thanks for that. i will tray. :)

  • http://anonymum.com anonymum

    I currently have this theme running in a test drive mode and can’t tell you how impressed I am with it, but I do have one question.
    How do I go about getting more than 2 posts on the front page?
    Thanks in advance

  • http://anonymum.com anonymum

    It’s ok, I was thinking it’s in the theme files, but it’s not, it’s part of the settings and I’ve fixed it.
    Again, I want to tell you how much I love the look of this theme.
    It’s fabulous!

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    I’m glad you fixed it, and thanks for the compliment!

  • http://www.truebloodfull.com Christina Hansen

    Wooo(:

  • http://RonSheely.com Ron Sheely

    Hi CopperBlade,

    I am using your Dragon Skin theme on my personal website at http://RonSheely.com

    Thanks for the great work.

    -Ron

  • http://www.jerseydevildvd.com Bill

    Like the theme, but if I try to click on a single post, I get an error saying this
    “Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in /home/content/b/i/l/billmecca/html/jerseydevil/wp-content/themes/dragonskin/single.php on line 27″

    sounds like an easy fix, but I have no idea? any help would be appreciated.

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    Bill: it works for me, and I tested to make sure. So it is very hard for me to tell why it’s not working for you. You can try replacing the line to get current author with something like this:

    $curauth = $wp_query->get_queried_object();

    Or try others at:
    http://codex.wordpress.org/Author_Templates

  • http://www.thegreatsouthernbrainfart.com Don

    I really love this theme but I’m not crazy about the links in the top bar. Is there a way to change it so that the links across the top are just pages as opposed to the options that come with it?

    Thanks in advance!

  • http://www.thegreatsouthernbrainfart.com Don

    I also noticed that with this theme, none of my comments show up. I get an error on every one.

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    Thanks. I am not sure about your problem with the comments not showing up, but if you want to get rid of the navbar, you can just delete everything in navbar.php or comment it out. If you remove navbar.php completely it will throw an error, but I’ll fix that for the next release.

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    Oops, nevermind. If you’re using version 1.5 you should be able to just delete navbar.php and it’ll remove the navbar code.

  • Colm Mc Geever

    This is a fantastic theme. Thanks. It’s just what I was looking for. I’ve one question, though. When I try and add the RSS widget to the sidebar, all the other entries disappear. As you can probably tell, I’m a wordpress beginner so please forgive me if this is something obvious.

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    Yes, if you’re going to modify the sidebar at all, you have to include all the stuff you want on it. So if you have an empty sidebar under “widgets” it will just use a default layout. If you start adding any widgets it will start with an empty sidebar and only display the ones you add. This allows you to remove the defaults.

  • http://www.gayvets.net/blog R Gilbert

    I am currently using Dragonskin and can’t get authors to display in Author in navbar, however everything is displaying as it should in the drop down navbar. My question is how do I get the authors name and/or names to appear in Author in the navbar at the top of the page?

    Thanks in advance because this is bugging the daylights out of me.

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    I noticed that some sites with the theme had an empty Authors menu. You are the first one to ask about it though: so the truth is I really don’t know why it isn’t showing up. I don’t think it’s because of a difference in version. My guess is how the users are set up. If you go to your profile, maybe you can make sure you have your first name, last name, nickname, and display name set and see if that helps.

  • http://www.gayvets.net/blog R Gilbert

    Thank you will try that and see if it helps.

  • Colm Mc Geever

    Thanks, Angelo. Would you have any suggestions as to how I could get the RSS icon added into the sidebar? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    I’m a writer and have a short story coming up soon in a magazine called Beneath Ceaseless Skies. As this magazine attracts a large online audience, I’m hoping to have my blog up and running soon. (I’m currently doing local testing.) Your theme fits the fantasy genre I write perfectly.

  • R G

    Hi Angelo, Dragonskin is one of my favorite themes, but I would like to add a home link in the navbar to the left of pages What would be the code to add a Home link in the navbar that the user back to the homepage regardless of what page or category a user is on?

    And thank you again for creating Dragonskin
    R G

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    R G: so how did you fix the problem with the missing authors section? All the navigation bar code is in the file navbar.php. To add a home button on that bar somewhere, just add a link similar to the ones already present. They should be wrapped in li tags (like wp_loginout).

    Colm: I think you can just use the text widget somehow. If you want to just include an RSS icon in the them, you could do so in the navbar.php file.

  • http://www.gayvets.net/blog R G

    Thanks Angelo, imported all of the settings from one of my other wordpress blogs that’s using Dragonskin.

    Thanks and will try both of the suggestions to see which works the best.

    Thanks again both of you.
    R G

  • http://www.gayvets.net/blog R G

    I’m still extremely new to writing code, in short most of it still all Greek to me and I’m still all thumbs at it. Any chance of you writing the code here so I can copy and paste into the navbar. Not lazy mind you, just still real crappy at writing code.

    Thanks again
    R G

  • http://www.gayvets.net/blog R G

    I’d be willing to make a 10 dollar donation on Friday. Know that’s not much these days but it’s all I can spare.

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    There are two options that I can see would make sense. Either add home to the Pages menu:
    http://bitfreedom.com/files/2010/06/navbar-1.php_.txt

    Or add home to the left as you requested:
    http://bitfreedom.com/files/2010/06/navbar-2.php_.txt

  • http://www.gayvets.net/blog R G

    Thank you so very much, I see where I kept making my mistake. I’ve saved both in the Dragonskin directory on my computer and have the home link on the navbar.

    If you have paypal let me know how I can make the 10 dollar donation or what other options are available.

    Thank you again and love it.
    R Gilbert

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    Thanks, a donation isn’t necessary but $1 to show appreciation would be more than enough. Based on your suggestion I put a donate button under the screen shot. Thanks for using this theme.

  • http://www.parawerthan.com Colm Mc Geever

    Hi Angelo,

    Thanks for that. I’ve got it up and running now. If you’re interested in taking a look it’s at http://www.parawerthan.com

    Many thanks again for this.

    Colm.

  • http://www.gayvets.net/blog R Gilbert

    Hi Angelo, just gave you a donation thanks a bunch for adding the donate button under the Dragonskin theme, it makes it so easy to donate.

    Have a good one
    R Gilbert

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    I have submitted Dragonskin 2.0 to the WordPress theme site, but they haven’t accepted it yet. I’m tempted to just post it here for now.

    Dragonskin 2.0 has a way to make color changes without downloading child themes. It is only a first step–you will have to make some very simple CSS changes by hand (colors only in a specific file). However, the next step will be to add an admin interface to select pre-made CSS files. After that, I will probably look into selecting colors directly through the admin panel.

    Dragonskin 2.0 will at least give people the ability to post/swap their css files if they want different colors.

    I have made no effort to institute any changes in the theme specifically for 3.0, because 3.0 is backward compatible and I certainly don’t want to make the theme unusable by previous versions until everyone has moved off. (Also, I’m not in entire agreement with the added complexity.) In the future I may use the custom menu feature of 3.0 to create the navigation bar.

  • http://crossfitdragonfire.com KOOL43

    I was using your theme, but the pictures posts are now messing up the layout.

    This started happening with wordpress newest upgrade…

    Any hope of getting the newest version of your theme to fix the problem?

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    I haven’t heard of any reports of this being a problem, and I haven’t experienced this on my own site. So, I doubt there is anything in my latest code that would fix your problem. But if you know how to use subversion and would like to get the latest of whatever I have, it’s over at http://code.google.com/p/dragonskin/. Version 2.0 that I was working on was rejected by WordPress because I had used some deprecated functions–which I’m glad because I was having a hard time keeping track of which functions they were deprecating anyway. I’ve been slow at getting back to it, because I really don’t want to release the next version until I make sure I fix all the issues with deprecated functions, a new admin interface for selecting different colors, and making sure the default settings are the most universal across all browsers and load the fastest.

  • http://www.jerseydevildvd.com Bill

    Angelo,

    finally made the change you suggested and it appears to work. Thanks!

  • Kam

    I absolutely love your theme! It’s perfect for my Warlock blog I started recently…I play World of Warcraft! I am however having an issue with my latest post having a huge gap under it so that you have to scroll way down to read the one before it and it is driving me insane! Is there a way to fix this? and please note that I am new to this and you’ll have to dumb it down for me ;)

  • Kam

    so no worries I figured out! it was a widget that was causing my problem!

  • http://kamilla.apotheosis-now.com/ Kam

    I just wanted to say thank you for making this theme! and to say again that I Love it! :D thanks you so much and I wanted to share my blog so anyone who wants to check it out here you go … http://kamilla.apotheosis-now.com/
    thank you again for making this theme and keep up the good work!

  • A Murder of Crows

    Any way to get nested menus into the navigation bar? also, is there any way to customize what shows up in that nav bar based on either tag, post&page author, or individual category?

    thanks

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    I worked on getting reasonable menu nesting on the menu items two separate times, and put a bit of time into it, with no luck. It’s something I really wanted to do, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the CSS to both center the menus and nest them in a reasonable way. It would have to be able to keep the menu headers centered, the first level of menus centered, and then offset a submenu based on the parent menu. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I certainly couldn’t figure it out any time soon.

    WordPress 3.0 has support for customized menus, which I do want to add. I haven’t had time to work on the next version of this theme much, but it’s definitely something I am looking into. Ideally, I’d want the default menu to show unless there was a pre-constructed menu.

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    Version 2.1–I decided to go ahead and post my current work. I finally got the color scheme chooser in the admin section working, so I thought it was good enough to post. This version isn’t available at WordPress.org yet because it is rejected due to more strict code requirements.

  • Paolo

    Great theme, you should add Buddypress support :)

  • http://www.windycityboudoir.com Rob

    Just installed Dragonskin and am building out the site. I hid the search form and drop down menus and it worked perfectly… …in Firefox. The search form and drop down menus still show up in Internet Explorer.

    Any ideas?

    Here’s the FireFox version (as it should appear): http://www.windycityboudoir.com/Images/WCB-FF.jpg

    Here’s the eff’ed up Internet Explorer version: http://www.windycityboudoir.com/Images/WCB-FF.jpg

    Thanks!

  • http://www.windycityboudoir.com Rob

    Oops, the Internet Explorer version is here:
    http://www.windycityboudoir.com/Images/WCB-IE.jpg

    Thanks again – it’s a great theme

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    It looks like you have nested HTML comments, and typically browsers have not supported that. I’m actually surprised that Firefox does. If you look in navbar.php and searchform.php you’ll see where there are already HTML comments. You can make those files blank if you need to just remove all of it.

  • http://www.windycityboudoir.com Rob

    Thank you Angelo, I appreciate the incredibly rapid reply!

    Cheers

  • http://NotLive bill

    Any way to move the sidebar from the right to the left?

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    I think it should be possible with some CSS changes. Maybe I’ll include that in the next update if I ever improve it enough to be validated against the newer versions of wordpress.

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    Well after a month of working to get the code up to speed with WP’s requirements for their site, of course they’ve added more requirements! So I can’t get the theme released there, but the newest version works great, download it here: http://dragonskin.googlecode.com/files/dragonskin-3.0.zip

  • http://www.bombonierebattesimoweb.com Bomboniere

    It looks a good template but it’s too dark for me!

  • blue

    Hi Angelo,
    I love Dragonskin and I just installed it (3.0 gold version) in my new blog.
    I noticed, however,that with firefox everithing is ok but with explorer the body of the post it is not black but gold , everithing is with a gold skin pictures.
    Are you aware about this problem, do you know how to fix this?
    Grazie!

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    @blue

    I see a problem with IE 8 that I didn’t know about. And I don’t know what is causing it yet.

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  • http://hyperpac.de Pac

    Hey,

    thx for the great theme. But how do I change the header image ? I couldn´t find an option for it. Thx and best regards.

    Pac

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    The version that’s on WordPress’ site requires you to upload a GIF images to wp-content/themes/dragonskin/images/header.gif and it magically appears. The current version on this site works the same way most WP themes work–upload through the Appearance menu.

  • http://hyperpac.de Pac

    Hey Angelo,

    thx for your quick answer. But your answer leads me to the question, why that version isn´t at WordPress ? I´ll download it from here anyways :-).

    Best regards
    Pac

  • http://bitfreedom.com/ Angelo

    WordPress disapproved my last 3 submissions of this theme due to coding standards. The last time it was only due to some small coding issues that won’t affect your usage. I had worked very hard through multiple versions and a number of days just to make the last attempt (version 3.0) before I decided to just give up for now. They’ve made it nearly impossible for a simple hobbyist like me to submit themes to their database as their requirements are a moving target.

    Here was my last attempt to submit dragonskin: http://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2811

  • Rob

    I think this project is well dead but just incase how do i move the sidebar from the right hand side to the left in version 3.0 thank you!