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.)
If you like this theme please rate it at WordPress!
Example Site Using Dragonskin
Features
- Widget enabled
- Gravatar enabled
- Drop-down menu
- Supports an optional header image to replace the text tile (just include an image as images/header.gif)
Integrated Support for Plugins
Image Credits
- Bowie J. Poag
- Brilliant Button Maker – for the 80×15 badges
- Arcsin Website Templates – for the border image
Download
Version 1.3 – January 10, 2010
- Added image for nicer looking blockquote
- Added comment capability back to pages (but don’t display “comments disabled” when turned off)
- Added support for local favicon
- Added two child themes
- Removed WP-PostRatings integration, integration can be done by editing the plugin
Version 1.2 – September 22nd, 2009
- Separated the navigation bar to a separate file for easier modification (navbar.php)
- Reduced the post area/black scroll width to see a little more of the background
- Reduced transfer size (dragonskin-4bit.png)
- Expanded author profile page to include all posts listing
- Fixed bug that occurs if you have the optional files set unreadable – won’t generate an error on files existing without permissions
- Added support for plugins
- Coauthors
- Smart 404
- Replaced deprecated: link_pages, wp_list_cats, get_archives
- Changed to display subcategories inline in drop-down menu
- Removed code for Similar Posts plugin – the plugin includes a way to insert itself through the admin interface
- Removed static-sidebar.php support
- Removed clickheat support – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easy-clickheat-intergration-plugin/
- Removed post-banner.php support – suggest to use http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smart-ads/
Version 1.1 – December 9th, 2008
- Fixed some accidental plugs for Heroes Only.
- Fixed sidebar bug on archive pages pushing sidebar below the content
- Licensed under GPL
Version 1.0 – October 17th, 2008
If you like this theme please rate it at WordPress!
This theme is perfect. Thanks for that. i will tray.
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
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!
I’m glad you fixed it, and thanks for the compliment!
Wooo(:
Hi CopperBlade,
I am using your Dragon Skin theme on my personal website at http://RonSheely.com
Thanks for the great work.
-Ron
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.
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
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!
I also noticed that with this theme, none of my comments show up. I get an error on every one.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you will try that and see if it helps.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
Angelo,
finally made the change you suggested and it appears to work. Thanks!