Into the White is a simple, usable and typographically pleasant WordPress theme.
Into the White is a small (29K), accessible and flexible theme for Wordpress. Read more about it.
Download the Into the White theme for Wordpress (.zip file, 21K)
It’s suitable for someone who wants a simple, ready-to-run theme, or those willing to dive into the code to make simple changes. These are two great examples of the latter:
(See the changelog or add a comment.)
Install by downloading the zip file, extracting it and uploading it to your ../wp-content/themes/ folder on your server. Log into your blog and select Design - Themes and select the theme.
As this theme alters the default WordPress archive system, you’ll need to do the following to get your archive page up and running:
Write - Page.Advanced Options - Page Template and select Archives from the drop down box.
The 'change permalink' option is located directly beneath the page title
Next you’ll need to make at least one of your existing posts a lead post. The blog’s front page will place the most recent lead post in the main area (just as a magazine would place its main story on the front page).
Doing this is easy. Simply tag the post ‘lead’.
The front and archive pages will display posts tagged ‘lead’ with an associated image. To attach the image you will need to add custom fields to your post: imageurl, imagealt, imagewidth and imageheight. You should add the following data to each field: the image’s url, its alt text, its width (in pixels) and its height (in pixels):
If you want the image to appear in the post itself you will need to add it manually.
Make use of excerpts (Write Post -> Advanced Options -> Exerpt): the theme uses them on the front and archive pages. The theme will work perfectly well without excerpts, it just won’t look so great.
This theme is offered ‘as is’ and the author accepts no responsibility for any problems, loss of data it causes. It has been tested on WordPress 2.6 as of 1st August 2008.
It is released under a Creative Commons license. It may be used and modified to your heart’s content, as long as I am credited.
Work by Leon Paternoster is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at intothewhite.co.uk.
Comments are more than welcome here.
Hey Eftu,
You can get round this by deleting line 21 from the index.php file.
Also, try using excerpts (you can find them under ‘advanced options’ on the new post page) when you add a new post. The front page will display the excerpt rather than a shortened version of the whole post.
Why ’sane’ permalinks?
I have been using custom permalinks, e.g. /%postname%/ for some time.
Is there something wrong with that?
Also, are you saying that all posts have to be tagged ‘lead’ to be included in the archives?
Hello John,
Apologies for the permalinks comment — I have hard-coded a reference to ../posts into the theme. As WordPress allows you to change the URL of any page, this part of the post needs rewriting. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with choosing your own URL structure (in fact I also use /%postname%/ when setting up new blogs).
No, you don’t have to tag a post ‘lead’ for it to be included in the archives. The archive page pulls all posts tagged ‘lead’ from the database and displays them in the main content area, along with their excerpt. The sidebar then displays a list of all posts. The idea is for authors to guide their readers to certain posts.
Hope that helps. Please leave a comment if you encounter any further problems.
Thanks,
Leon
Hey Leon,
Two questions for you, how can I disable the auto resizing of images to be a width of 512?
And also I have played with a bit but I can’t get it work but is there a way to show more then 1 post on the home page? I have gotten it work but it repeats the sidebar, or it puts the sidebar on top of the posts and then shows however many posts I want.
Thanks,
Great theme! I love simplicity, and now I noticed a new one you created.
Hi Michal,
As for your first point: yes, you can, but you’ll need to head into the style sheet. It can be found in themes - intothewhite - design - styles - default - screen.css. Deleting line 241 (width: 32em;) will do the trick.
To get more posts to show on the home page you need to edit the index.php file (it’s in themes - intothewhite). In line 5 you need to delete the part that says &showposts=1.
If you’re not confident doing that, or you run into problems, drop me an email (mail@leonpaternoster.com) and I’ll email you a modified version of the theme.
Yes, I’ve released a new theme. Into the White takes a bit of work on the author’s part, what with adding custom fields and resizing images - Velouria doesn’t need any of that.
Thanks for using the theme,
Leon
Hmm odd yeah I’ve changed show posts from 1 to 4 and it repeats the recent posts side bar 4 times…, each time next to the original post.
Not sure whats going on..?
Thanks for your help.
Hey, I used this layout a while ago and I now have a new layout in place. But there is a problem.
How do you change the permalinks to the default?
Thanks.
Kashif - just login to the back end and go to Settings - Permalinks. Then check the ‘default’ option.
Is it possible to have a category drill-down as per the typical WordPress theme?
Currently, when I go to /category/[my category], it shows the same content as the homepage. And /posts/[my category] returns a 404.
While I understand the Posts archive page and the ability to search, I think it would be useful for many readers to see posts belonging only to a certain category.
Is this possible with the Into the White theme?
Hello Sumeet,
Not at the moment. I could alter archives.php and incorporate category links, but one of the ‘features’ of the theme is that it changes the way that posts are organised (for the better, I think). In turn, this keeps things visually spare; again, I think this is one of the things people like about the theme.
It’s also why the theme isn’t widgetisable.
My next theme will be widget–ready (so it’ll be easy to add a category list)—you may want to take a look at that. I don’t think it’ll look as distinctive, though.
—Leon
Written by Eftu on August 26th, 2008
I think your custom field is a pain in the ass.