Big Amazing Grace/Blue Grace Themes Update

Nov 28th, 2008

Thank everyone for voting on the sidebar poll for Amazing Grace enhancements you would like to see.

It looks that most people wanted New Features and Cleaner HTML so I got busy and produced the update to both themes.

Child Themes

Blue Grace now behaves as a child theme for Amazing Grace. That means that both themes share the same code and only have different styling and images.

This will make it much easier to maintain, and you get two themes in one package.

Cleaner Code

I swept the code and removed unnecessary code, made optimizations and made it generally easier to read and change.

Optimized Images

I redid images, optimized them for size and removed the unused ones.

Full WP2.7 Support

Even before WP2.7 is out, both Amazing Grace and Blue Grace are enhanced to support all 2.7 goodies like sticky posts, nested comments and paging.

The new theme can be downloaded from the link below only, I will update the theme pages once the initial testing period is over.

Download Amazing Grace with Blue Grace themes

Continue reading:

36 Comments

Vladimir
Feb 22nd, 2009
Mike please download the theme from Blue Grace link on my sidebar. That archive will contain latest version of both themes.
Reply
Tommy
Feb 22nd, 2009
Thank you for a great theme. I just love the amzing grace. Keep up the good work!
Reply
mike
Feb 22nd, 2009
I want to use your amazing grace 3.0 theme for my wordpress721. I downloaded amazing grace and then when I saw the theme in wordpress, it said to upgrade automatically to amazing grace 30, which I did. Now when I try to open the theme for a view, nothing opens. The other themes open but not the amazing grace 3.0. At bluehost, I uploaded the amazing grace 3.0, but it doesn't unzip to the themes directory. Do I need to remove the original amazing grace first? What should I do to get this to work? Thanks
Reply
Kelsey
Dec 16th, 2008
Another question: Is there a way to scoot the RSS icon over so that there is room for more categories?
Reply
Phil
Dec 12th, 2008
I've been using your Amazing Grace theme on my blog - it's great, very clean and well laid-out.
I updated to WP 2.7 this morning and updated Amazing Grace to 2.7 to take advantage of WP's new integrated comment threading (I had been using the "Wordpress Thread Comment" plugin, complete with groovy Engrish email notification text).
Is there any way to tweak your theme so that the threading is more obvious? The indent doesn't really seem sufficient to distinguish the nesting layers - please see my test comments here.
I liked how WPTC blocked each nesting level out in its own indented, colored box, but I'd rather use as much of the integrated WP functionality that I can (my host's PHP settings make upgrading a bunch of plugins a real pain).
Reply
Kelsey
Dec 10th, 2008
A few questions:
I use your original version of Amazing Grace, and I have made a few alterations to it along the way. If I install your new update, what is the easiest way to keep said alterations, or is there a way at all?
Also, for some reason I cannot get usericons to show up where they should - they continue to just show up as anonymous heads. Any idea what is up?
Reply
Vladimir
Dec 8th, 2008
Mike the theme had numerous changes. The best way would be to compare them using a file compare tool.
Reply
mike
Dec 8th, 2008
Hi Vlad,
I currently use blue 1.0. Will this work with WP 2.7? I have made many mods and am unsure about how to upgrade to blue 3.0 without losing those. Is there a best practice for this?
Reply
Vladimir
Dec 8th, 2008
I updated both themes, and CSS for child pages is added as well.
Reply
slashk
Dec 8th, 2008
Thank you for the themes.
One question, which I think is a bug: When you create child pages then display them in the sidebar, they do not display indented. It appears that the html code is incorrect. For example, I get this html when I try to use child pages
```
 
2009 Races		
 
	PARENT
 
	CHILD1
	CHILD2
	CHILD3
 
	CHILD4
```
It looks like the closing tags for the parent page are wrong.
Any ideas on how to fix this ?
Thanks
Reply
Alan
Dec 5th, 2008
Nice, once I'd sussed that I have to upload both themes, or I end up with a blue blog with bits of the old one. Made me decide what style changes I really did want to re-implement, I went for 'kiss'... Now I can decide what was probably just a needless tweak.
Thanks, Vladimir
Reply
mrhdj
Dec 3rd, 2008
Thanks
print.png missing
Reply
Vladimir
Dec 3rd, 2008
I have updated the files, please download again.
Reply
Garrett
Dec 3rd, 2008
Greetings again Vladimir, as you will see, I updated to Blue Grace, but take a look at the color discrepancy around the bg-portrait part of the header. Also, do I simply upload jpg's named bg-portrait1.jpg, bg-portrait2.jpg etc, into the /images/ folder in the theme?
Let me know how to fix these issues. Thanks for the great theme.
Cheers.
Reply
Stephanie
Dec 3rd, 2008
I absolutely love Blue Grace - it is so welcoming to see on the blog.
Reply
mrhdj
Dec 2nd, 2008
Hi Vladimir,
Thank you very much for a great theme. I updated the new version but category pages are broken.
Thanks
Reply
Rudy
Dec 2nd, 2008
Hi Vladimir,
Will you consider converting this into a 2-column theme with an expanded footer?
Reply
Garrett
Dec 2nd, 2008
Greetings Vladimir-
I have been using your Amazing Grace Theme, and I am about to switch to the blue version. Thanks much for a great theme.
I have a couple customization questions:
1. How can I use my own photos for the photos to the right of the header text?
2. When I switch themes to the new blue one, will it mess up my widgets, design, or anything else I should take note of?
3. If you take a look at my blog, the popular posts section in the 1st sidebar has at least two missing links. Do you know a simple solution to clean this problem up, or where to look for solutions?
Thanks much,
-Garrett
Reply
Vladimir
Nov 30th, 2008
If you made significant changes it's best that you stick to them. new version of the theme only makes it easier for new users to modify.
If you still want to modify I recommend using a file compare tool such as one that exists in Total commander. It will tell you exactly differences in two files so you can compare files in the new theme to you old ones.
Best way to keep things as painless as possible is to create a child theme - like I did with blue grace. This allows you to just copy over your child theme with new updates.
Reply
Asep
Nov 30th, 2008
Hi I downloaded your theme, its nice. I will try it thanks anyway
Reply
NygmaticK
Nov 29th, 2008
Hi, congratulations, your theme is wonderful and i installed it without troubles. I think i will change the pictures on the right top :)
Reply
Jyri Väätäinen
Nov 29th, 2008
I use Blue Grace.
Reply
Jyri Väätäinen
Nov 29th, 2008
I would ask same. I do little changes to theme (translation in files, new text on theme etc). Sorry bad English.
Reply
Adele
Nov 29th, 2008
ooops - forgot the click the Notify me link - so will do here.
Reply
Adele
Nov 29th, 2008
I am currently using Amazing Grace. I had to make some changes - like taking out the top bar links to fit into what I needed for my blog - as well as changing the image and a few other things. If I load the update I assume that will wipe out all the changes I made. Can you suggest what I should do here. I'm not a techie so afraid to mess with what I have but also would like to see the new stuff.
Thanks -
Reply