Installation

If you have downloaded Binary Blue for the first time in your life, you should follow the installation routine being described in the following list:

1. Extract the ZIP file to a directory of your choice - keep the subdirectory structure!
2. Open your <wordpress dir>/wp-content/themes directory and create a new directory, e.g. “BinaryBlue”. It is recommended not to use whitespaces in the theme directory name as this is known to cause issues on several systems. At least it’s against naming conventions in webserver environments and thus no good practise.
3. Copy the contents of the ZIP file that you have extracted to the new directory.
4. IMPORTANT!!!! Make sure you have set up your wordpress installation correctly, especially the WPLANG locale definition in your wp-config.php! This variable MUST have a valid value like en_US, zh_CN, es_ES and so on, otherwise it may happen that your wordpress installation will produce errors like the well-known

   Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: cachedfilereader in /some/directory/structure/here/wp-includes/wp-l10n.php on line 72

   It is ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY for the Binary Blue theme to have a valid locale definition in your wp-config.php, as the theme is fully localized and therefore depends on a correct setup! Because this is the most commonly known issue with localized themes and plugins, I have now - finally - implemented a check routine that will look whether the WPLANG is set with a non-empty value, and if this check fails, the complete theme will fall back to its native German language.

5. Disable all plugins of your blog in the admin panel.
6. Switch to the default theme.
7. Open your wordpress admin panel, switch to the presentation tab and enable the theme.
8. Switch to the Binary Blue Options tab in the presentation section of your admin panel and setup your theme settings.
9. You need to create a directory named calendar-cache in the theme directory you’ve created on your webserver, and it must have write access for the webserver (chmod 777 in most environments - this may vary from system to system) to make sure that the AJAX calendar cache works as expected.
10. Enjoy one of the most advanced Wordpress 2.x themes available on the net

Update

If you are already using Binary Blue, but in an older version, you already know how to setup themes in general and Binary Blue in special. Take this route, please:

1. Disable all plugins of your blog in the admin panel.
2. Switch to the default theme.
3. Rename your current BinaryBlue directory in your <wordpress dir>/wp-content/themes folder to a pattern like “BinaryBlueV100Old” or something like this - so you will have a backup copy available if anything goes wrong with the update.
4. Follow the installation routine mentioned above, especially numbers 1. to 4.
5. MANDATORY: Open the theme’s options panel and hit the SAVE button to activate new features and settings that may have been implemented in the new version.
6. Re-enable your plugins, one by one, to check whether any of them interferes with Binary Blue (there shouldn’t be any issues, but sometimes not-so-well-coded plugins can cause errors - a common example for erratic behaviour occuring with Binary Blue is the comments preview plugin, as it totally blocks the AJAX features of the theme.
7. You need to create a directory named calendar-cache in the theme directory you’ve created on your webserver, and it must have write access for the webserver (chmod 777 in most environments - this may vary from system to system) to make sure that the AJAX calendar cache works as expected.
8. Enjoy one of the most advanced Wordpress 2.x themes available on the net

Frequently asked questions

If I enable your theme, I constantly am getting error messages like
Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: cachedfilereader in /some/directory/structure/here/wp-includes/wp-l10n.php on line 72
What’s the issue here?

You didn’t setup your locale correctly. Follow the installation routine above as if your life would depend on it and everything should be fine Make sure that your .mo file has the exactly same name pattern like the WPLANG value you’ve setup. Be aware that most webservers handle file names case sensitive, so letter capitalization matters!

If I enable your theme on my Wordpress 1.5.2 blog, it totally freaks out, my blog is broken, and the only way to get it back working is to delete the theme’s directory structure again.

Binary Blue works ONLY with Wordpress version 2.0 and above - upgrade your blog software and everything will be fine Sorry, a WP1.5.x backport won’t be available.

Hey, boy, I am already using Wordpress 2.x and your theme still causes my blog to crash! What’s wrong?

Well, I never could reproduce this, but it seems as if there are plugins on the net that totally break the theme. I know at least one case where Adhesive was the delinquent, and another case where the whitespaces in the theme’s directory name caused the webserver to freak out. Though I am usually brilliant regarding the stuff that I have coded myself, I am neither Jesus nor any other prophet or godlike creature, and this is the reason I can not know everything. It happens that you are on your own in this case to find out the reason, really, no kidding. Though, let me know if you find it out, so I can add both your issue and its solution to this FAQ, which may eventually help others one day

I have written my own scheme for BB 1.0.x and now, when I updated to the 1.1.0 release, my sidebar starts looking aweful. What’s that shit?

I must apologize, but the implementation of full and most convenient Sidebar Widgets support to be thought of required to change the HTML code of the sidebar almost completely. Unfortunately this will require changes to your customized stylesheet of your scheme file as well.

I love the one or the other of the schemes you ship together with your theme engine, but for reasons unspoken I don’t want to use your engine but K2 instead. Is there any chance you’ll publish your schemes for K2 as well?

Simple question, simple answer - no. The HTML both theme engines are based upon is totally different, so it would be really painstaking to transform the schemes. It’d end up in a literally spoken total redesign of the schemes. Additionally, I claim that Binary Blue is the more advanced one of both theme engines, so I don’t see any reason why not to use BB as your base theme engine for your blog (sorry for being that selfish )

I love your theme, and this deserves a reward. What can I do for you?

Well, thank you very much for the appreciation of my work. First of all, I want to please you to leave the backlink in the theme’s footer.php in place. What else: I always appreciate any kind of positive contribution to the theme’s community, let it be missing localizations, new schemes or simply helping others who run into problems while installing the theme. But what can you do materially? Well,

• first, feel free to donate your tip through Paypal
• Second, have a look at my Amazon wishlist