About MacBlue:
Macblue is a heavily modified version of the Lemontwist template. It is a free Pligg template released by Yankidank, but I highly suggest that you donate if you use it otherwise I won't keep making free templates. The template is by far the most advanced theme I have ever produced for Pligg, it has a lot of interesting features that will be discussed below.

The template is currently being developed for the next Pligg version (9.9.6). MacBlue currently is designed to work with Pligg SVN revision 71 current as of September 1, 2008. Please DO NOT redistribute this template or any variation of it without getting my permission first.

Features:
This template changes the votebox color depending on whether the story is published or still upcoming. You will often see both colors on search result pages which makes it an easy way for users to find quality stories first when searching or browsing by tags. Below the published votebox it also shows how long the story has been published, letting users know how fresh it is.

NEW: When submitting a story, this template will help users choose tag keywords through an ajax auto-complete script. This script pulls keywords from a dictionary file stored at /templates/macblue/js/tag_data.js.

Similar to Lemontwist, this template doesn't display a sidebar on the Live and Submit pages. Instead it widens the content area to focus the user on the more important data (for the submit page) and give enough room for large amounts of data (in the case of Live). I also removed the sidebar recent comments list because I didn't find it to be very useful, but it shouldn't be too hard for a novice user to add it back in.

Version:
The current version is 0.003.
Version numbers will be updated with each SVN revision commit that modifies this template.
To receive the most up to date version of this template please download it from the Pligg SVN under the /templates directory (not /trunk/templates).
It's brand new and still needs a couple final fixes (see below bug list), but I consider this template to be quite stable. I should have a rock solid version of this template ready for inclusion with 9.9.6.

If you want to run this with Pligg 9.9.5 you should take note of the following:

• Remove Sidebar Saved widget.
  

If you would like to contribute some help I would be glad to have the assistance. I would also greatly appreciate a donation using the Chipin widget associated with this forum thread. I invested a lot of time developing this template and I could use the money to help support me creating more free templates.

Known Issues:

• Check page management, currently submission isn't redirecting to anything
• Vote doesn't change to "voted" with ajax vote. Requires page refresh.

Support:
Limited support will be offered from myself once I finish this template. If enough users begin using this template I will create a new forum for bug reports and help requests.
Please check the README.txt and NOTES.txt files for more information about the MacBlue template.

If you like this template you might also like:

• LemonTwist by Yankidank

These templates take me a few solid days of work to complete, so please donate if you use this template. Otherwise I won't be able to continue producing more free Pligg templates.

Demo:

Demo MacBlue on the Pligg Demo Page.

[timbo]

How do you apply the "macblue2-3.patch" patch?

[Yankidank]

Patch is for users try to update a site from version 2 to version 3 of the template. I believe that you can use Winmerge to apply patches, but I would recommend using Winmerge to compare your version (if you started with version 2) to the latest since 3 isnt the latest version of this template.

[jiexi]

wonderful template with few flaws

[jack54321]

This is one of the best free theme out there, but it seems don't display that great in IE compared with in firefox and safari.

Even though there are some minor issues, the author did a great job for sure.

[jrothra]

First, I love this template! It's clean, easy to use, and seems stable. The larger fonts are a good idea, especially for those with vision impairments. Also, larger fonts for H* tags (or other headlines) seem to be the trend in Web 2.0 (and beyond).

With the IE issue, I found only the following (see screenshot as well)
Issue 1: Missing Images
The background images near the top are missing.

Issue 2: Rollover is slow to change
When you rollover/mouseover the navigation, the change of color is delayed only in IE.

I also found a universal issue (all browsers): Visual Hangover
Due to a dark blue line on the far left of the body content section, the top rounded corner looks like it hangs over the left side rather than lining up with it. Take out the blue bar and it looks like it might line up. Just a visual thing and only minor.

I've included screenshots from IE 7, Firefox 3, and Safari 3 (all in Windows) so what I describe can be seen (well, at least the areas I refer to since I can't animate the rollover in here).

[Yankidank]

The IE menu was designed to not have any background images. I had some issues getting IE to display the background images correctly and rather than spending hours fixing IE stuff I just took it out. You're welcome to correct it yourself, but I refuse to spend the majority of my time fixing IE issues because it's a terrible browser that Microsoft has no right to continue developing.
The other couple of issues are minor so I'm going to just leave them be since I don't plan on updating this template to work with the next release of Pligg.

[jrothra]

Originally Posted by Yankidank

The IE menu was designed to not have any background images. I had some issues getting IE to display the background images correctly and rather than spending hours fixing IE stuff I just took it out. You're welcome to correct it yourself, but I refuse to spend the majority of my time fixing IE issues because it's a terrible browser that Microsoft has no right to continue developing.
The other couple of issues are minor so I'm going to just leave them be since I don't plan on updating this template to work with the next release of Pligg.

Makes sense on the IE issues... it's a horrible browser that tries to think to much rather than do what it's told by the server/site.

On the update, do you think this template will work with the next release or will it be unstable? If the latter, that's sad because I really like it.

[Yankidank]

MacBlue wouldn't be fully functional with all of the updates made for the next release. It might work on some level but you would be missing out on a lot of new features and I can't guarantee the stability of it.

[jrothra]

Oh. I guess I'll need to find another template (lemontwist is the wrong style, sadly... looks good, but the trees/field limits its use).