Collage 2 release

YourHead Software has finalized their beta testing for their new Collage 2 page plug-in.

I could ramble on and on about this plug-in, but you'd really rather that not happen. Trust me. Instead check out Isaiah's latest blog post about the release and all of the new features.

The one thing I will highlight here from his blog post is this though:

New Styles: We’ve added a new Styles window. If you’ve used Kwix or Carousel, you’ll be familiar with it. Even better, we’ve begged, bartered, and bribed Elixir Graphics into creating a few professional grade Collage Styles that are built right in. They even did our super cool icon too!

We have also produced a couple of professional style packs that you can find here. We hope to make some more in the future as well.

Cloud Update

With help from Isaiah at YourHead Software we've updated the Cloud theme to work with YourHead's latest page plug-in — Collage 2.

This update for the Cloud theme fixes a major bug in which javascript conflicts prevented the theme from displaying graphics correctly in conjunction with Collage 2.

This update is recommended for all Cloud users.

You can download the new version of the theme here.

If you're upgrading from a previous version of a theme you will need to delete your old version before installing the new one. To do so, right-click (or crtl-click) on the theme in the theme drawer and select delete. After deleting the previous version follow the above steps to install the new version. 

* Be warned, deleting your theme will get rid of any data stored in it, such as custom headers, modified code, customized graphics, etc. Be sure to back up the data before deleting your old theme, if necessary. 

For advanced users who wish to copy only the updated files from the new theme to their modified theme here is a list of those files that have changed:

• index.html
• theme.plist

Be sure to check out Collage 2. It is a killer plug-in and a true must have for all RapidWeaver users.

Free theme: Cloud

This week has seen something new from us each day. Today brings something free to all of our users...

Today — Today we're releasing our popular Cloud theme as a free download. Drop by Cloud's product page to get your free download today!

Thursday — Thursday saw the release of our latest RapidWeaver theme — Notebook. This new theme is a real looker. It brings a unique style to your website while remaining classy. It is packed with a ton of theme variations in order for you to customize it and give it your own feel.

Wednesday — We released our first sets of Collage 2 style packs. These stylish Collage 2 packages have been a real hit. They're a great way to dress up your Collage 2 page with just a couple of clicks.

Tuesday — We released a new set of wallpapers for your Mac and iPhone. Two words: Cosmically beautiful!

Monday — We updated our Vanilla theme to fix a small bug with the top sidebar and its background color option.

New theme: Notebook

Say hello to Notebook

I've been toiling away on this new RapidWeaver theme for a while now, and I am quite excited to show it off.

Our latest theme, titled Notebook, is a real looker. It brings a unique style to your website while remaining classy. It is packed with a ton of theme variations in order for you to customize it and give it your own feel.

This new theme is a great choice for anyone interested in designing a blog, personal website, small business site or portfolio.

Let's get acquainted with Notebook —

The basics

Here's a quick rundown of the Notebook theme's variations. More details are covered on the Notebook product page:

Theme Variations

• Header visibility
• Header styles
• Title and slogan visibility
• Background
• Sidebar tab color
• Blog archives visibility
• Sidebar visibility
• Site search visibility
• Logo settings
• Page title visibility
• Body font styles
• Sidebar font styles

Color Variations
The Notebook theme makes use of RapidWeaver's Color Picker, allowing you to easily change the appearance of your site with a couple clicks of the mouse. We also provide built-in color schemes. For more information, see the Notebook product page.

You can edit these parts of the theme with the color picker:
• Site Background

• Site title
• Site slogan
• Blog title
• Site links
• Menu bar
• Menu bar - hover
• Menu text
• Menu text - hover

This theme works exclusively with RapidWeaver 3.6 and above.

For more

Be sure to read all of the details regarding Notebook to see what it has to offer you.

Stylin'

With the release of Collage 2, YourHead Software has introduced some killer features. The greatest feature, I feel, is the option to have expandable, customizable, and distributable styles.

I've been so thrilled by it that not only have I created many of the styles that you'll find in the Collage 2 already, I've sat down and created two additional sets of Collage 2 styles.

We hope you like the styles and would love to see pages you create using them. Feel free to post links to your site, or sites, which you're using Collage 2 and our styles on.

Check out the two new sets and let me know what you think.

Cosmic (wallpaper) beauty

I worked up some new wallpapers recently for both your desktop and iPhone. I'd been cosmically inspired by Leopard's space themed wallpaper and wanted to work up my own — elixir style.

Drop by the desktops section and get some swirly, cosmic goodness to spruce up your Mac or iPhone. You can check out a larger preview on the desktops page as well.

Vanilla bug fix

We've had a couple of reports of the top sidebar option in the Vanilla theme being broken. There was in fact a small bug which prevented the background of the top sidebar from appearing as well as the option to change the color of the sidebar background.

We've updated the theme to fix this bug. We're giving you the option of how to update your theme.

You can either download the full version of the theme and replace your current version (instructions are included in the README file that comes with the full download). Full versions have been sent out via e-junkie for all Vanilla owners.

The second option is to use the update installer found here.

The updater installs ONLY the one file that needs to be updated (colors.css). This allows for any modifications you've made to other files to remain intact. It also saves you the trouble of reconfiguring your site after re-installing the full theme. Using the updater is the reccomended process.

Please note that your Vanilla theme must be located in the default themes location for this updater to work. RapidWeaver, by default, installs all themes here and would only be elsewhere if you purposefully moved it. If this is the case, move it back to the default location before running the updater.

This brings our Vanilla theme up to version 1.5.

If you have questions, please let us know here.

Diversification

We do a lot of things here at elixir — Stock and custom RapidWeaver themes, icon and logo design, website development, and now even homework. OK, we don't do homework, but we help!

One of our customers e-mailed us the other day to ask a question. In his e-mail he also included this anecdote that made use smile. I asked him if we could share it with you all and he kindly obliged:

From Robert:

I bought one of your themes — Elements — the day I bought Rapidweaver. My 10 year old son announced he had a major project on space to deliver for school — "Just a written report, film or presentation" he said. He had done virtually nothing in three weeks and it needed to be in the next morning! Neither of us had ever designed a website in our lives, but after seeing your theme, I risked it, we downloaded RW and your theme, learned how to use it in an afternoon and completed the project on space shuttles as a website just a few hours later, thanks to you and the folks at RW. It really was a cinch to use even for a ten year old. My only disappointment was that he only got a B [on the project] — but at least it was better than the fail he would have been heading for with no project.

Reading this e-mail from Robert truly made me smile. I'm very happy that we could help out, without even knowing it. It also shows how quick anyone can pickup RapidWeaver and start learning it.

I'd not mentioned this to Robert yet, and wanted to wait until this blog post went up, but we've sent he and his son some other themes. Just in case he might have some other school projects to work on. ;-)