History: Snow

This theme was originally inspired by the Mtechnik_Xmas PostNuke theme, but all the graphics are original (if you look closely but not too critically, the snowflake "arms" are — somewhat overlapping — a t-i-k-i from perimeter to center), and virtually all design details are new.

The Snow theme includes two options for the page-top graphics: a jpeg topbar image and Flash snowfall effect. These will have to be modified for use at new sites.

By default, the non-Flash tiki-top is used. To use a Flash file instead, rename templates/styles/snowfall/tiki-top_bar.tpl as templates/styles/snowfall/tiki-top_bar_noflash.tpl and rename templates/styles/snowfall/tiki-top_bar_flash.tpl to templates/styles/snowfall/tiki-top_bar.tpl. In other words, the theme comes with two files, either of which can be named tiki-top_bar.tpl to display the desired image/movie.

The Flash (.fla) file is from Flashkit.com where the description says to "use freely". I resized the .fla document, removed the button, and replaced the background image. Along with the default "Snow theme" .swf file, the .fla file is included with the theme so a personalized Flash movie can be made.

The .fla file should be edited in Macromedia Flash or other .fla editor. Select the background layer and click "Edit/Cut". Import a new image file to be the background; it should be the same size as the original background file (734px by 95px) to keep things simple. "Publish" the movie to create the new .swf file. If the dimensions of the file are changed, update the Flash version of tiki-top_bar.tpl file accordingly.

The non-Flash version of the page top can be done different ways. The default treatment is a background image (header-bg.jpg) that tiles the width of the page. A logo image (logo.jpg) is specified to be centered on top of that.

To make a custom logo image that works in this arrangement, use the background image as a background layer pattern in your image editor and make new text layer on top of it, using one of the snowflake patterns as a texture for the text if you like.

The background image doesn't have to be used (edit snowfall.css) for a more plain top area, and the logo image can be changed accordingly.

This theme has CSS specified for a PHP Layers menu. The line of code to activate the menu is at around line 11 of the tiki.tpl file, but is commented out. To use the menu, change the " {* " and " *} " tags in that line to " { " and " } " (delete the asterisks) and, if necessary, change 43 to whatever menu id number you want to use.

The Snow theme has a slightly modified tiki-show_page.tpl file — to place a full-width graphic background behind the page title, a new div, id="pagetitle-container", was added around the code that calls the page title.

Also, tiki-read_article was modified to add a missing div class="article" tag.

Check out Sample Page to see how things look in this theme.