Infimum

Infimum is a theme I developed for WordPress, and is what this blog is styled in, giving it the very clean look that it has.

I was dissatisfied with the so-called “minimalist” styles currently available, so I set out to make my own. This started off by looking at a theme called Minn (which is now lost to the internet) and sort of liking its style, but desiring some changes—and discovering the code was horrendous. So I initially set out to clone Minn from the better code included with the default themes. In the process, I chopped a lot of the code out of the default theme, and made a theme that is compliant with the XHTML 1.0 Strict standard (instead of just XHTML 1.0 Transitional). Also, I kept it widget-ready and full of all the hooks that WordPress plugins can expect, so it should work with any other extension for WordPress. And the end result doesn’t look exactly like Minn did, but is sort of close (thus the name).

Download the latest version and let me know what you think.

  • 2008/08/11: Version 1.3.1. Bugfix. Fixed title clipping in IE7 (thanks to Lorph) and some ugly text when comments were off.
  • 2008/07/31: Version 1.3. Version re-numbered for WordPress Theme Directory compatibility. Really supports blog taglines nicely, fixed some wording elsewhere.
  • 2008/07/29: Version 1.1. Updated for compatibility with the WordPress Theme Directory. In particular, supports multi-author and category-using blogs now. Also supports Gravatars and the use of a blog tagline. Changed the version numbering scheme (will now be major, minor, bugfix). (Includes comment dating bugfix pointed out in the comments.)
  • 2008/03/23: Version 1.0. About this time was the initial release. 1.01 and 1.02 followed, using an out of date numbering scheme. No one cares.

23 comments.

  1. Great job on this theme, Alex. I just started using a slightly modified version of it over at my log.

  2. Hi Alex, one of my readers noticed a bug in the comments template. All of the comment dates are displaying as the date of the post. The fix is on line 30 of comments.php; we should use comment_date() instead of the_time().

  3. Hi, Adam. Thanks for pointing that out. Fixed and updated, glad you like the theme.

  4. Hi there…this is a beautiful theme and just what I have been looking for. I’m using it for my whole site.

    One question…how difficult would it be to create a page template that does not show the comment box, or could you provide some code that excludes the comment box from pages? I’m no php scribe, and I can’t figure out how to modify the main index template.

    Thanks again for scratching the itch for a truly simple theme.

  5. Chris—If you disable comments for a particular post or page, the comment box won’t show there. This option’s in the Comments & Pings section of the Advanced Options when you write a post, or you can disable them by default in the Discussion section of the Settings part of your WordPress Dashboard.

  6. Duh…that was easy…thanks!

  7. Hi -
    I love this template! It is simple to work with and very effective. Once question though, how do i configure blog posts to just show the first 100 words on the index page? Of course, the full blog would be visible once the user click the “view more” or blog title button?

    Thanks :)

  8. The title is clipped in IE7.

  9. I just fixed the problem by updating the css file. The “line-height” setting fixes it.

    #header h1 {
    margin: 0em;
    padding: 0em;
    font-size: 3em;
    line-height: 0.7em;
    float: left;
    }

  10. Hi Chris! I just installed the latest version and without having changed any of the code, it’s displaying funny on my site (the sidebar is underneath the main body of post text). Not sure what’s causing it, but please shoot me a message if you know of a fix!

  11. Ooops….that should be directed to Alex, not Chris :)

  12. Okay… I fixed it by adding in a lengthy subtitle! 12 characters (incl. spaces) is apparently too short.

  13. Leigh—You can do this by putting in your post at the point you want it to break off (text before that will be shown on the main page and the entry page, text after only on the entry page). I’m not aware of a way to do it automatically.

    Lorph—Thanks. Posted a bugfix here, should be on Theme Directory soon.

    Laura—Not sure what’s going on with your site! The blog description shouldn’t have anything to do with it, as you can see mine doesn’t have any description. I tried putting in a one character description and it was still fine here. If you can figure out what was making it happen and it’s a problem with the theme, let me know.

    Thanks for enjoying the theme, all.

  14. Hey Alex,

    Thanks a lot for devoloping such a magnificent theme! I edited quite a lot, but it’s all small things compared to the original. You might want to check it out though, I think it’s pretty cool :)!

    http://www.thijskleinpaste.nl

  15. Thijs—Glad you like it! I like some of your edits, particularly the smaller title text. Maybe some will make it into the next version…

  16. Hi, great theme, I like it a lot!

    Please try to view my site in Firefox3. It has the same issue as described by Laura. In IE7 it looks fine, although the title is cropped.

    Thank you!

  17. [...] ein Theme was mir erstmal gefällt ist da, es ist das Infimum Theme und es ist auf der WordPress-Seite zu finden. Schlichtes einfaches Design das mir sehr [...]

  18. [...] para gravatar, fondo blanco y letras en negro y azul, con dos columnas y el sidebar a la derecha.Theme Homepage | Descargar | [...]

  19. I love and use what you’ve created. I’m a photographer and would love the option to roll a bunch of photos down the right column under “Link.”

    Is this possible? BTW - I’m also from Minn which is cool!

  20. [...] the time being, I will be using this wonderful, minimalist theme called Infimum created by Alex Smith. I will eventually be migrating over my own personal design as soon as I [...]

  21. Hello Alex, i just set up the infimum Design on my new Blog. Thanks you did a great job.
    One question / problem i have. If i want to ad a widget to the sidebar (in this case the Tag Cloud), the Cloud appears, but the rest of the sidebar is not anymore there ?
    Do I have to paste manually some code into php site of the sidebar ?
    Or… ?

    Kind regards,
    Uli

  22. I have rebuilt all again - now it works and the last comment above needs no attention anymore.

    :) uli

  23. Hey!

    Your design is great - just what I have been looking for. Thank you.

    Couple of quick questions with respect to customization:

    1. Is it possible to change the colour setting (particularly for the header)? If so, how?

    2. Is it possible to change the “Latest posts.” heading on the home page?

    3. Is it possible to change the “pages” heading at the top of the page links section?

    4. Is it possible to change the font sizes?

    Thanks for your theme…and for your help with all this stuff.

    Best,

    Jon

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