How To Install The Carrington Theme Framework

Today I will provide a short step-by-step tutorial (with screenshots!) on how to install the Carrington Theme Framework.

What you will need:

Step One (1): Install WordPress

WordPress has a famous five minute install.

Unfortunately I won’t be providing the step by step details of how to install WordPress. If you haven’t set up WordPress before, I suggest you read the official documentation on how to install.

Step Two (2): Download Carrington Framework

Carrington Theme Framework Official Download Page

Carrington Theme Framework Official Download Page

You can download a Carrington Theme Framework from the official download page. For the purpose of this tutorial, I will be downloading Carrington JAM (Just Add Markup). It’s under the Developer section.

You should still be able to follow this entire tutorial no matter which framework you download.

Which theme framework should you use?

Under the Community section there are currently three framework options - Carrington Blog, Carrington Text and Carrington Mobile.

Each of the frameworks under the Community section are “out of box” packages – allowing the user to install and use straight away without the need of writing any code or a large amount of customizations.

Carrington Blog

Carrington Blog Preview

Carrington Blog Preview

Carrington Blog is designed specifically for the purpose of an out of box experience. It comes preset with some pretty awesome features such as AJAX loading, WordPress 3.1′s customizable colours and header images, widgetized sidebars, image galleries, “drag and drop” menus and much more.

If you don’t wish to edit any code (or you just want to touch a little code), or don’t feel comfortable doing so, then this is an ideal framework for you to use. In fact this will end up acting just like a normal every day WordPress theme in a sense.

Carrington Text

Carrington Text Preview

Carrington Text Preview

Carrington Text is designed with the text of each post focus. This theme would be good if you don’t have images for your blog and don’t wish to purchase quality ones, or so forth.

This theme would be ideal if your content is the most important thing to your website – such as a website dedicated to excerpts from your next best-selling novel!

Carrington Mobile

Carrington Mobile Preview

Carrington Mobile Preview

Carrington Mobile is designed specifically for mobile devices – Blackberries, iPhones, etc. The theme can be previewed on a browser, however you just have to keep in mind that mobile devices tend to have a much smaller screen resolution (everything will generally appear smaller and more squished).

Carrington Mobile is a theme framework that you use if your website is to be viewed predominately, or only, by mobile devices. Through a bit of customization and use of plugins you can enable your website to use both a normal theme and a mobile theme. This option will be explored in a later article post on www.katskinner.com.

Step Three (3): Upload the Framework to WordPress Themes Location

Using your FTP program, such as FileZilla, connect to your server. Browse to the following folder:

/wp-content/themes/

If you installed WordPress in a directory other than your root directory, naturally your wp-content folder will be found somewhere in there.

Name The Theme Folder Appropriately

Name The Theme Folder Appropriately

Upload the theme framework of your choice inside a folder with an appropriate name. I named mine “carrington-jam”, since I downloaded Carrington JAM.

Step Four (4): Select the Carrington Framework As A WordPress Theme

Wordpress Appearance Drop Down Menu

Wordpress Appearance Drop Down Menu

If you have used WordPress before, the next few steps will be quite easy for you. Basically you just need to activate the Carrington Theme Framework as a WordPress Theme.

It it important to note that a theme framework is different to a theme – the Carrington official Q&A explains this more.

Click on the Appearance drop-down tab in WordPress, and select “Themes”. This will open the available themes for your install.

You will need to active the Carrington Theme Framework as your current theme.

Once activated, you should see the appropriate framework under the “Current Theme” section. As you can see in the screenshot below, I have Carrington JAM as the current theme.

Carrington JAM Theme Framework Activated

Carrington JAM Theme Framework Activated

Step Five (5): Customize Theme as Required

Depending upon the framework that you downloaded, you may now need to go ahead and do some customizations. For example, in my Hello World article I showed simple screenshots of how I uploaded my blog with the Carrington JAM theme framework.

If you are using any of the community theme frameworks – Blog, Text and Mobile – there should only be a few customizations necessary (change your blog name, permalinks, etc). Most of these changes will be done through WordPress’s administration side as well, making your job easy.

 

Would you like to see more tutorials like this? I appreciate any feedback that you have. Please ask questions if you get stuck, I will do my best to reply.

  • Hoanock

    Hi, I am using Carrington Text Framework and I love how simple it is. But I want to add a navigation bar on the right of the banner but I dont know how to do that. Even I can not find the CSS file to modify the background or font color … Can you give me a guideline for this. Thanks in advanced!

    • http://www.katskinner.com Kat Skinner

      Hi!
      I am assuming you are trying to add a WP3.0+ menu into the header area? If so you will want to edit the file “header-default.php” under the “header” folder. Just add the appropriate code at the very bottom of the file (I think prior to the close header div).
      Also, it’s been a while since I used the Carrington framework, but from memory if you make another header file in the “header” directory, with name such as header-home.php or home.php, the Carrington framework will show that header instead of default. It’s an easy way to have different headers across your website. Otherwise just edit the default file.
      Hope that helps, if not just shoot back a reply!
      Kat

      • Hoanock

        Hi Kat!

        I did it! Yesterday I tried to modified the default sidebar of this framework but then when it came to the header, I totally forgot that I can modify the default header also. I just came to remember when I read your reply.

        Actually I am not a web programmer, I dont know CSS and PHP. But I was able to search for some theme that has the header I like, then I tried to copy and paste the code into my theme. Hehehehe Hope nothing will happen to the theme’s layout in the future.

        Thanks again for your reply!

        P/S: your theme is very nice. hihi

      • http://www.katskinner.com Kat Skinner

        Glad to help!

        Playing around with the files is the best way to learn – about one year ago I had absolutely no experience with design or development. I did exactly what you are doing now – just copying other people’s work and manipulating it to suit my needs. Just be careful with copyright if your doing anything commercial!

        Thanks for the comment about my theme. I have been working long and hard on it – still doing many revisions. This is my first official WordPress theme.

      • Hoanock

        Thanks

  • Hoanock

    ha, I just found out how to customize the basic elements. It’s in the CSS directory in my server. Can you please tell me how can I add a navigation bar into this framework. Thanks.

  • Hoanock

    Hi Kat!

    I am very sorry to bother you again but I hope you can help me out to solve this. Now I got a new problem with the comment system of this Frame Work. The problem is even I am an administrator, I must approve my own comment, and even with every comment after that, I must approve for them to appear. This happens to every user’s roles.

    To say, I check all the option in the Setting => Discussion of my blog and the result is same. I tried for nearly 2 hours and can not find the solution, even if on the internet, there is no thread that talks about this problem. Seem like I am the only unlucky person.

    I hope you can give some guidelines. Thanks in advance.

    • http://www.katskinner.com Kat Skinner

      Hoanock,

      The first comment every one makes would definitely be caught by the checkbox “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” setting under Setting > Discussion. From what you said above, you are aware of what this does (“even with every comment after that, I must approve for them to appear”).

      Do you have “An administrator must always approve the comment” checkbox enabled/ticked? If so, this box ensures that any comment must be approved before it can appear (which sounds like the issue you are experiencing). This checkbox most likely needs to be disabled for your needs.

      Ensure that “An administrator must always approve the comment” checkbox is disabled. Test the commenting system again – keeping in mind to test it you may need to post twice for the comments to automatically appear on a website for a particular use (if you have the latter checkbox enabled).

      If this doesn’t solve your problem, just shot me a reply and I’ll see if I can figure it out for you.

      Kat

      • Hoanock

        Hi, thank you for your reply!

        Sadly is, I do aware of the “An administrator must always approve the comment” checkbox and I am sure it’s disabled. Even if I disabled both the checkboxs, comments still need to be approved to be appeared.

        Hope to hear from you soon.

      • Hoanock

        Just to be added, I am not using any other commenting system except the built-in Carrington text framework.

      • http://www.katskinner.com Kat Skinner

        To be honest I am not really sure why you are experiencing such a problem. There may be a bug in the Carrington Text framework perhaps. Try asking for help on the Carrington Text Support Forum.
        The only other ways that the default settings in WordPress Settings area are easily over-ridden are through plugins or a custom function.php. It might be worth taking a look at that file – even if your not a developer and unfamiliar with any code there – and see if there is anything that could potentially refer to WP comments. If you make any changes to this file, it is essential that you make a backup first.
        Worse comes to worse, download a fresh copy of your framework and if possible WordPress, and make the changes again. Of course if you re-install WP make sure you export (and then later reimport) your content.
        Sorry I can’t be any more help. I haven’t experience a problem like this before, and I couldn’t find anything on google either.

    • http://www.katskinner.com Kat Skinner

      Also, do you use any plugins (such as Disqus) that affect the commenting system?

  • Hoanock

    Ok, I will take a look at it and try to figure it out.

    By the way, I can not register in the Carrington Text Support forum because they need me to fill in a Captcha Form, but there is no captcha form, haha

  • http://alexking.org Alex King

    These Carrington themes are not frameworks. Carrington is a platform for creating themes that need custom visual treatments for different site sections. It enables you to use easy file names to load in different templates as desired.