Serendipity (s9y) Tutorials

Theming Serendipity
Serendipity Quicksearch Form Revisited, many templates have a search box outside of the usual sidebar. This tutorial shows how to place a search box with a submit button that uses an image, and also is fully compatible with the livesearch plugin.

Replace sidebar titles with images, this hasn't been very widely used, but shows template designers how they can remove text from their sidebar titles and replace them with images.

Highlight the Latest Entry, templates that require a different style for the latest entry only can be done quite easily in Serendipity.

Are your templates cross version compatible?, Making sure users of older versions of Serendipity can still use your template is a challenge that can be easily overcome. Templates that showcase the latest functions are great, but spare a thought for users who haven't upgraded yet.

What happens when users don't use the entry title, well it means they can't access their entry from the normal url. This kind of mistake is easily fixed by proper coding in the template.

Original quicksearch form, for when you want to place a form outside of the usual sidebars. This tutorial explains how to add a search button and add text to your input box that returns if the user doesn't submit their search.

Add a breadcrumb trail to your template, my first explanation of the breadcrumb trail code that cen be placed into a Serendipity template.

Porting Wordpress themes to Serendipity, This guide to porting Wordpress themes used the WP dusk template as its example. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Background images in cells of calendar plugin, a nice touch if a calendar is integral to your blog design.

Greyed out next previous links when not used, our overview page links can be customised so that inactive pages are greyed out.

Styling the calendar plugin, If you want to do something a little different with your calendar plugin, here's how.

Small changes to next/previous overview page links, I like my next and previous links to be styled slightly differently from the original default theme.

Smarty 'truncate' in templates, sometimes a long entry title just won't fit into the header of the template, the solution is to use the Smarty truncate mofifier.

Style the 'continue reading' link, add some pizazz to your overview page with different styling for the continue reading link.

Add a dynamic drop down menu to your template, it can be done, this tutorial show how.

Anatomy of an s9y theme, a basic yet hopefully thorough explanation of the files in a template folder.

Using Serendipity
Customising your Contact Form Plugin, From version 1.8 of the contact form event plugin, it is now possible to dynamically edit the fields shown in the form. This tutorial shows how, and provides a few sample forms.

Installing Serendipity, I wrote this a long time ago before the Serendipity wiki had a decent install article. My version is still current, but isn't as detailed. Russian users of Serendipity needing a translated install tutorial should read my version.