Agregado Lifestream Theme for Wordpress Released

Agregado is a WordPress theme by Darren Hoyt and Matt Dawson, commissioned by the folks at Smashing Magazine. It features a built-in lifestream module and contact form with custom control panel options.

The motivation was to preserve the personal website, aggregate your data from sources around the web like Flickr, Delicious and Twitter, and publish it all in one convenient place in a consistent format. More details & documentation»

Requirements

WordPress 2.6+
Tested in: Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, IE7+
Host server with PHP5+ and cURL installed

Support

Please visit the dicussion forums»

Features

Lifestream module with carousel
Animated dropdown menus
Custom archives page
Built-in contact form module with AJAX sent/fail message
Built-in drop caps for paragraphs
Numerical pagination on archive and search pages
Author-highlighting for comments
User profile module
Widgetized bottom bar on homepage
Widgetized sidebar on single post pages
‘More in this Category’ sidebar module
Control panel options for lifestream and contact form

Getting things configured

Go to Settings->Permalinks and ensure your URLs use names, so the “Archives” icon links correctly
Go to Write->Page, and create a new page called Archives, selecting “archives” from the Template pulldown menu.
Go to Design->Agregado Options and input your RSS information from services you want featured in your lifestream, such as Flickr, Delicious or Twitter.
Go to Design->Agregado Options and input your email address and success message for the contact form
Go to Users->Your Profile and fill out the First Name, Last Name and Biographical Info fields.

Frequently Asked Questions

I installed Agregado – why isn’t WP finding my stylesheets and javascript? Why are subpage menus not working on certain pages?
Check to make sure none of your plugins are colliding with any of the theme’s jQuery. Starting by turning them all off. If you find specific collisions, please email me.
Why does the lifestream load slowly sometimes?
Sometimes fetching certain feeds (ex: Twitter) takes a second longer. Also make sure permissions are set to 0777 on the /includes/ and /includes/cache/ folders, though this should happen automatically upon install.

In the control panel options, you can also set the intervals feeds are retrieved (ex: 60 minutes).

I would also recommend Donncha’s awesome WP Super Cache plugin to speed things up.
Why doesn’t my link to the Archives page work?
Make sure you have created a new Page called “Archives” and selected your custom template from the pulldown.
How does the user profile pic work?
If you haven’t already, visit Gravatar and sign up for an account using the same email address as your WordPress admin account.

Big Thanks…

…to Chris Coyier, Ben Gillbanks, Ian Stewart and Hafiz Rahman for beta testing.

Changelog

• Version 1.2 | Sep 10, 2008
• Version 1.1 | Sep 9, 2008
• Version 1.0 | Sep 8, 2008

332 Responses {+}

Sep 8
11:08 am

Andor
nice theme, thx
Sep 8
11:14 am

XIII
Gorgeous work, I love how it looks and works without getting too crowded.
Sep 8
11:45 am

Marcus_A
Really nice work. A very nice looking and working Interface. Is it possible to use it with a childtheme very well?

Greets from Germany,
marcus
Sep 8
11:58 am

Elliot Jay Stocks
Wow. Very nice work, guys. Thanks for giving it away – this blows most premium themes out of the water!
Sep 8
12:02 pm

Ben
Looks fantastic Darren. Nice one.
Sep 8
12:30 pm

Daniel Black
Are you _kidding_ me? This is wickedly or insanely nice.

One question that probably deserves more investigation on my part, but I assume folks who use this would want to link the “Browse Pages” and “Search” items to actual links in case javascript is turned off? Before I started using a text-based browser, I dinna care; but I use one nearly daily and it’s frustrating to try to use sites reliant on javascript.

Not a criticism, just a question/clarification for my own edification.
Sep 8
12:35 pm

Tanner Christensen
That’s beautiful. And free? Are you nuts?
Sep 8
12:41 pm

kevin
Great Theme! I will test it.
Sep 8
1:06 pm

Curtis Henson
Really impressive. The attention to detail on this theme is amazing. So many things to love about it: the drop downs, the pagination, and archive page are my favs.
Sep 8
1:09 pm

styletime
you guys are amazing! who needs sweetcron ;)
Sep 8
1:16 pm

Chad
Beautiful work guys. I’m really impressed.
Sep 8
1:58 pm

Fubiz
Congrats !
Sep 8
2:34 pm

Darren
Thanks to all! We’re thrilled by the feedback so far.

@Chris: We fixed a few permissions in the zip file just now, but I’m not sure that would affect it. Anyone else getting that error?
Sep 8
2:58 pm

Chris
What is the code that disables something that’s embedded (i.e. a youtube video) into a post on the main page? Even if it’s just for the featured/most recent post.
Sep 8
3:32 pm

urartola
Congratulations, incredible theme.
Sep 8
4:02 pm

Darren
I did ran into a few problems, getting the theme all settled in. My biggest issue is that I canâ€™t access the pages, search, or sub-categories float menus. I suppose itâ€™s some kind of plug-in that needs to be installed. Either way, I hope you could enlighten us, or at least me, on how to get that working.

I think that’s related to the permissions change we made a little while ago. Try downloading once more.

Lastly, I have some kind of issue with the feed being downloaded from the various social websites. For now Flickr seems to work fine, but my Twitter feed seems to be not coming down. You think itâ€™ll need a bit more time to catch up?

Unfortunately Twitter is one of the least reliable feeds.
Sep 8
5:34 pm

james
Really great, thanks very much!
Sep 8
8:04 pm

Darren
Working on the jQuery calls right now, to make sure they don’t collide with plugins like Lightbox. Will post an update soon.
Sep 8
8:09 pm

Damir
Nice theme, thank you.
Sep 8
9:17 pm

Raj
Its beautiful! :)