GraphicDesignMe | Blog

In a previous post I explained why I’m using Flatpress over Wordpress for my blog with step-by-step instructions on how to install it.
Ok, so your at the point where got your flatpress blog up and running and you should see a screen that looks something like this:

This is the default theme of Flatpress, you probably want to change it. You have a few options:

1. Get a new pre-built theme and install on your site

Sounds more complicated then it is.
There are a few (and I mean a very few) pre-built themes here.
And a few more here from other users.

Step one

Find a theme you like and download the files to your computer somewhere that’s handy (I usually save to my desktop so I can see the files right away).

Step two

Once the files are downloaded you need to put them on your site through your FTP program of choice (I use Fetch but any one will do).

Step three

Place all downloaded files into your public/blog (or flatpress)/fp-interface/themes folder.

Step four

Log into your admin area of your blog and click on “Themes” you should see what themes are now available to use. Here’s what mine looks like right now:

I wanted to try out a few so I have the Studiopress theme I’m using now as well as one called Deckay 3.0 and the default Leggero theme. All you have to do know is click the one you want to use and your blog should update automatically. Pretty Sweet!

2. Taking a pre-built theme and tweaking it to fit the rest of your site

Follow all steps above. Next comes the fun part. I’m assuming that you already know HTML and CSS at this point although I may go into those a little in the future. If you don’t your stuck with the pre-made stuff.

In your HTML editor of choice (I use Dreamweaver) you can open and edit any files that came with the theme. You’ll find them in:
public/blog (or flatpress)/fp-interface/(the theme folder that you downloaded)/

For example I used the Studiopress theme and edited the files header.tpl and footer.tpl and the css files found in the /res folder called globals.css to fit with the rst of my website. I also replaced some of the images.

Just re-upload said files, refresh and see what you get. If you really mess up you can always start over by re-downloading the theme and replacing the page with the original!

A little background

When I started working on adding this blog to my site I immediately went to Wordpress and downloaded the latest version. I followed the instructions and looked up a few tutorials, and thought I had this thing down pat. I then downloaded MySql installed it and ran into a huge problem. I’m behind a firewall. What’s a girl to do? Go to google that’s what! So I looked up blogs that don’t require a database and low and behold I come across Flatpress. Now flatpress has a wiki with instructions on how to install but I thought I could make it a little simpler for people to understand exactly what they should do. If you’re in the same situation as me and want this stuff explained as straight forward as possible then keep reading.

Step 1. Download Flatpress

It’s free, just like Wordpress so just do it. Go to: http://sourceforge.net/projects/flatpress/files/ and grab the latest version.

Step 2. Unpackage the file

Just double click on the file and all should be well.

Step 3. Upload Flatpress files to your website

Once the package is opened a folder should pop up called, surprisingly, flatpress. Using your FTP program of choice (I use Fetch but there’s a ton out there) place this folder in your public folder - or in my case, to make my life easier I created a new folder called blog and placed the contents of the flatpress folder in there.

Step 4. Set up Flatpress

Next you need to set this baby up, so what you want to do is to make sure the folder fp-content should have “777” permissions. What?!?!
All that means is that in the permissions for the folder fp-content, all the check boxes should be checked.

Next the easy part:

Once that’s done you need to go through the setup. To do this you need to type in your domain/flatpress. i.e. http://www.mydomain.com/flatpress. This is pretty straight forward, there’s only 3 steps:

1. Welcome dialogue
2. Enter user name, password (these you give yourself to login to your site so just make something up that you’ll remember and is pretty secure), URL and e-mail address
3. Provided, setup was successful, you are then asked whether you want to login or view your blog.

Make sure, for security reasons, that you delete the folder setup and the file setup.php once you have your blog up and running

And that’s it!

Your done - unless you want a theme or have it match your site.
I’ll go into that in detail in a future post.