Why do I spend so much time fighting Roller? Why can’t I just get on and do my blogging thang? My patience is wearing thin. Shouldn’t the default environment just work? Why do I have to become and HTML/CSS expert? I didn’t sign up for this!

And judging by the quality of the OpenSolaris blogs, I’m not alone in my frustation. The content is great, but the presentation is often poor.

So, in the absence of better advice I have decided on the following:

• I will use the “Basic” theme with minimal hacks (see below)
• I will hijack <h4> … </h4> for my own subheading use
• I will mark all my paragraphs with <p> … </p> containers
• I will never use <p> as a separator
• I will spurn the use of <br> separators
• I will employ <pre class=”code”> … </pre> for code quotes

I’ve modified the “Basic” theme’s default _css file to ensure that “h4” headings have margins which match standard “p” paragraphs, and that preformatted code has a readable font size …

#set( $theme = "basic" )
#parse("/WEB-INF/classes/themes/css.vm")
<style type="text/css" media="print">
.rWeblogCategoryChooser{ visibility: hidden; }
.entries{ width: 100%; float: none; }
.rightbar{ visibility: hidden; }
</style>
<style type="text/css">
h4 { margin:10px; }
pre.code { font-size: 10pt; }
</style>

I didn’t like the way the “Basic” theme’s default _day file adds <p> … </p> containers around each day entry because this forces nesting of the “p” tags within the final HTML. Nor did I like the way the entry title was just marked with the “b” tag. So this is what I now use …

<div class="box">
<div class="entry">
#showDayPermalink( $day )
#showEntryDate( $day )
</div>
#foreach( $entry in $entries )
<a name="$utilities.encode($entry.anchor)" id="$utilities.encode($entry.anchor)"></a>
<h3>$entry.title</h3>
#showEntryText($entry)
<span class="dateStamp">(#showTimestamp($entry.pubTime))</span>
#showEntryPermalink( $entry )
#showCommentsPageLink( $entry )
#end
#showLinkbacks( $day )
</div>

For such an advanced blogging environment I find it absolutely incredible that I have to edit both the bookmarks database and the main weblog template jsut to get rid of the default (and useless) “News” links! Here’s my revised “Basic” theme weblog template …

<div class="entries">
<h1>#showWebsiteTitle()</h1>
<h2>#showWebsiteDescription()</h2>
#showWeblogCategoryChooser()
#showNextPreviousLinks()
#showWeblogEntries("_day" 15)
</div>
<div class="rightbar">
<h2>Calendar</h2>
<div class="sidebar">
#showWeblogCalendar()
</div>
<h2>RSS Feeds</h2>
<div class="sidebar">
#showRSSBadge()<br>
#showRSSLinks()
</div>
<h2>Search</h2>
<div class="sidebar">
#showSearchForm()
</div>
<h2>Links</h2>
<div class="sidebar">
#showBookmarks("My Sites" true false)
#showBookmarks("Blogroll" true false)
</div>
<h2>Navigation</h2>
<div class="sidebar">
#showCssNavBar()
</div>
</div>

Well, there you are. That’s what I did. I just wish it was a simple matter for others to use the above, but unless you are also using the “Basic” theme it almost certainly won’t work for you! However, the principles should be applicable to other themes.

I have also taken the precaution of downloading the current Roller distro just incase someone fiddles with the “Basic” theme in a later release. Sigh!