Living Open Source

DELTA - A church WordPress theme

Dec 7th, 2006 by Tim 46

Its been a while since I managed another theme. This one is designed with churches in mind and is the result of having helped a couple of churches online with WordPress. WordPress really is much more than a blogging tool. This theme is the next step along the WP-driven church evolution. I may even finally get round to using this on my own church site which to my shame still isn’t yet WP-driven.

The theme also includes a few extra header images. To use them just find the CSS stylesheet entry #main and modify the background-image tag. You could always create your own. I always think that a church website should have plenty of pictures of people rather than buildings! To make your own create an image with a width of 640px and a height of about 170px. Then upload it to the theme directory and modify the CSS.

The theme supports the following plugins:

Of course if you enable the sidebar widget you can put anything you like in the sidebar on the right.

Let me know where you are using the theme, especially if you are using it to build a WordPress driven church site.

Download the LivingOS DELTA theme.

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46 Comments on the Comment Wall

1 On December 7th, 2006 at 2:21 pm Justin Moore said:

Wow. That looks awesome Tim! Now I want to go and change my church’s theme…
2 On December 7th, 2006 at 7:40 pm Tim Walsh said:

Thank you so much for what you do. I’m building a website for the ministry I work for (becuase I used to work for Dell, I must know how to build a website, right? ) and have been pulling my hair out as how to do it right. I wanted to use a CMS or the likes so others could come behind me and still be able to edit and update the site easily, but I don’t have the time or motivation to learn Joomla or Drupal. So, I already have a wordpress blog (www.timwalsh.org) and decided to use wordpress for the new site. I’ve been searching and searching for the right template and along comes ‘Delta’. Thank you so much for offering your services to the community, Tim. God is surely using you, may you recieve His blessings 100 fold. Cheers.
3 On December 7th, 2006 at 7:51 pm tim said:

Thanks for your encourgaement. I struggled for a long time since coming into ministry as to whether I should let these skills go. After praying about it, and a nunber of friends urging me to keep it going, and discovering WordPress, livingos.com was born. And I must admit I do get a bit of a buzz seeing my work help churches around the globe.
4 On December 11th, 2006 at 10:37 am Brian Eelkema said:

Thank you so much for your theme. I had just decided (or finished procrastinating) to redo the churches website with CMS and choose Wordpress and when I looked for a theme, yours was perfect and just released (good timing on my part) Anyway I have been playing around with the theme and Wordpress this weekend and am almost ready to go live. Here’s a preview of your new template.
http://www.barriefirstcrc.com/test/
Thanks again. God bless!
5 On December 11th, 2006 at 4:11 pm Tomstone said:

There seems some error after install the theme, see this
http://www.fang.dreamhosters.com/blog/?p=3

Tags:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: jkeywords_post_tags() in /home/.antigone/tomstone/fang.dreamhosters.com/blog/wp-content/themes/LivingOS_DELTA/single.php on line 19

How can I fix this error ?
6 On December 11th, 2006 at 5:59 pm tim said:

Sorry, just delete that reference. I’ll upload a new version later. This refers to a plugin.
7 On December 11th, 2006 at 6:39 pm tim said:

I have now fixed the theme which was referencing a plugin and casuing errors on some installations. Just download to get latest version.
8 On December 12th, 2006 at 2:37 am Kathie said:

Hi there! I just wanted to say how much I love your themes. It’s nice to see there’s actually out there something that’s specifically created with the church in mind. It’s very much appreciated! I really hope you make it through the end of the alphabet.. lol
9 On December 12th, 2006 at 8:31 pm Fred McKinnon said:

Tim -
YES! I’ve been searching for a great WP Theme to use on my new podcast. Previously, I’ve been podcasting my worship devotionals and prayer/worship/ministry at http://www.highestpraise.com/podcast but I wanted to separate the two formats.

The Highest Praise Worship Podcast now is the format like a “radio show” where I feature new, modern/contemporary worship songs.

I’ve now separted my “spontaneous worship” type podcast and moved it to a new domain, yes - sporting your template!
http://www.worshipinterludes.com

I came here in search of fixing the fatal error, but saw your reply to the comment above, downloaded and uploaded the new single.php file and all is well!

Thanks again!
God bless, and Merry Christmas
Fred
10 On December 30th, 2006 at 9:23 pm Brannon said:

Thanks for the great template.
I’m using it on our church blog with a few modifications.
http://www.rcogop.com/blog/
It is a truly flexible design. Good Job!!!
Any tips on how to get the side bars of the edge of the page on the comments and events pages. The main page is just right.
11 On December 31st, 2006 at 1:07 am Chris A said:

tim, thanks for a great theme! I am not a church but i am going to use your theme 2 things:
1)i use gallery2 for my photos and this WP plugin does not make a WP :page”, it is a
12 On January 1st, 2007 at 2:43 am Chris A said:

Me again. This theme does not appear to work
with Mark Edwards Subscriber-only
plugin v1.02.1
(Allows you to mark posts as
13 On January 1st, 2007 at 11:15 am tim said:

I’m afraid I don’t have any experience of the subscriber-only plugin. The DELTA theme shows excerpts only on the front page. I suspect this is where you need to look if you want to hack the theme. Looking at the plugin home page, it seems to change the way excerpts work.
14 On January 7th, 2007 at 9:46 pm Nader said:

Great theme! Are you doing customization work on WP in combination with Plogger?

Looking forward to your answer, Nader
15 On January 9th, 2007 at 8:59 pm Chris said:

Tim, i am trying to use images in my posts and i can’t seem to get them to show. In the past, i use pic and this would align the pic to the left. I have div.img in the css but still can not get pics to showup. Can you help me get pics to showup on my page? Many thanks.
16 On January 10th, 2007 at 8:26 am tim said:

Are they images from Plogger or WordPress? Do they show up on the single post page? The Delta theme only shows the excerpt on the home page and I think therefore no pictures will show up.
17 On January 10th, 2007 at 5:10 pm Chris said:

Oh, yes, the do showup on the single post page. They are pics that i upload using WP. Is there an easy way to display images on the index page? I guess i could take the code from the single post and insert it into the index php code. I also have google video that i would like to display on the index page. Thanks again.
18 On January 20th, 2007 at 3:34 pm Chris A said:

Tim, i have tried to get my pics and videos to display on the front page to no avail. Is there anyway you can inform me how to get pics and videos to show on the index page? Many thanks
19 On January 20th, 2007 at 7:03 pm tim said:

Download latest version. I have changed the index page to show full posr rather than excerpt. If you liked the idea of excerpt then just use the MORE tag.
20 On January 22nd, 2007 at 5:36 pm Rob Doar said:

Tim,
Thanks so much for the theme! I have modified it for my church (still in progress), and you guys can see it in action at http://globalharvestchurch.net
you have a great site, and great ministry. God bless you man!
21 On January 23rd, 2007 at 9:53 pm Dave Kirkham said:

Tim,
I stumbled across livingOS via this theme just before christmas through the wordpress themes browser while looking for something to tart up my own bit of interweb (http://www.dkirkham.com). Since then I have taken over my church’s website and implemented a slightly re-branded Delta and have recieved some very positive feedback from other members.
I want to express my gratitude for your work here, and may come down to see you in action one evening and thank you personally!
Many Thanks
Dave
22 On January 24th, 2007 at 3:23 pm Rob Doar said:

Dave - I like the work you’ve done to your church’s site! I must say, you have a complicated sunday schedule!
23 On February 2nd, 2007 at 11:21 am Jimmy said:

Hi,

really such a nice theme. Can you please tell me ho can I stretch or u can say make it wide so that it can fit on the whole screen.

Jimmy
24 On February 3rd, 2007 at 3:12 pm Darrell said:

We just started a new church in Maryville, TN and were looking for not only the CMS tool to run our website, but a clean and polished theme as well….a short google search later, we found what we were looking for! Praise God for your work and our church appreciates your efforts! We currently have a stock load of Delta, but will be looking at modifying it in the future, but to tell the truth, there really isn’t much that we would need to change….the theme is THAT polished all the way down to the photos.
We do a question though (searched wp’s website to not much avail):
The sidebar1 template: what do we need to do to make the page list fit in neater (the last one is on two lines); reduce the font or is there a better way?

Appreciate your efforts and may God continue to bless!
25 On February 4th, 2007 at 8:47 am tim said:

Shorten your page title! Or change the width of the sidebar-1 in CSS. Shorter titles generally look better I think.
26 On February 6th, 2007 at 10:44 pm Chris said:

Tim, thanks so much for the new theme!! Since the new theme you will see that my categories do not “line-up” like the older theme. How do i make the child category look like a child category?
27 On March 8th, 2007 at 5:00 pm Jonathan said:

I’m sorry to spam the comments, but I answered my last question. It’s a plugin that I need to install. You can delete my last two comments.
28 On March 8th, 2007 at 5:57 pm Tim said:

Deleted. Your comments are not spam though - just you thinking out loud on my blog! Glad you like the themes.
29 On March 9th, 2007 at 5:28 pm Jonathan said:

Sorry, Tim a little confussion there. I still am having trouble with the page ordering. I answered the question about the widgets. When I transfered existing pages to the Delta theme it automatically places them in alphabetical order unless I create a new page. Do you know if what causes this or if there is a way to fix it without deleting and recreating every page I transfered?
30 On March 10th, 2007 at 9:33 am Tim said:

Delta uses the Sort_column parameter to set the order of pages (or should do!).

The line of code in sidebar1.php that does this is:

<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li='); ?>

So you set the order by changing the Page Order field on each page (usually found down the bottom of the right sidebar when creating or editing the page). By default Page Order is set to zero for new posts so you must change this parameter to control the order.

If you don’t want this behaviour then you can customise the wp_list_pages by change this line in the sidebar. More on this here.

Change sort_column=menu_order to sort_column=post_title for an alphabetical list.
31 On March 24th, 2007 at 8:29 am Philip Stolle said:

Tim,

First I have to thank you for this template. It’s helps jump start our site http://www.cedarridgechurch.net. I will be further extending it down the line.

Question though: Somehow, in wp-admin, I’ve broken the capability for Page Status, Parent Page, Page Password etc. functionality in the editor. I’m a bit bewildered at the moment. I’ve not altered Sidebar1.php. Would it possibly be related to the stylesheet? Does the admin pull style from the same stylesheet? The menu of options are present but the functionality is gone.
32 On March 24th, 2007 at 4:50 pm Tim said:

Changing your theme would not alter your admin pages. Something else will be broken. Try disabling any plugins you have installed.
33 On March 24th, 2007 at 10:39 pm Philip Stolle said:

Thanks Tim, but I’ve not installed any plugins yet. That’s the deal, I’ve only just begun the process, mostly switching out graphics and tweaking the stylesheet. Thanks for the thoughts. I appreciate any other possibilities you can think of.
34 On March 25th, 2007 at 8:25 am Tim said:

Admin is completely seperate from your blogs stylesheet. If you have no plugins installed, then I can’t think of anything but recopying the wordpress files to your server.

Or check the wordpress support forum.
35 On March 26th, 2007 at 10:32 pm Jim Adams said:

Thanks for all your hard work on this theme. This is my first wordpress blog/website. Can you point in the direction of some tutorial, faq, help file that will allow me to do the following:

1) Have a different header image on each page. I suspect this will take an if/then type loop on the header.php or some code in the style.css

2) I want to create a forum using the WP-Forum plugin on a page. But, I want to hide that page from the page menu on the index.php. Is this possible?

3) Is there a code example that will allow me to substitute a .swf file for the head image? The .swf will be the same size as the header.jpg.

I hope these questions aren’t out of line. Nevertheless, thanks again for DeltaOS.
36 On March 27th, 2007 at 7:52 am Tim said:

1 & 3 later.

2.)

You can change the line of code in the sidebar that displays the pages.
Add the exclude= parameter to exclude pages from the nav bar. Just find the ID for each page you want to exclude in the Manage Pages panel.

<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&exclude=1,5'); ?>
37 On March 29th, 2007 at 1:36 am Jim Adams said:

Thanks Tim, your help is greatly appreciated
Jim A.
38 On April 11th, 2007 at 6:30 pm melanie west said:

hi tim - i just wanted to show you a project that i am working on for our church using this theme.. it is not done yet, im basically still playing around with it before i get it live and in its own domain.. here’s the link: http://www.westdecrepito.com/project

i encountered 2 problems so far: i deleted the archives page because i cant get it to work, when i click on the title of the post it takes me to archives and not the post itself so i can read it. And if I click a post in the Archives it’s not opening to the post it just stays in the archives page. and.. i wanted to have just the excerpts of posts on the front page so i can limit exactly how many words i’d like there. how do i do that? any help is appreciated, thanks!
39 On April 12th, 2007 at 8:36 pm melanie west said:

hi tim - it’s me again. i am not spamming your comments here :-), i am just so excited. i worked on this theme all night last night.. actually until 4 in the morning. it is still a work in progress but i got it laid out now to where everything seems to work ok. i solved the archives problem by placing it as a sub-page instead of being in the main menu.

i’m still looking into how i could make the main post to a limited number of words. i had it set to where i only want 1 post but wanted it to remain in same size regardless of how long and short the messages are in the post.

blessings to you and thanks for all your hard work!
40 On April 16th, 2007 at 7:23 am Tim said:

Melanie,
You can use <?php the_excerpt(); ?> in the index.php in place of the_content() template tag. This lmits it to the first 55 words.
But it depends how long the words are! So for me the only sure way is to use the MORE tag when writing your posts.
41 On April 27th, 2007 at 9:02 pm Chris said:

Hey Tim! I have upgraded my PHP to 5 and now the DELTA theme is all messed up in IE 6.5 and 7. It did not do this until i upgraded to php 5. I just wondered if this theme has problems with php 5?
42 On April 28th, 2007 at 5:46 pm Tim said:

I’m not sure how PHP5 would mess up a theme. Have you also upgraded WordPress in the process. Removed or changed plugins? Are your other themes OK?
43 On August 10th, 2007 at 9:45 pm Kristy said:

Hi there,
I love your theme! This is my first wordpress site http://oasissundayschool.com. I do have a question though. I have enabled rss feeds on the right column from our local paper. I would really rather have the rss on the left column. I’ve looked at the code for both columns but I’m not sure what I should remove from the right and add to the left.

I appreciate any help!

Kristy
44 On February 12th, 2008 at 1:50 am 20 Specialty WordPress Themes | Vandelay Website Design said:

[...] Delta - This free theme is the only decent-looking church theme that I could find (not counting a Revolution rip-off that charges more than double the price of Revolution). [...]
45 On March 4th, 2008 at 7:18 pm Jay said:

Hey Great template! I am using it for our church, namechurch.org
Love it, very versatile and clean beautiful job.

I do have one question I loaded the tinymce advanced however due to the nature of the css the fonts do not change in posts or pages. I thought I would check to with you on how to allow format changes in the posts.

Thanks again for great work. Jay
46 On March 4th, 2008 at 10:56 pm Tim said:

Not sure how, or why you would do this. Formatting with tinymce will lead to very inconsistent design. This is the whole reason for Wordpress and CSS - you keep formatting apart from content.