I liked the look of redbel theme, which is designed by a Belgian named pixelb.  It has simple stark colours, simple design, with a nice WordPress 3.0 menu.  So, as easy as 1-2-3, I installed the new theme and had it working, after a fashion.

Modifying WordPress Theme

However, as usual with these free WordPress themes, there are a few things that needed to be changed, or tweeked, or modified to better suit the look of the website.

For example, the Forbidden City brand needed to be stronger, with the use of a logo on the header, which was easy enough to add to header.php, but meant the removal of the custom search page.  This is something I will talk about later.

Photoshop Change Colour of Image

Also, the colours were too plain. Forbidden City plays in red / yellow, as the colours of the Imperial Forbidden City of China.  The blue buttons, sidebar sprite, article, read more labels and .pngs did not match.  Using Adobe Photoshop CS4, I added an adjustment layer and colorized the hue/saturation, which is a very easy way to change colour of the image, if it is a fairly simple colouring.

Tutorial

1. Open the .png or .psd image in Photoshop
2. Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation (or press Ctrl U on Windows) to open the adjustment settings.
3. Actually it is better practice to go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation to add a new adjustment layer.  This means a new layer is added on top of the base image, so you can easily revert or delete the layer if things don’t go according to plan or don’t look right.
4. Name your layer as you like, leave color as none, normal mode and 100% opacity (as default settings). Press OK.
5. Click the colorize button, then change the hue setting to match your new colour chose (60 for yellow). Adjust the saturation (90 for bright yellow) and the lightness to suit (+5 for yellow).
6. Job done.  Save your new .png image as you like.

With the redbel theme there are four blue colour images you should change, in my case to either red or yellow.  You can then either change the .css link for each file, or simply rename the existing images and upload them via FTP to the theme images folder.

Photoshop Colorized Images Screenshot

Here are the new colorized images as I changed them, which you are welcome to download to use on your redbel theme, giving some extra colour palettes if preferred.

Various Colour Palettes for redbel theme

Redbel custom colours download

Download the custom colours for the WordPress redbel theme.

Redbel Theme Image Colours red (2) – Download the Red theme background Colours for Redbel

Redbel Theme Image Colours green (2) – Download the Green theme background Colours for Redbel

Other Modifications

redbel theme mod

I changed the header background in a similar way to give it a bit of a yellow splash.

I then changed the default puce.gif, which is used as a list indent on the sidebar to a gif of a football, to remind of the football based theme of the website.

I wanted to change the width of the main article, but the border of this is made from a fixed width image, which would be screwed up if the page width was altered, so I left this for the time being.

I found a problem with the widget options in the dashboard, that they were not saving when reloading the widget menu, but found this fix on WordPress Forums. I understand bpixel has sinced fixed this on the theme download.

I still need to work out how to add a search page to the sidebar, as the default option and the current .css for search mucks up the layout of the sidebar background images.

With the .css file, I made a few text, image and text colour changes, but nothing too drastic.

Thanks again to bpixel for the theme I worked with. I am very happy with the redbel theme mods I have made so far for Forbidden City FC.

Anyway, here are a few replies I received to some random questions I have asked:

“Travel: Where would you rather be right now?”

John K. 43 / M / Denver, US “exactly where I am”

Yabbox “Good answer. You lucky man.”

John K. “very”

Lauren F.  28 / F / Middle Village, US “zihuatanejo!”

Yabbox “It looks idyllic.  Take me with you!”

Lauren F. “Wish I could take myself!! ”

Dustin M. 25 / M / Missoula, US “Rob a bank”

Yabbox “Nice. I didn’t think of that.”

Dustin M. “I mean, look at women, listen to gossip, play pranks on people, or get rich?

Yabbox “Apart from wander around the rooms of a high class brothel, I thought of stealing a passport, or walking across immigration, or issuing myself a round the world airplane ticket, stealing a yacht, etc.  Similar lines I guess, but yours has more potential!”

Ian M. 26 / M / San Jose, US “id (birth cert, other documents), laptop, cell phone and charger.”

Yabbox “Modern day essentials. Frightening but realistic. Thanks.”

Ian M. “yeah…pretty much everything else is optional”

Melissa A. 29 / F / Dubai, United Arab Emirates “harddrives, bicycle, plants”

Yabbox “Superb answer. Realistic, practical and loving.”

Melissa A. “cool”

Maria F.  20 / F / Lisbon, Portugal “I don’t know, but if I woke up in an unfamiliar place without having any memory of how I got there, I’d call the police.”

Greg S. 25 / M / St. Louis, US “A hammock suspended between two doric columns overlooking the ocean on Santorini.”

Fernando B.  31 / M / Sao Paulo, Brazil “Probably will try to raise as much money as I can …”

Skyphone G.  40 / M / London, UK “I won’t assume right off that you might be gay if you are a flight attendant not unless you might be giving away signs of being effeminate? Being competent flight attendant demands a rigorous attention to details when it comes to serving demanding flight passengers. Only highly qualified individuals are fortunate to qualify & most of these qualities can only be found on people with specific attributes regardless of their sexual orientation.”

A Vintage International Original, September 2000
First published in Japanese as Noruwei no mori in 1987.
ISBN 0 375 70402 7

– This book was loaned by Willy and I read it in a few weeks, mostly at night while staying in Andre’s place and while Lily was away.  As soon as I saw the book and the author I was happy … I remember happy times when I read his book of short stories “After the Quake” however many years ago (where was that?).  I was a little sceptical of the translator (Jay Rubin) as they must put their own meaning to the translation in certain areas.  Anyway, it was a thought provoking read, but sometimes a little too sad with memories of lost love and sad love letters.  I was hoping the story wouldn’t stay sad the whole way through but knowing Murakami’s style wasn’t expecting a whole lot more.  The flow of the book worked really well, but it did seem to wrap up certain sections near the end much quicker than the detail he gave in earlier months.  I finished the book wanting to pick up another Murakami novel and immerse myself once again in Japan!

— I was sceptical of this book that came to me via Willy from Matt as it was an American author (a comment which Matt took on board for later loans).  But once I got used to the manner of writing and dismissed the reference points to New York places I didn’t understand, the book was actually quite easy to read and flowed in a meaningful direction.  It reminded me of JD Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye in it’s first person tense and diary like method of growing up in early teens in a similar location, despite clear differences in class.  But maybe with the same anquish.  It wasn’t a great novel, but the meaning behind modern society, throwing away aspirations and opportunity for success was evident in his struggles with growing up.  I read most of the book in May while in Beijing, then took it to Cornwall with me for the weekend camping, where I read a few pages.  It took a long time to read, I guess it wasn’t captivating enough, or perhaps I wasn’t finding the time to pick up a book.  Of course I had just got an iPhone, so that took over my 7-day wonder for a good couple weeks.

No Hunting Dogs Allowed in Room
No Cleaning Game in Room

Uploaded by yabbox

This is a screen shot taken from BBC Series ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ episode ‘Order out of Chaos’.

No Hunting Dogs Allowed in Room – No Cleaning Game in Room

It took me a while to work out what the second sentence meant, then it clicked, no cleaning (of) game (animals) in room.

It seems that the TLC Farmer’s Motel isn’t the only place where hunters get up to strange goings on in their motel room.  Someone called Kay2 commented on the Fodor’s website

Paxson—Paxon Inn/Lodge has a sign on back of room door “No cleaning game in room” made us wonder about the stains in the shower.

BBC Programmes

First off, the drunk and lively South Stand supporters and most of the stadium sing Hey Baby …

Here is a short video which sort of shows one of the pitch invaders (aka fully clothed Streaker) in a Tiger suit who started from the North Stand, climbed up and on to the goal posts in front of the South Stand, evaded a few security, played with the match ball at the half way line before finally being pummelled into the railings back at the North Stand. Impressive display.

And here’s a story of a same but different performance back in 1993.

A great final, a great weekend and Samoa lift the cup as a Firework display explodes over the Stadium

For those with addled brains, here’s a good link to Day 3 As it Happened

Roll on the continuation of the party in the bars tonight..

Yes, I think they were all drunk and definitely a few of them just a little bit queer.

Click here to view the embedded video.