WordPress 2.0 themes are now available.

The first of the WordPress 2.0 themes are up! I’m trying out the new BinaryBlue theme.  But it has a BIG surprise waiting for non-localized blogs that try it.  It will crash your blog and your admin pages.

It is a localized theme. That means that you HAVE to have a special setting in your WP-Config .

You know that section in wp-config.php that most of us have ignored? the one that says:
[PHP]
// Change this to localize WordPress.  A corresponding MO file for the
// chosen language must be installed to wp-includes/languages.
// For example, install de.mo to wp-includes/languages and set WPLANG to ‘de’
// to enable German language support.
define (‘WPLANG’, ”);

[/PHP]
Well, if you don’t have a value in there when you choose the new Binary blue theme, you only get this :

Cannot instantiate non-existent class: cachedfilereader […]

on every page of what you had previously thought of as your blog…

Luckily, the fix is simple… change the define line in the config file to this:
[PHP]

define (‘WPLANG’, ‘en_US’);

[/PHP]

and your site will work again (after it does some initial chugging to apply the localization – give it half a  minute…)

Beyond that, the theme is wonderfully well organized.  The options page is a treat and the developer, and you can see from his comments , that he is helpful and seems to know his stuff.  I’d like my WP3.0 theme to be as well organized.  This theme, though still 1.0, sets the standard that many should follow.

I do wish there was a readme file that explained that step or that localization was turned off by default.

I also tried turning on the ie7 “fixes” feature that the author gets tripple Kudos for turning into a configurable option rather than just building it in, and it caused some of my posts to wrap the sidebars down to the end of the page.  So that option is off again.

I’ll try do a full review of it over the weekend.

Hey, Kevin should create a blog entry for theme reviews that we can all point our tracebacks to…   Good idea?