Iowa Autumn 1

Thank you for downloading Iowa Autumn 1. This is my first attempt at releasing
a WordPress theme to the public. I have been designing my own themes for a while
but have not released them before now.

This theme started as the Maple Leaf, a theme adapted by Kaushal Sheth at
http://kaushalsheth.com and originally developed by Jennifer Ledbetter at
http://www.geeksmakemehot.com. While I started with their theme, I heavily 
modified it. I completely reworked the style sheet by changing colors and by
changing divisions and classes, removing many and adding a few. I also gave the 
body a background image, something I really like. I reworked all the sidebar 
items including my personal preferences and reworked a whole lot of the code. 
Jennifer's code was originally written as a theme for WordPress 1.2. Kaushal 
modified some of the code, but it still wasn't completely rewritten. I changed
a lot of the code to more closely match the WordPress Kubrick theme which is
distributed with WordPress 2.0.4.

If you are using the excellent Headline Images plugin by Cold Forged, found at
http://www.coldforged.org/image-headlines-plugin-for-wordpress-15/ , this theme 
will take advantage of that for your blog's entry titles. If not, you will have 
typical text for your blog's entry titles. 

This theme is widgetized as well. I have included the following widget items:

 * A WeatherIcon widget (if you have the WeatherIcon plugin installed) that
   allows you to set the city name from the widget control. 
 * A BLaugh widget - the way I use this on my system is to call a function
   used in the ImageManager plugin, found at http://soderlind.no/ImageManager
   If you don't have the ImageManager plugin, the BLaugh plugin will not be
   an option for you to choose.
 * An MDV Recent Comments widget supporting Nick Momrick's excellent Recent
   Comments plugin, found at http://mtdewvirus.com/code/wordpress-plugins/ ;
   if you don't have Nick's Recent Comments plugin installed, the widget will
   not be an option for you to choose.
 * An MDV Recent Posts widget supporting Nick Momrick's excellent Recent Posts
   plugin, found at http://mtdewvirus.com/code/wordpress-plugins/ ; if you 
   don't have Nick's Recent Posts plugin installed, the widget will not be
   an option for you to choose.
 * A My Links widget, supporting displaying the blogroll. This has been modified
   to work properly for both WordPress 2.1.x and older versions of WordPress.
   The function used for earlier versions has been deprecated in version 2.1.
 * A My Archives widget which displays your archives as a drop-down list box
 * A My Search widget which displays the search sidebar item better than the
   standard one (IMHO)
 * A Meta Buttons widget, which displays the meta area in the sidebar using
   graphic buttons for everything.

To install this theme, simply unzip the theme file (which you have already done
if you are reading this) and FTP the contents of the "iowa-autumn1" folder and
its "images" and "buttons" subfolders to your WordPress themes folder. Then go
to the "Presentation" area of the Admin Panel and select the Iowa Autumn 1 theme
to activate it. If you want, then go to the "Sidebar Widgets" area and set up
the sidebar to your liking.

If you like this theme, please put a link to my site somewhere or add me to your
blogroll. Thank you.

BillH
http://www.benched42.net/
