My Blog It » WordPress Themes

Inspired Magazine give away

David — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:52:05 +0000

Inspired Magazine has created a reasonably large WordPress theme giveaway: they are aiming to give away 26 WordPress themes by many high quality theme merchants. We will not list all of them, however I did notice Organic Themes, Press75, Themify, Obox, as well as StudioPress listed, amongst numerous others.
If you would like to add your theme, They are suggesting that you send a tweet or comment on their article together with the theme you’d like as part of your theme collection. Simple really. The competition will conclude next Monday, the 11th, so don’t hesitate.
So they’re not quite breaking the mold in terms of internet contests, however it’s a tiny investment for a free WordPress theme. Tell us should you win, and then we can also enjoy it vicariously through you!

WordPress Sucks

David — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 06:33:32 +0000

Okay, before you get your panties in a bunch I’m not talking about the software but more to those that run it and the decisions and actions they have been making lately.

It has long been understood by WordPress theme designers that the WordPress leadership has some control issues. These issues come down to their desire to restrain competition from all but a chosen few.

So what brought this up?

Today @andrea_r posted a tweet about 200+ themes that had been removed from the theme viewer. She posted the source of : WordPress.org Pull 200 GPL Themes You should make a point to read Dave’s post.

Why is this so important?

The WordPress blogging platform and it’s success was not just built by the few folks that control it. It has become so popular by the work and equity of those building themes and plugins. Could you just imagine what WordPress would look like without all these great addons?

It would not be nearly successful as is it is today, not by a long shot!

Just a hobby?

Most people that have put their time and energies into developing themes and plugins started as just a way to give back to the software they love and it’s community. But it’s very natural to desire an income from what you enjoy doing.

And why shouldn’t they? Developing themes and plugins while continually working on making changes every few months to insure compatibility with new versions is a lot of work.

So the rules…?

The only way you can a profit from WordPress is by doing custom design work…. Right? Will that change in the near future too?

At some point will WordPress refuse installation on domains of users that use WordPress to blog for profit? You may think this is a rather extreme thought, but then again if those developers that help make WordPress what it is today are not allowed to make their hobby into a business, is it really that far fetched?

Now I know that WordPress is not stopping them from making their hobby into a business but they are certainly not helping them.

By excluding them from the communities such as the WordPress Theme Library WordPress in my opinion is spitting in the face of the best WordPress contributors.

One last point

Have you noticed that every premium theme on the market has a link proudly proclaiming “Powered By WordPress”.

Maybe we should remove those links? and of course the links in the default blogroll…

Why is this all so important? (part II)

Because when an open source project losses the support of it’s contributors it ether dies or goes commercial.

1 Step theme install – Not

David — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:01:14 +0000

Installing a new WordPress theme should be one click, well in a fantisy world maybe. I’m going to take you through the steps to getting your newly found theme ready for use.

Check your theme for the not so nice

After downloading your newly found WordPress theme unzip the files look for a file called functions.php with a text editor. Look for anything that looks like this:

What we have here is a cheap and easy encryption method. The bad news is we don’t know what the heck is in there. It could be anything from simple link back code to a algorithm allowing backend access to your WordPress dashboard.

If you find code even remotely like this don’t use the theme. Maybe another day I’ll show how to decode this.

Next look in the image directory; There should not be any text or php files in this directory. If you find one take a look for the same type code as above.

When I tear into a theme I open every file looking for any encription. I have seen themes with link backs in the 404 files too.

Title and Keywords

Many theme designers are very lazy when it comes to the title and keywords. Most will use a very simple title such as this:

<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?>

So lets get started, open the header.php file.
I would suggest changing it to something like this:

<?php if (is_home()) { echo bloginfo(‘name’); echo “: “; echo bloginfo(‘description’); } elseif (is_404()) { echo ’404 Not Found’; } elseif (is_category()) { echo ‘Topics:’; wp_title(”); } elseif (is_search()) { echo ‘Search Results’; } elseif (is_day() || is_month() || is_year() ) { echo ‘Archives:’; wp_title(”); } else { echo wp_title(”); $subtitle = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘Subtitle’, $single = true); if($subtitle !== ”) { echo ‘: ‘ . $subtitle; } } ?>

Keywords

Most theme designers will not offer any keywords or will often use their own in the keywords meta tags.

so find this:

and change theme to your keywords.

WordPress Version

This is meta tag that is really not needed. You really don’t want hackers to know what version of WordPress your using. So just remove this entire meta tag.

Footer

Now open the footer.php file and look for the that encrypted code as we talked about before. Most themers who make themes for sponsors will add encryption so that you don’t remove the sponsor’s link.

But then again, there could be more in the code than just some simple link code.

Tracking code

Now don’t forget to add your tracking code for google analytic, mybloglog….

Did I miss anything?

Interview with Sunny Nathan from Headsetoptions

David — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:50:19 +0000

Could you tell us a little about yourself
Thanks for asking. I am Sunny Nathan, a 32 year old husband, professional engineer and a part time web developer. I started learning HTML and CSS out of a desperate need to create database driven sites for a not for profit foundation I co-found with a school mate from Canada.

Where do you find your creative inspiration?
I am perpetually on the learning curve, since this is not my primary occupation I have not had an opportunity to obtain any formal academic training. With that said, I draw inspiration from many sources, magazines, television, the Internet, pretty much anything I encounter. I have lately taken to Blueprint CSS and I might use it in all future contractual work, maybe eventually use it to design free themes.

What tools do you use?
As of now, I am using Photoshop and notepad, I hand code the CSS and XHTML, so I seldom use any editors.

How much time do you spend on each theme?
Anywhere between 3 to 8 hours to design and validate, again some themes never see the light of day, so it totally depends on my mood.

Why do you do design themes for WordPress?
Mostly because people have come to expect of HeadsetOptions and MandarinMusing. We started off making themes to develop relationship with our user base and we feel it is a good way to give back to the wonderful WordPress community.

What is your favorite snack while hacking away at your themes?
I barely snack, but I do drink tons of coffee. I sometime work with the TV on, just to catch the news or a rerun of Seinfeld while coding.

Not including your own themes; What is some of your favorites?
I like most of the themes by Design Disease. Theron Parlin and Derek Punsalan make pretty nifty themes; Brian Gardner, Darren Hoyt (who I found out recently is geographically the closest well-known designer to me), Small Potato are some designers who are consistently good, I like hoards of other themes, too many to mention, but pretty much anything that gets of wpSnap is in my opinion pretty high up on my list.

What are some of your favorite hang outs on the web?
Frankly I do not get online as much as I would like to, I usually hit my Google Reader to catch on feeds, visit Seth Godin at least once a day ever since I moved from being a researcher to a marketer at my day job, and the rest are usually for emails and site updates. I visit your site every time I see you on my MyBlogLog friends list; I seldom log into MyBlogLog myself though.

When not at your desk, what do you do for fun?
My wife and I catch up on our respective experiences each day, we usually end up discussing politics, books or just about anything our mind wanders into. We watch a lot of classic thrillers; we both are Hitchcock fans and have only a handful of movies to go before we have seen em all!

Do you design for any other CMS?
TextPattern and Joomla, however WordPress is my favorite.

Where do you see WordPress heading in the future?
Undoubtedly towards becoming the most popular and the best free CMS in the world. It’s only a matter of time.

Be sure to check out some of Sunny’s themes.

Interview with ChiQ Montes

WordPress Theme Viewer

David — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:10:08 +0000

Well we all know the official WordPress Theme viewer is a dead dog. But now you can find your new themes at the new WordPress Theme Repository.

The buzz is that it will work much in the same ways as the plugin repository. Who knows maybe sometime soon you will automaticly upgrade themes much the way you can plugins.

If you’re a theme designer you can upload your themes here.

Free WordPress Theme Kitten in Pink

David — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:24:38 +0000

This theme is unlike any I have done in the past. Maybe because it’s pink. So .. yeah .. it’s a pink, 2 column, widget ready theme.

Preview Kitten in Pink | Download

Download includes psd.

Free WordPress Theme RoseWood

David — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:30:07 +0000

I just finished my latest WordPress theme RoseWood

Download | Preview

RoseWood is a 2 column widget ready WordPress Theme The download includes the psd files.

WordPress Template Tag Resources

David — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:54:24 +0000

Learning all the template tags needed to build your WordPress theme can seem a little overwhelming. So today I thought I would build a small list of helpful resources for you today.

WordPress Codex This is where I learned most of what I know about the template tags. But today there are a few better options.

WordPress Template Tags Reference Guide by DBS Interactive. It’s an all in one page encyclopedia of Template tags. It use a little ajax magic to present every template tag with example usage.

WordPress Template Tag Lookup Tool by Theme Lab. I nice little search engine that finds the tags in a pinch. I’m not exacly crazy about this one because you have to know the tag’s function name completely to use it.

TAGStention by solutoire.com. Dreamweaver extension for WordPress Tags. I don’t use Dreamweaver so I’m not sure how it works but it might be worth a go. Also the last release of this tool was in 2006, so it will not include some of the newer tags.

The WordPress Help Sheet by WPCandy Is a nice printable pdf file cheat sheet.

I hope ou find these helpful. If you know of other resources please give me a shout. I would love to add to this list.

MyBlogit Updates

David — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:41:13 +0000

Just wanted to make a really fast post with a few tidbits of news.

Subscribers

MyBlogIt’s Subscribers has grown slow and steady from the very first post. But I have always felt unconfortable broadcasting the feed count. Well today that will change I’m putting the FeedBurner’s feed count widget on the site’s sidebar.

Comments

I have installed a few plugins to reward those commentors who post comments on MyBlogIt. Those plugins include: Top Commentators Widget and Commentluv So feel free to get involved with MyBlogit and comment.

WordPress Themes

I have been working, (or maybe I should say playing cause I enjoy it so much) on some new WordPress themes. I have created about 6 new themes. I’ll be fine tuning them and will be releasing them in the coming days.

Contest

I am working on a contest. It should be a lot of fun and will include a number of sponsors. More on this by Monday.

WPThemeHeap Site Launched

David — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:19:57 +0000

WPThemeHeap I just launched another WordPress theme site.
This one allows yout to list your free WordPress themes.

Feel free to stop by and list your theme. I might be offering this theme and plugin set for sale soon. But I will need to work out some of the bugs first.

I know just what the net needs another WordPress theme viewer.