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.

I started designing sites back in 1996 for clients. Of course back then we used tables instead of css to layout a design. I was pretty good at that. But now I have a harder time working with xhtml and css. I am figuring it out to a degree.

So back on topic. The guy I had meet eventually told me he was Lorelei from TopTut.com. Up to this point I had never seen or heard of her or atleast I don’t think so. I would send him my css problems and he would send them back fixed. After working with this guy we came up with an agreement; he would devlop a css framework that I felt comfortable working with and I would do some php work for him.

At the time it seemed like a good deal, but as time went by he changed the deal a few times and seemed to not be doing what he promised.

So this last week I told him I need him to keep up his end of the deal. So he suggested that he would let me use his cuurent design as a tempary framework until he had time to get me the complete framework. I was not really happy about this but he told me I could use it in anyway I wanted, as he already had a new design in the works for his site.

He sent me the css and a copy of the html, css and a few psd describing the layout. I was a bit suprised that he hadn’t given me the entire theme files but I was ok with it because I wanted to convert it to a WordPress theme myself.

I was however disappointed that he had not included a file for the single or comment file so I emailed him and never replied back.

At that point I decided to get to work first I designed the images in Photoshop, then I copied the files to my development server and started the conversion to theme and worked on the css.

I started to have a few questions so I emailed hi again, still no reply. I had come to the conclusion that he was upset with me because I hadn’t finished his php before he gave me the css. But I felt justified because what he gave me was just the start not the entire framework he had promised.

I did try getting in contact with him by posting a comment on what I thought was his site

But of course still no reply. I was able to figure most of it at on my own, and was getting excited. the theme was looking amazing. I couldn’t wait to get it up on my site.

I even anouced  my twitter

So After working on it for a few days I uploaded it to my site. Later that night I was reading my rss feeds and was shocked to read this: Ripped My Theme? You will Get Reported! I was spinning! I couldn’t understand what the hell had happened. Why was this guy that I had been talking to over the last few weeks turned on me.

I went to bed, confused and angry. When I got up the next day I decide to try and figure out why this had happened. I emailed him a few times. I got no awnser so I decide to try and find out as much about him as I could.

After a bit of poking around I relized that the guy I had been dealing with was not Lorelei. I downloaded one of her themes and was looking at the theme’s function files. The person I was dealing with told me that they new very little php.

The more I looked into Lorelei the more I realized I had been scammed.

So the answer to everyone question is; Yes I did rip Lorelei’s design. I was told that the design was mine and all the rights were mine as well.

Lorelei, I am very sorry this has all happened. You are an amazing designer!

I have no idea why this guy did what he did, but when it comes right down to I should have done more research on this person.
Here is a screenshot of the design.

I will not be using it!

Feel free to share your thoughts, I will not edit or delet them. (Sorry Tijger)

I got a chance to interview ChiQ Montes. It really is fun to make new friends within the WordPress themers community. What follows is some fun insight into ChiQ Montes.

ChiQ Montes, Please tell us a little about yourself.

I am ChiQ Montes. Female. Filipino. I have been building websites and blogs for 5 years already and have been designing WordPress Themes for more than a year now. I am a techie at heart and a very laid-back person as well.

Where do you find your creative inspiration?

I visit a lot of blogs everyday just so I’d get to see what kind of lay-out would best work for them and even cluttered ones would serve as an inspiration since I would then try to create a theme to help them improve their blogs. Also, I compliment this with visiting CSS Galleries  for the creative part of the theme like colors and image/icon placement.

What tools do you use?

I use Photoshop for designing themes then the good ol’ trusty notepad for coding and editing.

How much time do you spend on each theme?

I do try to discipline myself by imposing a time limit in creating WordPress Themes so as to be productive as possible but then most of the time, it all boils down to how I creative I feel when working on a theme. Sometimes, it only takes an hour to execute my ideas but there are also themes that I end up doing for three days.

Why do you design themes for WordPress?

Ever since I learned about WordPress and have used them for my blogs, I simply fell in love with it. It made everything easier. But being a web designer myself, using other people’s theme was not enough for me. I have also seen a big demand in WordPress Themes therefore I decided to plunge in the market.

What is your favorite snack while hacking away at your themes?

Eating while working isn’t a good practice at all therefore I try not to do it if possible. But at times that I feel like breaking the rules, I usually go for Nacho chips!

Not including your own themes; What are some of your favorites?

I do like using illacrimo by designdisease

What are some of your favorite hang outs on the web?

I never fail to visit smashingmagazine, blogcatalog and entrecard.

When not hiding in your workplace, what else do you do for fun?

I watch movies a lot! I also read business books/magazines and even play computer games.

Do you design for any other CMS?

Currently, no.

Where do you see WordPress heading in the future?

Oh! I believe WordPress will soon dominate even the e-commerce platform. In fact, there are already Premium Themes and plugins available today for this specific purpose and I’d eventually want to  WordPress themes for e-commerce sites.

ChiQ Montes Links

You can cacth her WordPress themes on her website Wordpress Theme Designer, or you can follow her on Twitter, BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. I think we can all learn a great deal from this budding designer.

Pick just one topic and keep it down to about 30 minutes, or so. It’s a challenge!

In the end, the topic I chose is one that is of particular interest to designers and themers of WordPress. I talked about different ways to put your content on display in a more creative way, than just your typical blog layout.

This is otherwise known as: WordPress Magazine Themes. The popularity of which cannot be denied.

WordPress Magazine Themes take the focus away from presenting your content in a chronological fashion into a more categorized, topical way. This type of theme turns the front page of your site into a grand portal of the content contained within, allowing you to bring forward content that may not have, normally, remained on your front page for very long.

My presentation is available for download - just click the image in this post and it will take you right to it, and it contains the code and template tags you would need to accomplish such a layout.

In my presentation, I took a look at four different elements in this type of layout:

• Leading Articles
• Featured Articles
• Topical Teasers
• Using Custom Fields to jazz up the display of your front page content through the use of images, video and/or audio files

What does it take to create a Magazine-type layout?

• The good news.. you don’t have to use ANY plugins to accomplish this
• The query_posts(); tag
• The wp_list_categories(); template tag
• the_excerpt(); and the_content_rss(); template tag
• The ever-present WordPress Loop
• Custom Fields
• Categories specific to the areas of presentation
• A little CSS for formatting and styling

The code provided in my presentation is code that I use in the Main Index template of the theme. This functions as the front page of the site - with other templates used for the internal pages (ie: Single Post template, Archives, Default Page, etc)

Leading Articles
Back in the day, I might have used a plugin like WP Sticky to accomplish this. Using that plugin, I could ’stick’ a certain post at the top of my display of chronological posts on my site to keep it on top for a longer period of time, so it didn’t get ‘pushed’ down and lost in the river of the other posts on my site.

Using a Magazine Theme layout, I can stick the Leading Article (or story, or post..whatever your flavor) in a styled container at the top of my site, maybe in a prime top left position, and use custom fields to add some imagery to draw more attention to it.

An example of this can be seen at Kevin’s site: Pointless Banter - - at the top left of his site, you’ll see one article under the “Today’s Banter” tab. That is the article he has chosen for the day, or the week, to highlight over all the others.

Featured Articles
Used much in the same way as the Leading Article, described above, I can use the Featured Articles code (provided in my presentation) to provide a listing, teasers (excerpts) of articles I consider to be ‘Leading’ articles - - posts that I want to keep circulating to my readers eyes on the front page.

Adding images to the display of those posts, by using custom fields, will spice ‘em up a bit and bring more attention to them.

Keeping with the example of Kevin’s site, above, he has an area down the left called “Featured Crap of the Week” where he categorizes his posts to be featured on the front page.

Topical Snippets
In my presentation, I mention that these category snippets, or teasers, can be used to pull the last most recent post from each category into and area of your site where you would like to display topical listings.

In Kevin’s example at Pointless Banter - he has such an area on his front page that displays the most recent posts from several of his categories, and uses custom fields to provide small icons to dress up the display:

• Pop Culture
• News
• My Life
• Things I Think About
• Sex/Dating/Relationships
• Questions Answered

Along with these three different sections - Kevin also has his page navigation at the top of the site along with other content presented in the tabbed container at the top: Recent Video Posts, Popular Posts and Recent Comments left on his site. Also, his Featured Video container at the top right of his site allows him to feature his most recent, most favored or most popular video. This isn’t accomplished through the use of any plugin, it’s simply a text widget that he changes out the video embed in when he is so moved to do so.

His Magazine-style theme also leaves plenty of room in the right sidebar for his advertisers and sponsors, and any other type of information he wants to present in that right side area of his site.

You can see the different applications for a site with this kind of functionality. Sites that do music reviews can nicely display featured artists, music reviews, Leading articles with polls - jazzing it all up with custom fields to display icons and images. Or a news site can neatly categorize their front page and bring forward different articles with news in categories like politics, entertainment, finance, etc.

The idea, really, is to get rid of that long, chronological display of posts that causes visitors to your site to scroll endlessly down and down to read them all - - and packaging those posts into neat little snippets and teasers on your front door that invites them inside to consume even more of what you offer.

If you missed the link to my presentation at the top of his post - you can also find it here: De-constructing WordPress Magazine Themes. It contains:

• The code necessary to bring all of this together on your site
• A break down of the template tags, and parameters you use to accomplish it
• Examples of some great Magazine Themes that use the functionality I present
• Explanation of how to setup the Custom Fields to bring in the images and icons

Online Video provided by Ustream
Many thanks to David for asking me to post on his site this week. I’m honored to have been asked and hope you find the information presented a bit helpful!

Lisa Sabin-Wilson is the author of WordPress For Dummies, designer/owner of E.Webscapes and occasionally blogs on her own, personal blog.

Headset Options

Sunny has a bunch of high quality themes. He also has one of the best tutorials I’ve found on DOMTab.

One of his newest themes is Silk(image to the left).

Keep up the good work Sunny!

Justin Tadlock

This guy really doesn’t need a link from me, But I like his themes because he has challenged other themers like myself to take it to the next level. He did with a free theme what the premium themers should have done.

WpThemeDesigner

AKA ChiQ Montes, has great potential. I just recently found her via MyBlogLog. I friend told me they believed ChiQ Montes & SmallPotato are one in the same. I don’t think it’s true… but then again who knows. ChiQ Montes I look forward to your future designs.

BlogOhBlog

Jai has moved on in and is feeling right at home. He has added some great free themes including 4 very well designed premium themes. Jai also drops alot of tidbits like this jem on rounded corners with css.

Download Loopy Rainbow Preview it in black

I have also added the FireWorks png files so you can make your own skin as well. You can share them with me and I may bundle your skin with it in future updates.

I would love to hear what you think of Loopy Rainbow.

Demo Political Politics | Download Political Politics

You can add your Adsense publisher numbers in the files adsanse_sidebar.php & adsanse_top.php. Open bio.php to edit your bio.

It’s a single column, widget ready theme, with 3 column sidebar at the bottom and a page menu at the top.

Download Squeeze Page | Preview Squeeze Page

Please tell me what you think.

UPDATE

Yan from [Geeks Are Sexy] reported a bug in the header. It’s been fixed. Thanks Yan!

After finding your new theme it’s very easy to install your new theme. Here is the quick guide:

1. Unzip your theme
2. Upload your theme to the themes directory
3. Enable your theme from your WordPress dashboard

You can use WinZip or my favorite zip utility WinRar to unzip your new theme. Next you’ll need to upload the theme directory to your WordPress theme directory (  /wp-content/themes/ ) using a FTP client such as SmartFTP.

The last step is to log into to your WordPress dashboard and click on Presentation or Design.  Then just click on the screenshot of your new theme.

Upgrading your theme is just as simple, follow the same directions as above, the only thing you’ll do different will be to overwrite the old theme, or rename the directory incase you need to fall back to the old one.

Sports Fishing is a 3 column WordPress theme with 2 widget supported sidebars.

I thank this is one of my best WordPress themes so far!

Preview Sport Fishing | Download Sport Fishing