After redesigning WPShout a couple of months ago, I decided to add some advanced features to the theme, package it up and release it into the wild. The result? Biblioteca. It’s a mix between a magazine theme, a tech blog theme, a bloggy theme and a theme framework – it looks quite nice out the box but has a solid library of advanced features including an advanced theme options page, widgets all over the place, in post SEO options, the lot. The features list is as follows:

• A practical theme framework that offers a solid starting point for any WordPress theme.
• Plug and play – works out of the box, with an extensive options page.
• Awesome SEO. Everyone talks about their theme having ‘awesome SEO’, but Biblioteca doesn’t just let you believe it, it has options for setting the post title and description.
• Featured content gallery – Biblioteca uses Chris Coyier’s jQuery slider.
• Extensive options page – pictured below, the options page lets you change a ton of options, from the width of the sidebar to the contents of the footer to the ads in the sidebar to your Analytics tracking code.
• Magazine look – you want a fancy featured content gallery? Biblioteca has one. Enable/disable it from the opions page.
• Tech blog look – you want a couple of posts featured below the main featured content gallery? Biblioteca has got one of them; it’s widgetised too.
• Bloggy look – you just want a blog? Biblioteca can do that as well. Just set the options in the options panel.
• Drop down navigation – Biblioteca has some rather nice drop down navigation.
• A ton of widgets – Biblioteca has an ever expanding number of widget ready areas in all sorts of places that allow you to easily pop text just about anywhere.
• Fancy footer – the three column footer here on WPShout is often complimented and you too can have one – Biblioteca has one which you can enable/disable from the options page.
• Auto image resizing – set an image to display on the homepage and it’ll automatically resize itself.
• Multiple layouts – through the options panel you can change the layout, having a thin main content area, a slightly larger main content area or an even bigger main content area.
• The list goes on – just download it and see for yourself!

When creating Biblioteca I wanted to make something that would allow me to rapidly develop future themes, something I’ve done. Whether that makes it a ‘framework’ or not I don’t know. What I do know is that if you’re a designer looking to create an awesome WordPress theme but you don’t want to start from scratch, you could do worse than base your theme on Biblioteca. If you’re not a developer, then by no means are you alienated from using Biblioteca; the advanced theme options and in-post SEO options make it a great choice for any blog – take a look at WPShout and you’ll see; pretty much all I’ve done is change the background on the theme.

As in accordance with WordPress itself, the theme is GPL, although offered ‘as is’ with no free support. You can see the theme live here and grab the download it here. Enjoy!

Over the past year I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Leland through his excellent WordPress resource, Theme Lab.  While most designers have turned their attention to building premium WordPress themes, Leland is one of the few who has continued to release quite a few completely free WordPress themes which are of a comparable quality.  Through his work with the WordPress community, he has been able to build a nice reputation as a coder and also build a loyal following.

About a month ago, Leland made me aware of a new project he was working on, building a business around the outstanding domain name CustomTheme.com.  As you’d expect, this new project is a service building custom WordPress themes.  While speaking with Leland, I was given the opportunity to be among the first to give the CustomTheme.com service a try (before it officially launched).  I jumped at the opportunity and ended up having him build a custom design for a new website I’m working on, Blog Tutorials.   Blog Tuts is similar to WPHacks.com, but will be expanded to cover SEO techniques, blogging tips, etc.

As far as the new design goes, here is a screen shot of the new custom design which was built specifically for Blog Tuts:

Last night I got the new design loaded on Blog Tuts and today I received word that Custom Theme was finally ready for the official launch, so I wanted to take a moment and let our readers know about this new service.   According to the services page, Custom Theme is able to accommodate just about any type of WordPress design you may need, including blog themes, magazine themes, gallery themes, and even CMS themes.

As of the publishing of this article, right now the beginning rate for purchasing your own custom design is as low as $299.00, which you’ll find is very competitive within the custom theme market.

Want to learn more about this new service?  Check out CustomTheme.com!

With the recent release of WordPress 2.8 this past week, there has been a number of complications and/or frustrations from the WordPress community, leading to a lot of discussion about how long you should wait to upgrade WordPress when a new branch is released.  Historically the WordPress team has always done a great job of testing their releases, which I think lead to a strong confidence from the WordPress community when it was time to upgrade.   Combine that with the one-click upgrade option that is now built into WordPress and the annoying tag reminding you to upgrade, and you’ve got a huge number of people who upgraded to WordPress 2.8 immediately upon its release.

Unfortunately, with each new WordPress branch comes changes which sometimes break WordPress plugins, create problems with the WordPress theme you are using, and usually includes changes to the code.   If you upgrade before the themes or plugins you rely on have been updated, this can cause problems.   The iThemes team recently touched on this subject with their post, When Should I Upgrade WordPress?  Their post also includes five helpful things that need done BEFORE you do your one-click upgrade:

1. Make a backup of all your site data
2. Upgrade of all your plugins
3. Visit plugin and theme author websites
4. Disable all plugins
5. Ask yourself if you need to upgrade now

I also recommend waiting a week or so to view feedback before upgrading.

I know several of you haven’t upgraded WordPress to 2.8 yet.   How long do you plan on waiting until you upgrade your WordPress installation?  Please include which version of WordPress you are currently using with your comment!

From time to time, I run across a number of very useful WordPress resources or interesting posts related to WordPress, which I share in my WordPress news and notes posts.   Here is a few that have caught my attention over the past month or so:

• WordPress Optimization Bible -The WordPress Optimization Bible is a collection of useful tips and tutorials on how to speed up your WordPress site. If you ever experienced slow WordPress admin panel, “MySQL server has gone away” message, pages taking forever to load or you want to prepare your site for a major increase in traffic (for example Digg front page) this is the guide for you.
• What’s in Store for WordPress Themes in 2009? – Justin Tadlock shares his thoughts on what he expects out of WordPress themes in 2009.   In my opinion, you’ll see many more premium WordPress themes, as well as a shift towards theme frameworks and child theme releases.   Click over to see what Justin is expecting!
• 135+ WordPress Tutorials – Instant Shift has compiled another large collection, this time featuring a number of our WordPress Tutorials and our WordPress code page.
• The A to Z of .htaccess – Alex of Nometech has published an excellent post covering a bunch of information about the .htaccess file.    Useful resource to bookmark for any webmaster!

Written by Alex Denning, a Twitter fan who has finally got around to launching his own blog, Nometech.com!

Recently WordPress has had a huge popularity surge, with the rise of ‘magazine themes’. At the same time that WordPress’ popularity has soared, people have forgotten about what WP is all about: fundamentally, it is a blogging system. Trying to keep that in mind, I’m releasing my first WordPress theme, NomeBlog.

NomeBlog is as simple or as complicated as you’d like it to be; those of you who don’t have much experience coding or don’t want to edit your theme files, you can just install the theme and leave it at that. However, those of you who are into theme customization, you’re going to love NomeBlog! Why? I’ll run down some of the features:

• XHTML valid code
• Auto-image resizing
• Breadcrumbs
• Awesome jQuery navigation
• Widgetised sidebar
• Author info at the bottom of posts
• Related posts automatically displayed
• iPhone support
• ‘Login’ option displayed on the navbar to those logged in
• Customised default gravatar (+gravatar support)
• Support for WP-Pagenavi
• Sidebar blog
• Built in archive
• 125×125 ad ready
• Feedburner subscribe by email ready
• Homepage thumbnail support

NomeBlog prides itself in ease of use – I originally built the theme, or at least what I based NomeBlog on for one of my other sites, Nometet.com. Why did I build it? It was taking me too long just to post something on Nometet, resizing images, inserting custom fields; I needed something that did the hard work for me. The solution was to build the NomeBlog theme.

As I’ve already said, NomeBlog is as simple or as complicated as you’d like it to be, so I’ll quickly run through some of the more advanced features:

• phpthumb built in – the script that timthumb was built off, phpthumb is the image resizer to end all image resizers; it is great! Check out the getting started guide (link below) for details of how to use it in posts, alternatively, you can create the custom field ‘Image’ and on the homepage will be displayed a thumbnail of the image you’ve input.
• iPhone support – as I wrote here a short while ago, iPhone support is becoming increasingly a necessity. NomeBlog supports the iPhone through the use of the iWPhone plugin, which I’ve customized. You can download the customized version of the plugin (which looks great!) here.
• Customised default gravatar – fed up with random monsters and boring silhouettes being displayed next to Gravatar-less-comments? NomeBlog has built in support for your own customized Gravatar. Just upload your own image file (again, see the getting started guide) and you’re done.

It is hard to show off all the features briefly, so for the full, complete list of features and details on how to get started, check out my new blog, where there is a lengthy getting started guide. To keep updated, make sure you grab the Nometech RSS feed too!

And of course, you can view a live demo here or download the theme. It is free, but please keep the link back. Any comments would be appreciated.