WordPress Hacks » WordPress Themes

Free WordPress Theme Framework: Biblioteca

Alex Denning — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:48:27 +0000

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!

CustomTheme.com Officially Launches

Kyle Eslick — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:43:28 +0000

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!

How Long Should You Wait to Upgrade WordPress?

Kyle Eslick — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:35:58 +0000

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:

Make a backup of all your site data
Upgrade of all your plugins
Visit plugin and theme author websites
Disable all plugins
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!

WordPress News & Notes – April 16, 2009

Kyle Eslick — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:14:09 +0000

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!

Free (Highly Customizable) WordPress Theme: Introducing NomeBlog

Alex Denning — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:21:40 +0000

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.

How To: Prevent Images from Being to Large

Kyle Eslick — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:09:51 +0000

Have you ever had an image show up on your website which is to large, causing problems for your WordPress theme? This is especially common for WordPress blogs that have multiple authors, where some authors or guest posters may not know how big they can make the images.

Fixing this is incredibly easy with this CSS hack! All you need to do is take the following code and place it in your stylesheet, setting a maximum width for your images:

.postarea img { max-width: 500px; height: auto; }

In the above code snippet, you’ll want to replace postarea with whatever div ID or CLASS your theme uses for the content. You can also adjust the 500px to the maximum width you’d like for your images to be.

Note: This hack may not work on some versions of Internet Explorer.

ColorLabs Project Offers Design Content – Win $3500.00!

Kyle Eslick — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:07:43 +0000

To our readers that are also WordPress designs, if you are interested in trying to win $3500.00, you may be interested in a new design contest that is being run by ColorLabs Project. Here is some information about the contest:

How can I participate in the contest?

To participate in the contest, you must submit a theme concept to ColorLabs Project. It’s not a theme, it’s just a concept. Here are some technical requirements of the concept:

The theme concept is intended for WordPress. That’s rule number one. But the great news is: there is a broad possibility of amazing stuffs we can create with WordPress.
We believe that there are numerous ways to present a theme concept, but to participate in the contest, your theme concept must be created in Photoshop format.
The theme concept must cater the 1024 X 768 user’s screen. Therefore, considering the margin and borders, the maximum width of the design is 980 pixels.
To participate in the contest, you need to publish a blog post and tell a bit of your story about the contest. You should also give a linkback to this post.
Designs must be submitted in JPG or PNG format to contest [at] colorlabsproject [dot] com. You also have to tell us the background story of the concept: what inspired you, how you designed, what the design is all about. Designs are not only about shapes, colors, or patterns. They should have insightful story that complete the whole as one. In the story, please also mention your full name and any URL you would like to be linked to if you win.
If you use any stock/source images in the designs, please submit them as well and mention the URLs in the story above. Please make sure that those images have extended usage licenses that allow the distribution of the design.
Designs must be submitted before 14th February 2009, midnight (GMT+7).

The competition is divided into two phases:

Qualification Round: ending February 14, 2009.
In this round, participants are only required to submit the front-page of the theme concept in PNG/JPG format. In the end, there will be 12 theme concepts that will be selected to compete in the final round.
Final Round: February 14, 2009 – February 21, 2009.
In this round, finalists are required to submit the inner pages of the theme concept along with the source files (PSD files). Source files will be assessed to determine the core quality of the design.

The contest is divided into 3 (three) categories:

Category A: General Blog/Lifestream and Photo/Videoblog
Theme concepts participating in this category should include general elements for standard personal/lifestream blogs or photo/videoblogs.
Category B: Business Blog/Portfolio
Designs competing in this category should include several basic elements of business/portfolio blogs. They should be able to market products/services or function as a showcase site.
Category C: Newspaper/Magazine
Theme concepts participating in this category should include main elements of an online newspaper/magazine, particularly: headline, featured posts, multiple post listings, and ad spots.

The winner from each category will receive US$ 1000 and additional US$ 500 will be awarded to the best of the three. So it’ll be US$ 1500 for the best of the best and US$ 1000 each for the rest two winners. All winners will be interviewed and featured in ColorLabsProject. One contestant may submit more than one design and he/she may win more than one category as well.

Designs are assessed by a special team from ColorLabs Project. Three main factors that we will put into considerations are (1) the background story of the concept, (2) how well the theme concept presents the site’s content to the viewer, and (3) how far it transforms WordPress into something stunning yet well-functioning as a website.

We will then make the winning theme concepts available as official ColorLabs Project themes and we will credit the contestant for the design.

Click here to find additional information and the Terms and Conditions.

My Thoughts on Digg and Their Community

Kyle Eslick — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:54:37 +0000

Despite the fact that I’ve been blogging for over three years now, the past two days have been a unique experience for me. For the first time in my blogging career, one of my posts made the front page of Digg. Truthfully, this isn’t the big accomplishment that it used to be as many bloggers make it there in their first few months of blogging, but this post isn’t about that. Instead I wanted to post about my experience being on the front page of Digg.

Funny thing is, the post that was Dugg was our best 3-Column WordPress Themes gallery, which was actually published on October 2, 2007. In that post, we featured our favorite 3-column WordPress themes in a gallery format for people to look through and find a suitable theme for their WordPress blog. This of course was before any of the premium WordPress themes or content management themes we have today. After I noticed the post was on Digg’s front page, I decided to revisit this post and noticed how “2007″ it was. WordPress has grown a lot since then and the quality of themes has really grown with it, making many of these themes really look outdated.

Anyway, I digress. It was Sunday afternoon before I realized WP Hacks had crashed due to being on the front page of Digg and it took a few hours before I tracked down the reason why and got the site back up and running. Once that was figured out I decided to dig through the Digg comments (pun intended) and was surprised with what I found:

1) Surely not the “best” themes out there.
Even though some look good, the others are really… well, insignificant.

2) Is it just me or are all of these comments ridiculous? This has become very common on posts like this where they are a ‘best of’ list. My guess is someone is paying people to digg their article and make it FP.

3) Wow, someone just randomly grabs a heap of themes with no discernible consistency of quality at all, jams a bunch of screen shots together into a blog post, then by virtue of having dug every submission of of anyone in his list of ‘friends’ in the last six months, gets this propelled to front page. Then he logs in his army of fake accounts and makes a bunch of comments about his own post.

4) These aren’t that great, and all of these comments look like spam . . .

Seriously?!? I wasn’t even aware this post had been Dugg for almost 24 hours and suddenly I have an army of accounts and I have friends digging for me? Is it not possible for people to legitimately make the front page of Digg these days? I guess I don’t use Digg enough these days to know the “rules for getting to the front page.” With that said, probably the funniest part is this post being close to a year and a half old, yet people act like it was a fresh post showing current themes.

Anyway, for years now I’ve never really focused on Digg traffic and I think the comments above show why. It is simply a rush of traffic which is usually not targeted to your niche topic, so there is little chance of converting them into readers. Why exactly would someone want their post on the front page of Digg? The only potential benefits I can think of are incoming links I suppose. Otherwise it is more of a hassle than anything.

So, what are your thoughts on Digg? Do you still use it?

Oh, and to our new readers, if you’re looking for a new WordPress theme, here are a few updated theme galleries we’ve made:

WordPress Hacks Year in Review: 2008

Kyle Eslick — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:00:22 +0000

As 2008 closes out and we welcome 2009, I figured what better way to close out the year than with a quick ”year in review” post featuring our best work during 2008.

I’ve always felt reviewing was a good process as it allows us to both learn from our mistakes and appreciate the progress we’ve made through the past year. This is a good way to stay motivated and loving what we do each day!

Here are the top WordPress Hacks posts, according to our internal analytics (based upon traffic/popularity):

How to Add an Author Page to Your WordPress Blog (January 2008)
How to Add Biography Info to Your WordPress Blog Posts (February 2008)
How to Tell WordPress to Function Like a CMS (March 2008)
How to Use WordPress as a Static Site (April 2008)
Best Free WordPress Themes Gallery (May 2008)
CSS Techniques: Using Sliding Doors with WordPress Navigation (June 2008)
Huge Compliation of WordPress Hacks (July 2008)
How to Add a Store to Your WordPress Blog (August 2008)
How to Create an AJAX-based Auto-Completing Search Field for Your WordPress Theme (September 2008)
How to Move WordPress Blog to a New Domain (October 2008)
WordPress Review Site: Premium Theme and Plugin (November 2008)
Free and Premium WordPress Themes Gallery (December 2008)

I’d also like to take a moment to thank those that helped contribute to the growth of WordPress Hacks in 2008. Your guest posts, inbound links, and comments help make the site the WordPress resource it has become today.

Happy New Year!

150+ Free & Premium WordPress Themes Gallery

Kyle Eslick — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:00:09 +0000

Updated: May 13, 2012!

As WordPress continues to grow in popularity, more and more designers are realizing the potential of building WordPress themes. In addition to the financial benefits, designers can also use WordPress themes to create additional inbound links, improve their reputation as a designer, and of course help generate freelance work.

Because of the huge size of the WordPress theme market, it has become increasingly difficult to find a good way to browse through the available WordPress themes. Unfortunately I don’t have a solution, but I have spent several hours trying to sort through the available themes and create a gallery to display many of the top designs in both the free and premium WordPress theme markets. Currently this page has over 150 WordPress themes, plus a few known theme clubs thrown in at the bottom for people that prefer that route.

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Blog WordPress Themes

Vintage Theme

WordPress Hacks » WordPress Themes

Free WordPress Theme Framework: Biblioteca

CustomTheme.com Officially Launches

How Long Should You Wait to Upgrade WordPress?

WordPress News & Notes – April 16, 2009

Free (Highly Customizable) WordPress Theme: Introducing NomeBlog

How To: Prevent Images from Being to Large

ColorLabs Project Offers Design Content – Win $3500.00!

How can I participate in the contest?

My Thoughts on Digg and Their Community

WordPress Hacks Year in Review: 2008

150+ Free & Premium WordPress Themes Gallery

Blog WordPress Themes

Lightsource Theme

Prose Theme

Canvas Blogging Theme

Mag.net Blog Theme

Glow Blog Theme

Flexx Blog Theme

PersonalPress Theme

Social Life Blog Theme

Social Eyes Theme

MyStream Theme

Fresh Life Blog Theme

Therapy Blogging Theme

Thesis Theme Framework

Genesis Theme Framework (by StudioPress)

Magazine/News CMS WordPress Themes

Lifestyle Theme

WP Smooth Theme

Elisa Magazine Theme

Zenko Magazine Theme

Spectrum Theme

Magazine WordPress Theme

Reflecta Magazine Theme

Blissful Theme

Manifesto Magazine Theme

Delicious Child Theme

WP-Chatter Magazine Theme

Initiate Magazine Theme

Sleek Theme

WP Sublime Theme

Estate Theme

Boutique Theme

Stunning Magazine Theme

Headline News Theme

WP-Prosper Magazine Theme

News Flash Theme

Minimal Theme

Mocha Theme

Gourmet Cooking Theme

Platinum Theme

Tribune News Theme

Polished Theme

Amped Theme

Gadget Theme

Streamline Theme

Evertis Magazine Theme

Serenity Theme

Blog Newspaper Theme

NewsTube Theme

Emporium E-Commerce Theme

Monograph Magazine Theme

News WordPress Theme

Cube Light Theme

WP Launch Theme

eNews Theme

WP Ellie Theme

Lexicon Theme

Sea Light Business Theme

My App WordPress Theme

Lumin Magazine Theme

WP Genius Theme

Optimize Theme

Bigfoot Theme

Going Green Theme

Bold Magazine Theme

Arthemia Premium Theme

The Source Theme

Vega Magazine Theme