Author Archives: Ian Stewart

About Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart is probably thinking about WordPress Themes this very minute. Don't forget to follow him on Twitter to catch his near-continuous ramblings and mutterings.

Post Formats and Content Templates in the Toolbox Theme

Posted on by Ian Stewart

Toolbox 1.1 is on it’s way with support for two of WordPress 3.1′s new Post Formats — Aside and Gallery — and a new template structure based on a content.php template. Let’s take a look at what’s new.

Update: It’s available now! Go get it and check it out.

So, Post Formats. I love them and I bet if you’re at all interested in WordPress theming you’re probably interested in them too. Toolbox 1.1 will add support for Aside and Gallery posts along the same lines as the new Twenty Ten theme will. If you’re familiar with the Twenty Ten theme you know what to expect. It already mimics this new feature with Categories. Asides have a hidden title on blog pages and Gallery posts have a thumbnail from your post’s gallery along with a sentence letting visitors know how many images are in the gallery. It’s pretty cool.

Continue reading →

What’s In a Name: Duster

A lot of people have been asking where the name for the Duster theme came from. I love naming themes (it’s probably something that warrants a post of it’s own in the future) so I’m glad to share the backstory. We started work on Duster during a team meetup in Arizona — notorious land of cowboys and shoot ‘em ups. We wanted something that reflected that same tough cowboy aesthetic and so, Duster. Well, actually, that’s only half true. It’s also the name of this really lovely pink flower you can find in Arizona. It’s really quite beautiful. :)

Toolbox: An HTML5 WordPress Starter Theme

Posted on by Ian Stewart

The Problem: You want to start hacking away at a WordPress Theme and get your site online. You don’t want to start with a Parent Theme, or a Theme Framework. You want to make your own theme—and you want it to be ready for HTML5. Only, you don’t know where to start.

The Solution: Start your WordPress theming engines! The delightfully blank, and stripped down, Toolbox theme is here.

Continue reading →

A Sample WordPress Theme Options Page

Posted on by Ian Stewart

Problem: You want to create a simple theme options page for your new WordPress theme but all the tutorials and sample theme options pages you’ve seen are way too complex or don’t fit in at all with the existing WordPress look.

Solution: We’ve come up with a simple, sample theme options page you can use for your next theme!

We’ve based this theme options page on the awesome sample plugin options page created by Ozh of Planet Ozh—only now with the bonus Radio and Select options and a Text Area.

Everything is bundled up in a Twenty Ten child theme called A Theme Options Theme—an instant working example—that you can download at the end of this post but here’s how you’d want to use it in your own themes …

Continue reading →

What Is The Automattic Theme Team?

Posted on by Ian Stewart

So, just what is this Automattic Theme Team anyway? In a nutshell, we’re a bunch of people who really care about WordPress Themes and want to see them get better and better on WordPress.com and for every WordPress.org user. And this is our blog.

You’ll be hearing more from us individually in the coming weeks but I thought, to get started, it’d be a good idea to share a few of the team goals we’ve been discussing. Just some rough thoughts really. But I’m hoping that by sharing them here you can get a better idea of what we’re up to—and get as excited as I am about it all.

  1. Every WordPress.com user should feel like there’s a theme that fits them perfectly, that is exactly how they want to present themselves to the world, that they’re excited to show to their friends.
  2. We want everyone to feel a sense of momentum and ever-increasing possibilities, and to do so we will present as many perfect-fit WordPress themes to as many WordPress.com users as we can.
  3. We will ensure all of our public work represents the best in coding practices, web standards, and technical excellence.
  4. We will craft all of our themes to have consistent user experience and meet our users expectations and hopes.
  5. We will teach WordPress developers to become the best theme developers in the world. If you’re a WordPress theme developer—commercial or 100% free—we want to help you be the best.
  6. We will ensure all our improvements make it back to the open source community.

I love the idea of meeting the “expectations and hopes” of WordPress users by delivering to them the best in WordPress themes. Pretty, painless, perfect-fit ones that just plain work.

So, the Automattic Theme Team. We’re WordPress themers developing for the millions of users on WordPress.com who want to give back as much as possible to the WordPress theme community at large.

Let’s be awesome together.

I’ve Joined Automattic

Posted on by Ian Stewart

Today marks the first day of my employment as a Theme Wrangler with Automattic and it feels great. I’m more than excited to finally let you know what I’ve been up to for the last little bit.

What can I say besides awesome, awesome, awesome? The enormous opportunity for learning and improvement; all the super-talented, friendly people; the chance to work on so many really, really cool projects—it’s almost unbelievable. This is a dream job for me.

So, yes, really excited. To say the least. And I don’t want to say too much right now so I’m going to keep this short. Though I imagine you have one very big question you’d like me to get to.

Continue reading →

The Perfect Blog Theme

Posted on by Ian Stewart

What is the perfect blog theme? I’ve been thinking about it and I think I have the answer.

For the blogger: The perfect blog theme disappears into the background and doesn’t hinder their writing in any way—in fact, it encourages it.

For the reader: The perfect blog theme disappears into the background and doesn’t hinder their reading in any way—in fact, it encourages it.

Please note what I haven’t included in my answer. It’s important.

Know of any publicly released themes that fit my criteria? I’d really like to know about them. Let me know if you’ve found them, or just let me know your thoughts on the perfect blog theme by leaving a comment.

And don’t be afraid to argue! I’ve been known to be wrong!