By Ian Stewart
·
February 28th, 2008
It’s prediction time: The Premium WordPress Theme phenomenon has approximately one year left before collapsing entirely, leaving a rather large hole between completely free WordPress themes and custom themes $1500 and up. If you’ve got a “Premium” WordPress theme waiting in the wings I advise releasing it sooner rather than later. As in, now.
Before I explain myself let’s get one term straight: Premium. I’d rather use the compound “pay-for-use” because more often than not “Premium”, when it comes to WordPress themes, simply means “it costs money” and not “of superior quality”. This isn’t true for everyone of course. For instance, I’ve recommended iThemes to potential clients. But it is certainly true of some (and will increasingly become true of more as the market becomes saturated).
Alright, that out of the way let’s get on with the doomsday WordPress theme market scenario. This week theme designer Justin Tadlock released a jam-packed WordPress-as-CMS style theme called “Options”. The download package is just a mess—in the best way possible; Justin’s got extra widgets, sub menus, javascript tabs, page templates and integration with popular plugins and web services, all wrapped up in a fairly clean design ready for customization. Way to go Justin.
Oh, and Options has one more feature. It signals the end of the Premium WordPress theme market.
Read More »
By Ian Stewart
·
February 21st, 2008
Automattic, the folks behind WordPress.com have a great quote on their company site, “Blogging is too hard.” I totally agree.
Why did you start your personal blog anyway? You wanted a place online to share things you found interesting and occasionally write a longer article, maybe even a rant. Right? Did you want to start a magazine site with 40 categories carefully arranged on a complicated home page? Or did you want a blindingly shiny site that looked like it had been attacked by a pack of floor buffers? Probably not. Did you want something simple and cool looking? Something easy to post to? Something that looked and worked like the tumblelog-style WordPress theme MNML? (What’s a tumblelog?)
Maybe. Let’s take a closer look at it.
View the live Demo or Download MNML.
Read More »
By Ian Stewart
·
February 19th, 2008
Did you know you can add a quick post section for logged in users to your WordPress Theme? Just like the Prologue Theme? Yep, in about two minutes. Ready? Start the clock.
First, download the latest version of Prologue.
Secondly, copy over post-form.php into your current template directory. If you’re using the default theme (like I am for this example) you would copy it into the folder called “default”. Open it up. For the sake of keeping this tutorial under two minutes I want you to delete the following line from this file.
<?php echo get_avatar( $user->ID, $user->user_email, 48 ); ?>
Now, open up the index.php file from the Prologue theme. See that fine bit of code that starts with <?php if( 'POST' and ends with '/post-form.php'; } ?>? Copy that code. You’re going to paste it somewhere in the next step.
Open up the index.php file from the theme we’re going to Prologue-ize. See that wonderful bit of code at the top, <?php get_header(); ?>? Man, I love that get_header(). Anyway, select it and paste that fine bit of Prologue-code here.
Okay, we’re Prologue-ized. Let’s see what we’ve got (remember, you’ve got to be logged in to see this). Read More »
By Ian Stewart
·
February 13th, 2008
I’ve been thinking about my next theme (now available), reviewing the themes in progress and looking over my list of plans. I think I’ve come to a conclusion about what the next ThemeShaper theme will be. Oh wait, you’ve already read the title so you know. Yeah, it’ll be a Tumblelog theme.
First things first, what’s a Tumblelog theme? Well in my mind it’s a theme that lets you tumble with the now. A theme that lets you post, post, post—consequences be damned. A Facebook where you’re in control. A tumbling rolling current of links and thoughts that doesn’t try and pass itself off as a community hub, premium news magazine, or anything anti-blog. It’s the bloggiest of all blogs really. Especially in this current phase of WordPress. Read More »
By Ian Stewart
·
February 12th, 2008
I love WordPress, let me get that out of the way at the beginning. But Drupal is really powerful. And terribly exciting—you can do so much with it! But I only like Drupal. Bit of a difference.
I’ll let that serve as introduction to letting you know that I have two projects that will require Drupal as a CMS and I don’t think that WordPress will cut it. WordPress, like I’ve said before, makes a great little CMS. But it’s not for everything. One project is a site for a complex and growing organization that will need finely grained user permissions and the other, a hobby site, is something like a Digg-clone for rating and sorting user-generated content. Sort of the standard “you need Drupal” projects. Read More »
By Ian Stewart
·
February 9th, 2008
How to use WordPress as a CMS is a popular question. Especially when you want to quickly throw up what is sometimes called “The Brochure Site”. Yep, that hoary throwback to Web 1.0, the static site. You’re going to template the site in PHP anyway, right? Why not just use WordPress and give your client the option of updating their content, while a million or so developers are working behind the scenes to make sure the code powering your site is the best it can be? Not a tough choice.
Besides, no one said it had to be completely static, did they? Here’s the rundown on a few plugins, the bare minimum you’ll need, that’ll turn a simple static site into a blazing fast dynamic one, with easily managed content, that you’ll love to use.
Read More »
By Ian Stewart
·
February 7th, 2008
About 5 minutes after releasing my first WordPress theme, Theseus, upon the world, I had my first support ticket to deal with. Check it out:
Thank you for this awesome theme, but it doesn’t seem to be working for me.
This is what it says after installing and testing it.
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in /home/javitsin/public_html/wp-content/themes/theseus/index.php on line 1
Now a Parse Error happens when, essentially (I say essentially, not exactly, because I’m a designer not a programmer), you make a typing mistake in a PHP file. Thing is, I hadn’t made any typing mistakes—that I could see.
The problem is, I work on a Mac and Macs handle line endings, you know, where you press return, differently than everyone else. Different as in, make Unix computers explode. Unfortunately for me, a lot of web servers are UNIX computers. That explode. Read More »
By Ian Stewart
·
February 5th, 2008
Theseus is the legendary Greek hero famous, amongst other feats, for defeating the Minotaur at the center of the Cretan Labyrinth and finding his way out again, thanks to a ball of string. This theme hopes to do the same, leading your readers through a maze of content, taking them carefully through what they need to see without getting lost.
The WordPress theme, Theseus, does this in two ways; by prominently featuring the latest post in a “feature” category of your choice (conveniently set on the theme options page) and moving all non-essential stuff (you know, widgets) to the page footer. Read More »
By Ian Stewart
·
February 2nd, 2008
Clicking on the image above will take you to a demo of my WordPress theme-in-progress, Theseus. Of course, depending on when you read this, it might lead to the finished theme. Then again, you may be reading this farther in the future than I’m anticipating and the link will instead lead to a page extolling the virtues of our new Martian overlords. In that case, all hail Theseus, Emperor of Mars! Read More »
By Ian Stewart
·
January 30th, 2008
This is the scenario: a new visitor, or a visitor returning after some absence, reads through the main page of your blog and clicks a “previous entries” or “older posts” link. Who is this visitor? What do we know about them? Well, 1. they want to read more content (congratulations!) and 2. (in the case of the returning visitor) they’re not subscribing to your blog.
How can we remind them of the benefits of subscribing at just the right moment, when the benefits are clearly apparent? Easy. Use a WordPress conditional template tag. Read More »