Themes: Page 10

Build A Theme With Thematic

By Jeffro on May 7, 2009

This is a guest post by community member Katemag Check out her work on Pixert.com as well as her personal blog Nineteenlabs

Thematic is a free, open-source, highly extensible, search-engine optimize WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples and styling for popular plugins.

Thematic is an easy to modify theme or a good way to create a new look for a theme, because there is no need to develop a theme from the ground up and it’s very easy to upgrade. Why?
You only need to add a child theme with your own CSS, when it is upgraded you only need to tweak it.

Install Thematic
It’s very easy, just download it from Theme Shaper (Ian Stewart’s site-the creator of Thematic), unzip it and then upload the thematic folder to the WordPress themes folder, wp-content/themes.

You don’t need to activate Thematic, because we are going to create a child theme. But if you’re curious about Thematic itself, you can activate it with an old-school way. Go to Appearance screen, activate the thematic theme.

A Child Theme
This is the fun stuff. Thematic includes a folder named thematic-sample-child-theme. Move the folder outside of the thematic folder, put it on the same level with the thematic folder in wp-content/themes. WordPress child themes are located in /wp-content/themes/ like any other WordPress Theme, then name thematic-sample-child-theme to whatever you want it to be.

Let see how the child theme is structured. There are two essential files for Thematic, just open thematic-sample-child-theme, functions.php where you place functions code to modify how thematic interprets data from WordPress. For example, remove thematic built-in title.

Another is style.css where you put css code to change how thematic looks. You can add images folder for any images on your site like header or logo.

Working with Thematic
I would suggest a few tools for creating a Thematic child theme. Those are Mozilla Firefox with Firebug installed and Text Editor like TextMate (for Mac Users) or Notepad++ (for Windows Users). What I really like from thematic is that there are so many built in features on Thematic, you only need to add features you want to add, that’s why we use Firefox and Text Editor. Theming WordPress has never been this easy, right?

Now, edit style.css – use your text editor, add the theme details

If you see style.css, there’s 1 particular line:
Template: thematic

It means that we use thematic as a theme base
Now, we look at our child theme. Activate your child theme, see that your child theme is exactly like Thematic.

It’s time to change the look of child theme to whatever we want. Open Firefox, then firebug.

We use firebug to track css so we can override thematic default css from the child theme’s style.css to fit your requirements.

Advanced Thematic
Now that know a little bit about thematic, here’s some further reading to improve your child theme.

A Guide To Thematic
Thematic Structures

Posted in Themes | Tagged child themes, frameworks, thematic, Themes | 10 Responses

SitePoint Gives Primer On Parent Child Themes

By Jeffro on May 7, 2009

SitePoint.com known for their in depth articles on trends on the web and in design has published a short and sweet primer on how to create WordPress themes the easy way using Child themes. As in most other articles that discuss the subject of Parent/Child themes, this one uses Thematic as the framework example and proceeds to tell you how to install a theme framework, how to start designing, and finally how to install your child theme.

The author actually took some flack in the comments since it didn’t provide a complete overview on how to create a WordPress theme but if you look at the article title as well as the section called What’s Next? near the end, the article delivers on what was promised. A to the point article that gets you started and then provides links if you decide to continue down the road.

Perhaps it’s just me, but in the WordPress theme framework race, Thematic appears to be winning the publicity race in the community. I’ve never worked with the framework so I can’t comment on it but I’ve been fairly pleased with the Theme Hybrid framework and my Hybrid News child theme. I’ve been thinking about developing my own child theme but when I think of support, I quickly push the idea back under the rug as I don’t have time to allocate to support.

Posted in Themes | Tagged child, framework, parent, Themes | 5 Responses

Gorilla Project To Change Name

By Jeffro on May 2, 2009

A few days ago, I reported on something called the Gorilla Project, a project aimed at creating a collaborative effort in creating WordPress themes. In that post, it was brought up in the comments that the name of the project was eerily close to a premium theme company named Gorilla Themes. Ryan McCue who is working with the project recently raised the concerns brought up in the previous post to the Google group assigned to the project. Jeeremie agreed that a name change was needed and so, the suggestions started flying in.

Yes, people are really concerned about the name. Last night, we received a very polite email from Carlos Aguaron, owner of www.gorillathemes.com, asking us if we would mind changing the name to avoid confusion between his project and ours. I really didn’t know about gorillathemes.com before and that was just a (bad) coincidence.

We are still very early in development so it would be no problem to change now for a more unique name. Any suggestion? You can search on http://domai.nr to see if domain is available. We are looking for a .org domain, not a .com.

At first, I recommended WPHive.com but there is already a WordPress project that exists using WP-Hive.com so that won’t work. A number of other domains were suggested as well such as WP-Jungle, WPTeam, WPRockers, WPGuerilla, and a few others. At the last moment, I’ve suggested they use WPSynergy which reflects team work and just sounds cool. However, looks like they already have a vote in progress for the name change with WPJungle leading the pack at 4 votes. Place your vote in the poll and let these guys know what you think.

Posted in Themes | Tagged branding, domains, Themes, wpgorilla project

A Question For Premium Theme Authors

By Jeffro on May 1, 2009

Ok, so here is the theoretical scenario. Theoretical because I don’t release or develop themes or plugins.

I’m a person who has created a plugin which modifies an integral part of a WordPress theme. End users end up contacting me to perform custom work with regards to implementing my plugin or their customizations to my plugin into their theme. However, in order to edit their theme, they must send it to me. This is where I had a few questions.

For you premium theme authors out their who don’t license your themes under the GPL, is it within your license for your customers to send me their theme for me to work on? If you’re not under the GPL, wouldn’t this violate their theme license because they have redistributed their theme to me in order to work on it? Am I required to immediately delete the theme once I have shipped them the finished product? Unless I am redistributing the themes my customers have provided to me to edit, how would you ever know your customer sent me their purchased theme?

Posted in Themes | Tagged gpl, premium, redistribution, Themes | 11 Responses

How To Screw Up Your Image

By Jeffro on May 1, 2009

Community member Kim Parsell sent me a notification the other day containing a series of messages exchanged on Twitter between Matt Mullenweg, Chris Pearson, and Brian Clark. I’m not sure how the conversation was initiated considering the post/comment that was linked to was created back at the end of March. At any rate, here is how the conversation on Twitter went down.

@photomatt I think Brian Clark / Chris Pearson of Thesis theme just said they want to sue WordPress. about 1 hour ago from web

@photomatt @bishless Sue, an anti-GPL case. I guess they’re against Open Source enough to sue their underlying platform to prove their interpretation? about 1 hour ago from web in reply to bishless

@photomatt There’s a history of litigiousness? http://blogigs.com/the-thesis-like-theme/ “I release the rest of my internet hounds on your site to shame you into oblivion” about 1 hour ago from web

@wyliemac Whoa. Something is brewing between @photomatt and the thesis guys, @copyblogger and @pearsonified. A GPL issue. about 1 hour ago from web

@wyliemac RT @copyblogger: @photomatt No, we invited you to sue us because you think we are doing something wrong. Intellectual honesty is your friend about 1 hour ago from web

@photomatt :( RT @copyblogger: @photomatt You better watch it Matt. We invited you to sue us to settle the GPL, but libel gets you a new world of hurt. 23 minutes ago from web

Upon checking out the BlogGigs link you’ll find an announcement about a theme Costa created called Thesis Like. Checking out the BlogGigs archive and also seeing the big 300 pixel sized advertisement, it’s clear that this person is a huge fan of the Thesis theme. However, the excitement for Costa was short lived as the first comment on the blog was from Thesis creator Chris Pearson.

First off, everyone take note on what has happened here as this is the way you are NOT supposed to handle a situation like this. Although Costa complied with Chris’s requests, Chris did a great job making himself look like a big, tough, cyberbully. I’d be upset too if someone released a free theme which mimicked my commercial product and on top of that, used my products name but I would have sent an email first. In fact, if you take a look at the business opportunity here, I would have offered some sort of cool license deal or something creative in exchange for Costa to take down his Thesis Like theme. Instead, Costa gets slapped across the face and threatened with the prospect of Internet hounds putting his site into shame. The next day, Costa publishes a public apology to Chris where in the comment section, Chris admits that he may not have handled the situation correctly.

GPL Fight! – Just Kidding:

I really don’t want to go down the GPL road again but it’s pretty clear that Thesis doesn’t give a damn about the GPL license, just like the customers who purchase premium themes not filed under the GPL. They just want a great looking theme which works, is affordable, and has a great support base. If they have to pay a fee to remove an attribution link, seems like customers happily do so with no questions asked.

A part of me would like to create a theme that clones Thesis but has my own php/WordPress code, my own CSS, and a big header image that points a middle finger at the Thesis logo. But I won’t do that and like Matt, I’ll let the market decide what happens to premium theme shops like Thesis.

Now I understand how Matt can get pretty upset when he sees premium theme outlets take full advantage of the free, open-source platform that has allowed them to establish their business while on the flipside, shut out the open-source nature of the platform with their commercial product.

Posted in Themes | Tagged chris pearson, gpl, Themes, thesis | 39 Responses

Compilation Of Theme Frameworks

By Jeffro on April 28, 2009

Theme Frameworks. Those two words have buzzed around the WordPress community since the beginning of this year. Every time I turn around, someone else is developing their own theme framework. But, if you side with Dion Hulse’s line of thinking where any theme can be classified as a theme framework then there are thousands of them to wade through.

1stwebdesigner.com has put together a compilation of 20 different theme frameworks and starting resources. The usual suspects show up on the list: Hybrid, Thematic, Carrington, and WP Framework. New to me on this list is Vanilla as Alister Cameron is still working on it, Whiteboard, OnePress, and The WordPress Starter Theme Project.

Looks like our buddy Dan Cole is going to have some work to do conducting another one of his framework charts so we can see how all of these frameworks compare.

Posted in Themes | Tagged compilation, frameworks, resource, Themes | 2 Responses

Matt Takes Notice Of Gorilla Project

By Jeffro on April 27, 2009

Checking out the WPTavern Twitter stream early this morning, I noticed this tweet from Matt: This could be interesting for WP themes: http://wpgorilla.org/ They should add finished product to theme directory. Taking a look into the Gorilla Project, looks like they will be producing open-source ‘Premium‘ WordPress themes.

The Gorilla Project is an opensource project created by Jeremie and Chris to overcome common issues encountered by a single WordPress theme designer.

I’ve never heard of Chris before but Jeremie should be a somewhat familiar name to most of you since he is the creator of the slick looking OneRoom WordPress theme. I’m intrigued by why these two developers are going down this road essentially doing the same thing every other theme author is doing but for a price.

I mean, everything on paper regarding this project looks great from an end users perspective, I just can’t believe there is no mention of revenue or money. I would be very, very surprised if this really was a project centered around benefiting the WordPress community as a whole, only because I’ve never seen something like this. Matt even suggested that once they have a finished product available, they should put it on the Theme Repository. If OneRoom and Jeremie’s latest project PigNews is the type of design work we can expect to come out of this project to be freely accessible to anyone in the WordPress community, that will be a huge plus not only for the repository, but for the community as a whole.

I’m going to try and get a hold of one or both of these guys to figure out what the ultimate motive is behind the project either in an interview on WPWeekly or a text based interview.

They are currently looking to build their team so if you’re interested and are a theme designer, a plugin developer, a PHP Ninja or only a graphic designer email them at joinus {a-t} wpgorilla {d-o-t} org. they also ask that you please attach a link to your portfolio if you have one.

Posted in Themes | Tagged gorilla, matt mullenweg, premium, Themes | 8 Responses

WP Framework Now On The Repository

By Jeffro on April 20, 2009

Ptah Dunbar has been working on his very own Theme Framework for quite some time now and today, after five revisions the framework has ended up on the theme repository for download. According to Ptah, this is what we can expect from the framework:

A blank WordPress Theme Framework that’s everything you need, and nothing you don’t. With features like microformats, a traditional template structure, convention over configuration, clean semantic code, documentation, and it’s atomic templating system, WP Framework is completely extensible, flexible and the starting point for theme authoring and customization.

The initial theme is about as plain as you can get leaving plenty of room for creative CSS types to dive in and generate their own masterpiece.

While there has been quite a bit of fanfare surrounding Ian Stewart’s Thematic framework and Justin Tadlock’s Hybrid framework, it will be interesting to see if Ptah can make any headway in this space as it’s slowly but surely becoming crowded and based on what I’ve seen, he has much less fanfare than the others.

Posted in Themes | Tagged framework, ptah dunbar, repository, Themes | 1 Response

P2 Officially On The Theme Repository

By Jeffro on April 16, 2009

Back in March, I let you know that P2 was on the horizon for self installed WordPress users and that it was already available for WordPress.com users. Fast forward to today and Prologue 2 is now on the WordPress.org theme repository. The theme features the following perks:

Hassle-free posting from the front page. Perfect for group blogging, or as a liveblog theme. Dynamic page updates. Threaded comment display on the front page. In-line editing for posts and comments. Live tag suggestion based on previously used tags. A show/hide feature for comments, to keep things tidy. Real-time notifications when a new comment or update is posted. Super-handy keyboard shortcuts.

Here is a video refresher on the theme:

You can also see Prologue 2 in action on the WordPress Development Update blog.

Posted in Themes | Tagged p2, prologue, Themes | 1 Response

Theme Repository In Need Of An Upgrade?

By Jeffro on April 12, 2009

Justin Tadlock, a notable theme developer in the WordPress community recently published his thoughts on why the WordPress theme repository is in need of an upgrade. Among his arguments is that the ability to update a theme via subversion needs to be added, the community needs a way to police itself and the ability to add custom sections of the readme.txt file so that theme authors can provide installation and F.A.Q. sections to their readme file. In the comments, Joseph Scott who is largely responsible for the repository responded to most of Justin’s queries.

While I enjoy the redesigned look of the repository, it sure isn’t fun to browse around. On the repository front page you’re presented with the most popular themes, featured themes, newest themes, recently updated themes and last but not least, a search box. The only time you can really click around via tags is when you visit a themes info page which displays the tags for that theme. I couldn’t find any categories as I believe they have been substituted with the use of tags.

While the old theme repository didn’t look the best, it did provide a wealth of filters for narrowing down the search for themes which matched your configured criteria. Considering there is 702 themes on the repository right now, I’m not sure what could be done to improve browsing around for a new theme that would be enabled from this day forward and be compatible with all previously uploaded themes. Honestly, I’d like to see the number of filters that existed before, come back in some sort of slick interface. Perhaps something that works like the Screen Options button in the 2.7 administration panel which controls what shows up on the dashboard.

Quality

Now here is something I simply don’t understand. When I am in the process of looking for cool themes to use, the theme repository is the last place I look. Why is that? Not to burst anyone’s bubble but the themes on the repository are crap when compared to commercial oriented themes or themes which are not on the repository but maintained locally by the theme author. When I say crap, I mean themes which have awful color schemes, terrible layouts, and just plain bad looks. I know one thing, in a strange sort of way, I believe premium WordPress themes have furthered the development of free themes but that is definitely not evident on the theme repository.

So I wonder if the theme repository is just used to get the word out about the first theme someone develops and then as they get better, they get off of the repository and do things on their own? Whatever the case is, I think it sucks that the repository is one of the last places I look for well designed, boundary pushing themes. However, I will note that I am beginning to notice many theme authors who produced great themes for free for the community are now developing their own theme frameworks and thus, creating child themes which they are either selling for a price, or you can not get the full documentation or help on the theme without paying a price. At some point in time, the WordPress Theme Repository may be the last safe haven for themes which are free all the way around, despite their quality.

Posted in Themes | Tagged repository, subversion, Themes, upgrade | 4 Responses

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