Themes: Page 9

Review – Wooden Fence By TemplateLite

By Jeffro on May 31, 2009

At A Glance:

Wooden Fence is a three column theme compatible with WordPress 2.7 released by TemplateLite.com on May 6th, 2009. This theme is also free. Also mentioned by the author: Compatible with IE6, IE7, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and W3C XHTML and CSS compliant.

License:

As for the license, Wooden Fence is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported license. So what the heck does that mean? Perhaps the following picture will help you out.

However, the theme author stresses that the main thing to keep in mind is that you must keep the footer link and a footer script intact to enjoy free usage. Footer script? Let’s take a look.

<?php //	This theme is licensed under CC3.0, you are not allowed to modify/remove the script and link without permission.?>
		Designed by <a href="http://www.templatelite.com/">Wordpress Templates</a> Courtesy of <a href="http://www.singlehop.com/">Cheap Dedicated Server</a><?php echo templatelite_show_links();?>
		<?php //	This theme is licensed under CC3.0, you are not allowed to modify/remove the script and link without permission.?>

Yes, that is a link in the footer to a cheap dedicated server hosting company therefor making this a sponsored theme. All I’ll say about that is if you plan on using this theme, plan on advertising for a cheap dedicated server company as well. If I know anything about the WordPress community, I highly doubt many people will.

Installation:

Installation was as easy as can be. All I had to do was extract the theme folder to my desktop and upload it to the WP-Content/Themes folder.

Configuration:

While most themes now a days have an entire panel of options, this theme doesn’t have one. The reason being, this theme does not have any fancy doo dads built in which need configuring.

However, there are a few things you can edit with this design. TemplateLite.com offers a PSD file that you can edit if you own a copy of Photoshop to change the text in the header. Unfortunately, you’ll need some design skills to change out the images in the photo frames since the photos are not on separate layers.

This theme is heavily dependent upon the initial design for it to look and feel the way it does. If you change one of the design elements, chances are good that it will make the entire theme look bad.

Design:

The initial design looks great out of the box but there are quite a few small things which bother me. The first is that the font color for the sidebars does not work well with the background image. You can tell the theme author put in some effort here as each sidebar has a dark or light color part of the background image but in my opinion, it doesn’t work. I think solid colors would work better here. The color of the font in the search box is a little too gray. I think it would look better with the font color used in the right sidebar. Other than that, this theme scores high points from me for creativity.

WoodenFence Theme In Action

Widgets:

Only two places you can put widgets in this theme, the right and left sidebars.

Support:

As far as I can tell, support for this theme is limited to the comments section on the release post. Not a great way to do support but if you’re just starting out, it’s a great way to measure demand for the theme. If the comments for support reach a certain point, that’s a good time to move things to a forum.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, this is a solid theme. it doesn’t leave much room for customizations due to the dependency on graphics within the design but then this theme wasn’t created to be customized. My favorite aspect about this design is the way posts are displayed. Each one has a paper fold with a thumbtack at the top. I just think that is pretty cool. The sidebars could be improved with solid colors and the footer looks great.

With the lack of an options panel, end users will be up and running in no time when they install this theme. A bit refreshing when you consider the amount of time it takes to configure a theme sometimes.

You can view all of the other themes TemplateLite has created by checking out their WordPress theme Showcase. While you’re there, check out the review they wrote up for WPTavern.com.

Posted in Themes | Tagged designs, templatelite, templates, Themes | 14 Responses

My Child Theme Technical Hurdle

By Jeffro on May 26, 2009

As most of you are aware, I ended up choosing to edit a child theme of the Theme Hybrid framework called Hybrid News. Out of the gate, using a child theme that is built on top of a framework certainly has a learning curve. For instance, if I installed a plugin where the directions told me to place a line of code in a certain theme template file, I couldn’t do that in this child theme since it’s primary purpose is to be compiled mostly of CSS without touching the core of the framework which holds the theme together.

Instead, it’s up to me to figure out how to add that plugins code to my child themes functions.php file. Something which requires I as an end user to know about filters, hooks, or other weird developing terms. In this instance, I believe child themes have raised the technical bar. I know if I put in a support query, Justin will be right there to answer it but I feel like a loony for having to rely on support in order to accomplish something which was easy before hand. I know some would argue that functions of a plugin should be added to a custom functions.php anyway to prevent it disappearing if a theme upgrade were to occur.

Other than this hurdle, I don’t have much to complain about. The experience has gone over rather well and it was nice to just edit the CSS of a theme for once without having to edit 5 separate template pages.

So should their be an easier way to customize where and when a plugins output will show up in a theme by implementing an interface of sorts for these plugin functions or should I just buckle down and learn a thing or two regarding functions.php, hooks, filters, and those other funky terms?

Posted in Themes | Tagged child themes, code, css, editing | 6 Responses

Interview With Kevin And Sarah On BlogThemesClub.com

By Jeffro on May 22, 2009

A few days ago, I noticed in my FeedReader that Kevin Muldoon of BloggingTips.com along with Sarah of Stuff By Sarah were starting up their own WordPress Theme Club. I sent Kevin and Sarah a list of questions I had regarding the theme club and here are their answers.

So you’re joining the ranks of having a theme club. What do you hope to accomplish with this club?

Sarah: We want to provide good and accessible themes designed for a variety of sites at affordable prices.

Kevin: In addition, we are looking to ensure that support is top notch. We will be writing guides for members to help them with the most common template edits (header, sidebar, footer etc) and will be helping members directly through the forum as well.

With so many clubs/stores already in existence, what will you be your points of differentiation?

Sarah: The individual theme sales and varying levels of membership should make it affordable to all users along with access to dedicated support and new plugins that we release. Also members will have a way to suggest new themes and plugins.

Kevin: I have to agree with Sarah regarding the cost of our themes. One of the most common criticisms of premium WordPress themes that I have reviewed on BloggingTips is that the theme being reviewed was a little too expensive for them. Which suggests to me that there is a demand in the market for more affordable designs.

As Sarah points out, offering a range of membership options will allow members access to several great themes at a much lower rate than buying them individually.

I also think that our support will help us stand out from the crowd. Last year I released the Evolution theme for free through BloggingTips. It proved to be very popular though most users were unsure about how to customize the theme to get it looking the way they want. Most of the common questions were relatively basic i.e. simple HTML and CSS problems.

However, you need to remember that most bloggers are writers and not designers or coders. Many of them do not have any programming knowledge and I believe many are quite happy with this i.e. they would rather concentrate on blogging than designing. Which is where we come in.

My knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP is not too bad so I will be able to resolve the majority of problems members have. Although Sarah is too modest to say it herself, she is, in my opinion, one of the few great bloggers who also know the WordPress system inside out. Her dozens of guides on the subject and the WordPress plugins she has released are testament to this.

So between us I believe we will be able to offer BlogThemesClub members fantastic support. And we have some good contacts within the industry as well so should we find ourselves overwhelmed with support queries, we can bring in some more people to the BlogThemesClub team

Upcoming Themes From BlogThemesClub

Will each theme have a flat rate price or will prices be different depending on the theme?

Sarah: The individual price will depend on the quality of the theme, the class/subject of it and how much work has gone into developing it.

With regards to licensing, will your themes be compliant with the GPL license, the same license that WordPress is under?

Kevin: No. A General Public License is only suitable to scripts which are distributed for free (Note : the WordPress themes which were released for free on BloggingTips last year were released under a Creative Commons License).

Once we have developed a few good premium themes we will probably look into developing 2 or 3 themes which we will release for free. These will probably be released under a Creative Commons or General Public License.

Obviously a GPL is not suitable for premium themes we are developing as it give users the right to copy and redistribute the work. This would effectively kill our business before it even started as anyone out there could legally purchase one of our themes, change a few lines of code and charge whatever they wanted for it.

How do you plan on handling support?

Sarah: Most of the support will be provided via a private forum on the Blog Themes Club site.

Kevin: On occasions it might be more practical to help someone via msn messenger or skype, particularly if the customer is really struggling to fix something. However I think long term the forum is the best solution as it will stop us from repeating ourselves. By answering a common question thoroughly the first time on the forum, we can direct future members who ask the same question to our previous response or to our FAQ section (which we will update with the most common questions and answers).

Which areas will you be tackling in first in terms of niche designs? For example, business oriented themes, personal themes, etc.

Sarah: We hope to get an even cover of designs available for each subject area. The first 3 themes are designed for bloggers, but the next theme is more targeted to the WPCMS style. However, whilst the themes may be targeted to a particular subject area, they will of course work for any type of site with a couple of slight alterations.

Kevin: Yes I think it’s very important to offer a wide range of themes, particularly for those who pay for a membership.

Conclusion:

I’ve linked to a number of WordPress How-To’s that Sarah has written so she no doubt has the skills necessary for the task at hand. Kevin has been around in the blogging scene for a long time and he has his finger on the pulse of what bloggers want. These two make a great team. So keep your eyes peeled to the BlogThemesClub project to see what these two come up with.

Posted in Themes | Tagged bloggintips.com, clubs, kevin, sarah, Themes | 1 Response

Copyright And The GPL

By Jeffro on May 22, 2009

This is a guest blog post written by Ryan Hellyer, who operates PixoPoint.com. While you’re there, check out his WordPress Template Generator

Disclaimer: All of my current distributed software is GPL licensed and I have no intention of releasing or promoting non-GPL software for WordPress in the future. I know very little about copyright law and software licensing and have no idea if the opinions expressed below are correct or not. I am simply providing the transcript below as I thought those debating the issue may be interested in it.

Whilst reading through the debate in the ‘One Peeved Off Theme Maker‘ topic a friend of mine who also happens to be a specialist in copyright law and author of a GPL licensed WordPress theme sent me a message via MSN. I took the opportunity to grill him with a few questions on the matter of the GPL and it’s effect on the non-GPL premium theme market. After a colourful discussion (he likes to swear a lot), I realized the transcript may be of interest to others. So here for you all to squabble over is the (slightly edited) opinions of a specialist in copyright law. He doesn’t want his name attached to the transcript so I’ve renamed him as Beagle (since he is a legal beagle).

Beagle said:
hey dude

Ryan says:
long time no see

Beagle says:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/06/meatcards-print-your-business-cards-on-beef-jerky-with-a-frickin-laser-beam/?awesm=tcrn.ch_1Q7

Ryan says:
ROTFLMAO. Laser printed beef?

Beagle says:
I know, how awesome is that?

Ryan says:
How about laser printed fruit rollups?

Beagle says:
hmmm, not a bad idea!

Ryan says:
So you gonna buy any?

Beagle says:
nah, it’s just cool

Ryan says:
You would then be a meathead with a meatcard

Beagle says:
lol, thanks!

Ryan says:
Do you mind answering questions about a legal debate about use of the GPL in WordPress themes?

Beagle says:
indeed

Beagle says:
whats the template generator url again? i’ll download a theme to see what you’ve got in there now.

Ryan says:

http://pixopoint.com/generator/

Ryan says:
but that’s not what I want to talk about. The template generator is GPL and I don’t have any intention of changing that.

Beagle says:
lol what the #*&#*are you building now then!

Ryan says:
Nothing, there’s just a big argument over what is and isn’t allowed and I’d like to get your opinion on it.

Ryan says:
I have no reason to release non-GPL stuff. I just find the subject facinating.

Beagle says:
do explain

Ryan says:
ok

Ryan says:
Many people claim that since WordPress the software is licensed under GPL2, that all software which uses WP functions is a derivative work of WP and therefore all WP themes which use those functions must be GPL licensed

Ryan says:
GPL2 seems to be some sort of infectious license, ie: you can’t use GPL2 code in something without the rest of the code being GPL2

Ryan says:
Now … lots of WordPress themes (particularly the good ones) are not licensed under GPL2

Ryan says:
The big question is … is this correct, and is it enforceable?

Ryan says:
Presumably you could write a theme so that it has a GPL section which allow a templating system to plug into it

Ryan says:
So the template could be used across the board with a variety of different platforms .. in theory

Ryan says:
But most of the themes in question are just using WP functions, ie: wp_list_pages to display pages; the_content to display a post etc. etc.

Ryan says:
There’s an argument here … http://www.wptavern.com/forum/themes-templates/446-one-peeved-off-theme-maker-8.html#post3603

Ryan says:
and a whole truckload more of them about the place

Ryan says:
it is quite a big problem in the WP community at the moment, particularly since WordPress.org now has a themes repository

Ryan says:
they’re even going to the extent of not only banning themes in the repository which don’t have a GPL (or compatible) license, but also themes which contain links to sites which link to other sites which host non-GPL WordPress themes or plugins

Beagle says:
So far as I can see, there is absolutely no way whaotsoever you could claim that a wordpress theme has to be GPL2 just because wordpress is (if that’s what the argument is about)

Beagle says:
legally speaking

Ryan says:
But the theme contains GPL2 code

Ryan says:
and the GPL2 license requires that it not be used in non GPL software

Beagle says:
so? that doesn’t matter in the slightest

Ryan says:
yeah, that’s what you said last time

Ryan says:
But what you say seems to be clashing with legal advice from elsewhere on the net

Beagle says:
if the GPL2 license requires that it not be used in non-GPL software, then you’re in breach of copyright

Beagle says:
because you’re breached the terms of the license

Beagle says:
that still doesn’t mean it’s GPL2

Ryan says:
I’m pretty sure I recall Matt Mullenweg saying (or someone said that he said) that he has consulted with copyright specialists on the matter who claim that WP themes need to be GPL2

Beagle says:
then he has some pet lawyers who are spinning @&$t for him

Beagle says:
it’s a fundamental principle of all copyright law that seperate copyright exists in a collation of copyrighted works

Ryan says:
He may have said that WP themes which are not GPL2 are in breach of copyright then

Beagle says:
well that’s a bit different

Beagle says:
but using php you would write new functions that would just call the could wordpress functions, and name them something different, right?

Ryan says:
yes you could, but your new functions would still contain the old functions, coz it would be done something like this:

Beagle says:
that’s ok

Beagle says:
in fact, now that I think about it you wouldn’t even have to do that

Beagle says:
oh, well, maybe

Beagle says:
if you look at the functions as a block…

Beagle says:
but then you’re only using pieces of it so….

Ryan says:
I figured you could have one piece of software which is GPL2 which grabs the theme code (which is non-GPL) and dynamically adds the WP functions into place

Beagle says:
hmm, no, I’m fairly certain that if it went to court wordpress.org would be $*$&%d

Ryan says:
So something like [ryanspage] could be grabbed on the fly and converted to wp_list_pages()

Beagle says:
exactly

Beagle says:
but here’s an even more important point that I just realised

Ryan says:
The two pieces of software could be entirely seperate

Ryan says:
the GPL2 bit would just grab that code and process it

Beagle says:
here’s the real kicker

Beagle says:
you write a theme, mmk?

Beagle says:
there are two seperate copyrights

Ryan says:
k

Beagle says:
one in the code

Beagle says:
one in the design

Beagle says:
even if the GPL2 license “forces you to release” the code as GPL2

Beagle says:
you still have copyright in the design

Beagle says:
so anyobdy who used your code, which is now GPL, to produce that theme is breaching your other copyright anyway

Ryan says:
By ‘design’ do you mean the CSS file and images?

Beagle says:
no

Ryan says:
That is often used as an argument by themers, that their CSS and images aren’t GPL’d

Beagle says:
that is also true

Beagle says:
I mean what you see when you look at it on the screen

Beagle says:
but those are seperate copyrights again

Ryan says:
Heh, that’s kinda abstract

Beagle says:
nah, it’s not abstract at all

Beagle says:
you have to look at it like lego

Beagle says:
every piece can be a copyright

Beagle says:
and you have copyright in the overall combination of pieces

Beagle says:
suppose everyone on a team takes a photo, right?

Beagle says:
and I put it into a collage

Beagle says:
I own copyright in the collage

Beagle says:
they own copyright in the photos

Beagle says:
provided that what i did was sufficiently “transformative” so as to make it a new artistic work

Ryan says:
Can you release the collage for sale and prevent others from modifying it even if the license of one of the pieces says that others must be allowed to modify it and that any derivatives of that photo must also be allowed to be modified and used freely by others?

Ryan says:
that was a bit of a mouthful, hopefully you followed it

Beagle says:
yes

Beagle says:
you can most definitely do that

Beagle says:
basically

Ryan says:
But isn’t that a breach of that particular photos license?

Beagle says:
you can say as much as you like that “any derivatives” blah blah blah

Beagle says:
no, that’s the point

Ryan says:
Since you are doing something which that chunks license does not allow

Beagle says:
provided it’s sufficiently transformative, the copyright in the first work has to relevance

Beagle says:
you’re looking at it wrong

Ryan says:
I follow what you mean

Ryan says:
I’m just repeating what is usually argued by others

Ryan says:
I’ve been reading a lot of this stuff about this lately

Beagle says:
well, if you go to the pirate bay and read the letters that get sent by lawyers all the time, you’ll realise that A) a lot of lawyers know %*%$ all about anything and B) a lot of lawyers will deliberately misrepresent the law to intimidate others into giving up their rights

Beagle says:
TBH. I also think that a straight GPL license wouldn’t stand up to much in court either

Beagle says:
’cause the purposes of copyright is to protect commercial exploitation

Ryan says:
how come?

Beagle says:
if commercial exploitation is allowed, you’ve given up a $*%# load of your rights anyway

Beagle says:
courts really aren’t interested in this whole creative commons / gpl type of attitude

Beagle says:
GPL might stand up in court

Beagle says:
maybe

Beagle says:
but you could put a lot of arguments against it

Ryan says:
that is what gets said a lot … maybe

Ryan says:
it hasn’t been tested apparently, apart from in Germany where it did stand up in court supposedly (or so I’ve read somewhere)

Beagle says:
the point is that anything that’s GPL’d never has any commercial use that is worth enough money to fight it in court

Beagle says:
yeah, european copyright laws are very different though

Ryan says:
Is NZ copyright law closer to USA or European law?

Beagle says:
Umm, moving closer to USA

Beagle says:
but copyright law in general is a $&%t mess when it comes to interwebs stuff anyway

Beagle says:
nobody really gets it right

Ryan says:
no kidding!

Beagle says:
IMHO, wordpress.org is rattling their sabres, nothing more

Beagle says:
trying to frighten people

Ryan says:
Sort of, Matt Mullenweg said they have zero interest in pursuing this in court

Beagle says:
heh, because he knows he’d lose

Ryan says:
but that they are keen to encourage everyone to follow the GPL since it is for the benefit of the community

Ryan says:
I suspect he wouldn’t care either way.

Ryan says:
It’s more of a moral point for him I think

Ryan says:
GPL benefits the community, hence they’re keen to encourage the release of GPL stuff

Beagle says:
yep, and that’s fine if you want to have a big moral argument

Ryan says:
But that doesn’t make it tick off premium theme developers anything less

Beagle says:
but if you’re talking law, the he doesn’t have a leg to stand on

Ryan says:
particularly since they’re not only being banned from the theme repository for having links in their GPL themes to sites hosting non-GPL stuff, but actually extending that right through to linking to sites which link to sites which have non-GPL stuff.

Ryan says:
This is why the template generator only outputs GPL themes

Ryan says:
I bailed out of your advice from last time about allowing a range of licenses

Beagle says:
well I think the theme developers are trying to have their cake and eat it too

Ryan says:
It may be legit, I honestly don’t know. But but I’d get hung drawn and quarted by the WordPress community if I didn’t released WP stuff as GPL. And there’s little point in my using another license anyway and it makes a lot more sense to give back to the community.

Beagle says:
yeah fair enough

Beagle says:
if you’re building themes on a platform where everybody shares code etc and the whole idea is for everything to be GPL, but you want to sell it, you can’t then complain when people take private actions (which are well within their rights) to cut you off

Ryan says:
Do you mind if I copy and paste this transcript, remove your name, edit the swear words and send this in as a guest blog post at wptavern.com?

Beagle says:
sure, go for it

Ryan says:
thanks dude

Beagle says:
haha, no worries

Beagle says:
yeah, legally it seems a pretty long bow to draw to say themes have to be GPL

Beagle says:
especially as you’d have to prove that individual functions are capable of supporting copyright

Beagle says:
most stuff you will read on the interweb about GPL is a pile ^&*%ing $&%t

Beagle said:
want to know something cool?

Ryan says:
sure

Beagle said:
you have facebook right?

Ryan says:
yep, should I login?

Beagle said:
yeah

Beagle said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_code

read the top part of that

Beagle said:
go to facebook, and enter ‘up up down down left right left right B A’ then hit enter and start typing/scrolling

Ryan says:
lol, where the heck am I entering that?

Beagle says:
just got to facebook and type it with ytour arrow keys like you’re playing a game

Ryan says:
doesn’t do anything

Beagle says:
try again … up up down down left right left right b a enter scroll

Ryan says:
bubbles?

Beagle says:
yep, how cool is that

Ryan says:
LOL

Ryan says:
Heck that gets annoying when you want to type something

Beagle says:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10234749-1.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crave

Ryan says:
lol, I should have bought that for my sister in-law

Beagle says:
that would be the coolest pregnant woman on the planet

Ryan says:
I’m guessing you are stumbling?

Beagle says:
indeed!

Beagle says:
remember our conversation about climate change?

Ryan says:
yeah

Beagle says:
Check out wattsupwiththat.com

Beagle says:
it’s now the most widely read science blog on the net

Beagle says:
it’s on wordpress.org’s top 10

Beagle says:
(overall)

Beagle says:
anyways, I’d better go sleepytime

Beagle says:
always good to chat to you man

Ryan says:
goodnight

Beagle says:
ciao

And just to reiterate … although I was the one asking the questions here, I do not know if the replies are correct or not. I’m not interested in releasing non-GPL themes, plugins or anything else for WordPress. My business PixoPoint.com only distributes GPL’d software and we have no intention whatsoever of releasing non-GPL software regardless of the legalities. The GPL fits perfectly with our business model and we are happy to abide by both the GPL and the requirements of the WordPress.org theme and plugin repositories.

Posted in Themes | Tagged copyright, gpl, Themes | 24 Responses

Review Of Eventina 2.0 – jQuery Strikes Again

By Jeffro on May 22, 2009

Since the launch of WordPress Tavern, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to promote/review commercial themes without joining their affiliate program. I think I’ve come up with an answer outside of telling those who want reviews to just purchase display advertising. If you expect me to review your commercial theme without paying me a dime, you must provide at least one copy of the theme to give away to my audience. I find this to be a win-win-win situation. Also, don’t expect me to provide a glowing review simply because you purchased advertising. These reviews are honest opinions and no one should put their integrity on the line because of a few bucks.

At A Glance:

With that said, I’d like to introduce Eventina 2.0 as the first commercial theme to be reviewed here on the Tavern. This theme was developed by ThemesCloset.com and is compatible with WordPress 2.7 with a single site license going for $39.00.

License:

If you’re going to be purchasing a theme, it’s important to know before hand what the license will and will not allow in terms of redistribution, modifcation, credit links, etc. If the theme itself is licensed under the GPL, you pretty much have free reign with what you can do with the theme.

In the case of Eventina, the license for the theme is not clearly visible on the product page. Here is the details regarding the single site license:

This license allows you to use EVENTINA on a single website. The copyright informations must remain in the footer.

However, located within the theme package is a file called license_agreement.txt which goes more in depth with regards to what you can and can’t do with this theme.

This license entitles you to use the theme on one domain / website, whilst also allowing you to remove any of our credit links within the theme. Themes released under this license include all theme files but not the PSD file. Themes released under this license is for personal usage only. You are free to modify the theme in any way you want.
This license does not apply to the Plugins that are included/compatible with the theme. All themes come compressed (“zipped”). All files within the Plugin folders are not governed by the above license, and instead, retain their respective licenses (as noted in the files themselves).

That information is in addition to the general terms found within this document. This document should be in plain view on the ThemesCloset website as it contains information which could influence a purchasing decision. It’s not right to find this stuff out AFTER you have spent the money considering ThemesCloset only offers refunds if there are major bugs or problems with the theme itself.

Installation:

Installation was a simple process however, for these types of reviews, I’ll be using the included readme file or instructions.txt file as my method for installation. Eventina 2.0 provides easy enough to understand instructions for installing and then activating the theme. There is one step you’ll have to perform after you upload the theme and that is to set file permissions 777 to /wp-content/themes/eventina/scripts and /wp-content/themes/eventina/scripts/cache/. Otherwise TimThumb images resize script will not work properly. After the theme is activated, it’s time to dive into the options panel to configure how this baby functions.

Configuration:

The nice thing about the configuration page for this theme is that all of the options are on one page. I don’t have to search throughout the backend for different menus containing different options. Eventina comes prepackaged with 13 different color schemes. Using one of these schemes is as simple as selecting it from the drop down menu and clicking the save button.

A Look At The Theme Options Panel

I know many themes for awhile now have allowed users to configure a feature post block to use a specified category. Eventina goes one step further allowing you to configure the featured content to be specified via a tag instead of a category. Just make sure you put the tag slug into the Featured Content Slug area so they match up.

Eventina offers two ways to display post thumbnails. Either by using custom fields or the built in TimThumb script. The choice is up to you. If you choose to go with custom fields, the options panel provides ways for you to specify a custom field name for photos and thumbnails.

I’m not going to cover every option in the panel but overall, I enjoyed the experience of staying within one panel to configure the theme. The save boxes for each section was a nice touch which saved me from using the mouse wheel too much.

Widgets:

This theme has three widget containers. A wide one with two narrow containers underneath. Not a lot of versatility when it comes to widgets but it gets the job done with this particular theme.

jQuery Strikes Again:

While reviewing Eventina 2.0, I discovered an incompatibility between the tabs in the sidebar and the CommentLuv plugin. Eventina is bundled with three different jquery files.

jquery-1.1.3.1.pack.js
jquery-ui-personalized-1.5.2.packed.js
jquery.tabs.pack.js

CommentLuv is bundled with a few javascript files of it’s own and so there in lies the problem. There is some sort of conflict between the two. Personally, I like the CommentLuv plugin so it’s a bit of a shame that I can’t use it with this theme out of the box. I’m not smart enough to know who gets the blame here, the plugin author or the theme author but based on my experience, using themes which are bundled with a specific version of jQuery usually leads to problems when it comes to plugins using jQuery.

I also discovered the same issue with the Contact Form 7 plugin. Considering this is a widely used plugin, this incompatibility could upset quite a few people if they find out about it after they’ve spent their money.

Support:

ThemesCloset provides a support forum specifically for this theme. This is where I went when I encountered a problem activating this theme on my local server which apparently doesn’t work. I had no problems activating the theme on a public site though. The forum doesn’t provide much in the way of an established base of threads but since this is a newly released theme, that is to be expected.

Support Forum Just Getting Started

If the forum doesn’t provide the answer you need, there are four other methods of getting in touch with the theme author including email, Skype, ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger. As a side bonus, the author speaks three different languages, English, Romanian and Russian.

Final Thoughts:

For starters, this theme definitely looks different than most magazine themes, especially with the three headlines near the top of the page. Some folks may think the gradient between the three images looks weird but I find it to be a cool way to view at a glance which headlines were published first.

Eventina 2.0 On Jeffc.ME

One of the best things about this theme is that it is FAST. By limiting the number of images down to three, this thing loads very quickly. The options panel was laid out nicely in discrete sections so I can certainly see how ThemesCloset claims this theme could be configured within 10 minutes.

Not bad for $39.00 but the plugin incompatibilities which I mentioned earlier in the review really need to be resolved for this theme to be taken seriously. Based on experience, themes which are bundled with their own jQuery stuff usually have compatibility problems with plugins. The last theme I used for Jeffro2pt0.com contained jQuery which broke many of my favorite plugins that also used jQuery. It’s a shame because the fancy tabs in themes are nice but if they break plugins, it’s not worth it.

Want This Theme?

The author of this theme will be monitoring the comments you folks leave and will choose one of you to become the recipient of a free single license copy of Eventina 2.0. Just leave a comment letting me know what you think about this review, the theme, or if you have any questions, maybe he’ll stop by and answer them for you.

Posted in Themes | Tagged commercial, eventina, review, theme | 6 Responses

Great Explanation Of Theme Template Pages

By Jeffro on May 20, 2009

John Pratt over on WPHacks.com has published a great guest post explaining the ins and outs of WordPress Theme Template Pages. These pages are what make up a WordPress theme. Although most theme designers end up doing things their own way, it’s a good idea to figure out the basic flow of a theme in case you want to make one yourself or add template pages to your current theme.

Every time a WordPress page is called the WP ‘engine’, if you will, determines (through process of elimination) what kind of page it is. It’s kind of like a “where am I?” function. WordPress says “what page am I…” and in turn tries to call pages in a specific order. If WP doesn’t find the PHP file it needs it just defaults to the “index.php” file and uses it instead.

If you’re an aspiring theme author, definitely give this post a read, print it off actually and use it as a reference.

Posted in Themes | Tagged hacks, pages, templates, Themes

Widgetizing That Theme Of Yours

By Jeffro on May 15, 2009

If you’re using a theme that doesn’t have a widgetized sidebar or if you’re thinking of adding more widget spots to your theme, I recommend reading this two part series by Sarah on BloggingTips.com which walks you through how to create a dynamic sidebar. This is great stuff as it enables you to take your theme to the next level. Add a few more widget spots or sidebars so you don’t have to be confined to one long sidebar. I’m a big fan of widget areas, the more the merrier.

If you perform this tutorial, make sure when you get to the part describing multiple sidebars, you give them common sense names.

Posted in Themes | Tagged coding, sidebars, Themes, widgets

Simple Guide To Adding Theme Options

By Jeffro on May 11, 2009

Sarah who does a great job sharing her WordPress knowledge for BloggingTips.com published a simple guide on how to add theme options to your theme. The guide goes over the code needed, explains what the code does, and provides a good base to start from if you’re planning on adding options to your theme. In today’s world of WordPress themes, theme options are a necessity to making it easy on end users to change various aspects of a theme. Just be careful you don’t go overboard adding every option imaginable.

Posted in Themes | Tagged bloggingtips, development, options, Themes

What Kind Of Theme Is This?

By Jeffro on May 11, 2009

With all of the various theme names these days, it’s getting harder to define what exactly a premium theme is. Andrew Rickmann over at Fun With WordPress tries to give us a better understanding of what premium means now a days as well as providing a valid argument that perhaps it’s time for the theme repository to have a grading system.

Making the distinction between premium themes and the degrees of theme beneath them really only lets the less than premium themes get a free ride.

So now we have premium, freemium, non-gpl, gpl, child, parent, free, commercial, *proprietary themes. Hey, at least we don’t have to worry about grand child themes!

My head hurts already from trying to think of the various classifications for a WordPress theme. By the way, proprietary is starred because that’s what Matt calls non-gpl pay for themes. At this point, I would say that themes you pay for is what I think of when I hear the word premium but after seeing Andrew give the lowdown on the top five themes on the repository, I’m beginning to think premium is just a means of describing a theme that is above par and something you don’t ALWAYS have to pay for. As if parent/child themes were not complicated enough, now we have about 50 different classifications for themes. Who’s responsible for this?!

So what do you think about a grading or classification system on the theme repository? What do you think about all of the various terms used to describe a theme?

Posted in Themes | Tagged coding, commercial, premium, quality, Themes | 1 Response

WPGorilla Now WPSynergy

By Jeffro on May 8, 2009

Over the past few days, I’ve been reporting on the fact that the WPGorilla project were in the midst of a name change. The change took place not only because of a premium theme author with a business centered around a gorilla, but also for SEO, and other reasons. After they initiated their poll for domain choices, I sent them an idea for a domain to use called WPSynergy. Don’t ask me how I came up with the name, but I thought that Synergy sounds like a cool word and since it has a meaning similar to what the project is trying to accomplish, is should be a nice fit.

So I’m glad to see the project continue with all new branding and a cool sounding name. I’m also stoked that they went ahead with the name. It’s proof that I actually do have some good ideas from time to time!

Posted in Themes | Tagged gorilla, project, synergy

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