In this post we release a yet another freebie: Academica WordPress Theme, a free WordPress theme designed specifically for educational websites such as universities, schools etc. It’s a flexible and versatile free theme that can be easily customized and branded for any university, academy or non-profit organization. The theme is designed by ProudThemes and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. As usual, the theme is free to use in private and commerical projects.Download the theme for free!The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.live demolarge preview (.jpg, 0.6 Mb)download the theme (.zip, 0.12 Mb)download the .PSD Logo (.zip, 42Kb)release on the developer’s siteIf you want to be informed when an update to Academica theme will be released, consider signing up with ProudThemes (free).FeaturesThe theme was developed for WordPress 3.0 (compatible with 3.0.1)Modern, three-column clean designSetting up Academica Theme is easy and takes just a few seconds. The theme can be uploaded directly from the Dashboard > Appearance > Themes page. No need to edit any files — everything can be done from the Theme Options page.5 built-in icons to share and link to your profiles on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn and YoutubeThe theme allows enabling/disabling of a jQuery-based content slider on the homepage for showing your photosAcademica Theme uses a jQuery-based drop-down menu with a fade-in effect9 sidebars (widget areas) and 3 custom widgets developed for this theme3 custom page templates and 2 custom post templatesDynamic image resizing (TimThumb script)Support for Custom Menus (WordPress 3.0+).ScreenshotsDrop-down navigation menu. See live demo.Content blocks in the sidebar, defined with a custom widget. See live demo.News archive page. See live demoComments area with threaded comments (“reply”-functionality). See live demo.Behind the design processAs always, here are some insights from the designers:“Most theme developers create a lot of magazine and portfolio themes for WordPress, however the education niche is mostly ignored. We decided to do something about it, and create a flexible and versatile free theme that can be easily customized and branded for any university/academy or non-profit organization. Of course, the theme can be used in other niches as well, no restrictions or whatsoever. After reviewing a ton of web-sites of educational institutions, our eyes fell on the web-site of Massey University of New Zealand. With a rather general layout and color palette, we decided to make the navigation and all styling pure-CSS, without any gradients, so that the theme can be customized much faster and easier.”Thank you for your great work, guys. We appreciate your work, your time and your contributions to the design community.© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: free, Freebies, themes, wordpress
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
Academica: Free WordPress 3.0+ Theme For Educational Websites
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August 29 2010, 11:04am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
Modernist: Free WordPress Theme with Focus on Typography
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Today we are glad to release a yet another freebie: a beautiful Modernist WordPress theme, designed by Rodrigo Galindez and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The theme is based on the design ideas of Jan Tschichold, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Dieter Rams, and other modernists. Beautifully built yet transparent, it was designed with a focus on optimal typography in order to better showcase your content: text, images and video.The theme supports widgets, is SEO optimized, has clean and documented code. It is loading very quickly, and has various WordPress 3.0 features. Works in IE 6+ and all versions of Safari/Firefox/Opera. Includes CSS3 enhancements. As usual, the theme is absolutely free to use in private and commerical projects.Download the theme for free!The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.live demolarge preview (.jpg, 0,14 Mb)download the .zip-package (zip, 0,6 Mb)release on the developer’s siteFeaturesThe installation of the theme is very simple. No plugins required, no extra frameworks required. Just download the theme, upload it to your server and activate it to make it work.WordPress 3.0.1 tested. It works with the latest version of WordPress, and also with previous versions.Embraces Social Media. Modernist has links to share each post to Twitter, Facebook, Delicious Digg, and Reddit. No plugins needed, it just works out of the box.Is SEO optimized. Modernist has been carefully handcrafted in order to produce a clean HTML/CSS template. No unnecessary lines, just pure, semantical, bulletproof code that Google loves.Supports widgets. Modernist has a widgetized sidebar, and WordPress’ default widgets are styled. You can also drop your favorite widgets or plugins without needing to touch a single line of code.Has support for threaded comments, navigation for comments, table styles, header styles and definition lists styles.Is flexible and extensible. Change the color scheme to suit your own taste. All the code is well commented. Personalize the theme by adding your own header or your own images in the sidebar. Use font embedding services such as Typekit to serve different fonts and make the typography look unique!Homepage (large preview)Comments (large preview)Comment Form (large preview)Post (large preview)Search Results (large preview)Main NavSectionThank you, Rodrigo Galindez. We appreciate your work and your good intentions.[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that we are publishing a Smashing eBook Series? The brand new eBook #3 is Mastering Photoshop For Web Design, written by our Photoshop-expert Thomas Giannattasio.]Related PostsYou may be interested in the following related releases:100 Free High Quality WordPress Themes For 201030 New Free High Quality Free FontsFree Full Layered Facebook GUI PSD Kit© Elja Friedman for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: Freebies, themes, wordpress
August 21 2010, 2:19am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
100 Free High Quality WordPress Themes: 2010 Edition
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It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since our last WordPress theme collection, but there you have it — the time has come again. Once a year we feature the most useful and interesting WordPress-themes that we are collecting over months and present them in a nice quick overview. The collections from 2007, 2008 and last year are still useful, but some of the themes are outdated or updated now.Looking back over these previous theme articles, you can clearly see how and why WordPress has rapidly matured into the CMS powerhouse it is today. With all of the features that have been added and improvements made with every new WordPress version and with its ever-increasing popularity among the design and development community, the quality of free themes is evident. Developers are continually pushing WordPress’ boundaries, giving us today’s outstanding free theme collection.Today, we present a fresh collection of useful WordPress themes. Please notice that some themes are a bit older, but they are included because we haven’t featured them last time. This round-up picks up where we left off last year: most themes below were released between June 2009 and August 2010. We’ve also split this collection into the following categories: gallery and portfolio themes, themes for bloggers, e-Commerce WordPress themes, clean themes, magazine-style themes, minimal themes, mobile themes; pre-launch themes; and finally “Themes That Take WordPress Beyond.” [By the way, did you know we have a free Email Newsletter? Subscribe now and get fresh short tips and tricks in your inbox!]Gallery And Portfolio ThemesCumulus (Free version) (demo)Cumulus is a very clean and calm portfolio theme. It contains a large block for featured projects and images and a nifty blog posts navigation in the sidebar.Imbalance (demo)Free wordpress theme in modern-minimalist style. Imbalance is a very user friendly, jQuery powered theme which looks really well under any browser and OS. Perfectly fits for your blog, online magazine or portfolio websites. It is optimized for high-loads, contains WordPress 3.0 menu support, Twitter widget, jQuery-based gallery and WP Post Thumbnails support.Shaken and Stirred Theme (demo)This theme is perfect for you if you’re in need of a gallery/portfolio website or if you just want a website with a unique grid layout that not many websites have taken full advantage of yet. “Shaken Grid” uses the jQuery Masonry plugin which “arranges elements vertically then horizontally according to a grid.” The result is a gap-less layout even if you have varying post heights.AutoFocus+ (demo)The theme is designed on an 800px, 8 column grid layout that truly allows your images to shine. The theme boasts a sharp typographic approach with a 22px baseline grid, and a Garamond/Helvetica (Times/Arial for you PC users) font stack that’s much easier to read.Fotofolio Landscape (demo)A nice dark WordPress theme with sidebar navigation and jQuery-powered lightbox for images. A good choice for photographers who want to feature their works in an online portfolio.FolioGrid (demo)This theme contains a fluid grid-based layout, jQuery-based transitions and automatically resizing thumbnails. Also, you can choose between various page tamplates, and the theme has a widget-enabled area, too.Mansion (demo)Mansion is a free photoblogger’s theme for WordPress. It features a flexible-width thumbnail grid for both images and photo journal entries. Mansion is perfect for those who want to primarily showcase their photographs and occasionally write blog posts.PhotoView (demo)PhotoView was designed for displaying photos and videos in a simple and clean manner. The theme has an integrated lightbox. Also, a PSD file is included for easy customization.SimpleFolio (demo)SimpleFolio is a portfolio theme that includes a blog and a very extensive option page that allows you to exclude all your portfolio items from the blog page. It also includes a front page slider. It has 2 different widget areas and threaded comments, and also supports paged comments and has 2 different page templates for advanced usage. The control of images is done from the post page.Smashing Multimedia (demo)This theme was designed especially for podcasters, photographers and users who can now easily embed videos and images, rate them and showcase them in their own WordPress-based blog. It has a parent theme and an easily customizable child theme. This WordPress Theme comes with layered PSD source files, a visual help guide and is fully localized ready for you to translate it into your target language.Fullscreen Photo and Multimedia (demo)Fullscreen is a free one-column photography and multimedia theme for WordPress that can be used for portfolios, photoblogs, videoblogs, and virtually anything else where you want your content to be front and center. It provides visual artists a unique way of presenting their latest work online using a minimalist side-scrolling homepage.Brave Zeenat (demo)A clean Portfolio Theme ideal for photographers, artists and designers to showcase their portfolios.Monokrome (demo)This grid-based theme is widget ready and has a Twitter stream and Flickr integration. The column width adapts to the width of the images and the width of the browser viewport.Portfolio WPESP Theme (live demo)Portfolio – WPESP Theme is a “minimalist” Theme based on the idea of portfolio created by DAILYWP. The Theme is a starting point in the creation of portfolios, using WordPress as CMS.Selecta (demo, WordPress 3.0+ compatible)Selecta’s rounded edges and bold, modern color palettes make for a fresh theme that’s best suited to blogs where video will be the main focus. The wider-than-usual frames around thumbnails and videos bring to mind the retro-cool of Polaroid photographs and old home movies.Work-a-holic (demo)Work-a-holic is a free two and three column WordPress theme that focuses mainly on showcasing portfolios for artists, web designers, photographers and illustrators.BlueBubble WordPress Theme (demo)The theme is clean and simple, contains a theme options page, uses post image thumbnail plugin, has 2 widget ready sidebars and uses jQuery/PHP-based contact form with easy customization. Requires WordPress 2.9+.WordPress Themes For BloggersLap of Luxury (demo)This theme uses gold in the logo, and white and black are used as the main colors. The 2-col theme contains a sidebar on the right that allows for a large square ad up top, and splitting into 2 columns below that. Comes fully widgetized. A special feature of this theme is the logo changer.Katana (demo)This theme has a simple layout based on anime or game niche. Theme will be suitable for blogs of such niches. Theme has features like featured post section, post thumbnails, banner ads, adsense, twitter widgets etc. Theme uses custom fonts for various titles. It has an intuitive theme option page which lets you configure the theme.Koi Theme (demo)Koi is a simplified version of N.Design Studio’s theme (2009 redesign). Key features: multi-level dropdown menus, social media buttons, threaded & paged comments, and sidebar widget plus three footer widgets. This theme includes an option page to manage dropdown menus, favicon, footer tracking code, and social media buttons. Requires WordPress 2.9+.Bueno Bueno is a clean, minimalistic design which sophistication in both its typography and structure. It uses a grid-based design, has integrated banner ad management, widgetized sidebar and 7 different color schemes. Also, the theme is packaged wth a .po file for easy theme integration.Notepad Theme (demo)The theme is inspired by the iPhone’s Notes.app. This new theme is widget compatible with threaded comments, social media buttons, and multi-level dropdown menus. It has been tested on WordPress 2.9 with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and IE7+. It also includes some nice CSS3 enhancement such as rounded corners and drop shadow.Strukture (demo)Peacekeeper (demo)The Seven Five (demo)A minimalist blogger/social theme including several customization and layout options.Simplo (demo)Galaxy (demo)The Galaxy WordPress theme is a two column theme that supports banner ads and the WP-PageNavi plugin. Perfect theme for personal blogs.Aparatus (demo)Zexee (demo)Cyangant Elegant (demo)Obscure (demo)A dark magazine wordpress theme suitable for any site nitche and best fit for community-based sites.MonkeyPr (demo)Designpile (demo)Obscorp (demo)The Side Blog Theme (demo)A free blogging theme with all sorts of customization and content management options.E-Commerce WordPress Themese-Commerce Theme: Kelontong (demo)The theme has a simple layout, clean, professional look, is integrated with WP e-commerce and features a slideshow for products.Dangdoot (e-commerce theme: free version) (demo)Dangdoot is a free e-commerce theme for WordPress and requires the e-Commerce plug-in.AppCloud (e-commerce theme: free version) (demo)AppCloud is another free e-commerce theme for WordPress. (It too requires the e-Commerce plug-in).Clean WordPress ThemesBlissful Blog (demo)The Ideal WebsiteThe Ideal Website is designed to fit Fibonacci’s Golden Section – otherwise known as the divine proportions. These measurements are said to be the most pleasing to the eye, and have been widely used for everything from judging beauty of a face, to the design of bank notes.Un.complicated Theme (demo)The layout is minimalist, clean, and organized into three 320px columns. This theme, are built on Starkers and implements the The Golden Grid. here is a wigetized sidebar, which looks like a regular three column row. I have also integrated twitter within the theme, using javascript. All the user has to do is find this line in the index.php page.Voidy (demo)Voidy is the perfect theme for your great blog. It is clean, clear and beautiful. It is minimalistic two-cloumn theme with the widgets all arranged in the right sidebar. Voidy was designed to make your content stand out and make everything else get out of the way.Clear (demo)Clear is the perfect theme for great authors. It is clean, clear and beautiful. It is minimalistic one-cloumn theme with the widgets all arranged at the bottom. Clear was designed to make your content stand out and make everything else get out of the way.Delicate (demo)Boldy (demo)A free theme that includes support for WordPress 3.0 Menu Management, has in-built slideshows, jQuery-based forms and live form validation as well as a widget for Twitter.Smooth (demo)Inuit Types (starter edition) (demo)Titan Theme (free edition) (demo)YouAre Theme (demo)Simple Organization (demo)Neutra (demo)Neutra is a simple and elegant theme for WordPress. Grid-based with focus on simplicity and typography.The Erudite (demo)A theme for writers who want readers, not visitors, traffic, click-throughs, CPMs or what-have-you. Carefully crafted typography and generous use of whitespace lets your writing shine. Version 2 includes a dark theme option.Magazine-Style ThemesThe ColumnistThe Columnist WordPress theme is inspired by traditional newspaper layouts and the grid structures and typography techniques they employ. It has WordPress thumbnail support, widget support, CSS3 column structure, jQuery animations, custom fields for images and featured latest post area.The Structure Theme (demo)The Structure Theme is a free WordPress theme with a modern minimalist design. There are 4 themes included with the Structure Theme download; a white theme, black theme, two column blog and a single column blog design. The theme was created with a simple and clean aesthetic meant to easily adopt the style of the content added to the site. The Structure Theme is also designed with customization in mind. Meaning, with a little work, the theme can be completely personalized to suit your brand.Aurelius (demo)Tanzaku (demo)The WhatsUp (demo)WPCount (demo)Maimpok (demo)Malleable (demo)Furvious (demo)A nice theme coming with 5 color styles, powerful admin framework and featured posts area.Newspress (demo)Minimal WordPress ThemesModernistReptileWP-Notes (demo)Clear (demo)Satoshi (demo)Ulap Theme (demo)ManifestThe goal with Manifest was to create a clean and streamlined theme that focused on the content and not the distractions. It utilizes a single column, 500 pixel wide layout. No sidebars. No widgets.Miniml Press Theme (demo)Functionalism (demo)LifeStreaming White (demo)Un.complicated (demo)Vostok (demo)Vostok is for those who don’t want attention to be distracted from content. Colors and typography have been carefully chosen to achieve maximum legibility with minimum eye fatigue. Also, code has been written with extreme care for web standards and accessibility.Mini (demo)Mobile Themes For WordPressWordPress Mobile Pack (demo)WordPress Mobile PackThe WordPress Mobile Pack includes the following: a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user visiting your website; a selection of mobile themes; extra widgets; device adaptation; and a mobile administration panel to allow users to edit the website or write posts while out and about.WordPress Mobile ThemeThis is a minimalist theme that can be used to target mobile users. The theme works with any mobile phone of any resolution. And with its light weight, it also drastically reduces loading times.MöbiusMöbius is compatible with iPhone (and iPod Touch), Android, BlackBerry, Windows, Palm Pre and Symbian touchscreen mobile phones.News Press MobileThe News Press theme is a simple and elegant solution for creating an iPhone-friendly news, blog or other text-centric WordPress website. It comes complete with all the standard WordPress blog features: search, log-in, categories, tags, archives, photos and more.Carrington MobileCarrington Mobile is an elegant mobile theme that supports advanced touchscreen browsers (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Pre) and that is also backwards-compatible with older mobile devices.Pre-Launch WordPress ThemesBEBACKWP (demo)Ice Breaker (demo)Ready2Launch! (demo)WP BlueprintThemes That Take WordPress BeyondGuruQ (demo)GuruQ is a basic theme designed to be used for Q&A websites. Visitors post questions to the guru, and the guru answers via the WordPress admin screen.P2 (Like Twitter in a Box)P2 is a theme for WordPress that transforms a mild-mannered blog into a super-blog, with features like inline comments on the home page, a posting form right on the home page, inline editing of posts and comments, real-time updates (to display new posts and comments without reloading) and much more.Driftwood Contact Manager (demo)Driftwood is a contact manager theme built for WordPress. This easy-to-use theme gives you an effortless way to track interaction with your clients and contacts.Aggregator (demo)Aggregator is a theme that aggregates feeds of any kind in one place and in an attractive format.GTD (private theme for teams to collaborate)MiniCard (demo)The MiniCard theme supports hCard and vCard microformats, it supports a ton of social networks, it can accommodate some portfolio items (optional), and it does much more, all from the dedicated theme configuration page.LiveTwit (demo)WordPress Theme ToolsElastic Theme EditorThe awesome Elastic is a visual theme editor and engine for WordPress. It takes a completely innovative approach to theme development. To get an idea of what it can do, check out this video:Divine (Convert PSD to WordPress) Divine is a Photoshop plug-in that allows you to assign WordPress roles to your main elements (e.g. #footer, #header, etc.). The plug-in then prepares all the files you need. Once you set up FTP access, the tool uploads the theme automatically to your server. Look at this video for insight into how Divine works:WordPress Debug ThemeThe WordPress Debug theme allows you to check early on for any possible issues you might have with your WordPress installation. It is quite simple for now, doing only a few things, but it does them very effectively.Starter And Blank WordPress ThemesStarkers HTML5 WordPress Theme KitStarkers is a bare bones WordPress theme created to act as a starting point for the theme designer… Free of all style, presentational elements, and non-semantic markup, Starkers is the perfect ‘blank slate’ for your projects, as it’s a stripped-back version of the ‘Default’ theme that ships with WordPressWP-ConstructorWordPress Constructor is a many-in-one theme. It contains 6 sidebar variations and three layouts (and you can create new is easy). You can configure colors and fonts. The theme also has post thumbnails (WordPress 2.9+) and navigation menu customization options (WordPress 3.0+).Buddymatic Theme FrameworkBuddymatic is a highly extensible theme framework for WordPress and WordPress MU blogs, including BuddyPress-enabled home and member blogs.ET Starter Theme for WordPressThe ET starter theme lets you easily choose between a one-, two- and three-column layout. It supports the WP-PageNavi, Twitter Tools and Contact Form 7 plug-ins and also includes a built-in jQuery drop-down menu.WordPress Skeleton ThemeThe feature-rich WordPress Skeleton Theme has been developed to speed up and streamline your WordPress development. One of its outstanding out-of-the-box features is CSS support for the iPhone and iPad (both portrait and landscape); simply edit the iPhone.css and iPad.css files.Paintbox CMS (demo)Paintbox CMS is a grid-based CMS theme layered on my actual theme-canvas Paintbox. It comes with a smooth 960 grid layout plus some creative jQuery effects for content loading.BLANKBlank is a theme with all the functionality of a typical WordPress theme but almost none of the styling. The idea is that using this as your base theme is far easier than using one that is already styled.(al)© Paul Andrew for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: themes, wordpress
August 19 2010, 7:14am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
Lessons Learned From Maintaining a WordPress Plug-In
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Recently I released a WordPress plugin for Google Analytics that adds a tracking code and dozens of various pieces of meta data to blogs. Since the release of version 4, I’ve updated it 6 times, to the point where it’s now at version 4.0.6. In this article I would like to share with you my experiences in maintaining this and other WordPress plug-ins and common good practices that I’ve distilled from that work.The updates that I released had a couple of purposes, ranging from bug fixes to new features and fixes in documentation. While all of these are nice to talk about, the bug fixes are the ones you’ll learn the most from, so let’s start by going through these.Website and Account ConfigurationAlmost as soon as I released the plug-in, people who updated were telling me that it worked wonderfully, and others were telling me that it didn’t work for them. Turns out I hadn’t tested the plug-in with a Google Analytics account that has only one website registered; I expected the websites to be an array. Fixing this bug was easy, but determining that this was the problem took a while.Being able to log into a few hosts of people who gave me access to their back end and FTP so that I could test my fix proved invaluable. This enabled me to release 4.0.1 within an hour of the 4.0 release.Another mistake I made was forcing everyone to reconfigure the plug-in. I assumed it wouldn’t be too much work for people, and it wanted to be sure the settings were clean, but it turns out quite a few people didn’t want to reconfigure. With 4.0.2, I came up with a way to inherit some of the settings and clean up the mess I made, and in 4.0.4 I made a change that I will add to all of my plug-ins:Large viewGood practice #1: Don’t assume anything about people’s websites and external accounts.Versioning Option ArraysAs a seasoned WordPress developer, I store all of the options for my plug-in in one option in the database, which is basically a big array. Why I hadn’t ever added a version number to these options is a mystery to me. Doing so makes it possible to do some very cool things: I can now add new features and set a default for these new features as soon as a user upgrades; I can show the user different messages based on the version they had before they upgraded; and more.Good practice #2: Add a version number to your option arrays.I’m still not using the WordPress option API stuff (check out this post by Ozh to learn all about it), which I probably should, but for now I find it easier to handle the saving and validation of options myself.Don’t Release Too SoonIf you’ve got a bug that’s bugging a lot of your plug-in’s users, you’ll probably want to release a bug fix as soon as possible. I know I do. This caused an issue with my 4.0.3 release, though, because I didn’t properly test some of the code I introduced, causing me to have to release 4.0.4 just two hours later to fix a stupid mistake I’d made with booleans. Nothing is as painful as 500 people downloading a version of your plug-in that doesn’t actually work.Good practice #3: Test, test, test before you release, even when you’re in a hurry.Know Which Version People Are OnOver the past two weeks, I’ve been helping several people who said they were on the latest version of my plug-in but in fact were not. To remedy this, I’ve started outputting the version number in the comment that the plug-in outputs before the tracking code. Problem is, if people run a plug-in such as W3 Total Cache (which everyone should use by the way) or anything else that minifies their output, that comment will get lost.There’s a solution for that, too: I’d already wrapped the script in <CDATA> tags, to help with Strict XHTML validation. Minifying will not occur within those CDATA tags, so I moved my “branding” comment to the CDATA section, and I can now always see, first, that my plug-in is active and, secondly, which version of the plug-in they’re using.Good practice #4: Make sure you can see which version of your plug-in people are running.URLs in WordPressOne of these things that can generate pretty awful bugs is a blog’s URL. Whether it’s due to people running their entire blog on https or “simply” running their blog in a sub-directory, it can cause headaches. It did for me in version 4.0.2 when I added URL sanitization: all relative URLs in posts and text widgets starting with a / were made absolute, in order to properly track these URLs. Tiny issue: I forgot about blogs in sub-directories, so a tiny portion of people would end up with links that used to go to /home but that now went to http://example.com/blog/home. I know, that was stupid; but that’s why I’m telling you: so you don’t make the same mistake.Good practice #5: Make sure all URLs you use will work in all circumstances, whether WordPress is in a sub-directory, on a subdomain or just in the root.Writing to the Root DirectorySomewhat related to the last issue, although I encountered this while developing my WordPress SEO plug-in, not the Google Analytics plug-in: if you write a file — say, an XML site map file — to the root of a website, and the website is actually a WordPress multi-site installation, things can go horribly wrong.Check out the following scenario:User 1 writes and publishes a post on example.com/blog-1/.An updated XML site map for example.com/blog-1/ is generated, and example.com/sitemap.xml is updated.User 2 writes and publishes a post on example.com/blog-2/.An updated XML site map for example.com/blog-2/ is generated and example.com/sitemap.xml is overwritten.See what just happened? The XML site map now contains only the posts from blog-2… This is exactly why the wp-content directory was created. There’s hardly ever a need to put a file in the root of an installation, and by not doing so, you make it far easier to run your plug-in in a multi-site/WordPress MU environment.Good practice #6: If you’re generating files, generate them in the wp-content directory of your blog. Do not write files to the root directory unless you absolutely, positively have to. And if you do have to do it, make sure it doesn’t go wrong when your plug-in is active on multiple blogs in the same multi-site instance.Rethink Your FiltersOn the day that I released 4.0, I got quite a few feature requests, ranging from very simple to somewhat more complex. One that came in quite rapidly and caught my eye happened to be quite simple: the user wanted the same outbound link that in my plug-in tracks the content of an article to track in text widgets. Because I don’t use text widgets that much, it never occurred to me to do this. It was a valuable lesson, though:Large viewGood practice #7: If you’re filtering content, try to filter it in as many places as you can, so that users get consistent results all over WordPress.[Offtopic: by the way, did you already get your copy of the Smashing Book?]Never AssumeIt’s true for everything, I guess, but especially true for WordPress developers: never assume. The seven best practices above mostly boil down to abandoning all assumptions about states, URLs and locations, and even about people knowing which version of a plug-in they’re using. Take all these matters into your own hands; your plug-in will be the better for it!(al)© Joost de Valk for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: plugin, wordpress
July 30 2010, 9:04am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
10 Useful WordPress Security Tweaks
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Security has always been a hot topic. Offline, people buy wired homes, car alarms and gadgets to bring their security to the max. Online, security is important, too, especially for people who make a living from websites and blogs. In this article, we’ll show you some useful tweaks to protect your WordPress-powered blog.[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #2 is Successful Freelancing for Web Designers, 260 pages for just $9,90.]1. Prevent Unnecessary Info From Being DisplayedThe problem When you fail to log into a WordPress blog, the CMS displays some info telling you what went wrong. This is good if you’ve forgotten your password, but it might also be good for people who want to hack your blog. So, why not prevent WordPress from displaying error messages on failed log-ins?The solution To remove log-in error messages, simply open your functions.php file, and paste the following code:add_filter('login_errors',create_function('$a', "return null;"));Save the file, and see for yourself: no more messages are displayed if you fail to log in.Code explanation With this code, we’ve added a simple hook to overwrite the login_errors() function. Because the custom function that we created returns only null, the message displayed will be a blank string.SourceTips for Securing WordPressWordPress Security: Hide Log-In Error Messages2. Force SSL UsageThe problem If you worry about your data being intercepted, then you could definitely use SSL. In case you don’t know what it is, SSL is a cryptographic protocol that secures communications over networks such as the Internet.Did you know that forcing WordPress to use SSL is possible? Not all hosting services allow you to use SSL, but if you’re hosted on Wp WebHost or HostGator, then SSL is enabled.The solution Once you’ve checked that your Web server can handle SSL, simply open your wp-config.php file (located at the root of your WordPress installation), and paste the following:define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true); Save the file, and you’re done!Code explanation Nothing hard here. WordPress uses a lot of constants to configure the software. In this case, we have simply defined the FORCE_SSL_ADMIN constant and set its value to true. This results in WordPress using SSL.SourceHow To: Force Using SSL on wp-admin Directory3. Use .htaccess To Protect The wp-config FileThe problem As a WordPress user, you probably know how important the wp-config.php file is. This file contains all of the information required to access your precious database: username, password, server name and so on. Protecting the wp-config.php file is critical, so how about exploiting the power of Apache to this end?The solution The .htaccess file is located at the root your WordPress installation. After creating a back-up of it (it’s such a critical file that we should always have a safe copy), open it up, and paste the following code:<files wp-config.php> order allow,deny deny from all </files> Code explanation .htaccess files are powerful and one of the best tools to prevent unwanted access to your files. In this code, we have simply created a rule that prevents any access to the wp-admin.php file, thus ensuring that no evil bots can access it.Source10 Easy Ways to Secure Your WordPress Blog4. Blacklist Undesired Users And BotsThe problem This is as true online as it is in real life: someone who pesters you today will probably pester you again tomorrow. Have you noticed how many spam bots return to your blog 10 times a day to post their annoying comments? The solution to this problem is quite simple: forbid them access to your blog.The solution Paste the following code in your .htaccess file, located at the root of your WordPress installation. As I said, always back up the .htaccess file before editing it. Also, don’t forget to change 123.456.789 to the IP address you want to ban.<Limit GET POST PUT> order allow,deny allow from all deny from 123.456.789 </LIMIT> Code explanation Apache is powerful and can easily be used to ban undesirable people and bots from your website. With this code, we’re telling Apache that everyone is allowed to visit our blog except the person with the IP address 123.456.789.To ban more people, simply repeat line 4 of this code on a new line, using another IP address, as shown below:<Limit GET POST PUT> order allow,deny allow from all deny from 123.456.789 deny from 93.121.788 deny from 223.956.789 deny from 128.456.780 </LIMIT> SourceOver 150 of the Worst Spammers, Scrapers and Crackers from 20075. Protect Your WordPress Blog From Script InjectionsThe problem Protecting dynamic websites is especially important. Most developers always protect their GET and POST requests, but sometimes this is not enough. We should also protect our blog against script injections and any attempt to modify the PHP GLOBALS and _REQUEST variables.The solution The following code blocks script injections and any attempts to modify the PHP GLOBALS and _REQUEST variables. Paste it in your .htaccess file (located in the root of your WordPress installation). Make sure to always back up the .htaccess file before modifying it.Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\<|<).*script.*(\>|>) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR] RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L] Code explanation Using the power of the .htaccess file, we can check requests. What we’ve done here is check whether the request contains a <script> and whether it has tried to modify the value of the PHP GLOBALS or _REQUEST variables. If any of these conditions are met, the request is blocked and a 403 error is returned to the client’s browser.SourcesProtéger Son Site Avec Un Fichier .htaccessProtect Your WordPress Blog Using .htaccess6. Fight Back Against Content ScrapersThe problem If your blog is the least bit known, people will no doubt try to use your content on their own websites without your consent. One of the biggest problems is hot-linking to your images, which saps your server’s bandwidth.The solution To protect your website against hot-linking and content scrapers, simply paste the following code in your .htaccess file. As always, don’t forget to back up when modifying the .htaccess file.RewriteEngine On
Replace ?mysite.com/ with your blog url
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+.)?mysite.com/ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
Replace /images/nohotlink.jpg with your "don't hotlink" image url
RewriteRule ..(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/nohotlink.jpg [L] Once you’ve saved the file, only your website will be able to link to your images. Other websites will automatically display the nohotlink.jpg image. Note that you can also specify a non-existent image, so websites that try to hot-link to you would display a blank space.Code explanation With this code, the first thing we’ve done is check the referrer to see that it matches our blog’s URL. If it doesn’t, and the file has a JPG, GIF, BMP or PNG extension, then the nohotlink image is displayed instead.SourceHow to Protect Your Blog from Content Thieves7. Create A Plug-In To Protect Your Blog From Malicious URL RequestsThe problem Hackers and evil-doers often use malicious queries to find and attack a blog’s weak spots. WordPress has good default protection, but enhancing it is possible.The solution Paste the following code in a text file, and save it as blockbadqueries.php. Once you’ve done that, upload it to your wp-content/plugins directory and activate it as you would any other plug-in. Now your blog is protected against malicious queries.<?php / Plugin Name: Block Bad Queries Plugin URI: http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/12/22/protect-wordpress-against-malicious-url-requests/ Description: Protect WordPress Against Malicious URL Requests Author URI: http://perishablepress.com/ Author: Perishable Press Version: 1.0 */
global $user_ID;
if($user_ID) { if(!current_user_can('level_10')) { if (strlen($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) > 255 || strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "eval(") || strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "CONCAT") || strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "UNION+SELECT") || strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "base64")) { @header("HTTP/1.1 414 Request-URI Too Long"); @header("Status: 414 Request-URI Too Long"); @header("Connection: Close"); @exit; } } } ?> Code explanation What this code does is pretty simple. It checks for excessively long request strings (more than 255 characters) and for the presence of either the eval or base64 PHP functions in the URI. If one of these conditions is met, then the plug-in sends a 414 error to the client’s browser.SourceProtect WordPress Against Malicious URL Requests/8. Remove Your WordPress Version Number… Seriously!The problem As you may know, WordPress automatically displays the version you are using in the head of your blog files. This is pretty harmless if your blog is always up to date with the latest version (which is certainly what you should be doing anyway). But if for some reason your blog isn’t up to date, WordPress still displays it, and hackers will learn this vital piece of information.The solution Paste the following line of code in the functions.php file of your theme. Save it, refresh your blog, and voila: no more WordPress version number in the header.remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator'); Code explanation To execute certain actions, WordPress uses a mechanism called “hooks,” which allow you to hook one function to another. The wp_generator function, which displays the WordPress version, is hooked. We can remove this hook and prevent it from executing by using the remove_action() function.SourceHow to Remove the WordPress Version Number (the Right Way)9. Change The Default “Admin” UsernameThe problem Brute force is one of the easiest ways to break a password. The method is simple: try as many different passwords as possible until the right one is found. Users of the brute force method use dictionaries, which give them a lot of password combinations.But knowing your username certainly makes it easier for them to guess the right combination. This is why you should always change the default “admin” username to something harder to guess.Note that WordPress 3.0 let you choose your desired username by default. Therefore, this tip is still usefull if you still use the old “admin” account from older WordPress versions.The solution If you haven’t changed the “admin” username yet, simply run the following SQL query to your database to change it for good. Don’t forget to specify your desired username.UPDATE wp_users SET user_login = 'Your New Username' WHERE user_login = 'Admin'; Code explanation Usernames are stored in the database. To change one, a simple UPDATE query is enough. Note that this query will not transfer posts written by “admin” to your new username; the source post below shows you how to easily do that.Source13 Useful WordPress SQL Queries You Wish You Knew Earlier/10. Prevent Directory BrowsingThe problem By default, most hosts allow directory listing. So, if you type http://www.yourblog.com/wp-includes in the browser’s address bar, you’ll see all of the files in that directory. This is definitely a security risk, because a hacker could see the last time that files were modified and access them.The solution Just add the following to your .htaccess file:Disallow: /wp-* Code explanation To disallow directory listing, we update our blog’s .htaccess file. Using the * wildcard, we can prevent any directory that starts with wp- from being listed.Source18 WordPress Security Plug-ins and Tips to Secure Your Blog(al)© Jean-Baptiste Jung for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: wordpress
July 1 2010, 7:14am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
Joomla And WordPress: A Matter Of Mental Models
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmashingMagazine/~3/4J9Ux4vC6-0/
Open-source content management systems (CMS) are a large family of Web applications, but if we’re looking for stability, performance and average technical requirements, we’ll come up with a handful of options. In the past, choosing the “right” CMS was a matter of the project’s requirements, but now this is not completely valid because the paradigm of extensibility had driven the development of major CMS’ towards a model of core features that are extensible with plug-ins that fill virtually any requirement.Picking the right CMS is then a matter of “mental models”: choosing the one that best fits our vision of how a Web application should work and what it should provide to users and administrators.In this article, we’ll explore the main difference in the mental models: of WordPress and Joomla for theming and extending their core.[By the way, did you know we have a brand new free Smashing Email Newsletter? Subscribe now and get fresh short tips and tricks on Tuesdays!]Background ThoughtsWordPress and Joomla are two of the most popular open-source CMS’ around. They offer large and active developer communities and excellent documentation.WordPress is the first choice among the designer community mostly because of its well-designed back end and wide availability of excellent themes.Joomla, meanwhile, suffers from Mambo’s legacy, which was notorious for low performance and semantically incorrect output (such as nested tables for layout). But since the release of version 1.5, Joomla has a completely rewritten core, with improved extensibility and better HTML output.One difference between WordPress and Joomla is their theming model. A website developer migrating from Joomla to WordPress might feel that the latter requires too much theme coding, while a developer moving the other way might feel that Joomla is less flexible and customizable. The reason for this is the different models on which the themes of these CMS’ are based.WordPress’ Theming ModelWordPress’ theming model is based on a per-view structure. This means that in each theme, you could have individual view files for the post list, the single post and the archive pages. These files are independent of each other, allowing the developer to customize each view but requiring them to duplicate many parts of the code. The only common parts in a theme are the header and footer, which can be coded directly in the individual view anyway.The main drawback of this model is that different views will not always require a different presentation (for example, the archive, category list and tag list are just lists). To overcome this problem, a theme is organized in a hierarchical structure, in which more generic views are used as fallbacks for specific ones. The common fallback for a WordPress theme is the index.php file, which is actually the only required file (along with a style sheet) in a theme. A complete reference and visual diagram of the hierarchical structure of a WordPress theme are available here.The Loop and Template TagsTo better understand how a WordPress theme works, we need to look more closely at the “loop” and template tags.All data for a post or a list of posts is extracted through a loop. A loop is basically a while construct that begins with this declaration:<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
// post output here
<?php endif; endwhile; ?>The most important part of this code is the_post(), which initializes a global $post PHP object containing all of the page data. The loop construct is also required for single post view, because all functions for presentation of data rely on the presence of the $post object. These functions are called template tags, and their main purpose is to output formatted data. Usually, they do not output HTML tags so that they can be used in different scenarios.A complete guide to theme development is available here.Joomla’s Content-Based ModelJoomla has a completely different theming approach. Joomla’s templates are built on a common structure defined in an index.php file.This file contains both static content (i.e. content that is common throughout the website) and template tags, which serve as content place-holders and are replaced by HTML output during the page-rendering phase.A common form for a template tag is:<jdoc:include type="modules" name="right" style="xhtml" />Template tags differ in the type of content they provide: component, message, module, head.This structural backbone implies that each view in the CMS outputs not a complete page but just what’s needed to present content. At first glance, a developer used to the theming model of WordPress might think that there’s no way to customize this content block. In fact, Joomla relies on the MVC architectural pattern, meaning that data extraction and presentation are separated, the latter being rendered by the view part of the application.Template CustomizationTo customize the default view, Joomla has a pattern called template override, through which the system scans the template folder for a custom view file to use in place of the default one. The image below shows the folder structure and naming convention of a default view and its override. An example of the folder and file structure of a Joomla template override (from the “ja_purity” template).Joomla overrides are an excellent way to customize a website template without hacks. Still, they are often overlooked, and Joomla’s support of legacy extensions make this pattern unusable, even for popular packages such as Virtuemart (which uses its built-in template system).A complete reference for Joomla’s template system is available here.Beyond Core (Image by jared)In the last few years, plug-ins have made a big difference in the software industry, one of the most notable examples being Mozilla Firefox.As we noted, modern CMS’ are developed to be extensible, allowing us to use the core as a backbone and build specialized parts on top of it. This resulting modular design is an effective development model for many reasons:Better maintainability Developers don’t need to modify the core in order to add or customize functionality.Lightweight and safer Only features that are needed are included, resulting in less memory consumption, a smaller code base and fewer vulnerabilities.Separate development cycles for core and features By offering an extensions API, third-party developers can add new features while the core team focuses on the reliability and performance of the system.With open-source projects, this last point is both a blessing and a curse. It benefits from shared development effort but leads to unverified work and a less organized workflow.Joomla and WordPress have tried to overcome this curse by providing coding guidelines. Still, little effort is spent documenting the back-end and front-end UI design.Aside from their different naming conventions, the extensions models of WordPress and Joomla differ in how third-party code interacts with the core by mean of the extensions API.The key point to understand is that while Joomla is based on MVC pattern, WordPress relies on an event-like system to which extensions can be hooked. Let’s look at some details.WordPress’ Hook MethodWordPress’ extensions model is based on the execution of a set of functions attached to the system flow by mean of “hooks.”Hooks contain a list of functions that are triggered at various points as WordPress is running. They manipulate (in the case of filter hooks) and output (in the case of action hooks) database data and can be accessed from within the theme itself and from a specialized plug-in package.WordPress lacks comprehensive documentation for hooks, but a list of hooks is available here.To understand the mental model behind WordPress’ hook system, we can compare it to the sequence of actions in baking a cake. In the beginning, we have an idea of what kind of cake we want to bake, so we get our ingredients. We cannot just throw everything together and bake it. So, we execute an ordered list of actions, such as “filtering” egg shells and mixing the eggs in with flour and sugar. As we’re doing that, we might want to customize the recipe. So, we “plug in” some chocolate and perhaps reduce the quantity of another ingredient by half. The result is a proper cake, created from discrete ingredients and a touch of creativity.WordPress bakes its pages the same way.Sidebars and WidgetsWhile plug-ins are broadly related to hooks, a widget is a special type of plug-in. It provides a means of showing information in a theme’s sidebar. The main advantage of widgets is that they are configurable in the back-end interface, allowing quick customization even for novice users. All available widgets are listed in an administration panel.In terms of theme development, the sidebar is similar in its mental model to Joomla’s template tags. It is a placeholder for something. The misleading bit is that a sidebar doesn’t have to be placed in the actual sidebar of a layout. It could go in the footer, navigation, header or elsewhere.To learn more about the new API for widget development, have a look at the official documentation.Adding FunctionalityUntil now, the problem with WordPress’ extension API was that it gave you no simple way to add complex functionality, such as e-commerce carts and event listings. Most developers excused this shortcoming by pointing out that WordPress is a blog engine. This will hopefully be resolved with the release of WordPress 3.0 and its system for “post types,” which makes it possible to use the “post” and “page” interfaces for different types of content.As for other popular CMS’ (such as Drupal), post types function as a kind of “Content Construction Kit,” giving you the ability to smartly add, manage and present specialized content. If you’re interested in trying this new feature, here is a good tutorial.Other than post types (and until major plug-ins update support for this feature), the only feasible way to add complex functionality is to use already existing pages as containers, placing in the body a place-holder (called a “shortcode“) that is replaced with HTML output by specific filter hooks.This approach is used by plug-ins such as Buddypress and WP e-Commerce, which extend the blog engine with social network and shopping-cart capabilities.Another great example of shortcode implementation is Contact Form 7, a fully featured contact-form management plug-in.Extending JoomlaAn often overlooked aspect of Joomla is that it is built on the solid MVC framework. So, extending its core is really much like working with products such as Zend Framework and CodeIgniter, which give you an already designed back-end interface upon which to integrate your own extensions. This approach also gives designers the ability to use template overrides, even for third-party extensions. A diagram depicting Joomla’s Model View Controller system flow.To better understand MVC and how it works in Joomla, here is a complete reference.Joomla’s Extension TypesJoomla’s extension model comes in three flavors, each with different tasks: components, modules and plug-ins.Components extend the core by adding specific functionality, such as e-commerce carts, event listings and forums. From the user’s point of view, we can think of components as discrete sections of a website, not connected to other content. A popular example is JEvents, an events calendar.In the theme system, a component’s output replaces the component placeholder in the template’s index.php file:<jdoc:include type="component" />Modules are like widgets in WordPress: they show a component’s information, which is extracted from the database. They are “attachable” to module positions and can be put on every page of a website.Modules are primarily intended to be teaser blocks, but they can incorporate full text and image galleries, which makes them handy for static parts of a layout, such as footer notes. They are also useful for showing related content on a page. For example, you could highlight interesting products for Web developers as they’re browsing a list of barcamp events.The template tag, which serves as module place-holder, looks like this:<jdoc:include type="modules" name="right" style="xhtml" />Plug-ins work similar to WordPress’ hook system, because they bind to specific system events to format, manipulate and replace HTML output. Possible fields of action range from content for articles (such as video embedding tools—AllVideos is a popular one) to HTML filtering and user-profile extension. Commonly used Joomla plug-ins include URL rewriting filters, which come bundled with administrative components such as Sh404SEF.Compatibility IssuesOne thing every developer should be aware of is that, despite efforts to provide a great extension API, Joomla 1.5 still suffers in its support of legacy extensions (built for v1.0), which do not have an MVC structure and which are sometimes hardly customizable. Furthermore, they break the API mental model.The Joomla extensions library has a clear mark for 1.0 or 1.5 native extensions. But faking 1.5 native compatibility is easy, which would leave developers with nothing but legacy code. This method is followed even by big well-known projects like Virtuemart.Hopefully, once Joomla 1.6 is released and legacy support is dropped, every developer will rework their code to fit the CMS’ specifications.What’s NextWhile the best way to choose a CMS is by trying it out on a real project, understanding its underlying mental model can make developers feel less lost in code and more aware of the design patterns they need to follow.If you want to develop themes and extensions for Joomla and WordPress, here are some resources.WordPress: How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch How to Write a WordPress Plugin: a complete reference on WordPress plugins development. Top 10 Most Common Coding Mistakes in WordPress Plugins: a must read for WordPress developers.WordPress 3.0 new features8 Useful Code Snippets To Get Started With WordPress 3.0Joomla:Joomla Developer’s Toolbox: a collection of resources for Joomla users and developers by Smashing Magazine.Creating a Basic Joomla! Template Developing a Model-View-Controller Component: a step-by-step tutorial on components development in Joomla. Creating a Hello World Module for Joomla 1.5: official documentation on Joomla modules development. Joomla Component Creator: a smart wizard for creating a “starter” component structure.Joomla 1.6 Updates: this article explains the primary objectives of the upcoming Joomla 1.6.(al)© Marco Solazzi for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: joomla, wordpress
May 3 2010, 6:52am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
Free Dark and Clean WordPress Theme: Designpile
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmashingMagazine/~3/8UFlnHxBKtc/
In this post we are glad to release DesignPile WordPress Theme, a theme designed by Site 5 and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The theme comes with 3 color styles and a couple of jQuery-based goodies. It can be used for portfolios and blogs as well as corporate webAs usual, the theme is free to use in private and commerical projects.Download the theme for free!The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.live demolarge preview (1.2 Mb)installation guide and documentationdownload the .zip-package (.zip, 0.9 Mb, includes instructions files and required plugins)download mirror for the .zip-packagerelease on designers’ siteFeaturesHere are some of the features of the theme: Widget ready (footer and sidebar), Easy to setup, the Theme Options Page has 3 color styles, Custom homepage, Simple Post Thumbnails Plugin,125×125 ads section with enable/disable option, using “WP125″ plugin,JQuery Lightbox,JQuery Forms,AJAX-based based contact form,Live form email validation,Theme Requirements: Wordpress 2.9.1+SidebarContent, overview“About the author”-sectionCommentsCategories archive sectionThank you, Gabi Schiopu and the Site 5 design team! We appreciate your work and your good intentions!© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: wordpress
February 20 2010, 1:02pm | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
SimpleFolio: A Free Clean Portfolio WordPress Theme
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmashingMagazine/~3/LSko0rG6YXQ/
Today we are glad to release a beautiful, simple and clean portfolio WordPress theme — SimpleFolio, designed by Omar E. Corrales and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. SimpleFolio is a portfolio theme that includes a blog and a very extensive option page that allows you to exclude all your portfolio items from the blog page. It also includes a front page slider.It has 2 different widget areas and threaded comments, and also supports paged comments and has 2 different page templates for advanced usage. The control of images is done from the post page.Download the theme for free!The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. You may modify the theme as you wish. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word.live demolarge preview (main page)large preview (portfolio page)large preview (single post page)large preview (back-end options page)download the .zip-package (.zip, 0.93 Mb, including installation guidelines)release post on designer’s siteFeaturesHere are some of the features of the theme:CSS-based layout,2 columns of fixed width,widget-ready,XHTML 1.0 Transitional valid,multi-browser compatibility: tested on Firefox, Safari , IE7, IE8, Chrome,easy to setup, theme options page,JQuery Lightbox,AJAX-based based contact form,Live form e-mail validation.Front pagePortfolioPortfolioOptions page in back-endSingle post, main areaSingle post, threaded commentsSingle post, sidebarBehind the designAs always, here are some insights from the designer:I created this theme after getting tired of all the fancy design themes that are very popular now a days, this is a design for people that just need the job done without complicating them selfs. The best use can be either for just someone thats starting to blog or some artist that needs to expose there art.Thank you, Omar. We appreciate your work and your good intentions!© Elja Friedman for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 17 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: wordpress
February 7 2010, 8:35am | Comments »
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I posted to smashingmagazine.com
“Magazeen”: Free Magazine-Look WordPress Theme
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/23/magazeen-free-magazine-look-wordpress-theme/
We love our readers. We respect the hard work of designers and developers across the globe. And we do our best to make the web design community stronger and the Web a little bit prettier. Therefore we ask talented artists and creative professionals to showcase their skills and release something unique and beautiful as a gift to the community. And when designers agree, truly impressive works see the light of day.
Today we are glad to release Magazeen — a free advanced Wordpress-theme in a magazine-llok created by the talented WeFunction Design Agency. This bold magazine 2-col-theme was designed with the main focus being on typography, grids and magazine-look. It was created especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. Download the theme for free! The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.
live demo large preview (.jpg, 1.7 Mb) download the theme (.zip, 0.3 Mb) download the PSD-sources (.zip, 4.5 Mb)
Inspiration behind the design As usual, here are some insights from the designers themselves: “We’ve created the Magazeen theme to try and pump as much style and functionality into a WordPress theme to give people something they might not expect from their standard Wordpress theme. There really is very few limits to what WordPress handle, so we’ve built in a lot of custom features and options to give people a little taste of what is possible, and how some small functionality tweaks can make a huge difference to the overall experience of browsing a blog. On top of that we’ve wrapped all that functionality up in a really cool and modern theme, with nice big title fonts, and a stylish colour scheme. The Magazeen theme is packed full of cool features to really encourage your readers to explore new posts and similar items. The first thing you might notice is the jQuery image showcase at the top, which is fully automated and will display the image from the latest post, and the title above it without you having to do anything other than define the image URL in the custom field we have created which will appear on in your admin post area.
Drop-Down Menu The other cool and fully automated feature is the related posts drop down effect. It’s a simple idea, if you click the category of the full posts a drop down will appear with some related posts from that category. And if you don’t see a post you like you can always view the full category by clicking view more.
Sidebar The sidebar area’s have been created to give you a lot of control over the featured posts, and recent posts. Once you’ve installed the theme, you need to go to your Widgets area, and simply activate the “Magazeen Latest Posts”, and “Magazeen Featured Posts” widgets. You can easily control how many posts each feature displays, and using this widget will ensure the area is styled correctly with the post image showing correctly.”
Footer Thank you, guys. We appreciate your great work, your attention to details and the brilliance of the execution. Related posts You may be interested in the following free Wordpress-themes as well:
Agregado: A Free Wordpress Theme Infinity: A Free Wordpress Theme Wordpress.Fun: A Free Wordpress Theme Fervens: A Free Wordpress Theme Dilectio: A Free Wordpress Theme Smashing: A Free Wordpress Theme
© Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 82 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Submit to Reddit | Submit to Facebook | Who is linking? | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: Freebies, theme, wordpress
February 23 2009, 5:59am | Comments »