One of the easiest things that you could do to customize your blog, besides change your header image, would be to change your background image. Sure, you could just set a background color, but why not bring in some texture?
Using full images can be problematic, as for the most part they will not conform to the size of everyone’s screen. Viewers with smaller screens will only see part of the image, and viewers with larger screens will see the image surrounded by white space. Even if you could get the image to stretch for larger screens, it would be distorted and pixellated, and this is where patterns come in.
In a sense, a pattern is a small image file which can be tiled seamlessly, thus adapting to any screen size. In WordPress, you can do this by uploading a small pattern image at Appearance -> Backgrounds in your Dashboard and choosing […]
Original post by James
Technorati Tags: blog
The most requested search item on this blog is “WordPress admin themes”. With variations of the various search terms, I would guess that we receive many hundreds of hits a day on just this blog from WordPress enthusiasts looking for themes to adorn their admin panel with. A simple search on Google reveals an old post from this blog listing 9 admin themes (I don’t link to it because most of the themes listed are dead or deprecated). Here is a list of nice admin themes that I can find, which are still being produced and regularly updated.
Fluency Admin by Dean J. Robinson. A nice looking, well documented, well translated admin theme that is often updated.
Wait for it ….. thats it!! (that I could find, please let us know if you know of others that are of high quality and updated regularly) There are various useful and popular tools to […]
Original post by Mark Ghosh
Technorati Tags: blog, google
These WordPress themes may be tiny, but they pack a big visual punch. These themes are great for sites with audiences with limited access to broadband, or any blog that wants to focus on speed and clean design.
Baughxie – a polished but very lightweight two column theme.
Mini – Minimal and elegant three column theme.
Simple Green – Very professional and very fast.
R755 – Simple yet sophisticated. Can be either two or three columns.
Swift – This is actually more of a theme framework than a theme. It has a theme options page with layout, font, and color options. Nicely done.
Technorati Tags: blog
Original post by Klint Finley
Technorati Tags: blog
BuddyPress 1.0 Has Arrived.: Andy announced the release of BuddyPress 1.0 on the BuddyPress community Blog and there was much rejoicing. This was an excellent opportunity to get my WLTC Community project off the ground and I was an like installation fiend as soon as I finished work on my day job.
So without further ado, especially if you want to play around with BuddyPress, please head over to the shiny new WLTC Community and register for either a username or a blog. I hope to meet you there!
Technorati Tags: blog, blogging
Original post by Mark Ghosh
Technorati Tags: blog, blogging
Learn how to create a sleek and stylish WordPress theme in Photoshop with this tutorial from PSDVibe. A little tweak with a little creativity could land you a personalized theme. Once you put together your new theme, don’t forget to offer it to others to download and enjoy!
Learn some new tricks and discover new tools and plugins to speed up your WordPress blog. I have run into some scalability issues with this blog recently and have learned quite a bit.
Jean-Baptiste tells us about 10 awesome .htaccess hacks for your WordPress blog including the ability to redirect visitors to a maintenance page while you can continue to see and work on your blog.
Technorati Tags: blog, blogger
Original post by Mark Ghosh
Technorati Tags: blog, blogger, news
How to make a “child theme” for WordPress. A pictorial introduction for beginners: Demetris has put together a comprehensive, step by step pictorial instruction set for creating your own Child Themes for WordPress. He assures me that the set of instructions are easy to follow. Child themes are WordPress themes that behave like parent themes (or a main theme on which the child is based) and inherits all the characteristics of parent themes including options pages.
If you like a theme, want to make small changes to the way it looks but do not want to make changes to the core theme files (for future updates etc.), child themes are the way to go. Remember to send Demetris a thank you if you like the work he has put into this documentation.
Design Trendsinspiration
Original post by Mark Ghosh
Technorati Tags: blog
Farms 100 Big Ones Theme Pack: Download this 100 WordPress themes zip file (17MB) and upload them to your blog to have 100 themes to play around with. Many of these themes are older but they are all widgetized, have a bunch of bug fixes, are internationalized, work on both WordPress and WordPress Mu and they have been time tested on Edublogs. I normally would not suggest that users download themes from sources other than the original theme authors’ site, but this is offered from a trusted source and the convenience of a single zip file added to the additional testing and bug fixing performed by Edublogs, is the icing on the cake.
Technorati Tags: blog, advertising
Original post by Mark Ghosh
Technorati Tags: blog, advertising
I came across this blog header generator via TechWack.com Big Huge Labs is the company behind this header generator which takes an image from either your local machine, Flickr, Photobucket or a linked image and creates a custom header image for you to use on the Kubrick WordPress theme. The generator provides options to align the visible part of the image in case it needs to be cropped. You can also choose whether to add credit to the image or not.
Linking to an image I found on a quick Google image search, this is what I was able to come up with. Click on the image to see the full size.
Big Huge Labs allows you to edit your result, save the image or share it through links or email. You can also elect to start over if you choose.
Although I hate seeing Kubrick being used all over the place, it’s […]
Original post by Jeffro2pt0
Technorati Tags: blog, google
Content suggestion engine for WordPress: TechCrunch has an interesting article this morning on the Alpha release of a product called Zemanta. Zemanta is a contextual content suggestion engine and works with WordPress and Firefox. With nothing to install on the blog, and a simple FF extension, Zemanta creates a little AJAX box on the side of your write panel in WordPress with suggestions on what to add to your content. This information is gathered real time from various media publication sites and blogs. I am watching the Zemanta control box as I type this post and it seems to update after regular intervals with new suggestions. It also lets you add links to various keywords on your post to other articles on the web and your blog.
I just tried out some of the features including addition of pictures and related links but the soup generated is not pretty and I […]
Original post by Mark Ghosh
Technorati Tags: blog
Three Column Themes
Blue Lily
Blue Lily is a three column theme which is quite simple and attractive, the main background is a striking blue with green color for the header. The navigation menu is right on the top of the page making it easily visible.
Content area is big enough and has a gray background. There are two sidebars which you can use to show off additional information.
Widget Ready: Yes
Compatibility: There were no issues that I saw with this theme on Firefox 2+, IE6, IE7, Flock.
Validations: Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional | Invalid CSS with 1 error
Demo | Release Page | Download
Blue Dream
Blue Dream is a three column theme with a graphical header and rounded navigational menu on the top of the page. The theme comes built in with RSS icons on top of the page to make it easier to subscribe to feeds.
There are two sidebars which can be used to display […]
Original post by Keith Dsouza
Technorati Tags: blog, rss, feed
