Category: Themes

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PadPressed Update

A few months ago, we bought the App Sumo Bundle which included the PadPressed theme. At the time, the plugin/theme combo seemed hard to install and the support channel wasn’t quite there.

We just came back to try it out with a new 1.5.1 release (free for existing customers) and we’re happy to report the documentation has gotten much better and there’s a now a support forum. The developers have put some thought into the features including the ability to pull your site logo as the “home” screen icon when you bookmark the site on an iPad.

The only thing we’re not happy about is that the CoverPad theme doesn’t work well in landscape mode when viewing on the iPad, by that we mean the inner page thumbnails disappear when the iPad is rotated into landscape mode. But otherwise it maybe worth $50 to get your portfolio up quickly on an iPad. Try out our test site on your iPad.

Get it: PadPressed theme

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New WordPress.com theme showcase

Looking for more cool WordPress themes? Check out WordPress.com’s new Theme Showcase for their hosted service. While you won’t be able to download the themes directly for your self hosted WP site, you can Google it to find the download link. You may recognize a lot of the themes but there will be a few new surprises! I like that they’ve started to categorize the features and layout of each theme better. Hopefully this will also trickle down to WP.org’s theme gallery.

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WP theme as malware?

Just when you thought it was safe to download randomly found WordPress themes, we run across a report at OttoPress of a dodgy site called “top-themes.com” that’s offering themes that could turn your WP site into a remote-controlled automated link spamming tool. This might be a good argument to only use trusted theme providers like WordPress.org or Wufoo.

Speaking of security, be sure to update your WP to v3.0.3,  (and yep it came out pretty quickly right after v3.0.2).

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Innovative uses for WordPress

While most of us love using WordPress as general purpose content management tool or blog, others have adapted for internal communication or as a knowledge base. Let’s take a quick look at three free WP themes that transform it into something a little different.

P2 – “Twitter-lite”
Want something like a private Twitter system for your company or group without the rest of the world seeing your messages? Check out P2, made by the WordPress peeps (Automattic) themselves. You can use this theme to quickly communicate with people on your team about your status or ask questions.

Quality Control – Case Management
The QC theme turns your WP install into a simple ticketing system to create tickets, assign status, and milestones. Use categories and tags to filter tickets. You can use this as a customer facing system for customer service or an internal bug tracking system. The theme seems to be well supported and maintained.

WikiWP
How about a WordPress theme that lets you create a Wikipedia-like encyclopedia? WikiWP has a very similar look to a real Wiki application with a left thin navigation column and main content area. And yes, there’s a commercial WP theme called WordPressWiki, but why not give WikiWP a try first?

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Theme of the Week: DeStyle

destyleHere’s a simple but clean looking and best of all, free, WP Theme called deStyle. It’s a 2 column design with a main body and right hand side column for widgets. I think it would be perfect for a simple blog and should be easily customizable. It also has an easy to change navigation bar background color switcher. It’s from a new WordPress theme company called ThemeShift.

Get it: deStyle

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Quick Tip: Preview a Theme without a Plugin

Did you know that you can preview an installed WP theme without having to install a new plugin?
This would be useful if you’re switching over a WP site to a theme that’s a work in progress but didn’t want public visitors to see it yet.

Simple add this to the end of your published site’s URL:

?preview=1&template=twentyten&stylesheet=twentyten

For example, this site with the Twenty Ten theme would be:

http://wpverse.com/?preview=1&template=twentyten&stylesheet=twentyten

Simply replace the name of your theme in the example after both template and stylesheet equal (=) signs. What if you’re not sure what the exact theme name is – for example if the theme name has spaces in it? To find out, go to the “Manage Themes” page, then hover your mouse over the “Activate” button of the theme you want to try out. In the bottom status bar of your browser, you’ll see the theme name that you’ll want to use.

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Theme of the Week: Work-a-holic

This week’s WP theme spotlight is “Work-a-holic Pro” by GraphpaperPress. It’s aimed towards designers and photographers who want to show off their work. What do I like about it? I like that it’s clean, it has a negative space, and chunky sized thumbnails of your work show up quickly on the home page.

The theme is laid out with a top area that tells the visitor, “Who am I” and “What I do” and the bottom area shows “What I’ve done.”

I am using the free version of “Work-a-holic” on my site called “SGVPhotos.com“.