Themes – Page 6

November 5, 2010

WordPress theme of the week: Vision

This week’s theme of the week is Vision sold at ThemeForest. What’s so different about this theme? Well this is the first one we ran across that has a WYSIYG type home page editor. Instead of posts or an admin panel based forms, it shows you a visual representation of the home page from which you click on areas you want to edit.

While the idea is neat, the execution is not polished as it could be. The lightbox-like dialog boxes lack a “save” button, instead you click on “X” to close the windows and hit “Save Options” to publish the changes. Also the default home page visual preview is a little gaudy (see the screnshot), so if you’re going to give your clients access to it, you’ll need to replace the mockup. We’re going to actually use this theme for a client so we’ll give more feedback on this theme in the next few weeks. Get it: Vision theme

November 4, 2010

PadPressed: Tough to use – so far

Remember the AppSumo bundle from a few days ago? I finally got around to installing the PadPressed plugin which is more of a “kit”. It includes a plugin and built-in themes. My first mistake was to install the contents of the ZIP file via FTP into the plugins folder. For whatever reason, WordPress didn’t like it and had a “fatal error.” Ok, PadPressed support asked me to install the ZIP file via WP admin and that worked. Fair enough.

I’ve uploaded quite a few test posts to my test site at ipad.noelsaw.com but I am not sure exactly what to do next. The problem with this kit is a lack of documentation and it’s not easy to find – you have to login to their support site. There’s no mention of it in their “ReadMe” file. Once you’re in support, you’ll find a one page installation/reference guide but it’s not a real tutorial on how to use this “kit.” Until the PadPressed people write up a proper getting started tutorial, I really can’t recommend this one, therwise you may be pulling your hair out.

November 3, 2010

New WordPress WYSIWYG Theme Builder – ThemeFrame

We’ve seen a variety of products and services like Artisteer or PSD2CSS that claim to let you build WordPress themes easily and quickly. Let’s add a third product to the mix that I ran into today called ThemeFrame. On paper it looks great with live Preview, CSS Inspector, color pickers, and visual sliders for settings. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to check these guys out in the next few weeks and do a quick review.

Update: if you want to get to the meat, check out their screencast video. A video is worth a 1,000 words!
And if you’re in the San Francisco bay area, check out the EastBay WP meetup for November 21st, where they’ll be taking a closer look at PSD2CSS.

November 1, 2010

WordPress theme/tools Bundle

The concept of “bundles” have been quite popular in the Mac community for the past 2 years, now we’re seeing it in the WordPress world. A website called “AppSumo” is offering $926 worth of WP themes and tools for just $32 (not a typo). Luckily it’s not just a bunch of no-name companies participating. We have two of favorite WP theme design companies, WooThemes and Graphpaper Press offering at least 2-3 select themes each as part of the package. There’s also a theme designed as an iPad native app called “CoverPad” that actually is acceleraometer aware. I think I’ll spring for this and review it in the next few days. Get it: AppSumo bundle

October 29, 2010

Great theme for company website

Sometimes it’s a challenge to find a WordPress theme that’s clean but has enough bells and whistles that can be used for a corporate web site. I found a theme called “Breeze” from ThemeForest. I like the home page slider, flexible page layouts, uses custom fonts, and it comes with a bunch of color options – both dark and light. I really liked the support from the developer for it – he was pretty informative and helpful. I am using it here for one of my clients: Biotech Investment Group. Get it: Breeze

October 27, 2010

Theme of the Week: zBench

zBench WordPress theme

This week’s WordPress is zBench. On the surface it looks like quite a few other WordPress themes with footer widget area, custom drop down menus, but when digging deeper you’ll see something you won’t see often, different layout options.

Get it: zBench

October 20, 2010

Theme of the Week: Meta- Morphosis

This week’s WordPress theme is Meta-Morphosis by WooThemes . It’s a great theme for building a content rich blog or magazine. It’s a 2 column design with a customizable footer widget area. I love the home page which shows on the left column, a main feature content area with other highlights below it and on the right column are blog/news posts. When you drill down to post or page, the main content area appears on the left and comments area is on the right column. I am using Metamorphis for my client: FitnessByMaggie.com

It has WooThemes’ very easy to use and customizable admin control panel. I would rate customization ease-of-use for this theme as fairly straightforward either through the WooTheme control panel or editing the style sheet. Best of all this theme is free!.