Posts Tagged ‘wordpress themes’

07
Jun
2009

WordPress Plugins & Themes

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This week was a pretty productive week for updating and editing my WordPress related content here on the website, I updated most of the plugins and a few of the themes to modernize them. In a few cases minor bug fixes but mostly just ensuring they are ready for the new WordPress 2.8 release.

Theme Updates

You can always find links to all my themes in the theme directory, but here’s a run down of some of the changes:

Great Chefs Great Restaurant Web Theme
New! This is a completely new theme for my website and hopefully will be my first contribution to the WordPress directory. It’s designed for restaurant owners and chefs who are looking for a perfect theme for their restaurant but could easily be used for any variety of websites.

One Night in Paris
I recently updated the One Night in Paris theme and redid a significant amount of the front end including a redesign of the index.php file.

Community Friendly Theme
Minor changes to the code designed to make the theme more compatible with 2.8

Plugin Updates

Get Image from Post, a Free WordPress Plugin
New! This is a simple plugin which allows users to return an image from the related post.

Get Better Excerpt Plugin for WordPress
New! The Get Better Excerpt plugin works almost identical to the built in get_the_excerpt() and the_excerpt() functions except it returns whole words.

You can of course see all my plugins in my plugin directory on thisismyurl.com or by visiting the official WordPress website at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/profile/christopherross where I sincerely hope you’ll download and vote for my plugins.

For a bit of shameless self promotion today, I’d love to remind everybody that I’m available to develop custom WordPress themes and plugins for your organizations. Sponsoring a free theme giveaway is an easy way to dramatically increase links to your website and give back to the community.

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11
Feb
2009

WordPress Web Sites for Charities

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Over the past couple of weeks a lot of you might have noticed that I’ve put a lot of recent work into building websites and web tools for charitable organizations, charities, children’s charities and not for profits. There’s a few reasons for that. First, last December during the Christmas season I offered to donate my time to charities in return for links to my website. I  had a wonderful response to that proposition and spent most of January working with organizations who deserved great websites but lacked huge budgets.

Some of the websites your support helped included the Stan Cassidy Foundation and the Fredericton Meals on Wheels, both wonderful programs which have benefited from your contributions.

fredericton meals on wheels WordPress Web Sites for Charities imageI’d love to make 2009 a year that I can help make more of a difference for community groups, charities and not-for-profits but just like everybody else, I have to worry about keeping the lights on here at the office so if your company knows of a community focussed group you’d like to sponsor, I would love to help build a great web presence for your group at a heavily discounted rate.

In the mean time, my website has a great WordPress plugin for charities which features a fund raising thermometer you’re welcome to download and use for free. There are also at least ten great WordPress themes, all free for you to download and use for charities.

Do you want to help a local community group? Everyday I talk to wonderful designers, illustrators and web developers who are looking to help.

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Posted in Blog Posts

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02
Feb
2009

How to get a unique WordPress theme

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One of the more frustrating things about using WordPress to a first time website owner is trying to find a unique, high quality WordPress website theme that doesn’t look like every other WordPress website on the market. It’s a pretty big task, even with thousands of great themes available. Let’s take a look where and how to start.

Theme Directories

Official Theme Directory - WordPress has a massive collection of free themes to download in their themes directory, the only problem with them is that most of the good themes have been used so often that it’s hard to find a unique one however, with a few tweaks and changes to color you can make even the most popular themes your own. Sometimes just changing the header and background graphics is enough to separate your website from hundreds of others using the same theme.

Other Theme Directories – A couple years ago there was bit of confusion over where to list your WordPress themes, that led to a handful of quality directories of WordPress themes which include but free and sponsored themes. A simple Google search will return a good list for you.

Premium Themes

The exact definition of what makes up a premium theme is a little questionable but in general a premium theme is a regular WordPress theme which costs money. The quality of premium themes vary, as do the features included but since the theme has an initial investment (generally $25 – $200) the number of people who have downloaded and installed the theme is considerably fewer. This makes it possible for your website to have a design which is not as widely circulated as the free themes.

Creating a Theme

Building a WordPress theme from scratch is your best bet to achieving a truly unique theme and if you have some knowledge of web technologies everything you need to know is stored online at the WordPress Codex. Specifically, there’s a great article called Theme Development « WordPress Codex that will answer every question you could possibly have about the workings of WordPress. In general to build a strong theme you should have the following skill set:

  • HTML or xHTML
  • PHP scripting experience
  • CSS layout knowledge
  • Image editing knowledge such as Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks if you want your website to have graphics
  • JavaScript programming knowledge for interactive elements

Hiring a WordPress Theme Developer

While the best solution for acheiving a unique theme is to build one from stratch, not everybody had the skills needed to create a quality theme and so hiring an experience WordPress developer becomes the best option. There are a few places to find people with the skills, including the WordPress Job board and mailing list. Of course, you’re always welcome to contact me for a free quote as well.

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Posted in WordPress Help

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20
Oct
2008

Free SEO WordPress Theme for Small Business Web Sites

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As part of my goal to create and upload five WordPress themes that are Search Engine Optimized, I’ve finished my second theme, it’s a simple website design for small businesses.

The purpose of this theme was to create a simple, clean, professional website design for companies who need an online presence without the clutter of a normal blog. It’s not a very exciting theme, actually it’s a little on the plain side but it does feature a simple single column design with widget ready footer and nice big text which will help people read the site.

made for small business 300x300 Free SEO WordPress Theme for Small Business Web Sites imageI’ve also taken the time to include a lot of SEO features for beginner website owners, these search engine tools are built right into the template and will auto generate headers, META and titles suitable for Google to index effectively. It’s an ideal blog design for a church or community group, or a small business on a budget.

You’re welcome to download the template for free. If you like this theme but would like to have it customized or installed for you, why not contact me? I’m available for WordPress consulting, theme customization and freelance development.

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    Posted in Free Downloads, Web Design, WordPress Themes

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