My newest theme, Deviant, has been released today. With this design I wanted to have fun and create something unique and in-your-face. I enjoy the bold titles, grungy background and left-aligned structure. You will also notice some subtle CSS3 elements throughout the theme, which I think enhance the design for those browsers that support it. While I realize this stylized design might not be a crowd pleaser, I see it working well for many niches. For more info you can browse the Features Page, or take a look at the Live Demo.

Deviant Features

Deviant comes with all of the great features that you have become accustomed to here at ElegantThemes, including the ePanel Theme Options page and  custom widgets that give you increased control over the design. The theme also comes in six different colors, so if Red isn’t your style you can test out the Green, Blue, Purple, Orange or Black skins instead.

I hope you enjoy the theme, please leave a comment and let me know what you think! I appreciate your feedback.

What’s to come

For those of you who are interested in what is to come, here is a preview of my upcoming theme “OnTheGo.” This design has been a lot of fun to make, as I used a completely new method to create it. Instead of starting in Photoshop, I was inspired to begin the concept using my trusty pencil and paper. After I few minutes of sketching I decided to just draw the entire diesign by hand,  and a few dozen doodles later onthego was born. I think it is turning out pretty cool so far, so watch for its release in the next week!

This month we have already released three new themes and a free icon set, but it doesn’t stop there! In fact, there are already some new themes in the pipeline and development has already begun. For those interested in what’s to come, here is a sneak peek of my two upcoming themes MyProduct and TheSource, as well as some more info on the MyAppTheme. By the way, if you are hearing about these new themes for the first time today then you are lagging behind! Join my Twitter and Facebook pages for the freshest updates.

MyProduct

MyProduct is something I decided to make after we started working on the MyAppTheme. I wanted to create something similar for businesses who are trying to push one major product to their visitors. This theme will allow you to really focus on featuring this “product” on the homepage, and the overall structure will allow great flexibility in how you inform people about your business.

TheSource

For some time now people have been asking me to create a “magazine” or “news” theme. TheSource is my answer to these requests. While this was my initial intention behind the eNews theme, I have since realized that eNews isn’t exactly what these people were looking for. With TheSource, I will focus on including much more content on the homepage while still retaining consistent hierarchy and readability. I also tried to push a more “media-esque” aesthetic that isn’t really found in any of my current themes.

MyAppTheme

MetaLab has also been adding the finishing touches to the MyAppTheme which I previewed earlier. For those interested, here are some more details shots of various elements of the theme.

I’m interested to hear your opinions on these new designs. Let me know what you think.

I have been receiving requests for a more simple, “minimal” theme for some time now. My goal here was to give users the same functionality found in most of my other page based themes in a more modest shell. Minimal is a great theme for those who want to give their blog a truly simple and elegant feel without sacrificing any of the advanced features you have come to expect from ElegantThemes. The colors are easy on the eye, and the overall minimalist approach to the design makes for a relaxing and userfriendly experience for your visitors. For more info check out the Live Demo, or view the Features Page for more details.

Minimal Features

1. Easy to Manage – The integration of ePanel makes managing Minimal a breeze.

2. Blog Section and BlogStyle Post Format - Even though the demo is page-based, you will see there is a blog section as well. Furthermore, you can always switch to BlogStyle mode which will replace your homepage with a more traditional blog layout. You can also choose to populate the featured slider with your favorite posts instead of pages. This makes the theme very versatile, hopefully satisfying the needs of both the traditional blogger as well as those who plan to use the theme to create a more page-based website.

3. Two Unique Color Schemes – The only colors that seemed to make sense for this design were a dark a light neutral gray. If the lighter version isn’t your style, then be sure to give the dark variation a try.

I recently finished up a website redesign project with Andy Wheatley from IT-IS International Ltd. The project involved a redesign and rebuild of itisint.com, and used the WordPress application to cover the core functionality of the site. Let’s take a look at the process of tweaking WordPress to transform it from a blogging platform to taking on the job of a typical Content Management System.

The Client:

IT-IS International are a small research and development company working in the life science industry, they develop software and instrumentation for the analysis of DNA (PCR- Polymerase Chain Reaction). Sounds complicated, right?!

Andy was a fantastic example of an awesome client, giving complete creative freedom and providing excellent feedback throughout the project. It’s lines like this in an email every designer dreams of –

I hope that this project might be something you could really get your teeth into (free reign on the design).

The key requirements for the site were to showcase the company with creativity and innovation while being updateable by the team. The structure was pretty simple with a collection of static pages, a news archive and a client only area.

The Solution:

I’m a big fan of the WordPress application, and use it for pretty much every website I take on, whether it’s a blog or not. WordPress has some amazing versatility, and can easily take on the role of CMS, eCommerce and more!

The IT-IS International site could easily be ported into WordPress. The static pages could be listed as WordPress pages, the News section could make use of WordPress’ blogging functionality, and the Client Area could be tackled with a mix of the default WordPress user hierarchy and a handy plugin or two.

The Design:

The design was put together using the IT-IS International Ltd corporate colour scheme of blue, grey and white. I took inspiration from the typical website design styles of web apps that use subtle details, and white space to create a fresh concept.

Being a topic focusing more on the WordPress section of the project, I’ll not go into too much detail on the design and coding stages, but here’s a screencast I recorded of the process of cutting and coding up the concept into a working XHTML/CSS page.

Building the WordPress Theme:

Once my coded concepts are complete, I’ll then move onto the WordPress theme creation. I have a handy template saved on my machine that’s based on the Default theme, but with the majority of the HTML removed, leaving the collection of PHP snippets ready for insertion in the relevant areas of the theme.

Active Navigation States

A little customisation was required in the navigation bar to allow the active link state to show on each item. The home link was inserted manually, followed by WordPress’ default list_pages tag. The News area needed to be active whenever the user was viewing a category, an archive or a single post so conditional tags were used to tailor the appearance of the active link class. A similar tweak was also needed for the Client Area section; This area uses sub pages, so the menu also needed to be active when a child of page ID 12 was active.

Date Stamps

The little blue date stamps were easily built using a mix of CSS and the_time PHP tag. The whole date is contained within the paragraph tag with a class of date; within this is a span that contains the month of each post. There’s an extensive range of options available for the PHP date function, so it was a case of simply choosing which letter represented the type of date I required. I needed a good old number (d), followed by the shortened display of the month (M).

Custom Pages

Continue Learning…

TheCorporation is a sleek and professional theme for business sites. Grab your visitor’s attention immediately with the prominent and flashy jQuery slider, and let them know who you are via the simple page-based homepage design. I have received countless requests for such a “non-niche” and  ”businessy” design over the last few months, so I hope that this helps to satisfy the needs of those members. For more info be sure to check out the Live Demo as well as the Features Page.

The Corporation Features

Powered by ePanel, TheCorporation comes with all of the great features you have become accustomed to here at EelegantThemes. Change  color schemes, post layouts, manage your navigation, optimize your blog for SEO and more with the click of a button.

1. Optional Blog-style Structure – TheCorporation is a completely page-based design, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it that way.  You can switch to “Blogstyle” mode at any time, which converts the page-based homepage into a post-based blog. Furthermore, you can choose to populate the Featured Slider with posts instead of pages. Even though this theme was made with a specific audience in mind, there is nothing stopping bloggers who just like the design from using it.

2. Six  Unique Color Schemes – TheCorporation comes with 2 styles, each with 3 color schemes, for a total of six different variations to choose from. The standard skin comes in three colors, including Blue, Green and Purple.

For those looking for a something a bit more understated, the theme also comes with a “refined” skin. This skin include 3 colors, including Red, Blue and Silver.

Click here to Download

Polish up your blog with this silky-smooth design. My goal with this theme was to create something simple, refined, and well, polished! All of my recent themes have been page-based, so I thought it was time I release a more traditional blog template. I hope this dark and “interfacey” design will be a welcomed addition the the ElegantThemes collection. For more information be sure to check out the Live Demo, as well as the Features Page in the gallery.

Polished Features

Powered by ePanel, Polished gives you full control over your blog. Customize your menu, colors, manage SEO and more right from your WordPress dashboard. Polished comes with six different color schemes, so if Blue isn’t your style, then you can always try out the Red, Purple, Orange, Green and Turquoise variations.

Click here to Download

I decided that it was time to update ElegantThemes with a new look. I feel like my style has changed a lot in the past year, and I was eager to re-work the design to better represent my interests. With this update I have also done some work behind the scenes. The membership system has been updated to a much more robust script that will allow me to make continued improvements to member’s area. You will already notice that I have cleaned up the design and added some new features, and I will continue to do so in the near future.

I have also performed a database integration between the phpBB support forum and the ElegantThemes member’s area. All users will now have an account automatically created on the forum when they join (all current members have also been added). Furthermore, it is no longer necessary to log in twice – once you log in to ElegantThemes you are automatically logged into the forum. While I am talking about the forum, I would also like to welcome Yuriy to the ElegantThemes support team. Yuriy is an experienced WordPress themer who will be helping out in the forums. If you have any questions don’t forget to stop by!

I quick note to affiliates. I have already uploaded new creatives that have been updated with the v2 style. I have also made an effort to upload some new banner sizes.

Theme Updates

I have completed a few theme updates. This is just a small first round to what I hope to be series of serious theme updates. If there is anything you would like to see please let me know!

1. Code Formatting – First of all I decided to go through all my theme’s css files and re-organize them. They were a little messy and I wanted to make things easier for those trying to do customizations. You will notice that I have reformatted every css file, as well as added comments that separates the code into various sections.  For such a minor upgrade this took my forever, (considering most of my themes have 3-4 stylesheets), and while there is still work to be done I think it’s a good start.

2. eVid Updates - I’ve had some requests, after releasing ePhoto, to create a black color scheme for eVid. I have done just that. You can now switch between the black and white color schemes via the eVid Theme Options Page.

3. Wooden Updates - Wooden was among the few themes in my collection that did not have any alternate color schemes. I went ahead and added a few, you can now choose between the Red, Blue, Green and Purple color schemes.

4. Quadro Updates – I have also updated Quadro with two tier dropdown menu functionality for both pages and categories.

What’s Next?

What can you expect next here at ElegantThemes? Well, more new themes and theme updates of course! I am also working on greatly improving my theme documentation, as well as setting up a brand new tutorials section. This section will house basic video tutorials that will explain the ins and outs of setting up each theme, as well as more advanced tutorials that will cover popular customization issues.

I hope everyone is doing well. Let me know what you think of the new design and what types of updates you would like to see done to any of my existing themes.

See full Theme Gallery here…

There are many like it, but this one is mine.

I have a “blank” WordPress theme for myself, because I make a lot of WordPress themes. Starting from Kubrick, or any other pre-made theme, would be absurd. There is to much stuff there that would to be stripped out or fought against to be useful. So, I have my own. It’s been in a folder called BLANK-theme on my computer for a while, so I’m going to call it BLANK. And now I’m making it available for you. Read on to find out the scoop on it and you can decide if it would be of any use to you.

What is BLANK?

It is a WordPress theme with all the functionality of a typical WordPress theme but almost none of the styling. The idea is that when starting a new theme, it is far easier to use this as a base then a theme that is already finished and styled.

What are some of it’s “features”?

• Things are as semantically marked up as can be for a starter theme.
• It’s XHTML 1.0 STRICT and validates. Maybe it will go HTML5 soon. We’re at that point where there isn’t a whole ton of advantages to going to HTML5 yet, but there aren’t many downsides either and it’s definitely the future.
• The sidebar is widget-ready.
• Page titles are optimized for best SEO and readability/usability.
• Functions.php file does a number of things: Sets up RSS <link>’s in the head automatically, loads jQuery, removes the weird header links like rsd_link, wlw manifest, and generator info that I’ve never once needed, and registers the sidebar widget area.
• Has some starter CSS ready to go, more about that below.

Uses includes for some key things, like under-title meta data and forward/back navigation, that are very common places for redundant code in themes.

About the CSS

As you can see from the screenshot above, the CSS is pretty baron, but not entirely! Here are some things the CSS is set up for:

• Uses a basic star-selector reset.
• Includes a .group selector for the new clearfix
• Has basic toolbox and WordPress-standard CSS classes, including .screen-reader-text for hiding things.
• Standard typography-related sectors are there but generally without any attributes.
• CSS for threaded comments is in there, but light on actual styling.
• Both screen and print styles included in single stylesheet. Print styles optimized for generic nice printing.

Demo and Download

If you want to take a peak at it live, you can view it in our Theme Playground. You can also download it from there, or directly right here.

OnTheGo Features

This theme comes with all the great features you are used to here at ElegantThemes, including the ePanel Theme Options page and all the functionality it provides, complete localization and translation to English, German and Russian, and more. Here are a few stand-out features worth mentioning in greater detail:

1. Optional BlogStyle Layout – OnTheGo was created to be a page-based CMS style theme, however, you can also use it like a traditional blog by enabling BlogStlye Format in the options page.

2. Four Unique Color Schemes – OnTheGo comes with four different color variations, including Blue, Purple, Green and Brown. You can switch between these color schemes at any time via the ePanel Theme Options page.

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