andreasviklund.com

Stewart McCallister has ported two of my templates (1024px and andreas09) into Movable Type format. Check them out on his Movable Type templates page!

Ok, I was a bit wrong in my last post. I thought I would need to wait with the release of new material, but a sudden attack of inspiration tricked me into porting my 1024px XHTML/CSS template into a complete, Widgets-enabled 1024px theme for WordPress. The theme keeps the same simple style as the template, and the simplicity is the whole point.

However, this is still a completely untested theme which has not yet gone through any quality checks or bug hunts. While the code should validate without any problems, there may still be strange errors and bugs in the theme. During the weekend I will make an effort to polish the code and make sure that the theme keeps a good quality, but I'm releasing this first version anyway. Feel free to try it out, and please let me know if you find some bug in it! General comments and suggestions are of course also very welcome.

The theme is hosted on themes.wordpress.net, so you can preview it live before you download it. Here is a screenshot (click to go to the theme page):

A short note for all WordPress fans out there: There is now a community-driven WordPress Podcast with news and information about the world of WordPress. My theme WP-Andreas01 was mentioned on the second episode, along with an interesting report on the new features in WordPress 2.1.

But the music was not very fun, so I suggested replacing it with something happier and faster. Like the trance music of Lagoona. That was not a popular idea! But I am actually not only a "techno" producer. I've played the piano since age three, and with some help from the band I could easily kick off some great jazz if I wanted to. Let me know what you want, Charles, and I'll make an exclusive for you.

In other news, the "andreas04" and "andreas05" website templates have been updated. No major changes, but hopefully improvements. The multiple layouts of 05 was removed since the multiple stylesheets created problems for several users. I will put it back, but I will put all styles in one stylesheet and have the layout selectable though different IDs and classes. 1024px will get the same treatment soon, and maybe andreas09 as well. 06-09 are next in line for updates and refreshments.

And the beta version of the new Anvish WordPress theme has been updated too. I got comments about the strange placement of the menu, so I have now aligned it to the right side, in line with the border of the main content area. I'm aiming at releasing the final version in a few days, if there is any interest for it and I manage to get it free from obvious errors…

In the last couple of days, I've been working on a new theme for WordPress. I wanted to make a really simple and visually appealing 2-column theme that looked great on screens with 1024 px width or more, since most 2-column themes still stick to the 800px-friendly style. The design is completely original, and at the final release I will release a regular XHTML/CSS template along with the theme. The name of the new theme is "Anvish", a name taken from one of my many unused domains. The theme is still a beta version, as it is still a work in progress. But I think that it should be ready for a first test, and everyone is welcome to try it out.

Start with downloading Anvish v1.0 beta. Try it out, play around with it (widgets should work unless I've made some serious bummer) and then let me know what you think about it. It is not supposed to be cool or advanced. Just basic and clean. It has no AJAX, advanced features, visual effects or other things worth mentioning. It is just simple. But a couple of warnings: Don't look too close on the header image. It is just a filler, the final theme will have better images included. Please don't re-distribute this theme. It is only a beta. A final version will be out in a few days, and it will be completely free and public - and of course available for re-distribution. Also note that I am switching to a new way of writing my CSS, the "Compact Oneliner" method. It may look scary, but once you get used to it, chances are big that you'll see the beauty of it!

One thing I want this theme to have is a "Custom header image" feature, and since I can't add it myself I hereby want to send out a call to all PHP coders out there. If anyone of you could help me add the same kind of custom header feature that WordPress.com has in some of the themes, please send me a note!

Edit: Thanks to everyone who has sent bug reports! I have fixed all reported bugs and I keep on updating the theme zip. Recent changes include fixing the broken archive.php (a spelling error caused errors) and aligning the main menu to the right (it looks much better now!). If you want the latest version, it is available through the download link above!

I'm proud to announce that my andreas01 template has climbed all the way up to the #1 spot of the OSWD.org "Most Downloaded Designs" list! With more than 29.700 downloads on OSWD.org (and more than 200.000 in total from all sites) andreas01 is without any doubt my most popular template. It gives great inspiration! And andreas02 is on the list too…

Speaking of OSWD.org, the site is currently not being updated since the webmaster is busy with his studies. The lack of updates has probably made the submission queue extremely long by now, and since I still haven't got andreas00 (uploaded in mid-April) accepted yet I will not submit any new material to OSWD until the site goes active again. I don't want to add more work to the queue, so I will wait until the queue is down to zero. OSWD.org is still a great site for templates, so it is definitely worth waiting for!

But at the moment, this means that I will not list OSWD.org as a primary download location. The andreasXX templates that are available on OSWD.org are not the newest versions. Instead, those are early versions of the templates that may contain errors and bugs that have been fixed in newer versions. If you want the latest versions, the best place to look is my own templates page. I am also hoping to have all the latest copies online at OpenWebDesign.org. I will also open a "museum" where all old versions are available, just for reference.

Another new detail is that each of my templates and WordPress themes now have a sponsored link in the footer. It is written in text format, and it is not obtrusive or disturbing in any way. All links point to normal and friendly websites, never to any bad place. There are of course no requirements or obligations tied to the links. Users are free to remove it if they don't want it. But these links make it possible for me to make open source template design (and free WordPress theme coding) into a full-time job - which is something I have wanted to do for some time now. So if you would choose to remove the link, you can do so. But if you would keep it, it would be a great way to support my work.

While money is the main reason for the sponsoring, it is definitely not the only reason. One really nice bonus would be that I could get more time to work on related work beside the regular coding. For example, I could give much better support to template/theme users. I could make more add-on packages, replacement images and of course many more templates and themes. With some luck, I could even be able to run a regular blog where I write about more things than just website templates and WordPress themes…

We'll see how it works. But it is definitely worth giving it a chance. Comments and feedback are welcome, as always!