Archive for category 'General'

May 11 2011

New WordPress themes currently in testing mode

Last week I spent two days working in Stockholm. Among the things that happened during those two days, I had a meeting with a WordPress theme developer who had expressed interest in converting website templates into WordPress themes. Right now, two new themes are in the works. Both are based on recently released templates which have got very positive feedback. One of those themes (based on the new Basic Noise template) is in testing and fine tuning mode, and if everything works out well I will release it here on friday.

By Andreas • Featured, General • 0 Tags: , ,

May 10 2011

Website templates and jQuery enhancements

I am currently writing on a how-to that I promised to do when I released the Basic Contact template, explaining how to insert a working contact form script into the template. The positive feedback from the Gallery template and the “How to add an image gallery” tutorial has inspired me to learn more about how jQuery can be used to enhance the features and usability of templates and simple HTML-based websites. Since I am a complete jQuery beginner myself, I am simply experimenting and trying different things. Whenever I manage to do something useful I write about how I did it, hoping that my experiences can be useful for someone else.

But I am much more of a designer than a coder, and I can not really present any learning material for jQuery itself. While it may be both interesting and educating to read about a beginner who is experimenting, it would of course be a lot more interesting to read tutorials written by developers who works with jQuery on a daily basis. I have previously encouraged both template and theme designers to join in and share their work and experiences here on andreasviklund.com, and it has led to some exciting co-operations and current projects which I will write more about later. But I would also like to extend my invitation to developers and backend coders. If there are any jQuery wizards out there who have worked with the andreasviklund.com website templates and enhanced them with different kinds of scripts, I would be happy to publish guest blog posts if you want to share your experiences or contribute with a tutorial or some other kind of material that could be useful for template users. Send me an e-mail if interested!

By Andreas • General • 1 Tags: , ,

May 9 2011

Distraction-free writing coming in WordPress 3.2

Text editors with completely clutter-free interfaces have been a rising trend for the last couple of years. Instead of having a user interface full of options, buttons, fields and other objects, distraction-free editors go completely blank – leaving only the text you write visible on the screen. It allows writers to put all focus on the writing, and for anyone who is easily distracted (which I know I am), this is a great tool that makes writing a lot easier. As a regular user of such software, I got really happy when I read WordPress developer Mark Jaquiths blog and found out that version 3.2 of WordPress will include a distraction-free editor!

Each new release of WordPress often introduces new features which I didn’t knew I was missing until I tried them. That is not the case for this feature. I have actually been looking for plugins to get this kind of feature into WordPress-based websites in the past, without finding any usable solution. While it wouldn’t be very useful for me on this site, atleast not compared to what it will be on more text-oriented sites, I will very likely be using it here quite often anyway. For example for writing longer blog entries such as tutorials and future reviews.

Keep up the great work, WP developers. It can not be said too many times: You are doing a great job, and I am just one out of millions of WordPress users who appreciate it.

By Andreas • General • 0 Tags:

May 5 2011

Commercial templates and premium WordPress themes

A lot of website visitors are asking about commercial website templates and premium WordPress themes, two things that are currently not available on andreasviklund.com. At the moment, there are no plans to add any premium content to the site, but I have sent out e-mails to webmasters of some really good template and theme provider websites and offered them banner space for 125px buttons at a reduced price. In an effort to help template and theme users find good commercial resources, I will be making a number of reviews of commercial template websites – as well as testing premium WordPress themes. Look out for these tests in future posts, they will appear in a new category called “Reviews”.

If you have a commercial template/theme website and would want to place a banner to promote your products on andreasviklund.com, you can use this link to see the 125px banner offer on BuySellAds.com. If you choose to advertise on this site, I would be happy to review your products as well.

By Andreas • General • 0 Tags: , ,

Apr 24 2011

The AndyBlue theme for WordPress

I have added a new theme to the WordPress themes page: the classic AndyBlue theme by Matteo Turchetto. It was released in 2008 and has, as far as I can tell, not been updated in a long time. But it has been a popular theme ever since it was originally released and I still get questions and requests for it so I wanted to make it easier to find.

AndyBlue is not a direct conversion of any of my templates, but it was inspired by the andreas08 template and shares a number of design elements with it. If you like the box style and the flat button menu of the andreas08 template, you may also like the AndyBlue theme for WordPress.

By Andreas • General • 0 Tags: , ,

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