Sep 21 2010

Themes as child themes for better language support?

I am currently working on rebuilding the WordPress themes to make them up-to-date with the current version of WordPress. During this work, I have considered several additions to the themes. One important addition is support for other languages than English. There have been translated versions of my themes, but I have so far never used the internationalization and localization features that are built into WordPress. I started rewriting the WP-Andreas01 theme to support language files, but ran into the same challenge that prevented me from using the feature in previous releases: Any update I make to a text string inside the theme, may result in a need to update all translation files to ensure that the translations work as intended. Before I move on with the theme updates, I would like to ask for some feedback on an alternative solution that could make this challenge into a non-problem:

Would it be a good idea to rebuild the themes as child themes to the default WordPress theme (twentyten), with standardized text strings that makes the child themes work in all languages that twentyten is translated to? Or are there reasons why this would not work?

By Andreas • General • 2 Tags: ,

Sep 14 2010

New template: Variant Classic

I have just uploaded Variant Classic, a new free website template that is not really new. If you have followed this website for some time, you may recognize the look: It is the previous design of andreasviklund.com! To read more about this template and see a live demo, go to the Variant Classic page. To download the template directly, click the screenshot below:

By Andreas • Build, Featured • 14 Tags: ,

Sep 8 2010

Variant Fashion for Typo3

Variant Fashion has been ported into a Typo3 template by Typo3-Asia.com. It is the first CMS version of this template that I have seen, and it appears as if you will be able to find more Typo3 templates based on my designs on the same site in the future.

I have not tested this version since I don’t use Typo3 myself, but it appears as if it includes three different layout options which would be excellent. If you give the ported version a try, feel free to share your opinion or post a link to where it can be seen in live mode.

By Andreas • Build • 2 Tags: ,

Sep 4 2010

Alternate template versions and CMS themes

Three of the most common requests that I have often got throughout the last couple of years have been “Can you make a wider version of template X?”, “Can you make template X with color Y?” and “Can you add feature Z to this template?”. In a few cases, I have updated the templates with the requested changes. But in the most cases, I have recommended the template user to make the changes himself/herself and sent explanations of the procedure – an option which was not really optimal.

More recently, template designer Jason Cole started publishing alternate versions of my templates on his own website, often based on requests from visitors on andreasviklund.com. Through the addition of the new discussion forum on this site and with sub-forums created for each individual template, there is now a single space for presenting and discussing modified versions of the templates.

Jason has joined the forum as a moderator (see his profile page) and he has created “Alternate versions and ports” threads in each template sub-forum. For example, see the thread for alternate versions of the andreas01 template where Jason’s wide version can be previewed and downloaded.

Together with Jason, I will be adding links to alternate versions as well as creating new variations based on your requests and suggestions. There will also be links to ports and theme versions for different content management systems and blog engines, such as WordPress, Drupal and CMS Made Simple just to name a few. With the exception of the themes listed on the WordPress themes page (which are soon going to be updated for full compability with WordPress 3.0), I can not do CMS ports myself. But if you have created an own port of any of the free templates and you make it available so that others can download and use it for free, you are welcome to post preview and download links in the forums – or contact me about it so I can add the links myself.

Requests are also welcome, although I please ask you to create a new thread for that purpose rather than posting in the variation threads.

By Andreas • Build • 4 Tags: , , ,

Sep 3 2010

Andreas on Facebook and Twitter

Beside the new forum, you can also follow andreasviklund.com on a couple of external sites. A new Facebook page has been set up, and @andreasviklund on Twitter is me. Quick links to these pages can be found in the small box on the right side of the website, under the headline “follow”.

There are also buttons at the bottom of each post in the blog, which allows you to share the post permalinks with others using a number of external services. A Twitter “tweet” button and a Facebook “like” button has been added to the template gallery and to each individual template page. If you find something useful, don’t hesitate to use these buttons to share it with others who might be interested.

By Andreas • Share • 1 Tags: ,

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