It was just announced yesterday that the official commercially supported theme page has been launched on WordPress.org. Right now each of the sites listed there are rotated, so there’s an equal chance of any of the sites being displayed at the top. If you have a commercially supported theme site, here’s how to get listed:

• Distribute 100% GPL themes, including artwork and CSS.
• Have professional support options, and optionally customization.
• Your site should be complete, well-designed, up to date, and professional looking.
• Include a haiku about yourself to be included.

Not really sure what haiku is for, although I’m looking forward to see what these commercial theme developers can come up with their Haiku writing skills.

I think this is great news because it encourages commercial theme developers to adopt a “100% GPL compatible” license. Even though PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, and artwork and CSS don’t, a pure PHP theme (without graphics or stying) would be pretty much useless to most end users.

I really hope this is the final word on commercial themes and the GPL, although I’m sure we can still find something to argue about, right?

And on the topic of commercially supported WordPress products, I’m wondering if there’s any similar commercial plugins page in the works, or do plugin authors still get no love?

I came across YummThemes the other day, and I’ll be honest with you, I actually thought it was a joke. No theme demos or screenshots, just a big bag of money, a promise of getting a “shit load of money” shot at me with a “very big gun” and an email newsletter signup form. Reluctantly, I signed up to the newsletter out of curiosity.

A couple days later, they sent everyone a free theme to everyone on their newsletter. I was impressed by the screenshot of the theme, and with some questions surrounding their legitimacy, I decided to give this theme a try and post the results in a review post.

And now onto the rest of the review…

Read the rest of this entry »

Today we have a grungy theme (hence the name) designed by DemusDesign, which I then ported to WordPress. This theme is coded for WordPress 2.7+ only, which means it has support for threaded comments and comment pagination. It also means it won’t work on previous versions of WordPress. It has 6 widgetized areas, including a widgetized footer. More on that, and a couple other things below.

Live Demo | Download

And now onto the widgets, and other stuff…

Read the rest of this entry »

Some of you picked up the hint at the bottom of my last post, but today is Theme Lab’s second birthday! It is exactly two years after the first post, and exactly one year after Theme Lab’s first birthday.

Like last year, I’d like to take this opportunity to review the past year and let you know what’s in the plans for the future of this site. Also like last year, this will be a long and gushy post. If you don’t like long and gushy posts, you should probably stop reading now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today we have a feature-packed WordPress theme called RS14. The template was originally designed by Roshan of Rambling Soul, which I then ported to WordPress. It has two widgetized sidebars, Gravatar support, tag support on single posts. There is also a options page as well as two custom page templates, more info on which will be gone over after the jump. This theme would be great for a business or company site, and I’ll show you how to use it for that below.

Live Demo | Download

And now more information on the theme options page, custom page templates, and more…
Read the rest of this entry »

The lack of changelogs in a lot of WordPress plugins is something that’s bothered me for a while, and I wasn’t the only one. I’m very wary of upgrading plugins, and when I see that a plugin needs to be upgraded in my WordPress dashboard, I’d like to know exactly what’s being changed. It might be a major security fix, it might be a minor bug, it might not be a necessary update at all. Changelogs give this information to end users about changes from version to version.

Well, there’s some good news for all of you who like to check out the changelogs before upgrading plugins, but it’ll require some action on behalf of the plugin authors. There is now a standardized way of adding changelog information to the plugin’s readme.txt file. To plugin authors wondering how to do this, read this post on Peter Westwood’s blog. This information will then be displayed on a dedicated “Changelog” tab on the plugin’s page on the WordPress.org plugin repository.

I know themes aren’t usually updated as often as plugins are, but I’m wondering if it would be difficult to implement something similar for WordPress themes hosted in the official theme directory. Anyone have any thoughts about changelogs for themes too?

For those not following the latest WordPress and GPL theme news lately, some big stuff has happened in the past week or so. First, iThemes announced they were going GPL, and WooThemes followed suit later in the week.

Some people reading this blog might have no idea what I’m talking about when I’m referring to GPL themes, because I’ve never discussed it here before. Why? Because most of the discussions I’ve seen regarding the GPL and WP themes are extremely arduous, and more importantly…inconclusive.

Basically the GPL license says while there is nothing wrong with charging for GPL software, users are free to modify it and redistribute code without permission of the original author. This means someone could legally buy a commercial GPL-licensed theme, and re-release it for free.

Alex King reminded people of this fact, and the mere idea of exercising the rights granted by the GPL led to quite a bashing in the comments. Some commenters even went so far as to say they’ve lost “all respect” Alex, again, for merely pointing out the idea, not actually doing it. Alex later apologized for that post he made earlier.

While I think those people who lost “all respect” for Alex King (as a result of that post) completely missed the point, it did bring up some interesting questions. While I don’t believe there’s any doubt that modifying and redistributing GPL themes is in fact legal, I think the real question is: is it ethical or not?

In my opinion, piggybacking off the hard work of these developers, who are trying to make a living off their themes, by undercutting them for a few quick bucks is not ethical. I believe the true value in buying almost any commercial theme is not just the theme itself, but also quality support. In my eyes, there’s no better place to get support than the original source.

What are your thoughts on this issue? Is it ethical? Are commercial theme authors truly embracing the GPL? Sound off in the comments. This is probably the first and last post I’ll ever make on this topic, so make it count.

Today we have a very clean theme designed by Anto, which I then coded into XHTML/CSS and ported to WordPress. It’s a two column theme that uses only two images (not including the logo). Everything else is CSS-based, which makes it very easy to modify colors and such. More on this will be gone over below. This is coded for WordPress 2.7+ only and has features like threaded comments and comment pagination. It also has a widget-ready sidebar.

Live Demo | Download

And now onto the color schemes and logo image…
Read the rest of this entry »

I was initially excited about the CodePress syntax highlighting in WordPress 2.8, although after actually using it recently, I changed my mind. While just the syntax highlighting alone is not a problem, the way it completes quotes, and auto indents makes it somewhat annoying to say the least.

I asked on Twitter, and found a thread on the WordPress.org support forums, but unfortunately couldn’t find a solution on either. It turns out the solution was actually a lot simpler than I thought. Watch this quick video to see how to disable it:

As a quick outline, here’s what you have to do:

• Login to your WordPress 2.8 admin panel
• Navigate to either the theme or plugin editor (doesn’t matter which)
• Click the “Screen Options” tab located in the top right corner
• Then click the “Disable syntax highlighting” link

To enable it again, follow the same steps and click the “Enable syntax highlighting’ link instead. Another method of disabling/enabling is to append ?codepress=off or ?codepress=on to the end of the Theme Editor URL.

Hat tip to Eric Sizemore (as mentioned in the video) for pointing this out to me.

Since WordPress 2.8 was just released yesterday, I thought it might be a good idea for this week’s issue of WordPress Weekend Resources to focus specifically on 2.8-related content.

WordPress Version 2.8 - The WordPress 2.8 page over at the Codex. The page is broken up into 4 parts: highlights, new features, advanced features, and features that did not make it. Definitely worth skimming through to get an idea of all that was added.

WordPress 2.8: What’s new - An extensive post on what’s new in WordPress 2.8, mostly from a developer’s point of view. Things like the new body_class function, proxy support, and relational navigation links, among other new features are all covered on this article.

WordPress 2.8 And 10 Things That You Should Know Before/After You Upgrade - This post goes over 2 things to go over before upgrading, and 8 things you should be aware of after upgrading. Aside from the obvious theme/plugin compatibility check, it also goes over a number of the updated features present in 2.8, complete with screenshots.

There are a few more in-depth articles on specific WordPress 2.8 features, although the above are mostly roundups. If you know of any other WordPress 2.8-related resources, feel free to post in the comments.