It’s been a while since our last free WordPress theme. This one is designed by Roshan from Rambling Soul, who has recently returned to designing free templates after a long absence. This theme has a number of interesting features, which will be gone over below.

RS16 screenshot

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Read on to check out the features in more detail…

Image-Based Page Navigation

Roshan designed this template with a set of button-style image links for the page navigation. I wanted to make sure there was an easy way to choose which image you wanted to use on a page-by-page basis, so I coded in a custom write panel to make it easier.

RS16 Button Image

  • home – home
  • works – works
  • blog – blog
  • downloads – downloads
  • blog – blog

Simply type in the name of the corresponding image listed on the right, on the write menu on each page. If nothing is specified, the “works” image will be used (which is why there’s a paintbrush on every other page besides About).

The code used to display the image links through custom fields was heavily modified from the WordPress Menu Tricks article at ThemeShaper, take a look at the functions.php file in the theme if you’re curious.

Widgetized Areas

There are only two widgetized areas in this entire theme. One widgetized area is on the 404 template, in case you want to customize your 404 page from the WordPress admin.

The second is called “Homepage Top” and located on top of the index page, so you can customize the information displayed there.

RS16 Homepage Top

WP-PageNavi Integration

This theme is integrated with the WP-PageNavi plugin. Simply install it to get super cool numbered pagination on your index, archive, and search pages. Otherwise you’ll get normal previous/next pagination links.

RS16 PageNavi

Twitter Integration

Your latest tweet is displayed at the bottom of each page in the RS16 theme after you input your Twitter username in your user profile. This Twitter input box located at the bottom of: Users → Your Profile.

RS16 Twitter Input

Thanks to Justin Tadlock for the code to add and use custom user profile fields.

Multiple Background Images

Roshan included four different post background images with different colors. Adding onto the custom write panel made for the page navigation links is a way to define an alternate background color to posts and pages, if you choose.

RS16 Backgrounds

The different color choices are: green, gray, brown, pink. If no color is defined, the default color is green.

RS16 Background Colors

Thanks to WPRecipes for the code on how to get custom fields outside the loop.

Conclusion

Hope you all like the theme, despite the unconventional page navigation. It’s worth noting that there is another set of text-based page navigation located in the footer. If you want more Rambling Soul templates which I’ve ported, check out this tag page for the full collection.

Not many people have noticed, but the support forums have been closed ever since the new design was launched. Not only so I can create a matching bbPress theme for it, but also wanted to set aside some time to clean up all the spam accounts which are cluttering up the database. Hardly anyone uses it anyway, so hopefully the few that do can be patient while I set that up again.

With that said, feel free to let me know what you think of the theme in the comments, including support-related questions if you notice anything that’s off.

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