Today we have a pretty cool looking blog template designed by Rambling Soul. I then took the template and ported it to WordPress (with a bit of help). This theme features an unusual vertical page navigation, visible on the left side, as well as a featured post area. There are also two widgetized areas. This theme is built for WordPress 2.7 and above, and has features such as threaded comments and pagination.

Live Demo | Download

And now onto the rest of the features in more detail…

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I know it’s been a couple weeks since the last issue of WordPress weekend resources. The following links cover a massive amount of WordPress theme development information, so hopefully it makes up for it.

How To Create a WordPress Theme – This series of posts by Ian Stewart over at ThemeShaper will take you through the process of making your very own WordPress theme from scratch, similar to a series of posts made by Small Potato over at WPDesigner over 2 years ago. This really is a must-read series if you’re interested in WordPress theme development.

Power Tips For WordPress Template Developers – This article by Jacob Goldman over at Smashing Magazine goes over a number of useful tips for theme developers, complete with code examples and screenshots. Topics such as how to code a featured post and members only pages are covered.

That’s all for this week. As always, be sure to let me know of any other recently published WordPress resources in the comments.

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?