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.
I registered the domain themelets.com several months ago (way back in August of last year) in the hopes of one day making a WordPress child theme “portal” of sorts. I started working on it off and on for the past few weeks, and earlier today I finally got it ready.
On the site you can find information on the latest WordPress child theme releases, announcements regarding many popular theme frameworks, along with tutorials and other resources.
Yeah, I know the site is pretty much dominated by Thematic child themes at the moment, but in time maybe we’ll see more variety of child themes spanning across different frameworks.
Don’t worry, I’m not jumping ship from Theme Lab to start posting about new child themes all day. Think of it as a sister blog to complement the content here.
So go on and check out Themelets and let me know what you think in the comments.
I have just selected four winners who entered the first Theme Lab contest. Each of them will receive:
Just a refresher on how the contest was run: each contestant can pick one number between 1-1000. After about a week, the contest is closed, and I pick a number between 1-1000. The closest four people to that number will win.
So, want to see what the winning number was, and more importantly: if you were close enough? Read on…
You might be wondering what these three things have in common: free domains, free web hosting packages, and free premium WordPress theme club memberships. Well, these are all prizes up for grabs in the first Theme Lab contest! Honestly, I’ve never been big on contests, but when Nick Roach of Elegant Themes contacted me a few days ago offering to sponsor a contest/giveaway, I was more than happy to oblige.
But, a WordPress theme really isn’t much use if you don’t have web hosting to use it on. Your own domain name wouldn’t hurt either. This is why I contacted Jack of Fused Hosting and Bill of Available Domain Names to donate to the contest as well.
If you want to know what exactly is up for grabs, more information on the sponsors, and how to enter, read on…
It’s been a long time since I last updated Theme Lab - over five months, so where do I start? First of all, yes, I am still alive. I apologize for just disappearing without a trace like that. That was unacceptable, although I’m not using this post to shower you with excuses. Let’s just say that I had some more important offline endeavors that needed to be focused on for a while.
Second of all, I’d like to thank those of you who stuck around. Strangely, my subscriber numbers steadily increased, eventually breaking the 1k barrier, after I stopped posting. Anyway…
The first part of this post will be a roundup of sorts. I’ll be reviewing some of the recent happenings in the WordPress and theming community while I was gone. The second part will discuss my future plans for this site.
As you all probably know, this site is focused around WordPress, and more specifically, WordPress themes. Believe it or not, but there are a lot of other themeable (is that a word?) CMS and blogging platforms out there besides WordPress out there.
Most of these platforms don’t have nearly the amount of themes available that WordPress has. Here’s a short list of some other pieces of software I had in mind that are lacking in the theme department:
Do you use any of these systems? Would you be interested in themes being ported over to these systems? Have you even heard of them? Let me know in the comments.
It was announced a few days ago that bbPress would be releasing a series of 1.0 alpha versions. These versions will be compatible with WordPress 2.6 and above, which is good news for me.
I took this opportunity to upgrade my own forums after sitting dormant for nearly a month after upgrading to WordPress 2.6. For all you people itching to ask questions in the forums, but couldn’t sign up or login, feel free to do so now.
Some of you who frequent Theme Lab’s support forums may have noticed you aren’t able to login anymore.
Why is this? WordPress 2.6 - that’s why.
The cookie changes between 2.5.1 and 2.6 are so “radical” they render the WordPress-bbPress integration useless.
When is the bbPress update coming? Apparently, not any time soon.
WordPress-bbPress users are encouraged to stick with WordPress 2.5.1 until a stable bbPress update is released, but don’t hold your breath.
If you’re using a Theme Lab theme and need support, feel free to post a comment on the release post on the blog, and I’ll try my best to get back to you.
Minus one minor problem with an outdated WP-DownloadManager plugin, upgrading to WordPress 2.6 was relatively painless. The aforementioned plugin, which I use for managing the theme downloads here at Theme Lab, was updated by the author - correcting the bug. Here are a couple articles with tips on upgrading your own WordPress install:
You should always be taking regular backups of all your sites, especially in preparation for something like a software upgrade.
I’d like to know how your WordPress upgrade went. Any issues?
To those who don’t read the archives of the “Site News” category, today is exactly one year after Theme Lab was launched.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone and everything who made all of this possible, go over a little Theme Lab history, as well as let you know what is in store for the future.
This post will be very long and gushy, so if you don’t like long and gushy posts - you should probably stop reading now.
Anyways, how can one contact you to do...125x125 Anto Ben Swift black blue bright brown Ceneb clean colorful dark DemusDesign elegant featured post FreeCSS glossy gray green growldesign Hive Designs khaki left sidebar light minimalistic Nuvio one column orange pink purple Rambling Soul Rayk Design red right sidebar silver simple Six Shooter Media sleek Solucija Styleshout SymiSun Templatefusion three columns two columns white yellow
Welcome to Theme Lab. My name is Leland, and I run the place. I write all the tutorials and code all the themes you see here on the site.
For more information about me, feel free to read the about page. If you want to drop me a message, feel free to contact me.
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