E.Share

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…

Widgetized Areas

Like I mentioned above, this theme has six widgetized areas. Four of these are located in the sidebar, and two in the footer. The following diagram will illustrate where exactly these go.

The Top Sidebar, Middle Left Sidebar, Middle Right Sidebar, and Bottom Sidebar should be self-explanatory. The “Footer Lists” widget is designed to house at most four different lists. These can be recent posts, comments, whatever. The “Footer About” widget is designed for text, which you can use to write an about blurb about yourself.

I opted for this instead of a theme options page since with widgets you have a bit more control, unlike in previous Demus Design ported themes like Underwater and Bolshevik which have theme option pages.

Page Menu

On the theme demo you might notice each link on the top page navigation has a subtitle. This was present in the original template and wanted to integrate it into the WordPress version as well. Thanks to this article from ThemeShaper, I was able to do that.

To add the page subtitles, I also coded in a custom write panel that only appears when you’re on the Edit Page screen.

Don’t make it too long or the page list might get pushed to the next line. Unfortunately with the subnavigation code, I’m not sure an easy way to exclude pages besides using subpages, since the page list only displays top level pages.

Conclusion

Thanks again for the nice birthday wishes last week, it’s greatly appreciated.

Hope you all like the theme. Thanks again to DemusDesign for the great template. Let me know what you think in the comments, but remember to post support requests in the forums.

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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.

History

The past year had a number of highs and lows. Some very popular themes were released here, including Miniml which was featured on sites such as Smashing Magazine, among other sites.

A large chunk of the year, however, the blog was left dormant due to personal reasons. I later revived it, and luckily a lot of you stuck around.

On last year’s “History” section, I had a part where I showed the past designs of this site. Well, looking back, it seems I’ve stuck with this one for over a year!

I was planning on unveiling a new design today, but unfortunately I couldn’t get it ready in time. More on that below.

Thank You

This blog wouldn’t really be much if it wasn’t for you, the readers. The feedback and comments I receive from this site daily are what keeps me motivated to release more and more themes and WordPress-related content.

Top Commentators

Thanks to the following commentors. These people have commented on a number of posts in the past year.

• Anto
• Keith
• Calítoe.:.
• ThemeLib.com
• cuteegirlee

Blogs

Thank you to the following blogs. These blogs have helped out Theme Lab in one way or another.

• WP Tavern
• WordPress Hacks
• Fun with WordPress
• WPMU Tutorials
• Mashable
• WPZOOM
• ThemeShaper
• Lorelle on WP
• Blog Herald

WordPress

Of course, none of this would be possible without WordPress and it’s lead developers.

• WordPress.org
• Matt Mullenweg

I apologize if I missed anyone.

The Future

I’m not going to go into too much detail on this part, because I believe this may be true. I have a few other WordPress-related sites I’m planning on launching in the near future. I’ve already launched Themelets, but will be launching at least a couple more.

As usual, I will be releasing more free themes as well as tutorials and other WordPress news from around the community.

And no, I’m not selling this blog, which is a question I get asked a lot. Blogging on at Theme Lab is fun for me, and unless someone wants to offer me some ridiculous amount of money, I doubt I’ll sell any time soon.

Conclusion

I’ll be honest, I didn’t even remember my own blog’s birthday until exactly three days ago when this CWC birthday post jogged my memory.

Like I said above, I was planning on unveiling a new site design today, but three days really isn’t enough time to get everything ready. Look out for that soon though.

In the comments, I’d love to hear your feedback on what should be focused on most in the next year. More themes, tutorials, articles? Sound off.

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…

Theme Options

Like I mentioned above, the RS14 has a theme options page, on which you can control a number of layout-related options. Here’s a screenshot:

Now, let me explain what each of the options does exactly.

Header

• Exclude Pages: Pretty self explanatory. If you have any top level pages you would like to exclude from the page navigation menu, simply input a comma separated list of page ID numbers here.
• Include Home Link: Disabled by default. This might be useful if you have a main index of posts on your front page and want the “Home” link to show up in your page navigation.
• Page ID of First Link: If you have the “Home” link disabled, you might want to input the page ID of the first page that shows up in your list here. This will eliminate the left border on the first link of the page menu.
• Right Description: Overrides the text where you currently see “Put a Nice Little Description Here.” Can use <span class='bigger'> for bigger text. Make sure to use single quotes.
• Right Box Title: Overrides the green title which currently says “Put Some Contents Here” over in the box on the right side of the header.
• Right Box Text: Overrides the text that is currently inside the box on the right side of the header.
• Right Box Read More Link: Disabled by default. Enter a full URL in here if you want a “Read More” link to appear.

Main

• Main Index Heading: This will override what currently says “latest news” on the main index page. Can use <span class='green'> for green text. Make sure it’s in single quotes.
• Sidebar Heading: This will override what currently says “browser news” on the blog’s sidebar. Can use <span class='green'> for green text. Make sure it’s in single quotes.

Custom Page Templates

As mentioned above, this theme has two custom page templates included. There is a “two column sidebar” template along with a “three column sidebar” template. These are used if you would rather not have the default sidebar on your static pages, which usually display the category and archive lists (or whatever you set your widgets to). You can see these page templates in action on the demo site.

The first step is to select which custom page template you’d like to use from the “Template” dropdown list on the left. Both of these are configured through custom write panels available on the Add New Page menu. Here’s what it looks like:

And here’s what the options mean:

• Page Heading Override: This option lets you override the page title. Can use <span class='green'> for green text. This also works on regular page templates as well.
• Sidebar Heading: This option lets you override the sidebar headings on the custom page templates. Can use <span class='green'> for green text.
• Column Thumbnails: If you want to use a thumbnail in a certain column, input the full URL to it here. Below are some included thumbnail images you can use.
• Column Titles: This is where you put the title to the columns.
• Column Text: This is where you put the content for the various columns.
• Column Read More: If you want a “read more” link displayed, enter the URL you want to link to here.

If you’re using the “Two Columns” template, you can ignore all the options which refer to “Three Columns” and vice versa.

Remember, you don’t need a blog on your front page, and that is especially true for this theme. I currently have the “Three Column Sidebar” template set up on my homepage with some thumbnail images included in the theme.

Included Images

If you want some generic thumbnail images to use in your posts, and custom sidebars, there are a few included in the theme.

Image	URL
	http://yourwordpressurl/wp-content/themes/wp-rs14/images/img1.gif
	http://yourwordpressurl/wp-content/themes/wp-rs14/images/img2.gif
	http://yourwordpressurl/wp-content/themes/wp-rs14/images/img3.gif
	http://yourwordpressurl/wp-content/themes/wp-rs14/images/product1.gif
	http://yourwordpressurl/wp-content/themes/wp-rs14/images/product2.gif
	http://yourwordpressurl/wp-content/themes/wp-rs14/images/product3.gif

There are also a couple pictures of Tony Montana and Vito Corleone, but you probably wouldn’t want to use those on a professinal business site. You can check those out on the “About” page of the RS14 demo site.

Widget Areas

As mentioned above, there are two widgetized sidebars with one on the left and one on the right. These are visible on the main index, single posts, archives, search results, and normal page templates. In addition to the two widgetized sidebars, there is also a widgetized 404 page.

Conclusion

For those following me on Twitter, thanks for being so patient. I know I’ve been tweeting about this theme for a couple weeks now, but I just wanted to make sure everything was ready before it was released. This may not be my most advanced theme coding-wise, but it probably is options-wise. I actually had to set up a whole new demo site for this theme, which is a first for me.

This theme took me a long time to port and get everything right, coding in all the CMS theme features and such. I have been listening to your feedback and I hope this isn’t just another “boring blog theme” although I will try to mix it up between CMS themes and blog themes in the future.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this theme in the comments. Although, if you have any support-related questions, please post them in the forums and not ask via e-mail.

Oh yeah, and there’s some big news tomorrow. Some of you who have been following this blog for at least a year might know what I’m talking about, so if you do - try to keep it a secret.

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?

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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.

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