Zack LiveWordPress Theme | Best Premium WordPress Themes - Zack Live

WordPress Complete Tutorial 03: Using WordPress Themes on WordPress.com

Zack — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:04:31 +0000

This is the third post of my WordPress Complete Tutorial series.

For all tutorials in this series, please visit:

WordPress Complete Tutorials

In the last post, we created a blog on WordPress.com. We will continue working on that blog, the topic of today is the themes.

Change Your Theme

How the blog is displayed is based on the theme used. Let’s go to the blog we created, ZackLive.WordPress.com, At the bottom of the page, we can see this blog is using a theme called, Wu Wei which is designed by Jeff Ngan. Let’s try some other themes.

Go back to Admin Panel, you can visit Admin Panel by adding wp-admin to your blog’s URL, in this case, it will be: http://zacklive.wordpress.com/wp-admin.

Click Appearance->Themes. There are a lot of great themes listed here. Most of them are free to use, some Premium themes require you to purchase.

We go with some popular themes. Click Popular under Browse Themes in the middle of the page. These are the most popular themes on WordPress.com. You can find some well-designed themes here. We will try INove theme for this time.

Scroll down the page to the bottom, you’ll find INove theme. Or type INove in the search box to find it.

It shows the name of the theme, a short description and tags. Tags describe the features of the theme, such as two-columns, right-sidebar.

Now click on Preview to see how it works for your blog, or click on Activate to use this theme. I’ve activated INove theme, let’s see what’s the difference.

A totally new blog! Just one click you’ve got a new design of your blog. And it’s all free, what can be better?

Sidebar and Widgets

You may notice that INove has a right sidebar, which is different from the default theme. We can edit the sidebar from Admin Panel.

Click Appearance->Widgets.

Widget is one of the most amazing things of WordPress. It’s a small tool which contains different features, such as showing latest posts. You can add or remove these widgets to your blog by drag-and-drop. You don’t need to edit any code to change the layout of your blog.

Widgets are usually used in sidebar. Sidebar is like a container for widgets, you put widgets into a sidebar so that the widgets can be functional.

Some themes have only one sidebar, others may have several, there is no limitation to the number of sidebars, it’s all based on the design of the theme.

INove theme has one sidebar, right sidebar. You can drag-and-drop your favorite widgets into it. It’s better that we put some thing that will help readers to find out more about our blog in the sidebar. Like Categories, Recent Posts and so on.

After modifying the sidebar, we need to refresh our blog to see how it works.

We’ve got the new sidebar now. If you want to remove any widget, just drag and drop it off the sidebar area.

WordPress Menu

Let’s set up the menu for the blog.

Go to Admin Panel, click on Appearance->Menus.

The left hand side is inactivate, because there is no menu for now. We can create a menu by entering a name for the menu and click Create Menu. Here we use “My Menu” as the name.

Ok, we’ve got our menu. We need to allocate the menu to theme – select a Theme Location for the menu. There is only one menu location in this theme, the Primary Navigation. We choose My Menu for this location and click Save.

We can set up items for the menu now. The first item we need is a Home button which is a link back to the home of the blog. We will add a Custom Link to the menu. Enter the URL of the blog, in this case, it’s “http://zacklive.wordpress.com” and “HOME” as Label. Click Add to Menu.

We have our first item for the menu, let’s add more. Check the Page of “About” and click Add to Menu. Do the same to our only category, “Uncategorized”. So that there are three menu items. We can edit and remove them by clicking the triangle on the items.

Remember to click Save Menu when finishing editing. Refresh the blog to see the new menu.

Everything works fine.

Concludesion

In this tutorial, you learned:

Changing WordPress Theme
Editing Sidebar and the concept of Widget
Editing Blog Menu

In the coming tutorial, We’ll go through other settings of WordPress.

Free WordPress Theme: Animes Theme

Zack — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 05:37:47 +0000

Theme name: Animes Theme
Version: 1.0
Author: NewWpThemes.com
WordPress Version: 3.x
Support website: NewWpThemes.com
Tags: Widget Ready, Fixed Width, Threaded Comments, Magazine Style, Three Columns

Description:

Animes is another feminine Anime-inspired theme, this time with a cream, pink and burgundy color scheme. It includes space for ads, an options page, and a featured content slideshow on the homepage.

Animes is a free premium WordPress theme with options page and supports the post thumbnails. Suitable for any niche specially for manga or anime websites or blogs.

Features:

Options Page
Featured Content
125×125 banners ready (easy editable from admin options)
468×60 pixels Header Banner ready (easy editable from admin options)
Three columns
Gravatar on Comments
Compatible with latest WordPress versions
Widgets Ready
SEO Optimized
Fixed width
Logo .PSD included in theme folder.
Tested and compatible with all major browsers: IE, FF, Safari

WORDPRESS THEME DEMO

DOWNLOAD WORDPRESS THEME

8 Free Elegant WordPress Themes for December 2010

Zack — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 08:36:58 +0000

Here is a collection of all Free WordPress Themes we found in December. We will be looking for more great WordPress Themes for you.

Visit our Free WordPress Themes page.

Or subscribe our RSS Feed for the latest themes.

Theme name: Sun Set Theme
Version: 1.0
Author: Zack
WordPress Version: 3.x
Support Website: http://ZackLive.com

WORDPRESS THEME DEMO
WordPress Theme: Sun Set Theme

Theme name: Sederhana
Version: 1.0
Author: Moch. Zamroni
WordPress Version: 3.0+
Support website: Tookangweb

WORDPRESS THEME DEMO
Free WordPress Theme: Sederhana

Theme name: Businezz
Version: 1.0
Author: Jai Nischal Verma
WordPress Version: 3.0+
Support website: Blog Oh Blog

WordPress Theme DEMO
Free WordPress Theme: Businezz

Theme name: Skeptical
Version: 1.0.2
Author: Nur Fathihah
WordPress Version: 3.0+
Support website: WooThemes

WordPress Theme DEMO
Free WordPress Theme: Skeptical

Theme name: Channel
Version: 1.1
Author: Roy Guan
WordPress Version: 2.8.4
Support website: Theme Junkie

WORDPRESS THEME DEMO
Free WordPress Theme: Channel

Theme name: Vector Flower
Version: 1.0
Author: ezwpthemes
WordPress Version: 3.x
Support website: ezwpthemes

WORDPRESS THEME DEMO
Free WordPress Theme: Vector Flower

Theme name: Bintaro
Version: 1.0
Author: Moch. Zamroni
WordPress Version: 3.x
Support Website: WP Charity

DEMO
Free WordPress Theme: Bintaro

Theme name: Mansion
Version: 0.3
Author: Chandra Maharzan
WordPress Version: 3.x
Support Website: GraphPaperPress

DEMO
Free WordPress Theme: Mansion

Theme name: Damla
Version: 1.0
Author: NewWpThemes.com
WordPress Version: 3.x
Support Website: NewWpThemes.com

DEMO
Free WordPress Theme: Damla

Free Premium WordPress Theme: Stylize

Zack — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 04:17:10 +0000

Stylize is an elegant, gorgeous and stylish magazine style Premium WordPress Theme. It supports latest WordPress(2.9+) functions, including thumbnails, threaded (nested) comments, comment pages, sticky post.

Stylize is inspired by Hypebeast, I add a top billboard slider, which you can set images and links in options page. A tabbed sidebar section is added as well to display more information in less place. In single post page, I separate trackbacks from comments, this makes the post looks clear and much professional.

The theme settings page is the big point of Stylize theme, I spent a lot of time on it. In the settings page, you can set head logo, enable or disable slider, slider images and links(as many as five slides), enable or disable sidebar subscription, customize subsciption images and links, enable or disable tabs, tabs’ title, customize RSS feed, add content to footer(Google Analytics code, for example).

Single Post Page

Standard Features

Supports WordPress 3.0+.
Supports WordPress 3.0 Custom Menu(with Dropdown Menus).
Supports Custom Background Color
Supports WordPress thumbnails, uses thumbnails in front page, you can easily add thumbnail to a post in editor page(right bottom).
Supports threaded (nested) comments and comment pages.
Supports sticky post.

Advanced Features

Ajax slider, you can set every things of slider in theme settings.
Ajax Tabs, you can set every things of tabs in theme settings, too.
Separate Pingbacks/Trackbacks from comments, this makes post pages look better.
Supports WP-PageNavi.
Full-functional theme settings, a lot of settings had been added to the settings page, check out the following image.

Powerful Theme Settings

Customize Logo settings.
Sidebar subscription settings, you can customize your RSS feed here(like changing to Feedburner feed).
Sidebar tabs settings.
Slider settings.
Footer settings, add your Google Analytics code here.

Hight Lights

Remarks

After activated Stylize theme, remember to go to Stylize Setting page to set theme options.
Stylize theme uses post thumbnail, remember to set thumbnail for your post.
Add Thumbnail

WORDPRESS THEME DEMO

WORDPRESS THEME DOWNLOAD

Word Press Tutorials and Word Press Theme Design

Zack — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 05:34:34 +0000

Premium word press themes market has drastically increased within few years. All the sites use these themes for their development. Everyone is confused at what themes to shop as lot of themes are available. This article shows key areas that we all must keep in our mind whilst implementing these word press themes. This surely assists the word press creators to augment the appeal of the presentation and enhances the creativity of the designers.

Assortment of a specific theme is a very important aspect. Usually popular themes are often used and bought as popularity portrays a chief influence in selection. Like, for example theme forest is popularly used. Then comes the appearance of these themes. Legibility in the text is very crucial, should look good at first look. Right color combinations and right font is also important. Back end tools are available to customize these. Switching through multiple themes should be made easy. There must be an alternative of sidebars to receive different widgets and also a preference of embedding CSS code for flexibility.

Full explanation of the theme in the form of documents is a major requirement. The developer ought to look inside the support as it is also important. Price and cost of the theme is the major concern. Sites like Template Monster have unique price for exclusive themes. Yet it’s not that cheap, for the equal value you can have a regular customized theme to your requirements accordingly, or a custom theme built exclusively, but should fulfill all the requirements.

Woo Themes, Theme Forest, Elegant Themes, Pro Theme Design and MOJO Themes are some renowned links for customized themes. Yet, one needs to observe the financial plan and necessities very closely prior to purchasing or creating a custom-made theme. Yet working on them is sheer fun and requires a creative soul to dig out the unfathomable desire to make a big success. Every developer should use the themes and tutorials to make sure that the output suits the theme of the content. As a develops, you must check and verify whether he is going for the best or not and make sure that extra creativeness doesn’t spoil the entire look of the theme.

Author bio

Buytemplates.net is a site which provides quality eBay templates you can also get the conversion of PSD2XHTML here.

Less Theme: A Blank Theme for WordPress Theme Designers

Zack — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:18:25 +0000

I’ve think about this for a while, and now the first version is ready to go. The Less theme is a blank or a template theme for WordPress theme designers, it supports the latest WordPress, has all common functions a WordPress theme should have. It was designed in simple layout so that you can easily modify it, to make your own themes.

I create this theme, because I want to have a basic template to start with when I create a new theme. By copying this theme and change the name, I don’t need to re-create those must-have files, you know, index.php, single.php, comments.php, etc.

Less theme supports latest version of WordPress, which means it supports threaded (nested) comments, sticky-post and comment pages. A theme options page is added, you can change the header logo and set your own RSS feed(like a Feedburner feed). Trackbacks are separated from comments, it makes the post page looks better.

That’s all for now, I’ll keep updating this theme as it’s the basic of all my new themes. You can use it for your new themes as well, wish this theme helps you too.

Make Your WordPress Theme Ready for Translation

Zack — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:13:49 +0000

If you want your WordPress themes to be used by more people, you can translate them to other languages, or ask your theme user to do this for you. But first of all, you need to make your theme texts translatable.

To do this, you need know how WordPress do the translation. WordPress uses GNU gettext for localization. With this framework, you can mark your theme texts for translation. You can use the following two ways to mark texts.

__($text) : this means $text need to be translated, and returns the result.
_e($text) : this means $text need to be translated, and prints out the result to the webpage, equal to echo __($text).

Let’s see some examples, the first one is the easiest one, when you have no posts to display, we will show a message: ‘Not Found’, here is the code:

Not Found

Because this message will directly print to the screen, we use _e():

This is very easy, isn’t it. The second example is about the comment number, here is the code:

The translations are not directly print out, but to be used for the function. So we are using __() to do this:

There is one more situation, which is you need to translate a sentence with parameter. Here is one example:

by

You can’t only translate ‘by’, because in some languages, you need translate the whole sentence so that it will make sense. Here is how to do it:

We use PHP function printf() to insert the_auther() to __(‘by %s’), so that you can translate the whole sentence.

Now you know how to make your theme translatable, next time I will write about how to translate your theme.

iTech Theme: Free WordPress Theme for Gadgets and Tech Blogs

Zack — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:23:00 +0000

I just started a new gadgets blog Gearor.com, so I design a new theme for it, iTech Theme. This is a high quality, low graphics, Lightweight, fast-rendering and professional WordPress Theme, inspired by SixRevisions, especially good for technology and gadgets blogs. A tabbed block is added to sidebar for displaying Recent Posts, Popular Posts and Recent Comments. Built in control panel(Theme Options), you can set customized RSS feed, email subscription, twitter subscription and header logo. Compatible with WordPress 2.7 and above(including 2.8.6), support threaded (nested) comments, sticky-post and comment pages.

Tabbed block is added to sidebar for displaying Recent Posts, Popular Posts and Recent Comments in a small amont of space.

Subscriptions of RSS feed, Email and Twitter is placed at the top navigation bar and can be customized in admin panel(Theme Settings):

There are total 6 setting you can customized:

RSS Feed Title
Custom RSS Feed: URL of customized RSS feed, you can put your Feedburner Feed here.
Email Subscription: For Feedburner users, you need to enable this function in Publicize settings in Feedburner. And then change ZackLive to your Feedburner id. If you have any troubles with this settings, feel free to contact me by commenting below.
Twitter Subscription: Enter your Twitter name here.
Logo URL: Enter the URL of your logo, your can upload it to your server or image hostings like Flickr, and then copy and paste the link here.
Show Description or not: Sometime you don’t want your description to be displayed, while you are using image logo, just check this, your description will not be showed.

Download iTech WordPress Theme

iTech theme in action on Gearor.com

iTech WordPress theme is released under GPL License.

Please let me know if you found any bugs.

Thanks to Dan Breslau for helping me with bugs. I’ve learned a lot from Dan.

My WordPress Themes Updated

Zack — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:16:47 +0000

New update:

I’ve created two WordPress themes, the Gray Lines WordPress Theme and the BlacknWhite WordPress Theme. I updated them today for WordPress 2.7(also 2.8), supporting threaded (nested) comments, sticky-post and comment pages. And added a control panel which you can set your own RSS feed and your logo image.

Download:

Gray Lines WordPress Theme

BlacknWhite WordPress Theme

PureCSS Free WordPress Theme

Zack — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:09:22 +0000

PureCSS is a no-image WordPress theme with a nice design and compatible with the latest WordPress 2.6 with Widget support and valid with CSS and XHTML. If you don’t like images which descrease your blog loading, PureCSS is a good theme for you.

Free WordPress Theme: PureCSS
Theme Author: Leslie & Yixia
Theme Category: No-Image
Theme Properties: 2 columns, Blue, Fixed width, Widget ready, Right sidebar

Demo | Download by FairyFish.com

Free Crystal Blue WordPress Theme: WPVision

Zack — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:50:00 +0000

This is a elegant WordPress theme introduced on BesTheme.com.

Free WordPress Theme: WPVision WordPress Theme
Theme Author: ElegantWPThemes.com
Theme Category: Personal
Theme Properties: 2 columns, Blue, Fixed width, Widget ready, Right sidebar

Terms: WPVision Theme is Designed By ElegantWPThemes.com Footer link to the designer is mandatory while using this Theme.

WordPress Theme Demo: Test Run

Free WordPress Theme Download: WPVision WordPress Theme