Site News

SimpleX 1.3.2 now available

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

simpleX

SimpleX has been quite popular amongst the available themes at WordPress.org and it just crossed 41,000 downloads which is pretty impressive for a simple design like that. After almost a year of the last update on the theme and WordPress nearing to version 2.9 now this theme really needed an upgrade. The last update was made when WordPress 2.7 was available. Since then, WordPress has come a long way.

So, after looking at questions on forums and issues people have reported, simpleX has been updated to work with latest WordPress. The 2 issues that were fixed are:

  1. Fixed Tag Cloud (the new WordPress has a different class so were showing the cloud as a list)
  2. Plugin compatibility (plugins like Lightbox now work perfectly).

It was still using the old jQuery manually. Now it pulling new jQuery automatically from WordPress files which means there are no longer conflicts with plugins that use multiple JavaScript libraries.

On the other side, the file size has been greatly reduced from over 100KB to just 75KB. :)

Click here and grab this simple and clean theme.

Posted in Freebies, Site News | 5 Comments »

Another amazingly simple FREE WordPress Theme: Poetry

Friday, November 20th, 2009

poetry

This and last week has been pretty busy working on a pro theme for GraphPaperPress. More on that later.

I had some free time today getting this simple theme completed. I was working on it last week but hadn’t had time to wrap up last bits and pieces including testing on IE. So, today, I completed all the initial testing and finalized couple of styles and thought I will give it a go.

Poetry theme is now ready for giveaway. I want to post here a pre-release version so if in any case, there are bugs, I can fix it in a couple of days before giving it a final shape. As mentioned earlier, Poetry is a simple, clean theme that is dedicated to all the Poets out there. Yes, all. You don’t have to be THE Great.

I am not sure if there already exists similar theme but I have only seen blogs / corporate / photoblog style themes. This theme has been inspired by my love to old books and typography. And from what I saw, it looks great on mac Safari and Firefox, and PC IE8. The other browsers don’t render the fonts and aren’t smooth. It might be better on Vista / Win7.

Preview

You can view the screenshot in this post for now as I will be setting up the demo for it a bit later.

Download

You can get the Poetry theme here right now. Please do post any comments / bugs you might have regarding this theme.

Cool Feature

Ah, BTW, one cool feature I forgot to mention is that you can use custom key author in posts to show the author of the poem right below the Title. It defaults to whoever the posting it from wordpress admin (such as admin himself). This way this theme can just look like the old book with all those great poem collection. ;)

Thanks & nJoY!

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Posted in Freebies, Site News | 8 Comments »

Experimenting Fresh Technology, embedding fonts on WordPress theme

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

manuscript

Hey all!

Wow, doesn’t this look better now? After a year of simpleX on WPshoppe, I got a little time to play around with a new theme. I was inspired because much awaited technology of embedding creative fonts onto a webpage has now been possible. This is surely going to be another revolution on the web world as this has been dreamt by a lot of designers out there.

Just few days ago, TypeKit launched its long time beta tested font embedding service. I couldn’t wait to realize this technology before its too late. So, I started working on a quickie theme naming it Typewriter. Now, why this name? Because, I subscribed to TypeKit as soon as I heard about the news. I browsed some 7 pages of free fonts and wasn’t quite convinced of the free fonts they have in their library. The only font I thought looked great was the old typewriter font, John Doe… and that clicked on my mind. What if I could make an old looking theme that used typewriter font?

So, I started working, and eventually put the site live today. And when I published the site with the typewriter font, oh my..  it really didn’t look good. I hated it. Maybe perhaps I was theming with Georgia font in my localhost with a clean white background. So, I just looked over TypeKit Library and found another font called Anonymous Pro. And voila, I liked how its matching.

Its good to be on the frontline on this new technology and staying away from the default arial, georgia fonts after 10 long years (for me). You guys should definitely check TypeKit as well. I have 4 invitations left so if you want one, just message me down here.

AND yes, hope you like the new look (still needs bit of work) and do let me know if you would also like this theme as a free download. :D

Cheers all!

Photo: kevinzim

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Posted in Site News | 5 Comments »

A new theme in the making… POETRY!

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

I have been quite interested past few days of doing something different from what I have been doing lately. I always loved the classic books, how the typography was used and how small the fonts were. I especially loved the Poem books where everything was centered. So, inspired from that, I have come up with a mockup (actually I just finished the first page minus few styles) for another clean theme and I am calling it POETRY! Yep, this one should be perfect for those who scribble poems now and then. Not necessarily long ones but like 4 lines would be indeed perfect. The alignment is all centered so I am not sure how readable it will be if you use it for a blog.
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Posted in Site News | 7 Comments »

Smashing Magazine tweet about Cleanr!

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Oh Yes! I didn’t even know this and when I did, I was really excited about it. Having noticed by Smashing Magazine, one of the favorite sites of mine, is a really BIG thing for me. This site has been a resource and inspiration hub for me all this time and having a 200,000 fan following isn’t a small site now, is it? So, yesterday, they had tweeted about Cleanr, which is also my favorite theme. Past few weeks has been really great for me and unexpected things are happening. This was one of them and I couldn’t stop sharing for all of ya guys. :)

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Posted in Random, Site News | 5 Comments »

Interview: Meeting with 7 Amazing WordPress Theme Designers

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

WebHostingSearch just carried out interviews with 7 of many great WordPress theme designers and I was lucky enough to be on the list. If you are an aspiring WordPress theme developer, feel free to read views from designers all over the world. I am particularly a big fan of Adii Rockstar who co-founded WooThemes and I envy what they have been doing at WooThemes. I feel very honored that I have been listed along with him. Thanks to Brian Franklin for publishing this interview.

If you want to know any additional facts about me, let me know. :) Cheers!!!

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Posted in Site News | 4 Comments »

A support forum!

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Its been quite a long time I posted. But this is why. I have been getting quite a lot of questions regarding customization to both simpleX and Cleanr themes. I will be upgrading both of these themes a little in a few days but just to keep things on a right track and not having to answer same questions again and again and  as well as people who use these themes at a later time would find it helpful to see the solutions that their predecessors might had, I am setting up a support forum.

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Posted in Site News | 3 Comments »

Another Free Theme : Work-a-holic [Portfolio + Blog]

Friday, July 10th, 2009

This is yet another free theme that I recently worked on. Its called Work-a-holic. And as the name suggests, it is to showcase your work on the web while having a separate blog of your own. I made this theme for Graph Paper Press. There are many features to it and can be downloaded from the Graph Paper Press website. Its, of course, free but you have to sign up for a free membership which takes about a minute. This theme will come with a lot of interesting features very soon. :)

Ah, by the way, I would like to thank all of you who have been using Cleanr and giving me all the positive feedback about it. Its just wonderful to read those comments. Plus, I would like to thank some of you who have made a valuable donation for the themes I have made. Its so helpful. More themes to come soon.

Thanks!

P.S. WordPress 2.8.1 is out and all of you should upgrade it as it is faster, lot of bugs from 2.8 fixed and more secured!!

Posted in Freebies, Site News | 3 Comments »

Cleanr 0.1 now up for download!

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

screenshotWell, its been quite a long wait and those of you who are looking forward to the working version of Cleanr, you have it right here, right now! Try the demo and be convinced that this is yet another clean, cool looking theme. Convinced? Grab the Cleanr right now and YES, its FREE!

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Posted in Freebies, Site News | 27 Comments »

22,000+ downloads and a revamped Cleanr!

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Hey everyone,

I hope everyone is doing just great and enjoying life! Its been a long time and you might be wondering where I got lost. :) Well, I am still alive and doing good. I just have been pretty busy with things here and there.

So, I just checked the stats at WordPress site and wow, I must say simpleX has been quite popular. There has been 22,000+ downloads as of today. I am impressed! Thank you all for the wonderful support. (more…)

Posted in Site News | 2 Comments »

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