• September 25, 2012
  • 2

Introducing SiteOrigin.com – home to quality free WordPress themes and plugins

This is the latest video in my “WordPress Community” series, which takes a look at some of the most promising work in and around WordPress today, including theme and plugin developers to WordPress educators and evangelists.

In this video, I highlight the high quality free WordPress themes and plugins by a South African developer called Greg Priday. Greg runs a site called SiteOrigin.com and he describes the site’s main goal in the following terms:

With SiteOrigin I’d like to break the perception that free means junk. I put a lot of effort into crafting code that is secure, reliable and most of all – useful. All my themes and plugins are and always will be 100% free.

This statement caught my attention and I include here as a reminder of the passion and commitment that characterizes many of those involved in WordPress. Greg has released four free themes and two plugins to date and I take a look at a theme called “Origami”, a minimal and elegant single column theme with a responsive layout and support for multiple post-types.

I’m always on the look out for new WordPress sites and developers, so if you have suggestions for things you’d like me to include in this series, please let me know, either on Twitter, Facebook or via the contact form. Thanks very much.

  • September 23, 2012
  • 7

Approaches to Responsive Design User Experience in WordPress

One of the areas of WordPress theme development that I focus quite a bit on in this blog is responsive design. Most recently, I came across two specific elements of responsive design integrated into two distinctive themes. Both elements concern the user experience side of responsive design.

On the one hand, in this video I take a brief look at a new WordPress theme launched on ThemeForest called the Flipit theme by a new company called FD Themes, which promotes the idea of “flipping” content. This simply means that at the click of the mouse button or with a single touch on a mobile device you can reveal a reverse side to a content object such as an image for example.

On the other hand, I take a look at the latest theme from Press75, the premium theme company run by Jason Schuller. The theme is called the Series Theme, which is geared towards video content and it promotes the idea of what I’m calling a “one-click” approach to content interaction. In this case at the click of a button or with a single touch on a mobile device you can reveal an overlay containing more content.

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  • September 19, 2012
  • 0

10 Stunning Horizontal Scrolling WordPress Themes for 2012

I’ve written and spoken quite a bit about horizontal scrolling WordPress themes on this blog, mostly in relation to the work of one of my favourite theme developers, Greg Ponchak. You can see my take on his work in this video here in case you missed. And while I’m on the matter, I can announce that I’ll be reviewing one of his latest themes soon and showing you how you might use it to create a simple art project. Exciting stuff on the horizon!

Anyway, back to this post. It seems to me that the horizontal scrolling theme category has never really been taken seriously simply because our experience of the web is still dominated by a top-down layout of content. Consequently, horizontal themes tend to be seen as ultra-niche, a novelty that often inspires wonder, but doesn’t really convert into large sales figures. Well I think that’s about to change.

Why? Portable devices are changing the way we access and experience web content. Tablets for example, support landscape and portrait views and their touchscreen capabilities make horizontal navigation just as easy as vertical. In addition, people use tablets for a different experience of the web. They want to be immersed in the content. They don’t want to do complex data retrieval manipulations that your keyboard and mouse allow you to do. So video, photos and audio are really coming of age with tablet culture. For these reasons, I see a serious future for horizontal scrolling WordPress themes.

So I decided to bring together a collection of the ten best horizontal scrolling WordPress themes for 2012 in the hope that it might sway a few more heads in the direction of this neglected form factor and get people thinking outside the box in terms of web and content design. So without further ado, here’s my list. It’s not in any order of preference by the way, just a free form list. Enjoy!

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  • September 18, 2012
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In response to Justin Tadlocks’s project – “ThemeForest: An Experiment”

Renowned WordPress developer, Justin Tadlock of ThemeHybrid fame, has posted a description on his blog of a very interesting project he’s recently launched codenamed “ThemeForest: An Experiment“.

The basic premise is to try and make a difference to the large number of discrepancies in code and development practice that renders some of the WordPress (WP) themes on ThemeForest (TF) sub-standard.

To be sure, there are a lot of high quality themes on TF and a lot of conscientious developers. However, there is also a general sense that quantity before quality or profit before end user is all too often the order of the day. So in the interest of doing something constructive and positive, Justin has set himself the task to release a quality WordPress theme on the marketplace called the Unique Theme and to help other developers (via TF forums) improve their code and knowledge of WP.

One of the responders in the comment section for that blog post is Japh Thompson, Envato’s WordPress evangelist or in his own words:

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  • September 16, 2012
  • 8

Responsive what?! 90% of visitors to my site use screens larger than 1024x768px…

This is an open question to the WordPress community:

have WordPress developers gone doolally over responsive web design?

Ok admittedly that’s a very blunt question, so let me explain. I was going over my site stats this morning while simultaneously checking email, reading the news, drinking coffee and patting the dog – as you do – and in true geek fashion the screen resolution stats for wpliving tickled my fancy!

After a little more scrutiny and a bit of simple math, I came to the conclusion that around 90% of the visitors to my site have screen sizes larger than 1024x768px, which is the standard iPad landscape resolution. Here, go ahead and see for yourself:

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