WPFreemium - Premium in Quality, Freemium in Price
May 7th, 2008 under Wordpress
UPDATE #3: WP Freemium Theme 2.0 is out!
UPDATE #2: Demo is up!
UPDATE #1: I forgot to mention, in order to fill all the information being displayed on the author pages, you’ll have to edit your user profile page and fill out those fields accordingly.
As promised last week, I’m releasing the theme I originally intended on creating for Bloggingtips.com and releasing it free for download.
In short: WPFreemium is a two column WordPress Theme heavily designed for multi-authored blogs.
WPFreemium features a deep integration of Gravatar images for all post authors, author profiles, and comments. Some of the primary goals for creating this theme was for it to be light weight, fast, and really highlight on the contributing authors.
Here’s a few screenshots:
Author Page:
Single Page:
Author Byline, Promotion on Single Pages:
Archives:
Download WPFreemium! - Demo
(version 2.0 - 176kb .zip)
Here’s a quick run down of features:
- Valid xHTML Strict 1.0 / CSS
- Code is well commented for the non technical savvy
- Sidebar Widgets enabled
- Custom Front Page with 3 featuring articles
- By default - 6 advertisement spots on all pages
- Gravatars highly Supported for Comments, Author Profiles and Author Posts.
- Author Byline + Promotion on single pages
- Author Profiles feature prominent image of the author with bio, contact details and more
- Image Gallery Support
- Yes Jeffr0, a Print Stylesheet is included.
- Favicon + iPhone Webclip icon Ready
- SEO Optimized title tags and headers
- 404 Error Page notifies admin each time someone sumbles across a broken link so they can fix it.
- …and Lots of minor details
Change Log:
- 2.0 - Completely revamped the backend along with a UI face lift. Using Blueprint’s CSS framework and grid system.
- 1.3 - Bug fixed in single.php - It didn’t generate the author’s promotion section with the correct author. To fix, move “
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/addons/author-metadata.php'); ?>” on line 51 in single.php file above the loop, anywhere above line 8 - 1.2 - IE Bug prevented the logo from being displayed. To fix, just remove “
h1#logo a { text-indent: -9999px; }” in header.php on line 31 - 1.1 - Typo, spelled Administrator wrong in author.php on line 25 (Adminitrator)
Recommended Plugins:
I’d recommend installing WP Limit Posts Automatically which enables you to customize the excerpts on the homepage, archives, and more.
Things to do before you install:
- Update the image with your logo.
- Change both, the favicon and iPhone webclip icon to match your brand. (Currently WordPress logos)
- Inside addons->ads->ads125×125.php: change the source to your correct advertisement page. currently its pointing to “blogdomain.com/advertise”
- I think that’s it. Upload the entire folder, “WPFreemium” in your themes directory and have fun!
Drumroll… Will there be Support?
Of course silly. BUT this is my first public theme so bare with me. I’ve tried coding for public releases making sure you guys can understand what’s going on in the backend and using best practices (always!). If you find something broken or whatever, shout me an email from the email address in _README.txt file, thanks!
Future releases:
Here are a few things I plan on adding in future versions for this theme:
- Theme Options for constant variables.
- Image uploader and cropping tool for logo and other images.
- A few aesthetics modifications
- Ad management (pt’s style)
- Fixes for unknown bugs you tell me about.
- X Feature that’ll be pretty cool.
Creating this theme was and still is a continuous process. This theme was originally planned for bloggingtips.com but things happened. BTW, I’m curious to see how his redesign is coming along? Anyways, I made a lot of backend changes so everything would work for the general public. A lot of things weren’t included in the first release due to time constrains with school and whatnot. So download this theme, test it, love it, hate it, whatever you do, tell me how it goes.
Now if you excuse me, I have another final to take today and it’s math. Last one to go!
Note to self: Setup a WordPress sandbox install for live demos. [I'm working on it!]
May 7th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Looking good man, I like the emphasis on the authors and the numerous advertising positions. And 10 points for the default printing support, woot! Now you should write an article about the print style sheet alone
By the way, you should register an account and put this on the WLTC forums so it gets picked up and published in the theme release post.
May 7th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Not bad at all! With a bit of graphics manipulation, this could be an absolutely spectacular base for anyone who writes too much ;D
Only thing on my mind is how easy it would be to have a smaller version of the first picture show up in every preview…
Thanks for putting this out =)
May 7th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Thanks for releasing the theme
I can’t see much point in using XHTML strict though. Unless you are careful to avoid certain parts of the wysiwyg editor, WordPress breaks XHTML strict validation anyway.
Jeffro has a good point about the print stylesheet. I should add those to my own themes - now on my todo list
There is a theme changing plugin which lets users change themes on your site themselves. I use this on my themes/plugins demo site … http://pixopoint.com/demo/wordpress/
It is quite useful as it avoids you having to install multiple copies of WordPress to show off your themes. And if you have it use the same database as your main site you can avoid having to backup multiple databases too
May 8th, 2008 at 2:49 am
@Jeffr0 - thanks man, I’ll do that!
@Trisha - Haha thanks! BTW, I made it real easy to change the size of all the gravatars in the theme, you see it in “theloop.php, index.php, and comments.php”
@Ryan - thx man! I wish you would had told me this before I started making a sandbox theme. I’ll consider it though if things get too complicated.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Way better then what they released yesterday.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Looks great, keep up the good work.
May 9th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Man that is one ugly theme. Damn right it should be free, nobody in their right mind would have paid for this one. Keep churning them out and we’ll keep letting them slip by…
May 9th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Wow Deepack, that sure was some constructive criticism you gave, perhaps he’ll be able to produce something better because of your detailed statistical analysis.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:07 am
@Jeff - Thanks man I really appreciate it!
@PJ - Whats up PJ! haha Glad you like my theme, theres alot more cooking in the kichen!
@Deepak - Well there ya go. I’m glad you felt so inclined to share your feelings regarding my first theme. Good or bad I soak up all feedback. And I really wanted to consider your thoughts and all but since you failed to provide me with any details and or credentials as to why you don’t like it, I’m really just going to take your comment with a grain of salt. Maybe next time you’ll be mature about it and atleast provide me with a link to your website so I can see where uber leet skills are coming from giving such meaningless feedback.
@Jeffr0 - Thanks man, I’m not sweating it, theres always an ugly ducklin in the crowd
May 9th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I like this theme quite a bit. Thanks for putting this out there.
- typo in author.php line 25 - the s was left out of administrator. - Scroll up to the author page screen shot above to see it.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:49 am
@sirholio:
typo corrected, download has been updated. thanks.
May 16th, 2008 at 8:19 am
@Deepak - Perhaps you should share with us your own themes you have released for free so we can critique accordingly?
May 20th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I loved the concept of a multi-author theme…but it was appearing broken in firefox. The various post categories were getting overwritten on top of each other in the top menu, and so was the text in the footer. Please have a look…I’l provide a screenshot if you want
May 20th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
@Saarthak: yes please do provide a screen, I did most of my browser testing in FF. Which version are you referring to?
May 20th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
What do I have to do to get the header image to showup?
May 20th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
@Barb: What do you mean? By default, the header.php file searches for “wpfreemium.jpg” which is the logo. It currently sits inside the /images folder. Letme know if your still having problems.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Take a look at the site linked to my name, It’s not showing up. Didn’t show up even right after I installed it. The file wpfreemium.jpg is in the images folder and I’ve not messed with the coding of the files.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
@Barb: Hey, I’ve checked it out. It’s showing up on FF but not IE which is weird. I’m looking into it right now.
In the meantime, to make it so images won’t appear, install the WP Limit Posts Automatically
May 20th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Nice plug-in you recommended.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
@Barb: Bug Fixed! Download updated! Added Change Log too.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
That fixed it!
May 21st, 2008 at 11:38 am
this is nifty. do you mind if i nitpick through it for my new site? you’ve included some awesome features!
May 21st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
@Jenny: Of course you can. It’s GPLed and all that jazz plus I wouldn’t mind anyway. Let me see how you implement them though, send me a linky?!
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Ignore Deepak - this is a brilliant theme! Thank you for offering it for free! If someone doesn’t like the colors or some minor thing they can change it - that’s what CSS is for…but structurally it’s great - a lot of great features and very well organized and thought out…… I can’t wait to use it on a site!
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:23 pm
@Trisha: Thanks, I’m not worried about him, I’m glad you like it though. I’ve got more coming!
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:14 am
had some problems using it. i have tried posting 3 topics and the format just screwed up without any formatting changes. maybe you can help?
take a look at http://ilovewallpapers.com/wp/
just for a suggestion for future development.
perhaps you can consider stretching the main bar or the screen to fit the width of the computer screen as it seems that those spaces left from both sides of the screen (left and right) are just wasted. bloggers could take a use of that space somehow for revenues maybe.
secondly, any future work for sidebar2 like two (2) sidebars from the right-most part of the theme?
bottomline, nice first theme, hope you can expand and modify of this theme in the future. keep it up!
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:32 am
oops, i got it working now. it seems that a HTML link and some HTML tags are affecting the sidebar1, i simply deleted my posts that contains HTML tags and the screwed parts simply went away.
will experiment more, if you need beta testers just let me know, am planning to use this to my new domain as soon as i get a grip of it and wordpress. tnx
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:52 am
@vertito: Looking at the code, you seem to have inserted a few divs inside the “featured articles” section and (1) the class=”post” is already defined in the css file (layout.css) which is probably causing some layout issues and (2) the div’s aren’t properly closed which is causing the page to look all crazy! lol
Solution:
Try deleting that bit and see if that fixes the page problem, then try adding it back bit and bit to make sure it doesn’t cause that problem again.
Anyways, are you suggesting a fluid layout? I don’t quite get what you mean. The layout’s width is about 960px wide which is a pretty standard width for websites nowadays. If your talking about making it even wider then that for larger screens, I think I could try that out.
Making WPFreemium three columns could be an option for a future release.
Thanks for all your feedback and suggestings, hopefully you’ll figure out those bugs, if not let me know! Also, I’ll be adding more features to this theme and all, but I’m working on WP News Theme which will be much more advanced and it’s almost ready!
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
Hi I have another problem for which I need your help. I’m getting the site up and running. I posted the first post and all looked fine. I had a 2nd contributor post, but when you full his complete post, my bio shows up at the bottom of the page rather than his. Is this because I am the administrator? I want his bio to show up there. The only way I see his bio is to click on his name as an author. Please help. I’d rather have no bios at the bottom than have mine on his page. Should I not post articles as the administrator?
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:32 am
FYI the link is my name, but the site is http://www.wecue.net
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:15 am
@Barb: Hey Barb, I see your problem. I’m working on it now and I’ll let you know when I figure it out.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:36 am
Let me know if I have to reinstall the theme because I’ve made some minor changes such as removing so many links off site to contributor’s sites. Also, just as a wish list item: I wish that when you click on the contributor’s picture it would take you to their bio rather than their website. I don’t mind having their website listed on their bio page, but I don’t want too many links away from the content.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:45 am
@Barb: Bug Fixed! Download updated! Added changes to the Change Log.
No need to reinstall, it’s a simple fix. Just look at the change log and that’ll tell you what to do.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:55 am
The download link is not working.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:55 am
Thanks for the fix though!
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Now it should work. I guess “wpfreemium” and “WPFreemium” are different locations?! lol
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I was able to change it in the file itself based on the change log and it appears to be working correctly now. I really appreciate the help!
May 25th, 2008 at 4:38 am
Just beautiful. I wish the colours were a bit different. I like the blues a bit (in honour of my daughter (long story)), bit it is beautiful.
May 26th, 2008 at 2:47 am
been playing for a while with the theme.
may i suggest also that the theme auto adjust to the screen width, like for 17″ inch monitors so all screen spaces are totally being used. that could probably give another sidebar column for more ads, or widget spaces perhaps?
what do you think? keep it up
May 26th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
@vertito: Your the second to suggest that, I’ll see what I can do for a future version of WPFreemium. The only reason why that feature doesn’t exist right now is the fact that the theme uses images for it’s width so increasing that is kind of a pain.
BUT! I’ve been thinking of an alternative way to achieve that same result so I’ll try that out.
Thanks!
May 26th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
I’m a little confused about how the show posts works on the main page. My top three posts are showing but I have five more entered and they don’t appear below under recent articles.
I haven’t changed the code at all.. is there something I need to do to make posts appear down there?
http://www.thenewsiewriter.com
May 27th, 2008 at 9:32 am
@Kelly: That’s weird. I’ll try to look into this a little more, have you tried downloading the latest version of the theme (1.3)?
May 28th, 2008 at 6:46 am
No.. I really don’t want to as I’ve already edited a lot of little things.
I changed the zero to a three in the recent articles area:
and it started to show posts - but only three and it repeats the same three articles from above.
This whole way of calling up a number of posts is totally different than other themes I’ve used and I’m confused by it. Can you point me to some resources on it?
May 28th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
@Kelly:
Here’s a brief overview on how it works:
The first loop starts up, and
$count = 0;meaning the first post is set to zero.Then comes the actual loop:
That’s basically staying: while each post comes through this loop, the variable
$count ++;goes up one digit.The next line:
if ($count == 1 OR $count == 2 OR $count == 3) : ?>Translates into only if
$countequals 1, 2, or 3 which is the first, second, or third post- display the post like this. (which is the featured style)That loop ends, and a new one starts up for the recent articles displaying the next four post.
So, the same thing happens:
But this time we’re only going to display the post only if it’s the 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th post.
if ($count == 4 OR $count == 5 OR $count == 6 OR $count == 7) : ?>Once that statement becomes true, which it should, it’ll display the post in the recent article format.
Loop ends, everybodies happy.
Now that I think of it, there’s probably a better way (easier way) to do this but I was probably thinking differently at the time. Still it should work though, let me know if that helps!
P.S. If your still running into problems just try downloading the latest version and overwrite the index.php file which is causing you all those mean problems. Nothing should have been changed in that file so everything should be A-Okay.
May 30th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Excellent theme !.. Very very very out of the box! I love it!
May 30th, 2008 at 8:43 am
@Lenny - Thanks man, I’m super glad you like it!
May 31st, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Hi Ptah,
Great design! really close to what I was looking for. I have a gourmet food site that I am about to launch and really need to add photos to each review. Is this something that is possible with this particular template?. Also is it possible to turn off the author photo?
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
@Rob - Yes, and yes.
If you’d like to add images next to each post, you’ll have to add this functionality manually via custom fields for now.
To remove the author picture, simply removed line 28 in index.php
If you need help with adding the image next to the article, let me know and I’ll see what I can do kay?
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 am
Hey Ptah ..
I’m finding that the template does not play too well in IE6? Any other comments about this?
What the problem is that the sidebar shifts all the way to the bottom if the page; its aligned to the side it belongs, but almost as if there are many divs shifting it downward.
Want to have a look?
Thanks..
Lenny ..
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I adore this theme! Just wondering if you know of anyway to have WordPress notify an author (rather than the administrator) when a comment has been made to their post. I’ve been looking for plug-ins, but the only one I found wouldn’t work. (might not be compatible with 2.5.1) Any suggestions? I set roles up to give contributors/authors the ability to approve their own comments, but can’t find a way to notify them that a new comment exists.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
@Barb - Yeah I know what you mean, I’ll look into adding that functionality in a future release. I’ll keep you updated.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:17 am
It’s broken in IE 6. Not unusual as I am seeing more and more designs ignore the CSS for IE but this is such a great theme so I wanted to bring it to your attention.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:59 am
Hello Ptah ..
Seems that my categories are now expanding onto a second line improperly. I dont want to remove them, but how can I prevent them from breaking the next line?
See an example here: http://pcnetgeek.com//upload_files/gns.category.links.broken.jpg
Any help is appreciated..
Lenny
June 9th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Sorry! i don’t speak well english.
This theme has a problem when show image in a post on homepage. I can’t fix it
June 12th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
great wp-theme!
June 12th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Ptah, Notify On Comment now works with Wordpress 2.5.1. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/notify-on-comment/ So now I can have the individual authors notified when someone posts a comment to their post.
June 12th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
@Bardb: I should of looked at extend to before I started playing with my own version, lol. I’ll probably consider adding support for this plugin to a future version of wpfreemium.
June 15th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Ptah .. Any idea on the categories issue?
Lenny
June 17th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Thanks for sharing this theme!
June 21st, 2008 at 11:27 am
Ptah .
The categories issues is getting really bad ..
Can you please help ..
http://www.pcnetgeek.com//upload_files/category-flaw.jpg
Lenny
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:13 am
How do you add an image for an author?
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:16 am
Lenny, if you don’t have a Gravatar, you can use the plug-in: add-local-avatar.
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:25 am
@Barb .. Thanks.. but what do you mean “if you dont have a gravatar”? I have it enabled in settings, but how can I change the pictures? Right now its just a “no image” type of icon.
Also has anyone got a fix to the bunched up categories issue?
The categories issues is getting really bad ..
pcnetgeek.com/upload_files/category-flaw.jpg
Lenny
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:35 am
Lenny, Look here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Gravatars#Theme_Support_for_WordPress_2.5 or http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/03/03/gravatars-and-wordpress-25/
or just use the plug in, which I think is easier:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/add-local-avatar/
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:25 pm
@lenny, I sent you a reply via email
@barb: thx for trying to help out while I was away, that’s really awesome of you!
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Ptah, No problem, hope it helped.
I’m really interested to know if the catagory issue affects anyone else. I’ve not expanded to more than one line of catagories yet, but I’m concerned what will happen if/when I do. Is there a way to only have the top 5 catagories list along the top or something similar?
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:27 pm
@Barb: yes, that problem will occur, and there will be a fix in the next release. I’ll explain all the details in an upcoming blog post.
I showed Lenny a way to display the most recent (meanig up-to-date) categories first. As far as limiting the categories by number, it’s currently not possible, that is unless you pick out the ones you want using
include=1,2,3,4,5inside thewp_list_categories();function.Again, I’ll touch up on this either this week or the following.
June 24th, 2008 at 5:10 am
Yep Ptah helped out.. Thanks the site looks as PRO as the theme intended it to
Thanks for the help ..
July 18th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Hi Ptah.. No problems laying 2.6 onto this?
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
@Lenny - should work with 2.6 (wpfreemium 2.0) in the works right now though.