Let me introduce you to Flounder, a beautiful new blogging theme that landed in the WordPress Theme Directory this week. Created through the collaborative efforts of WordPress UI/UX designers Mel Choyce and Kelly Dwan, Flounder is a fully responsive theme with a colorful design for post formats. The theme is based on Underscores, the popular…
Twenty Fourteen is making its debut on WordPress.com today, a full 22 days ahead of the WordPress 3.8 target release date. The theme is now available for free to millions of WordPress.com users. Twenty Fourteen, designed by Takashi Irie, started out as the Further theme. Through contribution from many in the WordPress community, it is…
WordPress 3.8 development is marching forward and we should see a beta very soon. Included in this upcoming release is Twenty Fourteen, a new WordPress default theme. Twenty Fourteen is a magazine / blogging style theme. As it is somewhat niche, there will still be room for Twenty Thirteen and others. Before we add a…
Chip Bennett announced on the Make.WordPress.org website that the theme review guidelines have been updated. Specifically, the theme unit tests have been reduced from required, to recommended. This change was inspired by a passionate conversation, started by Lance Willett. In that conversation they debated whether or not guidelines were hard and fast rules.
Themify has announced that they have discovered and confirmed a vulnerability in their framework. The vulnerability stems from an unsecure file named themify-ajax.php. The fix was released on November 9th, 2012 but the auto upgrade process failed to delete the file. Themify states they have “recently received several reports of intruders using themify-ajax.php to upload…
Despite WordPress powering over 20% of the web, there are still a lot of static websites that could use a dynamic upgrade. In order for a static website to take advantage of WordPress it requires two things: A WordPress installation and a WordPress theme that looks like the static HTML site. Thanks to a new…
At the beginning of this year there were just a handful of WordPress themes available for Zurb’s Foundation framework. Most of these were basic starter themes for developers. As we near the end of 2013, Foundation is rapidly becoming more popular with front-end developers and the demand for WordPress themes is also increasing. In addition…
WP Test is a site that any WordPress theme or plugin developer will want to bookmark. Created by WordPress developer Michael Novotny, WP Test exists to provide test data for WordPress themes and plugins. The site is very simple and includes only a download and a demo button. What’s in the download package? WP Test…
A few days ago, we mentioned an article by WPShout.com that explained how to find live examples of WordPress powered sites using themes. Today, I wanted to share a new site that’s been launched called WordPress by Example. It’s a WordPress specific search engine designed to showcase sites using themes related to search terms such…
This is a simple thing but it bears mentioning. Many major WordPress theme providers offer the ability to easily add Google Analytics or other tracking code via the theme’s options panel. The idea stems from wanting to market a theme with everything needed to create the website that you see in the demo. Theme developers…
WPShout.com has a great article that explains how to easily find websites that are using the theme you’re thinking about buying or using. One of the first things I try to do before downloading or purchasing a theme is to find actual websites that are using the design. While some theme companies have a showcase…
The questions are simple but the answers are not. Can a theme that is built for developers using best practices be successful in the commercial space? Can a commercial theme add value without adding functionality and bloat? Those are the questions that a trio of WordPress developers are going to try to answer with their…
David Bisset may have been the first person to coin the term “Armchair WordCampers”, referring to those who live vicariously through WordCamp attendees via Twitter. The concept sparked an idea for him and he decided to create WP Armchair for this very audience. His first version was actually created for the WordPress 10th Anniversary, a…
EngineThemes.com recently released version 1.0 of their latest project, ForumEngine. ForumEngine is a theme that uses Custom Post Types to turn WordPress into a forum. I caught wind of this new theme via a review published on WPLift by Joe Fylan. It’s nice to finally see theme companies thinking outside the box for once instead…
Steven Gliebe recently launched a brand new theme business built around a niche audience. It’s called Churchthemes.com So far, there is only one theme available for purchase on the site, but that will soon change, as outlined by Steve in a detailed post that explains the reasoning for starting the business. It’s a great story…