Archive for the ‘WordPress Themes’ Category
Despite the general awesomeness of WordPress plugins there is a common situation when plugins are an unnecessary headache for the web masters. The point is any plugin brings a series of updates that can crash your WordPress website functionality in some cases. So if you have some basic PHP skills (we mean really really basic – like being able to copy and paste the pieces of code) or web development experience you might be interested in making some little changes to your WordPress website with your own hands. With this in mind we have prepared for you some short and interesting WordPress hacks that would improve your WP-based without involving any third-party software. There are many simple functions that actually don’t need being plugin-powered. These are pagination, contact forms, social media buttons etc. Anyways, just know that this post isn’t meant to criticize the existence and usage of WordPress plugins – it’s just an alternate point of view so you could have choice. This post is meant for those seeking souls that are looking for simple and interesting solutions to improve their WordPress themes functionality.
How to build a WordPress Post Pagination without plugin
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Display Your Popular Posts In WordPress Without A Plugin
Last week we have announced the release of our WordPress 3.x themes. One of the major features they include is the ability for website owners to create and edit custom post types and page templates. This was actually one of trump cards that fortified WordPress’ positions in the CMS comparison chart. WordPress was often criticized for weak content system and the lack of flexibility in general (as we know WordPress is considered to be a blogging platform which is why it was pretty complicated to customize it for classical static business websites). So now this problem is fixed, and our new WordPress themes are perfectly compatible with this new feature and include some predefined custom post types and page templates.
So let’s get back now to these features. First of all, it very important to understand the meaning of the following terms: posts, pages, custom posts types and page templates. Without it it would be hard to comprehend all advantages and even the main point of implementing these new features.
- Post is a default content type which is related to the blogging sphere. Usually blog posts are displayed in reverse sequential order by time (newest posts come first).
- Page is a default content type that used for the static pages. Pages are for non-blog content. For example the default set of WordPress pages contains Home Page, About Us and maybe Contact Us pages. Actually you can remove all posts from a WordPress installation and by this you’ll achieve a standard non-blog static website.
- Page Template is a functional feature of our WordPress 3.x themes which allows you to change the page layout, number of columns, move siderbar etc.
- Custom Post Type is another functional feature that is tightly connected with Page templates. This option allows you to manage website’s content which is not typical for blogging post types. For example with the help of Posts section at the dashboard you can create separate pages for portfolio page items, edit content of the slider on your pages and so on. Custom post types can be the elements that page templates contain (e.g. every individual testimonial in a testimonials page template is built with testimonials post type) or may be used independently.
Now we will show you some interesting examples of the custom post types and page templates in our new WordPress 3.x themes. By the way if you want to see them in action – just click the live demo of the WordPress theme and play with its features ad lib. Here are some examples of page templates and custom post types.
Portfolio Post Type with Portfolio Page Template for 4 columns
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As you may have noticed recently our product line was enriched with WordPress 3.x themes. Despite the fact that it may seem just another piece of boring corporate news we must state the significant importance of this milestone – both for our company and our dear clients. It is not a secret that WordPress themes are an insanely popular product. So, it is not that simple to satisfy the growing needs of our customers with every new update of the WordPress CMS. But we are always open to hear the voice of our people and improve our products and services according to your needs.
WordPress CMS is famous for unique combination of reliable and highly functional back-end software which is spiced up with the ability to add extra features by installing widgets, plugins and other “delicious” stuff. And that’s the reason WordPress CMS is considered to be the most user-friendly software – even the newbies can master WordPress within the short period of time. Now that all ceremonies are over we can go straight to our topic. Below you’ll find the detailed information concerning the functional improvement of our WordPress 3.x themes.
Custom Post Types
Creating various types of posts is one of the greatest features that opens many great opportunities for WordPress users. Currently you can use the custom post types in our WordPress 3.x themes too. Here is the list of all possible post type options:
- Portfolio Post Type is the post type that delivers content in the form of image portfolio with some text comments to the images.
- Slider Post Type is another image related option that presents all your post content in the dynamic slider with navigation buttons and short text info.
- Testimonials Post Type lets you set up custom fields for this type of post, such as testimonial name, testimonial URL, set up featured image etc.
- Services Post Type
- FAQs Post Type allows to create a special post where content will be displayed in the ‘question – answer’ form as it is usually done on the FAQ pages.
Page Templates
This exact option offers you adding page templates that have various design characteristics. These pages have different number of columns, layout, sidebar absence etc. Here is a short info concerning each of our page templates.
- Full Width Page is a page template with one column and without any sidebar positions.
- About Page is a page template with one column and without any sidebar elements.
- Testimonials Page has custom styled design created by our designers specifically for displaying testimonials posts.
- FAQs Page template is a full-width page without any sidebar created for displaying FAQ information.
- Portfolio Page has 1, 2, 3 and 4 columns view layout enhanced with Prettyphoto jQuery plugin.
Multi-author blogging is not that much of a big deal these days because WordPress 3.x technically supplied us with this great function. There are many brands and projects that use the system of multiple authors on their WordPress-powered websites including such famous websites as Mashable, Techcrunch and others. So, if you run a blog with a large number of authors from different countries then you know that it is extremely difficult to control all processes without a reliable and powerful software. Everyday you have to read new posts, schedule articles, register new authors and so on. That’s why we want to present you WordPress plugins for multi-authors websites. These plugins will help you deal with publishing, staff management and other important functions. So, let’s begin!
1. WP-CMS Post Control
Now you can achieve more control over some important features of your favorite CMS. Writing post and page areas can be easily customized according to your needs. Basically you can set to show the controls you need. Also you can disable trackbacks, autosaves, revisions and even Flash uploader.
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2. Members
Among its main features are the great role management system which gives full role control over the users’ roles on your website (creating, editing and deleting). Also you can easily control user permissions (by role) to have access to posts content.
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Good news, everyone! There is no doubt that many of you, our fellow WordPress users, have heard that the major update of WordPress is coming – WordPress ver. 3.3. Yes, the current release doesn’t have such significant meaning comparing to what WordPress 3.0 was, but still it does have few very important features that cause huge impact on both simple users and WordPress developers. It means that WordPress team is planning to improve their product’s user experience for all categories of users. Now that’s that we call a smart content management system. Also, seeing our favorite CMS evolving is really a pleasant thing to do. Now if we get back to its latest release the first thing that stands out is a well-defined visual improvement of the dashboard. Also some major changes have been made in the under-the-hood sector which is primarily interesting for WordPress developers.
By the way, we’ve tested our WordPress 3.x themes with this new version of a platform and they’re perfectly compatible. Truly a match made in heaven. Now back to those new features.
We’ve collected five of most interesting (according to our opinion) new features that have been presented in WordPress 3.3 and we are going to share them with you. So, if you haven’t updated your WordPress version maybe this list will convince you to do that.
When WordPress goes paring with jQuery in the process of site development, you can come out with some really smart layout results. Because jQuery allows you to quickly animate your blog, style the navigation menu, add some interactive dynamic elements to showcase works – well this list can be endless as jQuery functions variety is ever-increasing. Most often site owners feel that the space on the front page is not enough to properly render their project objectives – if that is the case then this JavaScript library could be the solution you need. We extend our WordPress Themes with jQuery elements so you could make use of sliders, image/content galleries, show and hide functions as well as other interesting animation effects. You can use the most advanced techniques of this framework and your WordPress powered design will then feel more powerful and easy to browse and interact with. Those of customers who use our WordPress designs enhanced with jQuery already take advantage of everything this two amazing technologies can offer them. Now’s the time for you to benefit from our most advanced WordPress products.
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Jacov WordPress Theme
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JustStephen WordPress Theme
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Zero WordPress Theme
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So you pump quality blog content, but do you inject some creativity into your blog posts and articles? Well, don’t overlook the importance of post design as it plays a highly supportive role to engage people’s attention when they visit your site. We’re putting this list to show how you can style your blog content to encourage readers to spend more time on your blog and come for more. Though being quite generic in style, these web designs do break the mold of the blogosphere with creative approach towards blog post styling, being themed specifically to the content. The question comes then, what can you do to make your blog more attractive?
What keeps hooked on the blog post content is a cleverly design arrangement of posts – readers can spot grid style layouts with posts being placed throughout, neat column styles, scattered designs, themed post styles or ones that have a latest post being prominently shown whereas previous posts are being visually shortened.
As for the lead images, they often go with borders or shadowing (that helps the image stand out from the page) and are placed at the top of the post content to break up text heavy pages and provide visual relief. Left sidebar layout with the text framing the image or just going side by side with it is also popular when the task is to enhance the appeal of a blog. Thus, the image doesn’t fight with the post for attention, but reinforces the message.
When it comes to the post titles, to make them stand out from the standard post content blog owners use larger fonts, often with some unique font styles being applied to them. Plus, we can see post images with overlapping titles, often done to communicate more than a plain title could do on its own. In this case, the post title and image work together with the goal of enticing the visitor to read the first line of the post. Sometimes blog posts can even come equipped with a drop cap style when the first letter of the paragraph is being dropped cap to immediately draw readers’ attention to the start of the post.
Right after the post title usually goes some meta data – date & time, author attribution (to establish a human connection), and a comment count, which are worked into the design so they don’t stick out. However the layout solution for a date might be truly creative. Overlapping the post image, showing from behind of the content area, being distinguished with colors, unusual light/shadow effects, textures, or forms, they do their best to attract attention. Besides, a nicely designed comments count can as well go a long way towards encouraging the visitor to proceed with a post reading and even leave a comment, so it also needs serious consideration.
At the end of each blog post, many blogs are including things like buttons and links for social media voting and promotion, categories and tags, and clickable calls-to-actions (often a prominent ‘read more’ or ‘continue reading’ permalink at the end of the excerpt – short text snippets of posts on the blog’s home page) that will encourage readers to go and read the post entry. By the way, the text snippet length and formatting should be carefully calculated not to overload the page.
So break free of the usual blog posts design mindset, still try implementing these aspects as they can definitely increase and retain traffic on your blog.
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Blog.ismaelburciaga.com
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Colorcubic.com
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There is a common opinion that email marketing is mostly used by big companies that can afford it. This results in a wrongful opinion that if you are running a small blog it will be quite difficult for you to use this marketing technique. But in reality technology these days allows you to integrate virtually anything you want into your WordPress blog, and WordPress developers demonstrate the amazing flexibility of this CMS platform. Here are most popular newsletter plugins that will help you to easily manage email marketing campaigns without any problems. Actually it wasn’t that easy to find really powerful and reliable pieces of software, but these 5 plugins that we’ve chosen really do work and really are worth being used for email marketing on your WordPress blog. Having installed any of these WordPress newsletter plugins you’ll receive a great tool with a bunch of useful features allowing you to manage every step of your email marketing campaign starting from the process of the subscription to the moments of creating different mailing lists etc. We strongly recommend you to try at least two or three of these email marketing plugins for WordPress because each of these has its own interesting features that might be useful for you.
1. Newsletter
Newsletter plugin offers the widest range of options so far and is considered to be the most popular software in the field of email marketing tools for WordPress. Newsletter offers full set of tools including subscription widget, comfortable plugin interface with huge list of custom settings for the newsletter and subscribers. Also you can track down your marketing results via statistics tool available with this plugin.
Price: Free
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2. Newsletter Plugin
The following WordPress newsletter plugin offers a flexible system of creating and storing database of email subscribers on your website. You can easily create custom types of emails by using 15 custom fields, textboxes/radioboxes fields and many other useful options. This plugins is compatible with external newsletter software. It means that subscribers list can be automatically synchronized with any third party service.
Price: Free
MONDAY UPDATE: Well, randomly picking the winner was easy – since only the order of a person who called himself (or herself) WooHooSailing was eligible for entering a lottery, this person is the winner receiving small business VPS hosting plan from MyHosting.com. Congrats!
Remember that WordPress themes discount we’ve launched earlier this week? Well, we’ve decided to make it all a little bit more interesting than it already is – today we’re starting a lottery among the customers buying our WordPress themes! One lucky winner will receive the main prize – 6 months of free VPS hosting from our friends at MyHosting.com (about $200 value).
Now here’s what you have to do to enter a lottery.
- Buy one of our WordPress themes during a period of Friday, June 24th to Sunday, June 26th. This won’t be difficult as we have the Internet’s biggest variety of themes to choose from (1,200+) and each of these premium themes is available at a 20% discount.
- Once you complete your order, go back to this blog post page and post a comment containing the ID of a theme you’ve purchased in the comment text. Now here comes a very important part – while posting a comment in the email field please specify the email address that you’ve used for a template purchase on TemplateMonster (not in a comment text field). Don’t worry – the email address will never be disclosed and won’t be visible to general public, we only need to know it to be able to confirm that you have in fact made a purchase at TemplateMonster during three days of lottery and that it was a WordPress theme.
In other words, this means that only comments posted independently will be eligible for the lottery, no comments posted via social networks will be allowed to enter. We know you may not like it, but sorry, we have to do it just this once.
- First thing Monday morning we’ll look through the comments and will randomly pick one lucky winner who will receive a free 6 months VPS hosting from MyHosting.com. We’ll notify this person using the email address he/she has used for the WordPress theme order.
So, this is how we’ll do it this time – pretty simple, as you can see. Basically you purchase any WordPress theme, post a comment to this post and that’s it – you’re in!
Alright, enough of terms and conditions – everybody off to our WordPress themes section! Good luck!
Today at TemplateMonster we have launched quite a significant discount for all product categories of our WordPress designs. This great deal implies that for a very limited time you can save 20% on any WordPress Theme from TemplateMonster.
We are now selling over 1200 premium WordPress themes, varying in categories and design styles. With any of our WordPress templates you can take advantage of many enhancements, such as great functionality, easy installation, customization simplicity, but as well variety of features that will lessen your efforts maintaining them. Our WordPress Templates offer the best value for your money, plus you get awesome discount when buying them now!
So, if you think about starting a new WordPress website, you can move easily and benefit from the current promotion. WordPress 20% discount will last only two weeks starting June 21st until July 5th 2011, and all you have to do is browse our WordPress Templates collection and purchase the theme you like most at a special bargain price. Make sure you spare no time and order now – this promotion is for limited time only!
Defrozo Photoportfolio WordPress Theme
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John Thomas WordPress Theme
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