Review of WordPress for iPhone

Review of WordPress for iPhone By Ryan

On the way home last night I was browsing through unread feeds and saw someone talking about installing the new WordPress app on their iPhone. I jumped straight into the App Store and downloaded it for free (look for it under “Utilities”). The download was quick (even on an Edge connection), and within seconds I was setting up my own blogs and checking out the available feature set.


Interview with WordPress Theme Designer Small Potato

Interview with WordPress Theme Designer Small Potato By Ryan

There are a few names which stick out in WordPress developer/designer circles. One of those names is, curiously enough, a made up name: Small Potato.

Small Potato ran a very popular website devoted to WordPress called WPDesigner. Since some time last year Small Potato has disappeared and hasn’t (as far as I know) been in contact with anyone in the development community. Luckily I pulled together this interview with him before he left.


Interview with WordPress WPBits Blogger Leonid Mamchencov

Interview with WordPress WPBits Blogger Leonid Mamchencov By Ryan

I had the opportunity some time ago to interview someone who is very much interested in WordPress development: Leonid Mamchencov. He’s the blogger over at WPBits, and makes a point of explaining that his blog is not a blog about blogging.

I think I like him already. Full text of interview below.


10 Impressive Tumblelog WordPress Themes Reviewed

10 Impressive Tumblelog WordPress Themes Reviewed By Ryan

Tumblelogs are a popular form of blogging, whether they take the traditional minimalistic form or not. When the amount of information is available the way it is online via blogs, strong and simple messages are all the more valuable. The popularity of Jason Kottke’s kottke.org and John Gruber’s Daring Fireball are two examples of this trend in action, despite the fact that their sites don’t fit the new accepted tumblelog design format.


Announcing Theme Playground WordPress Discussion Live on Ustream.tv

Announcing Theme Playground WordPress Discussion Live on Ustream.tv By Ryan

What I’m calling Theme Playground On WordPress (Live) — real original, right — will be an hour long discussion, from 9pm to 10pm EDT tonight at Ustream.tv.


Chris Pearson and User-Functions.php

Chris Pearson and User-Functions.php By Ryan

Chris Pearson has put together a nice tutorial all about creating a user-functions.php file in your WordPress installation.

Do you enjoy your widget-ized sidebars? Then you have functions.php to thank. Theme developers can also use functions.php to add extra functionality to their themes. Just recently I customized a functions.php file in order to enable a theme options page, a method I’ll share with you later this week.

Here’s what Chris had to say:

One idea that immediately comes to mind is the creation of your own widgets (think sales boxes, special links, product descriptions, etc.). If you define functions for your most commonly-used widgets, you’ll be able to call them at any point in your theme’s code. This makes it much easier to test how certain elements will look on different parts of the page, which is useful for designers and amateur code-wranglers alike.

The benefit of using a user-functions.php, or a custom-functions.php (naming conventions are up to you), is that you can take your functions with you to any new theme you use, making transitions much smoother. He has also, not long ago, talked about adding a custom CSS file to your theme for added control.

Also, be sure to check out Pearson’s new Thesis theme. It looks pretty solid, from where I sit.


Theme Review: Amazing Grace

Theme Review: Amazing Grace By Ryan

This morning I received a notice from Vladimir Prelovac that he has just released his newest theme which he is calling Amazing Grace. Since he was nice enough to send me a note about it, I thought I could be nice enough to review it.


Matt Mullenweg Interviewed on Random Bits

Matt Mullenweg Interviewed on Random Bits By Ryan

I listened to a really interested podcast last week: an interview with Matt Mullenweg, creator/founder of WordPress. Matt mentioned it today on his blog (good one to subscribe to, if you are a WordPress fan) and it reminded me that I took some notes to post for those who might be interested in the bullet points without spending a half an hour listening to the cast.

First off, there is a great topic-by-topic breakdown at Search-This, the site responsible for the interview. See the podcast page for a breakdown of the entire interview. I’m just going to mention my favorite parts.

  • Matt said that one of the biggest changes we’ll see in WordPress 2.4 (due early 2008, and delayed for the sake of the developers enjoying Christmas) will be in the interface. He didn’t go into detail, but just said that this will be the biggest interface update since 1.0. Any guesses as to what will change?
  • When asked if there were any Plugins that Matt would consider incorporating into WordPress by default (like what happened with sidebar widgets) Matt mentioned the Google Sitemaps Plugin, which creates a dynamic sitemap for your blog. See our tutorial on the Plugin or go to the Plugin’s site.
  • Matt also talked about the photo gallery Plugin he has in use on his own blog (heavily modified) which he would like to incorporate into WordPress at some point. I was glad he acknowledges that WordPress could improve the handling of uploaded images, since I have been thinking that for a while.
  • Some exciting news on bbPress, the forum developed by Automattic and in use currently as the WordPress.org support forums: Matt thinks highly of it, and recently hired on someone named Sam to work specifically on bbPress. Apparently, since bbPress came after WordPress, the code is even more beautiful than WordPress’ code is. They are planning a hosted version as well. It sounds like it would be a lot like the WordPress.com/.org setup.

Watch Me Design a WordPress Theme: Colors, Fonts, and Design Decisions

Watch Me Design a WordPress Theme: Colors, Fonts, and Design Decisions By Ryan

NewsPlay, header designed

Yesterday was a really eventful one for the design and development of NewsPlay. I can’t take all of the credit, either. There were quite a few friends and readers involved in different elements. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I lost a lot of sleep developing this concept. And I think (hope) it was worth it. I’m still a ways from complete, but I think it’s finally something worth looking at and talking about.


Current state of design for NewsPlay, small

Borders and Color Palettes

I always have trouble with color choices, and this case was no different. I was chatting with someone I work with at Aspiring Indie about it (via Campfire) and she made a good point.

Color discussion on Campfire about Newsplay

She made a good point. If I want this to really take on the look and feel of a newspaper (and be mold-able by others) I need to keep the canvas somewhat open. Thanks, Ashley!

Oh, and I’m really excited about the border style. It’t pretty unique (that’s what she said) but it’s really growing on me.

…that’s what she said.

Teaser Images in the Masthead

This one really took some playing with. I mentioned this in an earlier videoblog, but basically I want the top section of this theme to operate the way the topmost portion of a newspaper does; that is, to highlight stories within the publication.

Here’s what I started with.

Beginning the teaser design process for NewsPlay

That’s from the gray box design I started with. From this I went through a few different renditions. Least of which was this.

Designing the teasers for NewsPlay

Pretty nasty, right? I should get points for disclosure in showing you the steps I take!

After some design and deliberation, though, I came to this. I think it’s a pretty cool way of showing off what’s new.

Designing the teasers for NewsPlay

Oh, and thanks to Scott from Phoreo for pointing out that the color in the header was tough to read. Fixed it, for the sake of eyes everywhere.

I like this way because it gives lots of space, has a nice tight size of the display image, and doesn’t take too much away from the header. What do you think?

The Sidebar, Before and After

I had some nice feedback from readers in my last post regarding the sidebar, and hopefully this will reflect some of those ideas.

Sidebar, before and after for NewsPlay, small

Click the image for a bigger version.

I’m playing with the idea of adding the date and breadcrumbs to the top of the sidebar, thanks to the suggestion from Neil in the comments the other day. It’s not quite in the header, Neil, but I’m hoping it might pull off a similar effect. Thoughts?

I really like this way of bordering (is that a verb?) the images in this theme. What do you think?

Choosing Fonts

Typography truly can make or break a design. I will talk about keeping a vertical grid later (something which greatly improves a site’s design) but right now I want to explain the decision to switch from sans-serif to serif on this theme.

One reason for the switch is that serif type better reflects print typography, in that many printed publications will use serif since it’s (arguably) easier to read on paper. Another reason for the switch is that I think Georgia looks prettier than Helvetica for this theme. Screens below.

NewsPlay with Helvetica

Using Helvetica.

NewsPlay with Georgia

Using Georgia.

As always, I’m open to suggestions. And changing this part of the theme will always be pretty simple, thanks to the beauty of CSS!

Thoughts Moving Forward

This post was much easier as a regular text post than a videoblog. I look forward to some more screencasting as I start cutting the theme together, but that’s a few days away right now.

Here’s the most recent PSD, as recent as the one sitting open on my laptop. I’ve incorporated Ulrich’s thoughts and contribution into this new one, so be sure and take a look. This is starting to take life a bit! (Thanks for the ideas, Ulrich!)

I will be experimenting next with a fluid two or three column option. What this means is I will want to have a design that looks good in a number of different ways. We’ll see how it goes, but I think it will really make this theme. Oh, and of course it will be built on Sandbox, if anyone is familiar.

Thanks for reading and participating in my little experiment here. I look forward to more feedback!

Other Posts in This Series


Watch Me Design a WordPress Theme: Getting Started in Photoshop

Watch Me Design a WordPress Theme: Getting Started in Photoshop By Ryan

Newsplay Photoshop Screen 01

It’s been a few days since I’ve updated this project, and I’m pretty excited about where this is headed now. The pressure is definitely on to develop something awesome, since Cory Miller has released NewsPixel and Adii has released Premium News Theme in just the past week or so, it seems. (Reviews of each will be on the way this week.) They are both pretty solid, and the last thing I want to do is start some sort of rivalry. I only hope my little project still makes a difference in what is quickly becoming a crowded market.

So, with that I offer the videoblog/screencast below if you wish (YouTube this time, which will hopefully work a bit more consistently) and some more information on my progress so far underneath the video.

From Paper to Screen

My last post of this series showed some of the designs I have been doodling in my notebook, and I received some good feedback in the comments. Not it’s time to start moving from paper to screen, and in doing so start to flesh out some of the decisions I’ve been considering both on my own and here at Theme Playground.

Newsplay Photoshop Screen 02

Above you’ll see a slightly small version of what I’ve been working on. It’s not complete by any stretch of the imagination.

I call this first version of the design a gray box design. I try to get all the basic proportions down and jot down the purpose of each area, but I don’t spend much time, if any, on fine tuning any of the design elements. The goal, in this stage, is to get the ideas down and to get them down fast.

Teasers in the Nameplate

One of the first things that exicited me about putting this theme together was the possibility of putting in teasers, like printed newspaper would, in the nameplate of the design. (The nameplate is the area where the logo resides, and the space is used to identify the publication.)

In the image above you can see I’ve only blocked out this space, but there are a few different ideas I have for actually making it happen. At first I considered only using blocks of color and text, as that would be simplest, but I really like the idea of using images if they are made available by the blogger. I will be working on this area soon to get some possible design concepts worked out.

Links to “Page Two”

Newsplay Photoshop Screen 03

I think it’s cute.

You know how in newspapers there is always that reference at the end of the column on the front page telling you to turn to another page to keep reading? Well, what if that same sort of direction was at the end of each shortened post on the NewsPlay homepage?

The page referenced will be the name of the category the post is associated with. I may have to make it display only the first category, though, since people tend to go crazy when adding categories to posts (don’t do that, by the way).

Have Ideas? Let Me Have ’Em!

I want to make this as available as possible to anyone who wants to take part. By that I mean that (like I said in the video above) I am making this Photoshop file available for download for anyone who wants to play with it in its current state. There isn’t much there, but have at it.

Download the NewsPlay Gray Box Design for Photoshop

I’ve left notes throuhgout the document and I hope that if you have ideas, you will contribute to this process. If you have a great idea, drop it in the comments or add it to the PSD and shoot it back my way. I really am excited for any feedback!

Remember, only about ten more days until this theme has to be completed. So don’t hesitate if you have ideas, this thing will be done before you know it.

Brainstorming More Ideas

And don’t think you can’t throw out ideas for this theme, even if they don’t seem useful at this stage. Here are some things that come to my mind:

  • Kick butt print and mobile views
  • The option to run with two or three columns
  • Drop down menu (with actual pages, not just categories)

What do you think?