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Like Obama? Get your Probama WordPress Theme

This has got to take the cake: now all those die-hard Obama supporters can get their very own, free, beautiful Probama WordPress theme, thanks to Darren Hoyt and his pals at Category 4.

I have to admit that I find Americans’ devotion and passion for political candidates to be unusual. I mean, political candidates are just people, and even worse, they’re politicians. Being a politician means making sweeping, glorious promises to solve world hunger and give free health care to every person who sets foot on American soil, and then breaking all those promises once they get into office since a) They can’t possibly keep these promises which are unrealistic and not based on anything but their ability to say whatever they want and b) They may know this and actually have no intention of fulfilling these promises.

In any case, you’ve got to give it to Obama who really has managed to capture the hearts and dreams of so many Americans. From the outside, it almost seems like there are only two candidates: Clinton and Obama, and from the outside Obama really does seem more inspiring. I mean, the guy’s gotten people to write songs for him.

And now he’s got his very own WordPress Theme. While this theme is only really useful for the small percentage of world citizens who love Obama so much that they’d build a site for him, the theme is really beautiful. The header and background image are great, and the layout and structure are eye-catching and have a lot of potential.

Probama Theme for non-Obama sites

So for those of us who aren’t Obama devotees, this theme has a lot of potential for use as a general blog or news site. The YouTube, audio and flickr sections on the home page are great, as is the four column footer. I like the list of recent articles at the end of the home page too, and the drop-down menu is fabulous. The details like the flourishes in between posts, the date style, and even the button styles all add up to make this an eye-catching and useful theme.

On a side note, the markets are predicting that Obama’s going to win, and apparently the markets predict outcome better than polls. Take a look at how the Obama stock is doing vs. the Clinton stock on Intrade:

Probama WordPress Theme

P.S. Did anyone notice that one of the singers in will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” video is speaking in Hebrew? Watch a bit, and then a woman with long hair says “Ken, anu yecholim,” which is Hebrew for “Yes, we can.” Anyone know who she is?

Posted in Themes | 10 Comments »

Create drop-down menus with WordPress plugins and themes

Drop-down menus are a great way to improve the usability of your site. They allow you to offer more information without taking up too much real estate, as well as organize your content in a useful way for your readers.

But coding a drop-down menu can be a bit of a PITA (no, not the bread that holds the falafel). Lucky for us, some of our fellow web-geeks have created easy ways for us to add drop-down menus to our websites and WordPress blogs.

WordPress Drop-down menu plugins

1. The Linux and Web Development Blog has a WordPress plugin that adds a drop-down menu to your navigation bar on your WordPress blog. In order to activate this plugin, you need to upload it, activate it, and add the following code snippet to your header file:

<?php
if (function_exists(’get_menu’))
get_menu(’topmenu’);
?>

Once you have done this, log in to your site, and customize the menu on the CSS Menu option page.

2. Ryan Hellyer has developed a super-duper plugin/generator combo that allows you to create and heavily customize a drop-down menu in your WordPress blog. Features:

• Easy to customize styles with his handy Suckerfish Dropdowns Generator
• W3C valid HTML and CSS
• Only uses Javascript for annoying browsers like IE6
• If you want your visitors to be able to access your menu with their keyboard, Ryan offers the “Suckerfish Javascript for keyboard accessibility” code for including in your site.
• Compatible with every existing browser (almost) and their uncles.

You can’t say Ryan’s not thorough! See the drop-down menu in action on the Suckerfish Dropdowns Generator page.

To use his Suckerfish WordPress plugin:

1. Download the plugin from his site and activate it.
2. Go over to his Suckerfish Dropdowns Generator and customize at will. You can change pretty much every style used for the drop-down: colors, background image, font sizes, families, weight, opacity, padding, etc. Ryan has also prepared 10 ready-made styles for drop-down menus that you can use instead of fiddling around with your own styles.
3. Once you are ready, click Submit Query and the generator will produce some CSS code.
4. Coyp and paste the code into your WordPress admin (under Options). The generated styles will only work with unordered lists with an ID of #suckerfishnav. In addition, this whole plugin/generator thing may not play nice with our least-favorite browser (IE6), so Ryan recommends using his handy Suckerfish Javascript for Internet Explorer code with your site.

3. Dtabs (Dynamic Tabs) wordpress plugin by David Burton allows themes to include an optional user controlled dynamically tabbed navigation system with the possibility of drop down menus. This plugin only works with dTab enabled themes, of which there is currently one: Kubrick Tabs. However, the author provides instructions on how to dTab enable a theme on the plugin page. You can see a working example on the author’s site. The plugin is also available on the WordPress.org plugins directory.

4. A few more drop-down menu plugins:

• wp_jquery_dropdownmenu plugin
• Wordpress CSS Drop-down Menu

WordPress Themes with drop-down menus

1. The Jillij theme is a one-column theme based on Kubrick that has transformed the vertical sidebar into a horizontal drop-down navigation bar that appears under the header image. The drop-down menu is based on Widgets, so you can modify what appears on the nav bar by changing the widgets.

2. Ryan Hellyer has also created a theme that has his Suckerfish menu built-in: Aqua Vaccinium WordPress theme. I have to admit that I don’t love the look of the theme (sorry Ryan!), but the built-in Suckerfish menu can be useful for people who prefer not to use a plugin.

(Ryan does have a theme which I really like, which he uses on his blog: Hellish Simplicity.)

Posted in Plugins, Themes | 12 Comments »

Guide to converting your XHTML CSS layout to a WordPress theme

Updated Feb. 14, 2008

Deziner Folio has a really useful step-by-step guide to taking your XHTML/CSS layout and converting it to a WordPress theme. They say this whole process can be completed in 30-40 minutes!

Developing a Wordpress Theme

Another option is DevBox’s Wireframe WordPress theme, which is available for download on their site. This is basically a barebones theme that you can use to easily take a XHTML/CSS layout and convert it into a WordPress theme.

Test Theme Wireframe WordPress Theme

Posted in Shorties, Themes | No Comments »

Park your new domain with the LaunchPad WordPress parking theme

Here’s a new and interesting WordPress theme idea: LaunchPad is a WordPress theme for people who like to buy domain names, but don’t always put a site on them right away. On many hosts, if you don’t create a site, your domain name hosts a page full of ads for them. LaunchPad was created according to the author to make it clear that “I’m not your billboard.”

LaunchPad is smart and pretty. It includes the ability for visitors to stay tuned by subscribing to the RSS feed and email updates.

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New Twitter-like WordPress theme released by Automattic: Prologue

Matt just announced the release of a new theme that will make your WordPress blog into a Twitter-like environment. The theme is called Prologue, and is available on WordPress.com and as a download under Open Source GPL. (If you click on this link, it will take you to a page where you can download each theme file one by one. It would be a little more user friendly if it was all in one zip).

Update January 31, 2008: The theme is available in one zip file download at Sizlopedia.

In case it’s not clear, Prologue does not run on the Twitter engine; it is simply a WordPress theme that uses the WordPress platform to emulate Twitter’s functionality, with a few extra WordPress blog features thrown in.

This is amazing (and is another reminder as to why I love WordPress) because:

• It is another example of the innovative brains at Automattic. Twitter has its uses, but can have many other applications with some tweaking, and currently has a few drawbacks. Automattic saw the potential, and created Prologue.
• Prologue has the following benefits that Twitter does not:
  • Privacy: It can be private so it can be used for online project management or other types of business collaboration that should not be public. As Matt says, this type of tool can be extremely useful for communication in virtual companies, and could even replace online project management tools like Basecamp.
  • Publicity: You can create your own Twitterish network on a specific topic: you love canaries and want to connect with others who share your love? Create a dedicated online site where registered users can express themselves and share information at will on caring for canaries.
  • Comments: The ability to add comments to any item means that the main conversation contains the primary information so it stays neat.
  • Multiple RSS feeds: As Matt says, “There are RSS feeds for everything: the entire prologue, each author, each tag, and even combination or searches can be subscribed to in your RSS reader.”

Check out the demo here. I love the idea, and I can’t wait to try it out.

Introducing Prologue « WordPress.com

Posted in Themes | 1 Comment »