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February 25 2014
February 17 2014
February 11 2014
HTML, CSS, PSD and More: 24 Free Design Resources from January 2014
Creativity is like a cat. Sometimes it gives you head butts and rubs against you. Then it delivers you nothing but dead prey or stays away completely for days. As a creative professional you need to find ways to get creativity back, while your cat just needs you to patiently wait as long as it takes. Sparking your creativity is best done by inspiration and inspiration comes from many things, not the least other people’s work. In the face of this fact we’ve put together yet another set stuffed with HTML, CSS and PSD templates and added the best UI kits. Your cat will not be interested, but you should keep the following list safe and warm….
January 20 2014
HTML, CSS, PSD and More: 22 Free Design Resources from December 2013
Design resources are great in many ways. Some of us might just use them as they are, building their next project upon them. Others simply take them as an inspiration to create their own. All of us collect these resources. There’s no denying, we are hunter-gatherers. In the face of this fact we’ve put together yet another set stuffed with HTML, CSS and PSD templates and added the best UI kits. Bring it to the fireplace and hear everyone whoop with joy.
December 11 2013
HTML, CSS, PSD and More: 25 Free Design Resources from November 2013
Hello world! Another month has passed and here we are, back again with another collection of the most awesome fresh and free design resources we were able to dig up. We’ve put together a set stuffed with HTML, CSS and PSD templates and added the best UI kits. One important information before you read on: All the following elements are freely usable, though some will require a registration to download.
December 03 2013
35 Stylish WordPress Themes With a Flat UI
I think it’s obvious by now that ‘flat’ is not just a new design trend or style that will go away next year. It’s here to stay and I think it’s great.
The idea behind what we call ‘flat design’ is to remove the noise. This means anything that is not necessary to a design. Things like heavy gradients, not-so-subtle drop shadows, 3d graphics, and the heavy use of skeuomorphism, can be replaced with more muted color schemes, solid colors, and a stronger focus on typography – a flat design focusses on the essentials.
In this post we have collected a total of 35 great WordPress themes that sport a flat design style. I hope you enjoy this post, feel free to chime in via the comment section!
Colangine
Flatsome
Lorencia
Rocco
Marble
Coffee & Cream
Sketch
Omni
Kumaon
Swatch
Vertex
Kyte
Glider
Flat
Peddlar
Blogist
Discover
Hardy
Blogify
Satellite7
Doctype
Falco
Hayden
Keylight
Flatco
GoodInc
FlatBook
Flat
Flat
Hypertext
Amada
Alfie
Baylie
iMagPress
Breathe
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this post. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
November 21 2013
10 Free Beautiful WordPress Themes for Bloggers
WordPress is one of the most amazing blogging systems ever created. It’s easy to use and tinker around, which makes it very popular for bloggers, especially for most web designers. One of its awesome features is it’s easy to understand theme structure. Using basic PHP and some of WordPress functions, you will be gazing at the best theme that you could ever see in no time.
Below are 10 WordPress themes for bloggers that will make your eyes pop. They are well-designed and very easy to use. These themes are directed towards web designers and bloggers alike. Web Designers can make the most out of these themes by ‘inspecting the elements’ of the design and somehow, adapting them to theirs. Bloggers can use these themes on their blogs so that they will be spared on finding or even coding their own themes. Either way, these themes will provide you with some sort of inspiration. So, what are we waiting for? It’s time to look at these themes!
1. Best theme
2. Respo theme
3. Aldehyde
4. Flozo
5. Sueva
6. Respo-2
7. Espressionista
8. Terrifico
9. Playbook
10. Elegant Best Business Portfolio Theme
These WordPress themes are made for your utilization. However, you are still entitled to do your own designs. In fact, I personally encourage you to do yours. Why? Well because for one thing, it will stretch your creativity and allow you to become a better blogger/web designer. These are just like training wheels to guide you, so that when you’re ready, you will face the real world of web design and blogging with your heads up.
Essential Features for Building a New WordPress 3.7 Theme
When you sit down to develop a modern-day WordPress theme you’ll typically be following some design mockup, or at least an idea in your head. This can be a challenge at times when you don’t want to think much about the customizations. But any good WordPress theme should be comprised of a number of key points.
In October 2013 the newest WordPress 3.7 release was announced with plenty of new features. Not many updates will directly impact themes, yet it is a marvel seeing how far this platform has advanced since version 3.0. In this article I want to go over some of the core fundamentals you should think about including with every new WordPress theme. Especially for premium or free themes designated for commercial use by hundreds of different webmasters.
Getting Started
If you are unfamiliar with the core fundamentals of WordPress theming please check out their online documentation for more details. The bare minimum requirements should be a single index.php file along with a style.css stylesheet. Your CSS should begin with a comment block indicating the theme name, version, and other key metadata.
But this is quite literally the absolute least effort you could put into theming. Once you can start building in the functions.php file you’ll end up with a whole lot more customization. You can specify new custom post types, taxonomies, pretty much anything technical should be organized into functions and called in your theme file(s), or within the content as a shortcode.
Some of this terminology is newer to WordPress development beyond 3.0. If you are not sure how to build shortcodes or CPTs don’t worry! Plenty of guides online provide an easy-to-copy template of code which you could save as your own snippet for future development. Just be sure to familiarize yourself with these newer features to at least understand how they behave, and how they look in the WP Admin backend.
Theme Headers & Backgrounds
When you click on the “Appearance” link within the admin panel you find a number of sub-links which appear based on the currently active theme. One link says Header and this is very typical with newer WordPress themes. This settings page allows users to change out their header text for an image, or just update the link/background colors.
This is also true with custom backgrounds on the page. You can read more about custom headers & backgrounds which changed a bit during version 3.4. Basically you’d need to code an area for dynamic updates in the header, based on what the user selects. Both of these background/header functions can take an array of settings which determine the default state.
Backgrounds are slightly trickier but definitely not impossible. Custom Background Extended is a free plugin which capitalizes on this functionality. You can install the plugin and go through the source code to see how it works, or even check out some other related articles online. When targeting a wide audience both of these features can dramatically improve the quality of your theme.
Active Widget Areas
WordPress widgets are another very popular topic that have been around since the early days. However the process for developing widgets gradually advanced over newer versions to achieve what we have today. If you’re not familiar with the process of widgetizing a theme then definitely check out the online documentation or follow along with great tutorials online.
The benefit to widgetizing your theme is not in the ability to create your own widget(although this is pretty cool). By simply coding a widgetized sidebar you are allowing the user to swap out different pre-built widgets to see what looks best on the site. Plugins may also create new widgets giving the user even more options to switch around.
It’s noteworthy that a widgetized area can be placed anywhere in your theme. You could place some in your footer, just after the content, or even at the very top of your layout(think advertising). To get more technical, it helps if you name the widget areas specifically for their intended purpose. Also consider if they are left empty what content should appear, if anything at all.
Once you get comfortable programming widgetized areas into your theme, it might incentivize you to learn how to actually build custom widgets. These can include anything you like from database queries, API data, login forms, and so forth.
Custom WP Nav Menus
This step is probably the other crucial piece to any WordPress theme. Custom headers, widgetized areas, and WP menus are the 3 key points you should always consider. Anything else is definitely beneficial but certainly not required for a successful release.
You can read up more about navigation menus and the wp_nav_menu() function directly on the WordPress codex. The point is to first code a nav menu with a unique name. Then you can implement this menu into your layout with wp_nav_menu() calling the unique name as a parameter. If the menu isn’t setup then it’ll display the typical navigation by default.
Anybody who is somewhat familiar in WordPress should know how to create a custom menu. The user can arrange links and sub-links which become auto-formatted into HTML lists. Then the user selects which menu should be used and it’s all set! Now you would see this user-created list attached to a dynamic menu section already in the theme.
Additional Theme Settings
When you download a new copy of WordPress none of the internal themes have an extra settings menu. This has to be coded manually using the Settings API. It will usually display another link under “Appearance” with any text you choose – it is specific to your theme.
On this new settings page you can practically structure the layout any way you’d like. It can include sliders, input fields, many buttons and even multiple tabbed sections. Plugin developers often need to create their own settings pages for handling user preferences. But themes do not always require such settings – it is often found in more premium products.
But that doesn’t mean you should be discouraged from the idea! One free theme Monster does a very simple yet elegant job with this feature. Once activated you’ll find a new link “Theme Options” that displays a list of icons. The only option a user may customize is the monster icon which displays at the top of the page. A very simple and almost unnecessary settings panel – however it’s just one working example among a plethora of ideas that you could build into a WordPress theme.
Using Shortcodes
I brought up shortcodes earlier and I want to point out that many themes do not include these by default. Many plugins choose to utilize shortcodes because it is easier for embedding PHP-driven content into the page. Other reasons might include formatting text styles like columns, horizontal rules, link buttons, tables, HTML5 video players, and so forth.
WordPress also has a documented section about their Shortcode API you should look into. The development process might remind you of building a widget. Although these two ideas are very fundamentally different because shortcodes will be added directly into post/page content using brackets. So a new video widget might look like this: [wpvideo src="/media/movie.mp4" width="640" height="480"][/wpvideo]
You have the freedom to name your tags anything you like, so long as it hasn’t already been taken by another plugin or a core WordPress feature. If you are brand new to making themes don’t stress about getting into shortcodes right away. Build something that you can be proud of and make sure it works properly with no bugs. From there you should try updating the v1.0 release to add some extra functionality – and maybe a bit of that functionality includes shortcodes.
Closing
Many of these ideas are commonly understood by folks who are familiar with WordPress. Keep in mind that not everyone wishes to be a developer. So the more you can get people interacting with the admin section and not the source code, the better your theme will scale. But it’s also true that development is messy and sometimes you just need to hack into the code! No matter how you decide to start building themes, just keep practicing and be sure to gauge feedback whenever possible.
November 18 2013
Fall Cleaning Pt. 2: 26 Free Design Resources, Fresh from October 2013
Hello global design community!. We are back with another edition of our monthly collection of the freshest design resources. Today, we’ll show you, what October 2013 had to offer. If you know our series already, you know you can expect the best HTML, CSS and PSD templates, as well as UI-kits for your next great web or native app. All of the resources showcased here are fresh, free and easy to download, suitable for experienced and amateur web designers, so be sure to download the ones you love and share them with everyone you know!
November 08 2013
35 Magnificent Free and Premium Tumblr Blog Themes
The various blogging platforms such as WordPress, Blogger, and Medium has paved the way for newer and better features in web applications. Tumblr has always been a very interesting platform because it utilizes many post formats which appear naturally in the user interface. Thus many Tumblr themes are built focusing around these post formats. It is a unique way of blogging where you don’t always need to be writing text in order to post.
For this collection I have organized 35 outstanding themes for Tumblr blogs. Some of the free themes have been around for years, while others are still pretty new. I’ve also split the list between some free themes along with some premium designs. You can definitely count on high-quality work in these premium themes – the question is do you use Tumblr enough to justify a purchase? Check out these templates and see what you think about refreshing your blog, or even opening up a new one!
Mono
FeelinDreams
Pierre
Desire
Tumblair
Serendipity
Within
Halftone
Luomo
Vintage Metro
Pholiotheme
Polaroid
Fanfarron
Pastel
Redib
Diana
Pinch
Sewed
Druid
Clarus
Art She Said
Rubber Cement
GreyMatters
Jennifer
Linear
Langer
Effector
Simple Things
Chunky
Color Shades
Royal Cameleon
Papercut
Ava-May
Showroom
Lightweight
November 06 2013
Blacktie.co: Premium Bootstrap 3 Themes for Free
This is a must-read for any designer out there! Blacktie.co is a side project of Carlos Alvarez, a theme crafter in his own words. He ‘s not available for freelance work at the moment, so don’t bother to ask. On Blacktie.co, Alvarez offers free Bootstrap 3 themes in premium quality. At the time of this writing there are "only" seven themes available, yet all of which are of high quality and keep the promise to be "premium".
October 16 2013
Colors of Fall 2013: 21 Fresh and Free Design Resources
Hello designers, developers, web enthusiasts of the globe. We are back with another edition of our monthly collection of the freshest design resources the month of September had to offer. If you know our series already, you know you can expect the best HTML, CSS and PSD templates, as well as UI-kits for your next great web or native app. All of the resources showcased here are fresh, free and easy to download, suitable for experienced and amateur web designers, so be sure to download the ones you love and share them with everyone you know!
September 16 2013
44 Alluring Websites Powered by WordPress
Open source has taken the web design community by storm. Even just the past 1-2 years has seen a tremendous rise in the number of plugins, themes, and free codes for web developers. Notably WordPress is a fast-growing CMS engine for running your own blog or website.
There are millions of different websites powered by WordPress running online, with new launches happening each month. I put together this gallery focusing on 44 eye-catching websites running on WordPress. You can use these designs as inspiration for your own ideas. WP theming is a big topic and it’s worth studying so that you can build your own themes.
HelloWallet
Creative9
Bill Cosby
Official PlayStation Blog
Yoke
SoSweet! Creative
Barrel
Kaus
Unheap
Bottled Sky
The Style Spy
NuContext Creative
Fringe Web Development
Ghost Horses
Attitude
In Motion
Rule of Three
Carol Rivello
Tone Agency
Amp Agency
Demand Media
Web Designer Wall
Voodoo Solutions
Grind
The App Developers
InfinityList
Start Somewhere
National Academy Museum
Trokit Agency
I-MTB Magazine
Pulpfingers
Izumi Massage
Last Minute Illustration
WPliving
40digits
Coca-Cola Brazil
Onst Creative
3magine
Colorz
We Code Builder
Worry Free Labs
Knock Knock Factory
Marketing Profesional
Latin Rogue Cleaning
September 13 2013
Hotter than August: 26 Fresh Templates, Themes and UI-Kits from Last Month
How was the month of August in your area of the globe? Over here in Europe we definitely had (and still have) some hot spots. So, if swimming is what you aim for, come over to the Mediterranean and be happy. If you’d rather refresh some web designs than your worn-out body stay with us and read on. Once again we roamed about the webs, searching for the freshest elements a web designer could be interested in. This is what we came up with.
September 10 2013
How To Stay Cool When Your Client Wants To Maintain Their Own WordPress Site
So your client doesn’t want you to maintain their website for them. I encounter this a lot working with DIY-minded small business owners, and I used to dread it – I mean really dread it. Back in the day, allowing your client access to a website meant constantly fixing it after they broke it. Or worse, they would break it then try to fix it themselves after 3-hours of researching the error code on Google. Yikes.
August 01 2013
Best of July 2013: 30+ Brand-New HTML/PSD Themes & UI Elements
This is the second compilation in our monthly series of brand-new HTML/PSD themes and UI elements. All the works exposed here are fresh resources from the month of July 2013. You will find another big set of ready to use themes, templates and elements for the web as well as completely editable files for your favorite image or vector editor. We got something for everybody…
July 15 2013
40 Beautiful 3 Column WordPress Themes For Free Download
WordPress themes are everywhere and there is literally a huge plethora of themes available for the WordPress users to choose from. One of the main reasons of WordPress popularity is the availability of high quality and quite flexible themes that can make any website truly captivating.
In this day and age, 3 column WordPress themes are getting very popular and this is the reason why we have compiled this collection of 40 excellent 3 column WordPress themes for you.
We have already published a post about 3 Column WordPress Themes and today’s collection also will be useful for you. All the themes presented in this collection are free to download. So, enjoy everyone!
July 11 2013
Summer 2013: The best HTML/PSD Themes & UI Elements of the Season
If you develop websites and your environment is not WordPress, you still don’t need to live your online life in visual darkness or hide beneath the sheets. We curated a list of awesome templates layered in HTML and CSS to make your work easier, and with a lot of different grooves to find the appropriate one for your web. Or, if you are you more confortable developing your own theme based on some pre-built elements, here is the inspiration you need to create an awesome theme or application. Starting with the PSDs and UIs shown below, you can create your own awesome design. Take a look!
July 01 2013
Premium Small Business & Corporate WordPress Themes for Inspiration
Launching your new small business can be a real hassle. There are always a million other things to be handling related to accounting, marketing, project management, and other various tasks. Getting your new website up online can be one of the slowest processes if you aren’t prepared. But thankfully if you do not want to craft an entire layout from scratch there are dozens of WordPress themes to choose from instead!
I’ve spent some time perusing the most interesting WordPress premium themes for new company launches. Any of these templates would be an added benefit to your company. Plus it can save you over a week of time from handling the website design, coding the theme, and then checking for bug fixes. These templates are already fully coded and support the latest version of WordPress 3.5+. Check out a few samples and see what you think.
ListingPress
ListingPress is a WordPress premium theme geared towards real estate agents & companies. The design is almost too perfect to pass up if you are in this field of work. The homepage features related listings along with locations and search features.
Overgrowth
The Overgrowth theme stands out as a very plain white template. It leads users deeper into the content because of typography styles and elusive imagery. But oddly enough the website layout is also designed for retina devices. This means each of the images uses an @2x variant on the more dense retina screens.
Glider
Glider is a typical WordPress theme focused around the image slideshows. I have been really impressed with the actual frontend coding on this theme. All of the HTML and CSS is very neatly organized. Any WP developer should have no problem customizing this theme to their own liking.
K. Responsive
K. Responsive WordPress theme is a great choice for a design agency or local business. The flat website layout is easy to navigate and provides a very intuitive feeling. Just checking out the live demo and watching the responsive features really makes this theme a pin above the rest. It is also a single-page parallax scrolling layout which is even more exotic.
Minett
Minett is designed as a modern responsive WordPress theme. It should be used for typical agencies or companies within the tech/Internet arena. The whole design is based on a 12-grid system using metro blocks and darker colors. I really like the template and it could be put to good use by any number of companies.
Metronomy
Metronomy is a similar theme that uses blues and greys to blend the text into the layout. I really like the heading area because it is small yet easy to navigate. The text is super easy to read even on mobile devices. This is why Metronomy is such a great responsive theme for corporations.
Nuzi
Nuzzi stands out as a retina-display optimized responsive business theme. The top heading section contains a content slider which you may adjust in the backend. But the top navigation with dropdown menus is what stands out to me the most. Each link icon will update on hover and it provides a beautiful user experience.
BuMagic
BuMagic is a clean responsive business WordPress theme for developers. It provides an exceptional template for getting started when you just need to get something online. I really like the minimalist approach which stands out more than the complicated textures.
Tfingi
Tfingi seems to be a really basic theme with a multitude of color choices. You can select from any number of color schemes to display right on the homepage. There are also plenty of great shortcodes which relate to buttons, inputs, and image slideshows. Check out the live sample demo to see everything that this theme has to offer.
Reclame
Reclame WordPress premium theme is a brilliant HTML5 layout designed for any business. It uses dark text with a light background along with colorful link animations. I particularly enjoy the featured icons listings where the background changes color as you hover.
Olympus
Olympus is a retina-ready responsive WordPress theme for small businesses. The colors are easy to blend and they really stand out when skimming through content on the site. Each dropdown section in the top navigation may span a number of columns. This can be useful if your company has a lot of pages which all need to be linked from the same nav menu.
Circles
The Circles WordPress theme is really cute and goes perfectly with almost any topic. The design features 4 main layout types which are all adjustable from the backend. The blog itself also has variations which you can update to blend nicely for your business needs.
Inceptio
Inceptio is a responsive multi-purpose theme which is designed to be used for an Internet media company. You can use this for practically any company, but the design features and homepage slider often favor portfolio entries. The footer section has 3 different block areas which are great for publishing your company ideologies.
MiniCorp
Minicorp WordPress theme really is a mini corporation website. It focuses on flat website UI along with a common responsive navigation menu. As you resize the page some of the elements will drop off and remain hidden. This is a truly brilliant company website if you have a bit of time for customizing the page elements.
eBookie
How many writers are looking to publish their own eBooks online? Well the eBookie premium theme is an excellent choice for launching your site. This responsive theme is designed to focus around your new book launch, and hopefully draw in paying customers from the landing page.
Webbie
Now Webbie is a little different in that this theme is geared towards marketing your Internet company online. This is a great template for setting up your own eBook shop, or selling website templates or WP plugins. The Webbie theme favors creative professionals who are building their own products to sell online.
Blandit
Blandit may seem to imply the more bland nature of this website layout. But in some cases your business really just needs a simple, bland interface for visitors to gather information. How much more could you ask for? I would certainly recommend Blandit as an easy to use, easy to customize WordPress theme which fits any company niche.
Vertex
The Vertex theme is beautiful because of its elegant typography. You can setup a custom logo right at the top next to the heading navigation which blends perfectly into the image slideshow. I really like the simplicity of this layout because it forces visitors to focus on your content. Check out the live demo preview to get a better idea.
Fusion
Fusion is an interesting WP premium choice which has a fullscreen background image in most of the page layouts. This can be adjusted within the CSS to fit anything your company needs. I really do like this theme and it is worth checking out if you have the time.
MyProduct
For software developers and open source projects I must recommend the MyProduct theme. This is practically a showcase website layout built using WordPress to offer sales of your latest application. Both desktop and mobile platforms could benefit using this theme as a marketing point. But the template will need a few customizations before going up online.
MyCuisine
The business world is full of restaurants which really need an Internet presence. MyCuisine is an exceptional WordPress theme based around this exact niche. The price is very reasonable to get up your own website online quickly without very many customizations.
MyApp
The MyApp theme is very similar to MyProduct, except this time it is based around mobile applications. Often times developers will launch a new mobile app and create its own homepage website too. This WordPress theme is perfect for developers who need a quick solution to getting their app website online.
Glider
The best part about Glider is the fixed sidebar navigation interface. This may not be very common among other business websites, but it does advance the user experience to a whole new level. I think this template is at least worth testing just to see if you could use it. This will not fit every company but it is at least worth looking into as an alternative.
The Corporation
The Corporation is my final example in this collection of business themes. WordPress does come out-of-the-box with a fantastic number of settings. This corporate theme is sleek, easy to use, and provides lots of extra space for offbeat content. It is just another choice you may find useful instead of building your own theme from scratch.
Final Thoughts
Not every new company launch will need its own website. Sometimes there are other more pressing issues to deal with, or you may be using an alternative website to handle contacts. I would recommend that new companies plan out their website in advance. This way your agenda will be set in motion before even tackling any big projects! Although this is a wonderful collection, continue to browse some other templates and see if you can pick out the perfect choice for your business.
June 29 2013
At A Glance: How To Secure Your WordPress Site [Infographic]
Securing your self-hosted WordPress site is absolutely essential. That’s the reason for our continuous coverage of this particular topic throughout the years. With WordPress becoming more and more dominant as the motor of today’s web, the topic stays at the top of our advice list. Throughout the last four years, the number of WordPress blogs having been hacked has more than doubled from 81,000 to over 170,000 per year. The fresh infographic by WPTemplate.com aggregates everything you need to know to properly secure your site and gives you a decent hint sheet to always keep your eyes on.
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