I finally got a Wordpress theme account and it's given me motivation to finish off one of my previous themes, and finish off a new one. You can get the Tulip Time theme here and the Silver Lexus theme here they are both a 3 column fluid layout. Tulip Time is bright and orangey. You'll know what i mean if you see it. Silver Lexus on the other hand is very subtle. It might look too light (lots of light grays), but the idea behind it is to combat adsense blindness. Put some adsense ads on it, and there's no way in hell anyone would miss them How are they SEO friendly? In quite a number of ways. I've set it out the way I would normally set up a site, so search engines should like them. H1 and H2 tags come up first. Second is the content. Side Bars are displayed third. Navigation, Form Elements, Breadcrumbs, footer all come in last. H2 tag changes to whatever the page name is. They also include the usual digg, reddit, delicious, etc. links on the post pages. They're widgetized as well, so if you're into that sort of thing, it'll be ready (i hope). They also validate XHTML1.0 Strict if you care about that sort of thing. Hopefully people like them Grant Money
any suggestions on where to stick ads? Could you possibly help me out placing ads in the right column? Where would I put the ad code if I want it at the top im using the Silver Lexus.... very nice!!
I put personally put them in the left hand column as your ctr would be a great deal higher (at least from my experience). open the sidebar.php file and under where it says <div id="column2"> paste your adsense code. it would look like this <div id="column2"> <ul><li class="listHeader"><h3>Advertising</h3></li> <li> <script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_client = "pub-edit-this-number"; google_ad_width = 160; google_ad_height = 600; google_ad_format = "160x600_as"; google_ad_type = "text_image"; google_ad_channel =""; google_color_border = "FFFBFF"; google_color_bg = "FFFBFF"; google_color_link = "663300"; google_color_url = "BB8800"; google_color_text = "999999"; //--></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script></li></ul> <?php if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar('Left Sidebar') ) : else : ?> Code (markup): not sure if that helps, but hopefully it'll point you into the right direction
Grant, Great looking theme. Rep added. Before I download it I'm guessing its easy to change the header image. I want to use the theme for a sports site so the Lexus car does not really work. Do I just upload a new image (named header??). Thanks
Grant, I was wondering how to start creating a brand new custom wordpress theme? I've gotten very good at modifying existing ones to be very different and how I want them, but how should I start just coding one from scratch?
Thanks! There's 2 images as part of the header. the first (page_header.jpg) is just the background which features the slight gradient background, and the top bar (for the breadcrumbs, searchbox). the second (page_logo.jpg) is the image of the car, which has a background color that matches the first background image. if you wanted to keep the current gray background, you would only need to change the page_logo.jpg image. if you wanted to change the whole background color in the header, you'd edit both images. hope that made sense
I just went off the initial default skin and started editing that. Most themes are based off another theme at some point, so I can't see anything wrong with just starting off with an existing theme and changing it to how you want it. Then i'll find bits i like from other themes and just paste them into the theme i'm working on. If the themes are different enough, I doubt anyone will care if you've taken bits and pieces from other themes.
a bit of everything, html for the markup, css for layout and styling, php for whatever else needs to be done dynamically. there's nothing complicated, so it should all be pretty easy for anyone getting into theming to start making new themes. it's also a great way to promote a new site (make up a free theme for it, and release it into the wild!) btw, when i said copy and paste from other themes above, i didn't mean like whole sections. say i wanted to display the recent posts, i'd check what themes have done it, copy and paste the bit of code (which is usually 1 to 3 lines), and then make it work the way i want it to. if the original code was heavily customised, you'd put a note and thanks in the source code.