News 13 comments

PressPlay 2.1 Released

By Michael on March 22nd, 2010

Just released the first update for PressPlay 2.0.  The major improvements of version 2.1:

  • By request, I’ve added theme options that give you total control over the page and category menus in the header.  Each menu can display Pages, Categories, or nothing at all.
  • I’ve fixed a few bugs involving images in posts.  Most notably, images should now center correctly.
  • I’ve changed the way the tabbed widgets in the sidebar load in order to minimize conflicts with certain Plugins.  If you had to deactivate a Plugin to get the tabbing to work correctly, give it another go.
  • Finally, I moved the search function to searchform.php and tweaked the search code so that it now validates correctly.

Download it at WordPress, or head over to the PressPlay page for more info and a demo.

Theme Customization 1 comment

How to Integrate Twitter onto your Blog the Easy Way

By Michael on March 21st, 2010

Alongside Twitter’s massive rise in popularity over the past two years, I’ve noticed that a lot of WordPress themes are coming with built-integration between your blog and your Twitter account.  Typically, you enter your account name in a theme options page, and then your blog will display your latest tweets and maybe include a “follow me” link.

Guess what?  These features can be nice, but they’re almost totally unnecessary.  You already had the ability to do this, and probably more flexibly than the theme’s particular function allows.

Continue reading How to Integrate Twitter onto your Blog the Easy Way →

Theme Customization 11 comments

How to be an Expert Theme Tweaker: Changing the Background

By Michael on March 20th, 2010

tweek

Tweek, from South Park.

Some of us are born tweakers.  We find a WordPress theme we like, we install it, and then we decide we don’t like the font.  Or we want a custom logo.  Or we want Google ads to appear below every third post.  Or…we just want the site to look like our own, and not something generic or something that belongs to someone else.

That’s the real root of the issue, I think.  Luckily, there are a few simple theme modifications you can make — even if lines of code make you go blind — that will make a site your own.  Let’s start with one of the most common requested changes: giving your theme a custom background.

Continue reading How to be an Expert Theme Tweaker: Changing the Background →

News 15 comments

Introducing PressPlay 2.0

By Michael on February 6th, 2010

I’ve just released version 2.0 of the free PressPlay theme for WordPress.  It’s a massive revamp that gives the theme an updated design, theme options, and custom page templates while staying translation-ready and cross-browser compatible.  Download it at the WordPress Free Theme Directory, or check out a demo and a complete list of features.

News 3 comments

PressPlay 1.3, in Honor of 5,000 Downloads

By Michael on August 5th, 2009

a-thing-of-beautyPressPlay recently hit 5,000 downloads at WordPress’s free theme directory, something I honestly never expected when I first submitted it at the end of June.  This is my first theme, and now that I know a bit more about what I’m getting into, I’m even more excited about designing another one.  Thanks to everyone who’s downloaded it!

To coincide with the 5,000th download, I updated the theme to version 1.3.  This one fixes a major oversight in 1.2 that resulted in post information not appearing on single post pages.  It also makes PressPlay now completely translation-ready (thanks to Georg for a ton of work on that) and features a new date graphic.  So go on, download PressPlay 1.3.

Now that I know PressPlay is a pretty stable theme — barring any bugs in 1.3 — I’m thinking ahead to version 2.0, and in particular, an optional magazine-style homepage and a bunch of theme options.  That won’t be for at least a couple of months though — I already have a second theme I’m working on before I get to that — so in the meantime, here’s to the next 5,000.