Today is April 19, and my last free theme(Loveblog) was released on 19th February(what a coincidence, eh?). In this post i will present you My Tech Theme, a free theme that will be released next week. The most important thing that i can say regarding this new release is that IT WAS ABOUT TIME!.

I should have released a theme in March also, but i just didn’t have the time(i will explain why a bit later), but i will try to release 2 themes in 1 month.

My schedule is full, meaning that i’m busy almost all day:

- I’m graduating this year, finals are 2 months away(this means lots of learning) + the lots of stress

- Lots of design work. Believe it or not about 1-2 people contact me daily asking quotes, and willing to hire me.

- Stuff is getting pretty serious with my girlfriend, this means i have to give her a bit more attention and spend a bit more time with her.

- Work on the yable project - i finally bought the script license for yable, and within the next 2 weeks the new design will be implemented and it will be ready to take off! This will mean lots of advertising work.

Getting back to the stuff about the theme:

Yes, the preview that is shown above is a preview of the theme(unfinished, so some elements location/colors/ items maychange)

X One of the best features that it will have is the featured post location. Adding a post to the featured section will be simple as pie. You will just have to create a “Featured” named category and add the post to it and it will show up on top of all posts.

X XHTML strict and CSS valid coding - as usual the code will be as clean as possible

X Although it looks a bit complex the theme will be lightweight and this will increase the load time of your blog

X i won’t forget about SEO friendly coding either, which means that the content will load before the sidebars do

The above wraps up about all the “special” features that i have in my mind right now, all the features will be presented next week in the theme release post.

It’s been quite a while since i last released a wordpress theme so i decided it would be appropriate to launch a brand new cool theme. Although valentine day has passed you can use this theme for general usage, but i also included a valentine logo with the theme.

As you can see i am also using this theme(well till my custom theme will be coded…which might take a while due to health issues of BetNg4U, and i’m not planning on letting anyone else do the job because it will have lots of features that are not so easy to do).

Some of you might say that it’s a bit girl-is because of all the red and pink. Well it’s not. It’s main purpose was to be a valentine day theme yet a theme for general usage with a sleek professional look.

Because of the health issues of BetNg4U and the studying issues of Cypherhackz ( he is graduating this year, and he needs to study, study,study) Naif coded the theme for me. I worked with him last year on a phpLD theme that i made. I was looking for a professional coder when i remembered him, and PM-ed him on DP. He did the job within 24hours and fixed the bugs that popped up, i checked and rechecked it and everything seems to be working fine.

LoveBlog’s Features(you will love this part):

Fluid width! - The theme has a fluid width, meaning that it will stretch out in all browsers giving your blog great appearance.

2 columned theme ( 1 right sidebar column and 1 content column)

Advertisement ready! - No no no, i am not referring to adsense or widgetbucks!, i am refering to affiliate ads. If you have a running blog you can start selling ad space on your blog right away! you can add as many 125×125px ads to the sidebar as you like.

I hooked you up with a “Advertise here” banner, you can just replace it with affiliate banners, or just keep it there and link it to your advertisement page to find advertisers.

To add the advertisement banners you need to open up sidebar.php and add your html code there in the <div id=”advertisements”> section.

Here’s an example:
<a href=”http://www.thaslayer.com”><img style=”border:0″ src=”http://themes.thaslayer.com/4/wp-content/themes/LoveBlog/images/ad.jpg” width=”125″ height=”125″ ></a>

Widget ready sidebar - the sidebar below the Advertisements section is widget ready, you can add widgets from your wordpress admin panel.

A cool blue talk-bubble favicon(which is hosted on my server, so you don’t need to worry about loosing it )

2 logos to choose from - in the package i included both the psd of the general logo and the psd of the valentine logo along with the font used

If you want to use a bigger logo than 250×75px you will have to edit in style.css the #header h1 part:

#header h1 {
margin: 0; padding: 0;
width: 250px; height: 75px;
font-size: 1px; font-weight: normal;
text-indent: -999em;

The theme is using Brian’s Threaded Comments version 1.5.9 to give your visitors a bit of extra flexibility.

LoveBlog Theme is fully compatible with latest wordpress release!

Page commenting system - Your visitors have the possibility to comment your pages, not just posts! example: http://themes.thaslayer.com/4/?page_id=10

Works flawlessly in all browsers(Firefox 1.x/2.x, Opera, IE 6, IE 7)

The top right menu items ( Homepage | Sitemap | Contact ) can easily be edited from header.php

You will not have any sponsored links in the footer, only a link-back to my blog which i kindly ask you to keep.

Installation of the theme:

The installation of the theme is extremely easy and consists in 7 simple steps:

1) Download the zip archive and extract it.

2) Upload the contents of the “upload” folder to “wp-content” folder on your server.

3) Go to your admin panel and at “Presentation” activate the theme.

4) In admin panel at plugins activate Brian’s Threaded Comments.

5) Add your widgets and enjoy the theme!

6) Bugs are constantly fixed and as bugs are fixed the changelog and the archive is updated.

7) If you want to receive bug fixes and notifications about the the theme check out the sidebar Get Theme Updates! element and enter your email address and subscribe.

I respect your privacy, i won’t share your email address with anyone and you will have the possibility to unsubscribe at any time.

The newsletters will contain information ONLY about theme releases and bug fixes.

Download links and Live demo:

Live demo: http://themes.thaslayer.com/4/
Download link: Loveblog Theme (327)
Alternate download link: http://slayer.webarea.ro/loveblog.zip

Feedback and suggestions:

If you discovered any bugs in the theme or if you have any suggestions feel free to send me an email to tom@thaslayer.com

Changelog:

19th February 2008 - The official release of LoveBlog wordpress theme

Donate to development:

Creating quality wordpress themes takes time and money so if you wish to support me feel free to use the button below and donate a few bucks, any amount is welcome. Donations will help me pay fees for coding and development and releases of new great looking templates!

The donations are 100% secure, you can donate using your credit card or your paypal account.

Web 2.0 is a next generation trend in web design which refers to the way websites interact with their users. This trend is being led by social networking sites, blogs and membership websites. In a web 2.0 environment, the users determine the content of a website in short; the websites are user-driven.

As a by-product of this trend, web 2.0 web templates are quickly gaining currency as more and more graphic designers and programmers join the fray.

Building a web 2.0 website can be a daunting task especially if one lacks any programming or design skills not to mention the potential cost of hiring the services of a professional. A way to go around this huddle is to download a free web 2.0 template.

There are many websites and sources where one can buy web 2.0 themes and templates for a fee, but there are also others where the templates are available for free.

One obvious advantage of getting a free web 2.0 theme template is the expense. Many website operators, businesses and marketers are strapped for initial capital and since the dot com bust in the 90’s, many businesses and individuals are unwilling to invest a lot of money in web projects unless there is a high certainty of a return. Using free web 2.0 templates is therefore an obvious advantage in as far as cost is concerned.

Another advantage of using free web 2.0 templates is time. Many online business owners are not technically savvy not to mention the lack of programming skills. A lot of online business owners have wasted an enormous amount of time trying to be website designers and techies. Loss of time translates into loss of business and now most website owners prefer to get free web 2.0 templates instead. Tied to this is the obvious relief of not having to involve oneself with back-office maintenance issues and troubleshooting. The provider of free web 2.0 templates offers all the support and troubleshooting.

Getting free web 2.0 templates used to be expensive as we saw earlier but in the last year, websites offering free web 2.0 templates have emerged and more are sure to come. These templates can be downloaded immediately one signs up therefore many websites offering these templates will also require a valid email address.

The following are websites where anyone can download free web 2.0 templates:

• www.templateworld.com
• www.sr-ultimate.com (this website actually offers many other links to free web 2.0 templates)
• www.designload.net (Design Load also offers paid templates but these are usually of a higher quality)
• www.smashingmagazine.com (this is another resource site that contains a lot of information on free web 2.0 template)
• www.freecsstemplates.org

• www.oswd.org

We are going to look at one such free web 2.0 template website, www.freecsstemplates.org.

This site offers lots of colorful web 2.0 and xhtml/CSS templates which are compliant with w2c standards. Freecsstemplates.org displays thumbnail versions of the actual templates which gives the viewer a cursory glance at the templates being offered.

One great advantage offered by this site is the ease of downloads. One does not even need to sign up as a member as is the case with other free web 2.0 template websites. The files are downloaded in zip format and one can easily unzip them using either the winzip utility or winrar software.

Winzip costs a small fee but with a careful search of the Internet one can find a free downloadable version or even download a free trial version from the winzip website. Windows Vista automatically comes with a utility for unzipping files.

Conclusion: Free web 2.0 templates are therefore the best route to go when seeking to build a truly user-driven website.

Before everything i want to wish all of you Merry Christmas with lots of joy(i know its a bit late), gifts and happiness and a happy new year!

On saturday you most probably taught that again problems occurred with the theme and i didn’t notify you about the delay, well nothing serious happened(we got drunk like pigs) , yesterday we fixed a few bugs and i was keeping the release for 25th december as a Christmas Present.

Well, all the drinking caused the delay and a bug that occurred in the last minute which was fixed today.

We worked a LOT on this theme, the basic idea of the theme is to offer bloggers a clean and sleek web 2.0 styled theme with unique and great features.

Please Digg this if you like the theme

Check out its features:

IMPORTANT! The Theme needs php 5.x to run! It will NOT run on php 4.x.

Quote from PHP Website:

Support for PHP 4 will be discontinued at 2007-12-31. Please consider upgrading to PHP 5.2.

This means that all medium/major webhosts who run php 4.x will most probably upgrade to php 5!

IMPORTANT! Make sure you add a title to the text widgets!

2 columned theme with a right sidebar

Avatar system powered by Mybloglog avatars or Gravatars , you have the possibility to choose which service you want to use in admin cp @ sexy comments options

Cool animated favicon

Dragable and expandable sidebar boxes

Shadow effect on text on navbar and sidebar box titles

The sidebar is 100% widget ready

TO INSERT A NEW SIDEBAR WIDGET MANUALY, USE THIS TEMPLATE

<fieldset class=”sidebarwidget_reg_holder”><div class=”side_bar_widget”>
<div id=”sidebarwidget_title” class=”sidebar_title”>
<!– PUT YOUR WIDGET TITLE HERE –!>
</div>
<div id=”sidebarwidget_content” class=”side_bar_content”>
<!– PUT YOUR WIDGET CONTENT HERE –!>
</div>
</div></fieldset>
<script type=”text/javascript”>registerSidebarWidget()</script>

AJAX powered search and comment posting

9 colors for you and your visitor to choose from

TO CHANGE THE DEFAULT COLOR OF YOUR THEME GO TO FUNCTIONS.PHP
CHANGE THE $default_theme = “color number“ VARIABLE WITH ONE OF THE FOLLOWING VALUES

0 - green
1 - grey
2 - blue
3 - purple
4 - navy blue
5 - gold
6 - light brown
7 - teal
8 - red

Post tags and tag cloud option

Great looking links(the visitor will notice the link more easily and in a more enjoyable format.

Recent comments display and the possibility to display any widget in the sidebar in a dragable box.

XHTML & CSS valid!

Works flawlessly in all browsers(Firefox 1.x/2.x, Opera, IE 6, IE 7)

You will not have any sponsored links in the footer, only a link-back to my blog which i kidnly ask you to keep.

The font i used is a commercial font so i couldn’t include it in the pack, so we made a great tweak: the header image is automatically generated, so no image editing is required, just enter your blog’s title and tagline in your admin control panel.

The comment system is powered by sexy comments along with Karma Addon

The theme is using the Silk Icons Collection

The Theme is 100% compatible with Wordpress v 2.3.1!

Installation of the theme:

The insttalation of the theme is extremely easy and consists in 7 simple steps:

1) Download the zip archive and extract it.

2) Upload the contents of the “upload” folder to “wp-content” folder on your server.

3) Go to your admin panel and at “Presentation” activate the theme.

4) In admin panel at plugins activate Comment Karma and Sexy Comments

5) Add your widgets and enjoy the theme!

6) Bugs are constantly fixed and as bugs are fixed the changelog and the archive is updated.

7) If you want to receive bug fixes and notifications about the the theme check out the sidebar Get Theme Updates! element and enter your email address and subscribe.

I respect your privacy, i won’t share your email address with anyone and you will have the possibility to unsubscribe at any time.

The newsletters will contain information ONLY about theme releases and bug fixes.

Download links and Live demo:

Live demo: http://themes.thaslayer.com/3/
Download link: Chameleon Theme (407)
Alternate download link: http://slayer.webarea.ro/chameleon.zip

Feedback and suggestions:

If you discovered any bugs in the theme or if you have any suggestions feel free to send me an email to tom@thaslayer.com

Changelog:

28th December 2007 - The official release of the Chameleon theme.

2nd January 2008 - Fixed page order bug

Donate to development:

Creating quality wordpress themes takes time and money so if you wish to support me feel free to use the button below and donate a few bucks, any amount is welcome. Donations will help me pay fees for coding and development and releases of new great looking templates!

The donations are 100% secure, you can donate using your credit card or your paypal account.

The theme is ready and its working flawlessly on Firefox and Opera BUT  i can’t release it.

Why can’t i release it? , well this is a tricky question which has a simple answer: F*CK Internet Explorer 6, i can’t release a theme that looks VERY messed up in IE 6….still the majority of internet users use that damn browser.

the release is delayed till further notice(max 1 week), i want everything to be close to perfect(just like at Styleicious) so that everyone can enjoy it to the maximum.

Thanks for your patience,

Tom

Remember? On 5th november i launched the styleicious template and on 25th november thanks to Fracisco i launched it for blogger also.

Many people switched to my theme and they are still using it, to be honest about 70% of them are blogger users.

This time i’m coming with a brand new clean,fresh and web 2.0 theme with features i’m sure you will enjoy and use.

The theme’s name is Chameleon. At this point you are most probably wondering why did i name it Chameleon , so here’s the answer:

At first i named it iGreen, but then i remembered a cruical thing that BetNG told me when we we’re working on a hotel project and that just blew me away.

Back then he told me about a special type of PNG images, alpha PNG’s so this crazy idea hit me: lets make the theme;s color 100% customisable at just a click of the button you can have different variations of the theme. NO, i am not talking about just the fonts and backgounds, but all the elements.

An other great feature is the ajax sidebar, you can move them around and expand or collapse them, and the menu items and the h3’s(headings) have shadow implemented, so you can type any name the shadow effect will be added automatically.

As usual the search will be AJAX powered.

For the comments we will use sexy-comments plugin along with Karma plugin.

The font used on the banner is a commercial font, meaning i can’t give you the font, so BetNG came up with the idea that the title will be automatically generated, you will just have to set the title in admincp and it will generate the banner. Cool huh?

As usual the search will be AJAX powered.

I will release 2 versions of the theme: one with a right sidebar and one with 2 sidebars(3 columns)(one on each side)

You can check out the demo of the theme in development at http://themes.thaslayer.com/3/

Remember the theme is currently under development and many features won’t be available and won’t look as in final version.

Any comments/feedback and Donations (As you know i don’t put sponsored links on my themes so any extra buck is welcome. All the money from donations will be used on themes development and will give me the chance to release more themes) are welcome. So if you want to contribute just hit the DONATE button below.

Thanks a lot for your support,
Tom

The Styleicious theme got really popular and it also captated Francisco‘s interest who sent me a mail asking permission to convert Styleicious theme and make it available for blogger also. My reply was obvious: “sure! feel free to convert it for blogger :)”.

In a few days i got an email back with the demo of the theme and the download links to it, i was pretty amazed, he did a great job on the conversion and now Blogger users can fully enjoy the theme.

The theme is available for blogger in 2 languages: Spanish and English.

Download English version:

Main download: http://thaslayer.com/Blogy-Styleicious-E-BlogandWeb-com.zip

MIRROR: http://blogandweb.com/wp-content/download/Blogy-Styleicious-E-BlogandWeb-com.zip

Download Spanish version:

Main download: http://thaslayer.com/Blogy-Styleicious-BlogandWeb-com.zip

MIRROR: http://blogandweb.com/wp-content/download/Blogy-Styleicious-BlogandWeb-com.zip

You can check out a working demo at http://blogy-styleicious.blogspot.com/

Read the Official Release post on Francisco’s Blog - http://blogandweb.com/2007/11/18/plantilla-blogy-styleicious/

I hope you enjoy this release also, and remember you have Francisco to thank for

Wooohoo!!! you have no idea how thrilled i am to announce that starting from this moment you can download my latest wordpress template with ajax addons!

Me and my coder(BetNG4U) invested lots of work to make this template what it is and for more than 20 hours we debugged it and improved it to work perfectly. BetNG4U even modified the rating system, because it had some javascript errors and didnt work in IE6. Each time we revised it problems appeared, but finally we fixed everything and everything looks cool.

Check out some of the screenshots on 4 resolutions:

Width = 1024px -> PREVIEW HERE
Width = 1400px -> PREVIEW HERE
Width = 1280px -> PREVIEW HERE
Width = 1600px -> PREVIEW HERE

As you see there aren’t any distortions and the style is 100% fluid and doesn’t have ugly overflows or such, meaning The theme works flawlessly.

Here are it’s features:

great looking web 2.0-ish logo

2 columns for you to have place to put extra content

WidgetBucks and Adsense READY!

widgetized sidebars

AJAX rating system

Thread tags

Tag Cloud

Recent posts and recent comments display

Cool hover effects at comment fields

great looking post display and commenting system

XHTML & CSS Valid

Great hover effects!

You will not have any sponsored links in the footer, only a link-back to my blog which i kidnly ask you to keep.

And last but not least : it is 100% compatible with Wordpress v 2.3.1!

We added AJAX Features to the theme like:

AJAX search

AJAX comment posting

AJAX page navigation (AJAX powered Page navigation will only work if you don’t use mod rewrite, since there are unlimited options to rewrite the URL’s in the admin panel we couldn’t make the AJAX page navigation work with all of them, so only those who have default URL’s will be able to use it(don’t worry, you won’t miss much if you use mod rewrite, in the matter of fact the pages will load a bit faster)

Installation of the theme:

The inststalation of the theme is extremely easy and consists in 4 simple steps:

1) Download the zip archive and extract it.

2) Upload the contents of the “upload” folder to “wp-content” folder on your server.

3) Go to your admin panel and at “Presentation” activate the theme.

4) In admin panel at plugins activate WP-PostRatings

5) Enjoy the theme!

6) Those of you who downloaded the theme before bugs we’re fixed and are facing problems please download the updated package and re-upload it.

7) Make sure you check back once-a-while for updates and bug fixes!

Download links and Live demo:

Live Demo: http://themes.thaslayer.com/2/

Download link: http://thaslayer.com/styleicious.zip

Alternate DL link: http://slayer.webarea.ro/styleicious.zip

If you wish to further develop the theme or add new features to it feel free to contact me at tom@thaslayer.com

If you find any bugs/problems please post a comment here and they will be solved in the next release!

As mentioned above, you will not have any sponsored links and we invested lots and lots of work in this FREE template.

Changelog:

8th November 2007 - Fixed the menu and the bug that was making pages saved as drafts to appear in the menu

10th November 2007 - Fixed footer bug, made the footer fluid so if you have lots of tags footer won’t get messed up

12th November 2007 - Anand came accross a sidebar bug, it seems that in ie the middle sidebar(the one with ads) overflows on the footer, this happened because we fixed the footer bug and messed it up, The bug has been fixed

13th November 2007 - The overflowing textbox BUG that was appearing in IE6 has been fixed

If you wish to support me feel free to use the button below and donate a few bucks, any amount is welcome. Donations will help me pay fees for coding and development and releases of new great looking templates!

I really hate delaying stuff but i can’t avoid this. The coder who i hired to work on the template got pissed on me and told me to give the job to someone else because he’s overwhelmed with preasure. In the process what he coded he didn’t act professional, i told him that i want the coded template to look just like the psd, and he starts showing me progress of the work and i keep telling him what to change(lots of stuff)(must have been really overwhelming lol).

Anyway, my point is that now i’m working with a good friend of mine:BetNG4U(i worked with him on SEO tools project and Helin hotel project. He started working on it yesterday and made quite big progress, he didn’t ask me guidelines not even once, thats true that he made typo’s but stuff like that happens. He is planning to make it XHTML Strict(not transitional) and to add some cool ajax features to it(trust me he has what it takes for the job)

So the template’s release is further delayed till he gets it done and we test it and fix bugs(he said it will be finished tomorrow + adding the ajax features + lots and lots of testing(what we like) to make sure everything will run smooth in every browser and every pc.

PS: the template will be fluid!

How did the Styleicious template get created?
Well yesterday and today i didn’t have much custom work to do, i finished all the custom designs that had to be finished and i got myself a big mug of coffee and yesterday night i started working on the template. The template is finished(the design itself) BUT to make sure everyone likes it and to improve it more i posted it on Digitalpoint for some reviews and suggestions. You can check out the thread at Stylicious Reviews The template has a very sleek look, and will have implemented lots of exciting plugins and features.

Lets check them out more detailed:

great looking web 2.0-ish logo

2 columns for you to have place to put extra content

WidgetBucks and Adsense READY!

widgetized sidebars

AJAX rating system

Thread tags

Tag Cloud

Recent posts and recent comments display

AJAX based Poll system integrated

great looking post display and commenting system

XHTML & CSS Valid

Great hover effects!

And last but not least : it will be 100% compatible with Wordpress v 2.3!

You will be able to download the template starting from 24th October(Wednesday), if the release gets delayed you can be sure that i will let you know.

Update(25th october):

The release is delayed to 30th october due to some problems. I had some problems at designing, but eventually everything came out right. The template is being coded as we speak, lets hope we won’t have any more problems.

Update(30th october):

 The release is further delayed due to coding problems(problem with the coder…needed to change him). But now i’m working with a good friend who tends to add more ajax features to it.

Read more in The Delay Thread 

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If you are interested in hiring me for a custom job feel free to send an email to slayer@webarea.ro