Leon Paternoster » theme

Re-introducing the 133 theme for WordPress

Leon — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:50:03 +0000

The 133 theme has been redesigned. Now with even less.

Download the 133 theme for WordPress (version 2, ZIP, 16K)
See the live demo

Flicking and reading

The thinking behind 133 was to provide a theme that gave the reader nothing to do apart from read and flick through posts. It was built on Sandbox and took a grand total of 133 minutes to write (geddit?)

It’s been my second most popular theme (surprising, considering it wasn’t listed by Smashing Magazine), perhaps providing evidence that there’s a demand for design that promotes reading and little else (see Readability and Today’s Guardian).

Screenshot of the 133 theme.

To get an idea of what it does it’s best to list what it doesn’t:

no search
no archives
no tags or categories
no navbar
no menu
no comments
no Twitter integration (there was in version one, but it was pointless)

Usage

Excerpts

The theme makes use of excerpts by displaying them on the front page and above posts on single pages. If a post doesn’t have an excerpt, the front page will display the whole post instead, and the single page won’t display an excerpt (obviously), nor an abbreviated version of the full post. In short, feel free to use excerpts but don’t worry if you don’t.

Images

The content column is 560 pixels wide. If you add the class pull to an image it’ll place it in the empty left hand column. Pulled images must be 265 pixels wide; if they’re not, they’ll be resized. (Note: you can apply the pull class to any element). Centring images and floating left and right work in the normal way.

You can also incorporate full page images (the theme is 855 pixels wide in all) by adding a wide class to images.

Asides

I’m a fan of (proper) conversational asides in blog posts. Wrap anything in aside tags and 133 will pull them into the left hand column. (Warning: WordPress can be somewhat moody with asides; check your HTML after making any amendments).

Additional information

The theme will attempt to display the following info from behind the scenes:

Users → Your profile → About yourself → Biographical information is displayed in the footer.

Settings → General → Description serves as a tagline and is displayed in the header, aligned right.

Behind the scenes

The theme has been re–written from the ground up. It’s now marked up in shiny HTML5 and I’ve used the Google Font API to sprinkle some IM Fell DW Pixa around.

(A by–product of all this is to reduce the size of the zipped theme to 15.7K, including a screenshot. The stylesheet weighs in at 291 lines, including comments.)

It looks different

The structure is essentially the same: three columns, the first left mainly empty, the content placed off centre to the right. Titles are now set in IM Fell DW Pixa and body copy remains 100% (16 pixels). If you’re on Windows you’ll get Georgia. If you’re on a Mac or Linux you’ll get Palatino. Everyone’s happy.

The content column has been widened from 500 pixels to 560 pixels.

The thinking behind 133 was to provide a theme that gave the reader nothing to do apart from read posts and flick to the next one. It was built on Sandbox and took a grand total of 133 minutes to write (geddit?)

It was actually my second most popular theme (surprising, considering it wasn’t listed by Smashing Magazine), perhaps providing evidence that there’s a demand for design that promotes reading and little else (see Readability and Today’s Guardian).

Introducing the 133 Theme for WordPress

Leon — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:33:58 +0000

The 133 theme is essentially an experiement, or a diversion: a way to kill a couple of spare hours on a Saturday afternoon with Radio 5 on in the background and no domestic football to distract me (although I’ll probably be able to follow my team on international weekends in the very near future). It took 133 minutes to make.

Download the theme (133.zip, 34K)
See the live demo

I had a few things in mind when writing the theme: I wanted a traditionally paginated, dive into the full content affair, and something that’s both easy to read and doesn’t make the reader think of anything beyond flicking between posts.

Screenshot of the 133 theme for WordPress

Format and comments

From a writer’s point of view, it’s more like a Tumblog or Posterous, but with half decent markup. You could use it to post pictures, quick thoughts etc. I removed the WordPress commenting system altogether and replaced it with a simple Tweet this post link by incorporating the Simple Twitter Link plugin (NB: you won’t have to install any plugins as it’s built into the theme). There’s no archive, no navigation menu.

I’ve also added a field to User → Your profile → Extra profile information which will allow you to add your Twitter ID to the Tweet this post link (useful for tracking Tweetbacks).

Please note that the theme won’t display tweetbacks: I’ve added this functionality to my own version.

Behind the scenes, it’s built on a slightly modified version of the Sandbox theme: very few changes were made to the PHP files and the CSS weighs in at around 250 lines (including comments).

It’s ready to use now. I may add search and archives in future versions. Or maybe not.

Introducing the Scherzo theme for WordPress

Leon — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:13:22 +0000

A precise theme with a widget ready sidebar. Built on the idea of making your blog as readable as possible:

Download the theme (scherzo.zip, 62K)
View the live demo

Feel free to modify or use for any purpose, but please keep the footer link to my website in tact. This theme is released under the terms of the GPL license.

Installation

Install in the normal way, i.e. extract the scherzo.zip file and upload it to your themes folder. Login to your dashboard and select the theme from the Appearance menu.

Screenshot

Screenshot of the Scherzo theme

Feel free to leave any comments, criticism or bug reports.

Changelog and updates

Version 0.2 (released 13 February 2010)

home page displays full post content rather than post excerpt
search results page displays full post content rather than post excerpt
archive pages (author, tag, category) display full post content rather than post excerpt
improved spacing between posts on home page
removed unused image and links template pages
added an archive template. To use this create a blank page and select Archives from the Template drop down menu. The page will display a list of categories and a tag cloud

Introducing the FON theme for WordPress

Leon — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 21:33:00 +0000

A simple, readable theme for WordPress:

Download the theme (fon.zip, 70K)
View the live demo

Feel free to modify or use for any purpose, but please keep the footer link to my website in tact. This theme is released under the terms of the GPL license.

Installation

Install in the normal way, i.e. extract the fon.zip file and upload it to your themes folder. Login to your dashboard and select the theme from the Appearance menu.

Notes

FON WordPress theme screenshot

This is an early version of my TTP theme. I’ve tested it across all browsers except IE6, and it works well; however, I can’t accept any responsibility for any problems it may cause you.

You can add widgets to the sidebar.

Please feel free to leave any comments, bugs etc.

Introducing the Gigantic theme for WordPress

Leon — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 16:01:32 +0000

~~To celebrate a (fingers very crossed) seamless move to a new host~~, I’m releasing the Gigantic theme for WordPress:

See a live demo of the theme
Download the theme

The Gigantic theme - clean typography and whitespace

Description

It’s a minimal, easy to read theme with some pretty typography. It requires WordPress 2.7+ and is written in valid HTML5 (that’s before any plugins start generating invalid markup). HTML5 is a good thing.

Please note that some minor changes were made on 4th March 2009 (most importantly, the archive no longer lists every post; instead, readers are presented with a list of categories and dates). I recommend updating if you downloaded prior to 4th March 2009.

Installation and usage

Install in the normal way. To set up an archive page, create a new page using the ‘Archive page’ template. Name it whatever you like.

The theme makes use of the blog tagline, excerpts and your first name (as set in the ‘Profile’ section). You can also enable threaded and nested comments (to a maximum of 5 deep).

The front page will show the last 3 posts’ excerpts.

Beware: it’s not set up for widgets (where would they go?)

About

It’s designed to be a very simple, stylish theme that displays your content with a minimum of fuss. Influences include minimalsites and, somewhere in the background, Dan Mall. Several very nice people contributed their ideas.

Credit me

If you use or modify the theme, I’d be very grateful if you’d keep the footer link to this page in tact.

Tell me what you think

I’m not a particularly sensitive soul, so please feel free to leave feedback, bug reports, rants etc. here. Your feedback will help improve the theme.

Introducing the Velouria theme for WordPress

Leon — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:21:01 +0000

Please note that this theme is no longer supported. You might want to try one of my newer, better coded themes instead.

Screenshot of the Velouria theme home page

Installation and instructions

Install by downloading, unzipping and uploading the ‘Velouria’ folder to your site’s theme directory (normally yourblogdirectory/wp-content/themes). Log into your site and install from Design - Themes.

To set up an archive page, go into Write - Page. Give your archive page a title. Go to Advanced Options - Page Template and select ‘Archives’ from the drop down box. Don’t enter any content. Hit the ‘Publish’ button.

Make use of excerpts (Write - Post - Advanced Options - Excerpt). The theme uses excerpts on the front page and in the archives.

Tag your important posts ‘lead’. The theme will list the last 10 lead posts on the front page, while the archive page lists lead posts first.

As ever, your comments are more than welcome.