Speaking of the gallery, it’s running on a WordPress plugin (tested a bunch of them, actually).  I liked this one the best.  It accomplished what I wanted it to do.  But in order to get the lightbox functionality, I would have had to install *another* plugin.  I’m a big fan of having certain functionalities hard-coded.  (Excessive plugins seem to slow WordPress sites down).    So, that’s what took so long to get it running.  The theme files now are hard-coded for colorbox.  While I was at it, I also did the same thing here I did with Halfton 1.1 – internalized the Java to the WordPress core and also added in the Superfish drop-down menu.  (Someone complained about my lack of menu drop downs since moving away from iNove).

It’s funny, my friend Mitch (another designer) and I got to talking – we’re both now officially “jQuery whores” – if there’s a script to do it, we’re stealing it.  =p  (Most of them are GNU/GPL licensed, so it’s not really stealing.)

Speaking of Mitch, we’re discussing the possibility of a joint collaboration on a WordPress theme.  He’d do the graphics, I’d do the coding.  We’d then submit it to themeforest.net and hope to sell a few.  Split the proceeds and all.  Dunno if it’ll happen.  I’m still experimenting with a few things, and I think I want to do a “premium free” theme for submission to the WP database first.  We’ll see.

Anyways, that’s it for now.

Since Saturday, I’ve done quite a bit of work to the theme for their site.  It’s enough to me that I’ll wind up actually increasing version numbers. =)

I’ll provide a laundry list of changes:

• Internalized most of the Java to use the WP-packaged binaries (you mean I don’t need to include over 50k of scripts?! No wai!)
• Re-formatted the post comments area
• Created an additional admin area to include “regular” post data that they generate – Restaurant Info, post thumbnail, etc.
• Created a theme options page where they can change the variables for the links.

Those last two items are huge.  As I’ve been discovering, the theme options are what really makes a theme stand out, especially in the “premium” category, where it’s about the only way to distinguish yourself against the competition.   There are some really amazing theme option pages out there.  And some others that truly suck.

All of this work has led me to want to start in on another theme – but right now, I’m kind of lacking in the “graphical inspiration” category.  I suppose that’s what I get for spending too much time on the code aspects of my reading and not the design aspect.  =/

BTW, if you see any random theme changes around here, don’t despair.  I’m just looking through the various themes to get an idea of popular theme options.  I’ll be back to the regular BlackPress theme here soon.

It’s required a bit of extra work on Matt’s part to get it working (editing a lot of post info).  But it’s there.  =)

The site is heavily enabled with javascript (to hide some elements and make others “pop”).  I was going to actually add a few other things, one cool one would have been a script that would automatically add in a google map based on any location info within the page.  The problem though, would come when the page itself had multiple cities on it (like the list of all posts).  Bit of a pain given their setup, but would have been workable.

Running three different CMS softwares over the last year and change, I’ve come to some basic conclusions about the two most prevalent – Joomla and WordPress.  I can appreciate each one for the differences and likenesses they possess.

Quite frankly, WordPress has to be the most designer-friendly site.  For obvious reasons, it’s geared towards the more “simplistic” use of a blog (the application seen here).  To do anything though, such as manipulate menus to show specific data, you’ve got to hand-edit the theme files.  Not a terribly difficult thing to do if you understand what’s going on, but not fun in the least.  There’s a lot of plugins and such to add functionality, but it’s still somewhat limited, I think.

The last two weeks, I’ve been working on the re-design for my friends over at halftonreviews, and I’ve had to delve deeper into manipulating the base code to accomplish the look and feel they want.  I’ve had to work with them to re-think their application of the data they have so that it looks less like a blog and more like a real site.  (The validation came last night when a professional designer friend of mine had to ask me if it was still a WordPress site!)  The re-design’s about done, there’s a lot of little things left on the table to do.  But I’m pretty pleased with where it’s at so far. (I’ll post again when they go live with the template)

In contrast, Joomla is a site that’s geared towards the true nature of a CMS – content management.  The code is designed in such a way that no one with any inkling of markup and coding can create a content-rich site.  However, to accomplish anything more with the overall design is really an exercise in frustration.  To re-theme the site is a pain (if you aren’t using a professional theme).  But that’s what makes it so great for sites such as the alumni association site I maintain.  There’s so much flexibility and ability to really manipulate the content without needing to edit the theme files.  You just download a mod, a plugin, or a component.  Expanding the site is a breeze.

I have another project to work on after I finish up the halfton design and ship it off to the twins.  When I ordered the new game server for the upcoming season, I went with a small group of guys that have been working to manipulate the Source Server binaries to create the ultimate gaming environment.  Their servers are able to maintain a stable framerate, which is the panacea of the FPS gaming community.  When every bullet you fire needs to hit where you aim, they’ve managed to tweak the server so that each shot rings true.  But anyways, one thing I suggested to help them drive sales was a custom MOTD (message of the day) that pops up on a new server sold when you initially join.  I’m researching how to use html or php or something else to actually query the server, get a value (such as sv_hostname) and return it in the html.  My idea was to have the header line say something like “you’re playing on *server name* hosted by padgaming”, give a little spiel about how special their servers are, and then the price list.  What’s going to make it unique is that it’ll use the same type of language behind a CMS – querying a database to update the data as needed.  So, the file itself would be minimal, just referencing the database values to return, and then all the text would be in the database.  I’ve had to learn how to do PHP/mysql coding, and it’s nowhere near complete, but that’s the plan.

After that, it’s either another new theme here, or I start to delve headlong into Joomla templating.  God in heaven help me.  That’s going to be a rough time.

http://halftonreviews.com/?p=423

The theme’s name is BlackPress – it’s a variation of a tutorial done by Richard Carpenter over at hv-designs.co.uk.  The tutorial just covered the Photoshop mockup, not the slicing and coding necessary to turn it into what you see here.  

I think that there’s one or two minor things that I’ll need to clean up, but otherwise, I’m calling this one done and moving onto the next project…

The quarter-ton duo from halftonreviews (Matt & Dan – half of the halfton quartet) are letting me work with them to really change their site around from this rather repetitive wordpress layout into something a bit more to their liking.  I think it’s possible.  With what I’m picking up from the WordPress Codex and other resources, as well as practice, everything should be good.

My first WordPress Theme is online!  You’re seeing it here.  It’s by no means 100% finished, but it’s really the first chance I’ve had to really work through the steps of creating a theme from start to finish.  Where it’s really lacking, I think, is in the design department.  You may notice that I drew a lot of inspiration from the previous theme (iNove), although honestly, when you start seeing so many of these themes, they all start to bleed into one another.  Graphically, I’m just not that inclined.  Especially when I’ve never done more than some basic editing in Photoshop and Fireworks.

That was actually one of my gifts for Christmas, some books on using Ps and Fw, so I’ll hopefully learn a bit more about site design.  I’m also scouring the ‘net for more design resources to give me the opportunity to try out different things.

To be honest, now that I’ve worked through a full creation, I might just go back and make the serious modifications that I want to iNove.  Always see what happens. =)