A couple of months on and I have a new flat, am fully settled and can now get back to theme production In the next few weeks I plan to push forward very quickly with Not Just Another Theme, things will change a bit before it’s release as I’ve had some new ideas during my absence from the scene, and it’d be nice to implement some of the new features of Wordpress 2.9!

So I know I always say it… But do stay tuned for some exciting updates in the upcoming weeks.

PS I have been reading all your comments whilst I’ve been away, so a big thank you for all the compliments, and I will be working on getting Urban completely bulletproof to solve all of the date issues that people have been having.

Next up is Forget About Agents is launching on Monday - we’ve still got a few features to add but it’s at a suitable stage for release. Any UK visitors might want to take a look

Finally, and perhaps most exciting, is the development of a new ‘Freemium’ themes site built upon my upcoming theme ‘Not Just Another Theme’. Stay tuned for more information on this one.

I will be back into the swing of things, answering questions etc on Monday - I notice a lot of people are having issues with the dates on my Urban theme, I’ll be taking a look at that and will hopefully have a fix released during the week.

Why not give it a go?

Try the live demo.

Usage:

Urban gives you several ways to represent your posts: Display the excerpt (default behavior), display an image, or display a Youtube video.

Displaying an image is a similar process to that of my previous theme, Viewport, however now there is no need to re-size your images manually, Urban will automatically do it for you! So:

1. Write the article as normal.
2. Click the ‘Add an Image’ button and upload your desired image.
3. Copy the image link from the list that appears, click ‘Save all changes’ and close the overlay.
4. Scroll down the ‘Write Post’ page to the ‘Custom Fields’ tab and in the key field enter ‘lead_image’ (minus quotes).
5. Paste the image link you copied previously into the value box and click ‘Add Custom Field’.

That’s all that’s required, now your post will be represented by an image which the reader can expand by clicking the magnifying glass that appears when they roll their mouse over a post.

Displaying a Youtube video is even easier! Simply:

1. Write the article as normal.
2. Scroll down the ‘Write Post’ page to the ‘Custom Fields’ tab and in the key field enter ‘youtube’ (minus quotes).
3. Paste the complete Youtube link you from your browser address bar into the value box and click ‘Add Custom Field’.

Urban will then go and grab the video screenshot for you, and users can watch the video by clicking the magnifying glass that appears over the post.

When you’re done your ‘Custom Fields’ tab should look a little bit like this:

Other Options:

Urban offers some advanced options that blog owners may choose to activate. These are explained in more detail on the ‘Urban Settings’ page that will appear on your Wordpress Admin page when the theme is activated.

These options are:

• Enable tracking (no personal data is stored)
• Enable Last.fm
• Enable Twitter
• Enable Spell Checking

Download:

Download the Urban theme (.zip ~760kb).

Questions and Comments:

Limited support is available, just leave a comment on this page and I’ll see what I can do.

If you like what you see here, and would like to talk about what I can do for you, get in touch!

I started by asking myself one question: “Why should the user have to navigate away from content, to view more content?”. With that in mind, I set about created an entirely new web-based interface, expanding users expectations of what can be achieved using today’s technology. Effort was made to allow the user to enjoy a ’single-page’ experience, with all content being loaded dynamically in the current page. As a result, there are no actions on the site that require page reloading! Of course loading a lot of content onto one page can make it cluttered, so a content management system must be used, cue the obvious choice to design and built a desktop-style interface with windows, icons, and a ‘taskbar’. Short of maintaining the current content, every aspect of the site has been redesigned to reflect this decision.

Navigation is slightly differently than the user might perhaps be used to from a website, however the interface structure closely mimics that of probably the most frequently used interface - the desktop, regardless of your operating system, the thought process is the same. If you treat the website as such, it soon becomes a joy to use. Any combination of content can be viewed simultaneously, as would be possible on your own desktop. Video can be playing whilst you read and comment on an interesting article just right to it’s side, a list of all articles in a category can be accessed whilst checking the most recent comments just by hover over the taskbar.

For more of an insight into using the second version of paulicio.us, check out the introduction video, the icon is right there on the desktop!

v2 is in fully working, but early stages, below is a short list of features:

• All content loaded inline, dynamically
• Ability to open, move, minimize and close windows
• Taskbar shows open and minimized windows
• Taskbar shows recent comments for open and minimized windows
• Real time comment posting
• Automatic comment author recognition
• Support for many media types (currently single images and Vimeo video implemented)

Coming soon:

• Automatic saving of page layout, carry on just as you left off when you come back!
• Support for additional media types (Youtube, photo albums etc)
• Real time notification of new posts and comments
• Additional bugfixes

I hope you enjoy using the new look, why not leave a comment or suggestion, or even hire me! paulicio.us continues to be powered by a lightly modified version of Wordpress.

Viewport is now integrated into PhotoQ Photoblog Plugin by Manuel (whoismanu.com).

PhotoQ is a WordPress plugin that turns your blog into a photoblog. If you are a photo enthusiast or simply have a lot of pictures to post, PhotoQ is your ideal companion.

I’m am very pleased to have Viewport included with PhotoQ, and you really must check it out if you are a photoblog owner!

Update:

Version 1.1 has been released with several bugfixes and improvements. Please scroll down or click here to get the latest version.

Viewport is a free Wordpress theme from Paul Bennett. It features a clean and simple layout with sliding ‘panels’ displaying images to represent posts. It also features a user-changeable background (color or image) and other customizable elements.

More information about the theme can be found here at Smashing Magazine, and here on the Live Demo.

Usage:

As this theme uses images to represent articles, a little more work is required when posting. This is a step-by-step guide to using the Viewport theme:

1. Write the article as normal
2. Create 3 images using your favorite image editing program. They’ll need to be 940×600px, 940×300px and 270×172px respectively.
3. Click the ‘Add an Image’ button and upload your first image.
4. Copy the image link from the list that appears, click ‘Save all changes’ and close the overlay.
5. Scroll down the ‘Write Post’ page to the ‘Custom Fields’ tab and in the key field enter ‘lead_image’ (minus quotes).
6. Paste the image link you copied previously into the value box and click ‘Add Custom Field’.
7. Repeat steps 3-6 with the other 2 images, however enter ’single_image’ in the Custom Fields value for the second image, and ‘archive_image’ in the value for the third image.

Additionally, a short video tutorial is available for download (Quicktime, 720p, ~16MB).

That’s all, now your posts will be represented by the images you chose.

Posts that don’t have images will display a grey box, so whilst it may be time consuming, you may wish to update all your recent posts at least.

Additional Notes:

It’s worth noting that uploading just a lead_image, will work - the image will be resized to display on the other pages, however in the long run you may see increased bandwidth usage due to always loading the large image.

Depending on the image quality you use, the main images are likely to be between 50KB and 300KB each, for that reason it is recommended to edit your Wordpress settings to display around 10 posts per page. In actual fact, because the archive page works in groups of six, you may wish to display a multiple of six posts per page -  I recommend 12, but the choice is yours.

Credits:

• Coda Slider by Niall Doherty
• Quest for Capital by John Su

Download:

Download the latest version directly (.zip ~255kb).

Download the Viewport theme from Smashing Magazine. (Older Version)

Questions and Comments:

Limited support is available, just leave a comment on this page and I’ll see what I can do.

If you like what you see here, and would like to talk about what I can do for you, get in touch!

Version 1.1:

Version 1.1 of the Viewport theme is now available to download here. This updated is recommend for all users experiencing problems with version 1.0.

Changelog:

• Fixed: unclosed divs when comments on articles are closed.
• Fixed: ‘Where Next’ image not updating correctly/at all.
• Fixed: Archive and Category pages not scrolling correctly/at all.
• Corrected: ‘Image Color’ to ‘Background Color’ on settings page.
• Feature: Theme now supports multiple media types including images, flash video and iframes (support for Google Maps included) as the lead_image. Read more about this feature below.

Recommended for advanced users only, lead_type now accepts links in image, flash video (.flv) and iframe format. The theme will attempt to determine the type automatically, so no further user input should be required. However if the content is not displayed correctly or at all you may try adding the custom field ‘lead_type’, for which accepted values are either ‘flash’ or ‘iframe’, this will force either media type to be displayed. It is also worth noting that video content doesn’t have to be prepared in 940×600, however it will be stretched to fit. Additionally you must define the size of the iframe, width=940 height=600 (Google Maps default is 425×300 for example, so you must change these values in the lead_image field).