TemplateLite.com – About My Themes

More Sub Themes and More Offers

Brian — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:49:41 +0000

Releasing new sub themes like what I have been doing, I’ll be continue to do that in the future, with a better deal this time.

If you need to get the PSD file of my theme that comes with a sub theme, you don’t have to hesitate about which one (main or sub) you want to purchase due to the fact that they are sold separately at $35 each previously.

From now on, I’ll be including the PSD files of BOTH the main and the sub theme(s) selling at the same price! To sweeten the deal, whenever a new sub theme is released, those who possess the PSD file of the main theme will be given the PSD file of the newly-released sub theme, absolutely free.

Simply put, at $35, you’ll gain access to the PSD files of all the sub themes associated with the main theme!

If you have previously purchased the PSD file before the sub theme is released, you can request to send the PSD file of the sub theme. Simply contact me and include the transaction ID of the main theme in the message and I’ll send the sub theme’s PSD file to your email.

More sub themes are on the way and you can take a sneak peek of the upcoming themes below.

Main Themes

Sub Themes (Upcoming)

By the way, the themes above are given the first priority to be upgraded to ver. 3, in which the custom header menu will be added.

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More Sub Themes and More Offers

List of Custom Themes

Brian — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:00:50 +0000

The custom theme list will be constantly updated whenever a new one is created.

This page showcases all the custom themes that I have created so far. The customization is done with the principle that the core coding of the theme is left untouched. Only the graphical part is custom designed to suit the topic.

Click on the images below to view the bigger screenshot.

Theme Customization – Request a Quote

If you would like to have your own customized design, take a minute fill out the form below so that I can better understand your needs.

I’m currently NOT available for any customization work.

You can still send the request if you don’t mind waiting for more than 6 weeks for the delivery of your theme.

[contact-form]

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List of Custom Themes

How to Customize my Themes without Changing Coding

Brian — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:53:53 +0000

This guide is very useful for the graphic designers who have little or no knowledge about theme coding. See how I turn my Wooden Fence theme into a kids topic below.

There is no such theme that fits all topics. Though I have created themes in many topics, you may not find the one most suitable for your blog.

At TemplateLite, I want to allow my theme users to have greater control over the look of my themes while keeping the core coding intact. You only need to change the graphic part to suit your topic. Minor modification of the font style is needed sometimes.

Before I start out, it is important to stress and explain why I don’t encourage changing the core coding in the whole customization process.

Reason #1

You may mess up the coding that makes the customization become very complicated and difficult.

Reason #2

Since you are not changing the coding, whenever a theme upgrade version is made available in this site, you can download and install the upgrade without having to develop your own upgrade version of your customized theme. This will save you a lot of time considering Wordpress is constantly upgrading and improving it’s platform quite frequently.

In this tutorial , I am taking the Wooden Fence theme and show you how to customize the header and footer to suit your sites topic.

First of all, take a look at the theme before and after customization viewed at a resolution of 1600px.

Before Customization (Parent Theme)

Preview Theme | Download Theme

After Customization (Child Theme)

Preview Theme | Download Theme

You can see that the changes made to the theme include ONLY the header and the footer section. The design in the content and the sidebar area are left intact.

This is how I did it.

Step 1
Open the PSD file of the Wooden Fence theme. The header and footer design is shown below.

Header Design (Parent Theme)

Footer Design (Parent Theme)

Step 2
Turn off the layers above the wooden fence (make them blank).

Header Design (Parent Theme)

Step 3
Design your own header. In this particular case, I designed a stitched frame with 3 adorable children, rainbow, color pencil, and some kids playing kites.

I assume you possess the intermediate/advance Photoshop skill so I am not going into detail as to how I created them. This guide is mainly for graphic designers to customize the theme image without changing coding.

Header Design (ChildTheme)

Step 4
Now, repeat the same procedure in the footer. First, turn off the layers in the footer in front of the wooden fence.

Footer Design (Parent Theme)

and add your own footer image to it.

Footer Design (Child Theme)

Now you have completed the header and the footer design. The next steps will be slicing the right images to the correct size. To do it correctly, you need to open the header and the footer images of the parent theme to get the dimension.

Step 5
Under the parent theme’s “/images” folder, find all the files containing the header area that you have modified. There are only 16 image files (some of them are icons) in this theme so it would be easy to find the right images.

Files in “/images” folder (Parent Theme)

In this case, “bg_header.jpg” and “bg_top.jpg” contains the header area that you have modified in the PSD file.

Step 6
Open these two files and measure their dimension.

bg_header.jpg (Parent Theme)

bg_top.jpg (Parent Theme)

Step 7
In the modified PSD file containing your new design, slice the header using the exact same dimension. For “bg_top.jpg”, you need to turn off some of the layers in the center part of the header image to make them blank.

bg_header.jpg (Child Theme)

bg_top.jpg (Child Theme)

After that, save the two modified images as “bg_header.jpg” and “bg_top.jpg” and overwrite the two files in the “/images” folder.

Step 8
Repeat the same procedure for the footer images. Under the parent theme “/images” folder, find all the files containing the footer area that you have modified. In this case, “bg_footer.jpg” and “bg_btm.jpg”

Then measure the dimension of the images.

bg_footer.jpg (Parent Theme)

bg_btm.jpg (Parent Theme)

Step 9
In the modified PSD file containing your new design, slice the footer using the exact same dimension. For “bg_btm.jpg”, you need to turn off some of the layers in the center part of the footer image to make them blank.

bg_footer.jpg (Child Theme)

bg_btm.jpg (Child Theme)

After that, save the two modified images as “bg_footer.jpg” and “bg_btm.jpg” and overwrite the two files in the “/images” folder.

Step 10
Now, upload the images to your server to replace the old files and refresh your theme in the browser to see the changes.

Congratulations! You now have a new theme design that suit your blog’s topic!

After Customization (Child Theme)

Preview Theme | Download Theme

————————–
Other info:
This will save you a lot of time considering Wordpress is constantly upgrading and improving it’s platform quite frequently. Once you have customized your theme another important step is finding a backup storage solution to securely store and share all the work you’ve done on your site. I’ve found the just cloud reviews on this site are helpful for comparing cloud hosting and storage options.

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How to Customize my Themes without Changing Coding

TemplateLite’s Options Page Explained

Brian — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:40:42 +0000

I always want to improve the standard of my Wordpress themes to make them premium-like. My latest innovation is to include an Options page in the Sunset Farm theme.

What is a Wordpress theme Options page?
A theme Options page is an interface in Wordpress where you can control how a theme looks and functions solely by setting options without changing the core theme files.

How to access the Options page
The Options page can be found under the “Appearance” tab in the Wordpress admin. Take the Sunset Farm theme for example, click on the “Sunset Farm” link under “Appearance” to access the Wordpress Options page.

What features are available in my Options page?
Too many features will confuse the users. I only include the essential one while allowing some extent of customization. If you think some features are important and would be nice to be added to the Options page, please let me know.

All the new themes created after the Sunset Farm theme (excluding child themes) have the Options page. In future, the Options page will be applied to all older themes eventually.

There are three main sections in the theme Options page
General Setting Layout Setting Post Layout
Please note that the “Post Layout” section is only available in themes with version 2.0+

The features are explained base on the Sunset Farm and the Texture Art theme.

General Setting

The general setting in the Options page allows you to define the Twitter settings, feed URL, tracking code and IE6 warning option. The details of each items are described below.

This option allows you to display or hide the Twitter icon.

Enter your feed URL for your readers to subscribe. If you leave it blank, it will be showing the Wordpress default feed URL in this format: http://www.yourblog.com/feed/

Enter your traffic tracking code in this field. I recommend Google Analytics as it is by far the most comprehensive tracking code I have used.

If you check this button, your visitors’ who browse your site in IE6 will see a popup icon asking them to switch to other browsers in order to view the theme correctly.

Layout Setting

The layout setting in the Options page allows you to define the theme style, blog title and tagline and home link.

Let me explain how they work as follows:

In the Sunset Farm theme, there are 4 options in the pull-down menu. Let’s experiment with the “templatelite.css” and “paint.css” option. In each experiment, the “Blog Title and Tagline” has to be in the “uncheck” status. I’ll tell you why later.

Option 1: templatelite.css
When you select this option, the header design will look like this:

And the font is showing the Verdana style:

Option 2: paint.css
When you select this option, the header design will look like this:

And the font is showing the Arial style:

Now, let me take the paint.css option example and show you how this is done.
Changing header image with texture
- Download this PSD zip file containing the header image.
- Extract and open the PSD file in the Photoshop program
- Use the Texturizer effect found under Filter -> Texture to create the effect.
- Save the image using this name: bg_header.jpg
- Upload the image to your server under the “/styles/paint/” folder

Changing the font style
- Open style.css under the root folder of the theme
- Open paint.css under the “/styles/” folder
- Copy the following “body” element in style.css and paste it in paint.css
body {
font-size: 12px;
font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
color:#C2AE7D;
background:#160500 url(‘images/bg_repeat.jpg’) repeat-y center top;
}
- Change the font family in paint.css to “Arial”
- Save paint.css and upload to your server under the “/styles/” folder

This is just an example of how to work with the theme style. You can also manipulate other CSS elements like changing the height of the header, reducing post width etc. The possibilities are endless!

Now let’s get to the “Blog Title and Tagline” option. Unchecking the button in this option will not show the Blog Title and Tagline as defined in the “Settings -> General” page. When you check the button and select the “paint.css” under Theme Style, you’ll see the blog title and tagline in which the font style is defined as italic Times New Roman as follows:

This option allows you to add a “Home” link to the header menu. You can choose to hide it by unchecking the button.

Post Layout (only available in ver. 2.0+)

The post layout in the Options page allows you to define the automatic thumbnail feature.

The post thumbnail can be defined under the “Post Thumbnail” section found at the bottom right sidebar in the admin of the individual post.

You can define the thumbnail width and height here. It is advisable to upload the images with the same size as you defined in the Options page to avoid cropping and resizing by the program.

If you activate the thumbnail feature but the thumbnail image is not defined in the individual posts, you can choose to display the default thumbnail image.

Insert the number of words you want to display in the post excerpt.

If you have any questions with my Wordpress theme Options page, please leave a comment below.

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TemplateLite’s Options Page Explained

Theme User Guide Documentation

Brian — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:09:49 +0000

Starting from the Theater Room theme, you will find a user guide document as part of the theme files. The user guide contains general and important information about my themes. Currently, it contains the following items:
1) Theme license
2) Installation instruction
3) Header title customization
4) Main features
5) Theme upgrade
6) Theme support

The documentation will also be added to my older themes in the near future.

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Theme User Guide Documentation

Theme Support Forum is Launched Officially!

Brian — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 08:55:58 +0000

I am bringing you another great thing about Templatelite. A support forum for my themes has just been launched!

As committed as before, I want you to have the least problem when using my themes and I pledge to make my themes one of the best in the industry. Hence, I have decided to offer theme support via forum.

Previously, all the theme support was handled via the comment section. As of today, if you need any form of theme support, you’ll need to post your questions in the forum.

You can still leave your non-support related comments in the comment section, e.g., you can share your opinion about the themes you use.

Besides managing support, you can find everything you need to know about my themes in the forum too. For example, there is a section where you can showcase your themes modified using my themes. If you want to perform customization for my themes, you can request help from other users because I am not available for custom work at the moment.

I welcome all my theme users to actively participate in the forum and make it a friendly community effective in solving problems. See you there

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Theme Support Forum is Launched Officially!

Showcasing Your Customized Theme

Brian — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:03:38 +0000

Having been offering free Wordpress themes for more than a year, I have seen some designers customizing my themes in a nice way. I hope to see more beautiful work from you!

The time is ripe to showcase your beautiful work on my site. No matter what you have modified, simple or complicated, as long as I feel that the modification is nice and could give inspiration to others, I’ll feature your site/blog in my forum (yes. I am going to open a support forum for my themes soon!).

For example, I like the simple modification of the Girly Nature theme as shown in this site which shows different way of displaying the font design in the header and the post title. I also like the big customization of the Paper Craft theme as shown in this site where you see the designer made a big change to the graphic of the original theme.

I will create a section in my upcoming forum where you can showcase your customized work of my themes. I welcome all my theme users to actively participate in this program. Simply submit your site/blog for review.

The following shows just a few modification examples from using my themes.

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Showcasing Your Customized Theme

Why IE6 Must Die?

Brian — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:18:03 +0000

The Internet Explorer 6 was released 8 years ago. Because of its ability to tie up with Windows XP, Microsoft was able to lock in an astounding 95% captive market.

Since IE6 was launched in August of 2001, the browser was already plagued with numerous problems that led to a plethora of unresolved browser bugs and security issues. Eight years have passed and the same nagging problems remain and it is now time for me to weigh my options and consider the reasons why it is time for IE6 to go.

1. Absence of Transparency Support in PNG

IE6 has not been able to resolve the problem about its inability to support transparency in PNG as we end up with annoying gray color displays as replacement to the transparency. We are better off with Firefox, Opera, Safari and IE7 as they support transparency in PNGs.

2. Serious Security Issues

Failure to update your browser is tantamount to opening yourself up to all sorts of security attacks. If you insist on using IE6, then you must have to contend with code snippets that are capable of shutting down your IE6. You can learn everything about them at Wikipedia. Read through the information and find out why IE6 is considered unstable.

3. Facebook, YouTube and Digg are shunning away from IE6

The signs are all written on the wall. Facebook, YouTube and Digg are slowly disassociating from IE6 and they have recently announced plans to scale down their support for IE6. Ultimately, we will reach the tipping point where you will not be able to browse Youtube and Digg using IE6.

Due to the reasons stated above, as of this writing, I will not test my themes against IE6 anymore. Also, I will not support any IE6 related issue for my Wordpress themes. If you are still using IE6, I strongly urge you to upgrade your browser to IE7 or IE8 to avoid problems.

And since IE8 is already released and its market share is getting bigger, I will start testing my themes against IE8. Removing IE6 from my browser test and adding IE8 to the list will now make my themes compatible with IE7, IE8, Safari, Opera, Firefox and Chrome.

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Why IE6 Must Die?

Poll: Suggestions for Additional Theme Features

Brian — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:04:47 +0000

My designing skill for Wordpress themes has improved a lot since I created my first theme last year. It’s time I contribute more to the community by incorporating more features to my existing and new Wordpress themes.

There are so many features that I could add but I will only add those that most of you want. Feel free to participate in the poll below and let me know which feature(s) you would like me to incorporate in my themes.

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Poll: Suggestions for Additional Theme Features

Full Feature List of my Free Wordpress Themes

Brian — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:30:14 +0000

This post will be constantly updated to reflect the recency of my free themes’ features.

My themes have some of the features that you can’t find in most of the free themes out there. And I make sure they contain those features that I outlined.

Theme Features Summary

Free Forum Support

One-Click Easy Setup

6 Major Browsers Supported

W3C XHTML/CSS Compliant

Latest WP Version Supported

Wide Screen Resolution

Friendly CSS Structure

I will describe the features of my free themes in 3 parts. The theme features in the first part applies to ALL my themes. The features in the second part applies to ver. 2+ of my themes. The features in the third part applies to ver. 3+ of my themes. The fourth part outlines the recognition I got from big websites.

Part 1: All my Free Themes Contain These Features

Free Forum Support
One of the big reasons people like my themes is the FREE support. Previously, the support was done in the comment section. When I figure that the comment section can no longer address your issues in the most efficient way, I decided to move the support section to the forum. Whether you have issues with my themes or just want to say hi, you are most welcomed to my forum!

One-Click Easy Setup
Once you have uploaded the theme file to the correct folder in your server, the next thing is to activate the theme in the Wordpress admin. After activation, you blog will be up and running without further configuration.

6 Major Browsers Supported
Most of the themes(free or paid) I found on the internet claim to be compatible with major browsers but didn’t specify exactly which browsers they did the test. Is theme compatibility with Firefox and IE browsers enough? Yes if you are targeting 90% of the internet users who use the two browsers.

For every theme that I release, I will test them against 6 major browsers that include Firefox, IE7, IE8, Chrome, Safari and Opera. Click here for more details.

Optimized for Search Engines
One of the most important factor for a SEOed theme is W3C compliant. No doubt about it, my themes are compliant with W3C.

Besides that, a logically use of heading tag such as H1, H2 etc. are important in the search engine ranking. My themes’ blog title, post title, page title defined using H1 to H4 so search engines give more weight to those title keywords.

Free Access to Theme Upgrade
I will constantly update my themes to fix issues and make them compatible with the latest Wordpress version. A revision will be released whenever there is an update and the version details will be shown in the "Change log" section of the theme page.

W3C XHTML/CSS Compliant
It is not easy for a theme to pass the W3C validation. Because of that, not many themes are compliant with W3C.

I will go all out to fix all the errors when I test my themes against the XHTML validator and CSS validator and make sure I pass both the tests before I release the themes.

For the benefit of being W3C compliant, click here

Latest Official Wordpress Version Supported
When Wordpress releases a new version, I’ll retest all my themes individually using the latest Wordpress version. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about Wordpress compatibility issues if you use my themes.

It is definitely not easy to retest so many themes in a short time whenever Wordpress releases new version but I’ll do my best to make it work!

More info about Wordpress version compatibility

User Friendly CSS Structure
The theme’s CSS file(style.css) contains a lot of items because of the rich theme features. However, I grouped them in an organized way so you’ll be able to find the right item to edit.

For the details of how I layout the CSS structure, click here

Browser Display Resolution
Base on the data on W3schools, 93% of all internet users are using a display with 1024×768 pixels or more. Because of that, I design my themes to display well on a resolution with 1024px and above. Click here for more info

Award Winning Themes
Most of my themes have been reviewed and graded by ThemeGrade, a site offering the most complete review of free and premium Wordpress themes. All of my themes listed in ThemeGrade have got at least Bronze status, beating majority of the Wordpress themes in the market.

Other Common Features

Sticky Posts

Widgetized Sidebars

Gravatar Enabled

Threaded and nested comments

Childpage menu

Auto-resizing & cropping for Images

Search Ready

RSS Ready

Trackback and Pingback Enabled

Part 2: Themes with version 2.0+ Contain These Features

Options Page
My self-developed Options page gives you great customization that allows you to define different setting in the general, layout and post categories. The features in the Options page are developed base on the users’ feedback. If you think certain features worth to be added to Templatelite’s Options page, feel free to suggest them.

For the details of the Options page, click here.

Automatic Thumnails
A thumbnail feature has been included in the core of WP 2.9+. This is a simple feature that doesn’t allow you to define the thumbnail size and the default thumbnail image, set the number of words to display as excerpt and auto hide images as defined in the individual posts.

Hence, I worked around the built-in WP coding and created an advanced version of the automatic thumbnail feature that allows you to define several setting in the Options page for greater customization. Click here for more details.

Ad Widget
This widget is designed to work for 125×125px and 250×250px banner ads. The difference between using the text widget and the ad widget to display the ads is in that the ad widget has good formating base on the theme design. All you need to do is to insert your banner code and the ad will space out nicely without further formating.

Drop-Down Menu
When you create multi-level pages, a drop-down menu will be auto-created in the header’s navigation.

Part 3: Themes with version 3.0+ Contain These Features

Custom Header Menu
You can manually define the header links using the custom menu. To do it, first, click on the “Menus” link found under the “Appearance” tab in WP admin. Then follow the instruction on the page to add your custom menu.

Part 4: Theme Recognition from Big Sites/Blogs

Hongkiat.com
Featuring Red Light and Watercolor

Smashingmagazine.com
Featuring Coffee Desk

SmashingApps.com
Releasing Grunge Style

Sixrevisions.com
Releasing Letter Frame

Crazyleafdesign.com
Featuring Coffee Desk, Watercolor, Photo Frame, Photographic Film, Red Light

Catswhocode.com
Releasing Bulletin Board

Speckyboy.com
Releasing Worn Wall

Taragana Blog
Featuring and reviewing Red Light

WPtavern.com
Featuring and reviewing Wooden Fence

ThemesPreview.com
Featuring and reviewing most of my themes.

Themelib.com
Featuring Coffee Desk, Watercolor, Photographic Film

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Full Feature List of my Free Wordpress Themes