In this post, I’d like to give a review of this site because it is so special that set them apart from any other Wordpress theme directories. I also give a brief review of another theme review site, Wpthemereview.com.

By far, ThemesPreview.com and Wpthemereview.com are the only two sites that provide review and rating of Wordpress themes. There is another yet-to-launch site, Wpthemecritic.com that will be reviewing Wordpress themes.

Let’s spend a little time talking about Wpthemereview.com before I review ThemesPreview.com in details.

When you visit Wpthemereview.com, you’ll see a “SEO score” being assigned to each theme.

Click on any theme and you’ll see SEO score note below the screenshot of the theme. There are two categories:
1) We like this theme because it…
2) This theme could be improved, though…

As you can see, this site reviews mainly the SEO part of a theme. Nothing much has been told about the coding structure and compatibility issues.

Another problem with this site is the scoring method. There is no specific information as to how the SEO score came about. I even found two Wordpress themes having the same SEO score note but having different SEO score.

On the contrary, I am amazed at how ThemesPreview reviews a theme. The author has outlined the review criteria and grouped them in two sections: must-have criteria and optional criteria.

A theme must pass the must-have criteria to get a listing on the site. Then comes the optional criteria. There are more than 10 tests in this section and each passed item will be given points ranging from 1 to 3. The total score (in percentage) is what makes a theme better/worse than the other. 6 points have been assigned to the W3C validation test. It is the highest assigned points among all other tests because this is the toughest test to pass.

The other 2-point tests are “Theme Support” and “Firefox compatibility”. Theme support is important. The author makes it a point that a good coder should be more responsible for his theme. Also, a good theme should work on the Firefox as most internet users are browsing websites using Firefox.

Other less important tests are assigned 1 point each.

To calculate the total theme score in percentage, simply take the total points of the passed criteria and divide it with the total points of the tested criteria.

Themes which score between 60-74% will get a Bronze status. Score between 75-89% will get a Silver status. Score above 90% will get a Gold status. Most of my themes are getting Gold in the directory.

You can also calculate easily from the stats to get an overview of the quality of the free Wordpress themes in the market. From the stats, it’s surprised that more than 60% of the themes in the directory are not even getting Bronze status. In ThemesPreview, you get an idea as to how many of the designers are really doing a good job…. not many of them!

New themes are added to ThemesPreview every day for months. It is currently the main source for comparing the quality of different themes. As for Wpthemereview.com, the author hasn’t updated the site for more than a year so it is no longer a good site to follow. Therefore, I have excluded this site in my theme submission plan.

I am closely following the new review site, Wpthemecritic.com. When it is launched, I’ll be one of the first to submit my themes because I am very eager to see how my themes rate and see which areas I need to improve.

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.

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 some of my themes. The third part outlines the recognition I got from big websites.

During the time when I started to layout this theme, I am kind of running out of ideas. I was struggling to make something that would give you the “wow” feelings. Though it is not as appealing as I expect, it took me longer to create this theme than my most beautiful themes during when I was full of inspiration.

Ideas.. ideas.. ideas… I need more great ideas!

Latest Version: 1.00
Added on: 2009/06/17

Important: The Heavenly Blue theme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported. Please read the Terms of Use before you download it. If you find it troublesome to read the full terms, just remember one item as below will do:
You must keep the footer link and a footer script intact to enjoy free usage

Main Features

• Compatible with IE6, IE7, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera
• W3C XHTML and CSS compliant
• Gravatar enable

Blog Title and Description
By default, the blog title and description are using the Arial font. You can change the font style by following this instruction:
- Download this PSD zip file (also include the font that I use that is available free from fontstock.net.)
- Extract and open the PSD file in the Photoshop program
- Add the title and description using your desired font
- Save the image using this name: bg_header_new.jpg
- Upload the image to your server in the /images folder

View all my themes

Change log
2009-06-17 v1.00 - Release

The most significant feature of the Wordpress 2.8-Baker is its capability to browse for themes from the Dashboard of Wordpress. This means that you are able to specify your color choice, the number of columns that you require and choose between flexible or fixed width, among others.

Wordpress 2.8 comes with a new widgets interface design with enhanced speed. Another great thing about this new version is that it offers solutions for over 790 bugs of the older version.

The other notable features of Wordpress 2.8 include:
* Improved widgets API and widgets admin interface
* Plug in and theme editors with function lookup and syntax highlight function
* Improved loading speed of admin pages through compression and concatenation of script

If you had problems with widgets with the older version, this latest release may well be the solution to your problems. This latest release comes with an enhanced widget interface design which is not available in the 2.7 version. This feature provides multi-functionalities like widgets on the fly editing, multiple copies of widgets, and a lot more.

This latest version of Wordpress is equipped with an enhanced CodePress Editor which will come in handy when you are making tweaks and edits to plugins and themes from your Dashboard. It also comes with contextual documentation capability which is an essential element for the functions in the file that is being edited.

With that said, will my free themes work on this latest version? I made it clear that my free themes will be compatible with the latest Wordpress version so I am taking the time to test my themes on Wordpress 2.8 at the moment. I will announce in Twitter and the theme pages whenever a new theme version that works on WP 2.8 is released.

The 10 checks are as follows:

The following is the report:

Requirements:

- In header.php, it should have a small piece of PHP code that looks exactly like this wp_head(); or this do_action(’wp_head’);, usually just before a piece of HTML that looks like this: .

- In footer.php, it should have another small piece of PHP like this wp_footer();, or this do_action(’wp_footer’);

- In comments.php and/or comments-popup.php, it should have a piece of code like this: ID); ?>, just before the HTML tag.

Yoast said it is a standard to include all the 9 BASIC files below in a theme to avoid installation problem. Each file represents a standard Wordpress feature/structure.

home.php, single.php, page.php, category.php, author.php, date.php, archive.php, search.php, 404.php

Out of the above mentioned files, I only have home.php, single.php, page.php

Does that mean I am missing most of the Wordpress features? Not at all. I actually simplified the file structure even more by merging category.php, author.php, date.php, archive.php, search.php, 404.php into one single file, index.php

Strictly speaking, a theme without widget is not a Wordpress theme.

To determine whether a WordPress theme is widgetized, look for this code in the sidebar.php file:

.

Wordpress search function is quite powerful so there is no reason not to include it by default.

Your visitors will get turned off if your blog is not compatible with their browsers. However, it is impossible to make a theme work in ALL browsers. The author advises the users to install a theme which works on IE6, IE7, Firefox and Safari.

It is very important for a theme to comply with W3C. A theme with W3C compliant will be crawled by search engines easily and it is more likely to work on several browsers and other display devices like PDA.

However, you can’t find many themes pass this test either because the theme author is more of a designer than a coder or the coder doesn’t bother to take the effort to make it W3C compliant.

To see if a theme pass the test, you can use the XHTML validator and the CSS validator

Normally, the free downloadable themes will have the theme author’s link in the footer. Some will also have the advertiser’s link. You need to check where the external links point to in order to avoid linking to bad neighborhood.

Just like other free themes, I also list my links as well as my advertiser’s links in the footer. However, I am very strict as to whom to accept the advertisement. You can find the policy of my footer link info.

You can publish the articles in two forms via the “post” or the “page” option. Majority of the themes will add a link from the home page once you publish a post. But quite a number of themes doesn’t add a link from the home page once you publish an article using the “page” option, let alone pages that are a few levels deep.

With trackbacks, you can notify other non-Wordpress blogs that you’ve linked to them. If you link to other WordPress blogs, they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks.

To enable trackbacks, you need to add a one-line code to single.php and page.php.

This is the trackbacks code that I used:

It is much better to have different titles for each page than having a common one. The common practice is to include one line to the header.php file.

or

The two php code can be found in my header.php file. I even include an additional code to differentiate the titles of the single post from other pages.

In conclusion, my themes have passed all the items in the checklist!

Indeed, a lot of free downloadable themes are released under GPL license. But the problem with those themes is that majority of them can’t match the quality of other themes that are released under a different license.

I have researched major players who design Wordpress themes and none of them released the themes under GPL license with one exception from Studiopress.com. This site releases professional magazine style Wordpress themes. Their themes’ license is GPL but still, you have to purchase to use it.

All my themes are free to download. To sustain the site, I have to get advertisers to sponsor my themes so I can use the proceeds to continue releasing more high quality themes. Therefore, I can’t afford making my themes available for free under GPL license.

My themes have been using Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported license and it will continue to stay that way. In addition to the current license, there is one amendment that I’d like to include as follows:
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.templatelite.com/terms-of-use/

The reason behind this change is that the current CC license doesn’t specifically mention about the footer links and script of my themes. Now I make it clear that removing the footer links and script of my themes is against the terms!

In short, the license allows you to share and remix the work of my themes but you have to make sure that
1) you keep the footer link and a footer script intact
2) you can’t use my themes on your commercial sites

Those found in violation of my terms and conditions will be ordered to remove my themes from the affected sites.

Thanks for the review, I found a few things that I could improve for my future themes. However, I also need to clarify a few things about the review here.

Let’s talk about the license and the footer part of my themes. The CC license looks complicated but my main intention is only two things:
1) you have to keep the footer link and a footer script intact
2) you can’t use my themes on your commercial sites.
Other than that, you can manipulate my themes freely without any cost.

Unlike other themes, my themes are coded using the most basic elements. No options pages and plugins are found on the Wooden Fence theme as well as most of my themes. I created them that way because of 3 issues as follows:
1) Some plugins might not be compatible with the latest Wordpress version and the plugins designers fail to fix the problem.
2) Some plugins have security loopholes. I don’t want your site to get hacked because of the security faults pertaining to the plugins.
3) I’ll be able to fix the Wordpress compatibility issues in the shortest time whenever a new Wordpress version is available.

With that said, I am actually planning to design a theme with extra options for advance users. Anyway, it is still in the conceptual stage.

As for the graphic design, I am appreciated to see some great pointers to improve the graphic part of this theme. I am especially grateful for one of the commenters, Terri for his critics from the aspect of a graphic designer. I take his words in mind.

For those who want to suggest some useful features that I could add to my themes, please share with me your suggestions and ideas. I appreciate it.

From the designers’ perspective, a website can be divided into 5 main sections:

There are several elements found in the main sections where you can define the styles. The styling of each elements can be controlled in the css file. Normally, we name it style.css.

Different designers have their own ways of doing it. I’ll show you how I configure my CSS file in an well-organized way. I made it easy to understand so you can modify the styles of each element without much difficulties.

Open any of my themes’ style.css file and you’ll see that I grouped them into 9 categories:

The elements found in each category below are general items and differ from theme to theme.

This section include general elements like body font and link style, image alignment, font size of H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, blockquote style, break line(hr), field input style etc.

body{;}
img {;}
a {;}
a:hover {;}
h1 {;}
h2 {;}
h3 {;}
h4 {;}
h5 {;}
h6 {;}
p {;}
hr {;}
del {;}
ins {;}
blockquote {;}
input,select,textarea {;}
code{;}
.alignleft {;}
.alignright {;}
.aligncenter,div.aligncenter{;}
img.alignleft {;}
img.alignright {;}
img.centered {;}
.clear {;}
.spacer {;}

This section controls the image and position of the background, header, menu, content, sidebar, RSS and footer.

/********** LAYOUT **********/
#base{;}
#menu{;}
#header{;}
#container_btm{;}
#container{;}
#content{;}
#sidebar1{;}
#sidebar2{;} [if the theme is 2 column, sidebar2 is not needed]
#rss_search{;}
#footer{;}
#footer a{;}

This section controls the position and text style for the blog title, blog tagline (subtitle) and the header image position.

/********** header *************/
#blogtitle{;}
#blogtitle a, #blogtitle a:hover {;}
#subtitle {;}
#header img.home {;}

This section controls the display of the page menu link which can normally be found in the header.

/************* MENU ***********/
#menu ul {;}
#menu ul li {;}
#menu ul li a {;}
#menu ul li a:hover{;}
#menu ul li.current_page_item a {;}

This is where the content section is defined. You can change the setting of the normal or the sticky post, post title, post date and the page information.

/************* content *************/
.archivetitle {;}
.post{;}
.sticky{;}
.post_title{;}
.page_title{;}
.post_title a,.post_title a:hover,.page_title a,.page_title a:hover{;}
.post_date{;}
.post_date_d {;}
.post_date_m {;}
.post_author{;}
.post_author a{;}
.entry{;}
.info {;}
.category {;}
.tags {;}
.bubble {;}
.navigation {;}
.navigation {;}
.sorry {;}

Control the everything related to the sidebar which includes the image position, text, links and fields styles etc.

/************ sidebar ************/
#sidebar1 {;}
#sidebar1 a{;}
#sidebar1 a:hover {;}
#sidebar1 ul {;}
#sidebar1 li {;}
#sidebar1 h4 {;}
#sidebar1 ul ul li {;}
#sidebar1 select{;}

#sidebar2 {;}
#sidebar2 a{;}
#sidebar2 a:hover {;}
#sidebar2 ul {;}
#sidebar2 li {;}
#sidebar2 h4 {;}
#sidebar2 ul li{;}
#sidebar2 ul ul li {;}
#sidebar2 select{;}

Note: sidebar2 is not needed if the theme is 2 column.

Control the position of RSS icon, position and text style of the RSS as well as the search input area.

/*********** RSS and Search ***********/
#rss_search .input {;}
#rss_search .submit{;}
#rss_search a.rss{;}
#rss_search a.rss:hover{;}

You can control the comment section that includes the avatar, nested comments, paging, pingbacks and trackbacks etc.

/************ comment ************/
#postmetadata {;}
.nocomments {;}
#comments {;}
.commentlist {;}
.comment,.trackback,.pingback{;}
.comment .children{;}
.comment div, .trackback div, .pingback div{;}
.trackback div, .pingback div{;}
.comment div div,.trackback div div, .pingback div div{;}
.comment .says, .trackback .says, .pingback .says{;}
.comment .avatar{;}
.comment .fn,.comment .fn a,.trackback .fn,.trackback .fn a,.pingback .fn,.pingback .fn a{;}
.byuser .fn a{;}
.bypostauthor .fn a{;}
.comment .comment-meta,.trackback .comment-meta, .pingback .comment-meta{;}
.trackback .comment-meta{;}
.comment .comment-meta a, .trackback .comment-meta a, .pingback .comment-meta a {;}
.comment .reply{;}
.comment .reply a{;}
.trackback .reply, .pingback .reply{;}

/**comment paging WP2.7**/
.commentnavi{;}
.commentpages{;}
.page-numbers{;}
.current{;}

/*** comment form ***/
#respond {;}
.cancel-comment-reply{;}
#commentform {;}
#email, #author, #url {;}
#comment {;}
#submit {;}

This section controls the widget setting. You can add your own widget and define the setting here.

/********** WIDGET **********/
#wp-calendar td {;}
#wp-calendar {;}
.wp-caption {;}
.textwidget {;}
#akismetwrap{;}
.rsswidget img {;}
#sidebar h1 a.rsswidget{;}
.wp-smiley{;}

Dogs are man’s best friend. I used to have a Chow Chow (a breed of dog that was first developed in Mongolia) 15 years ago. A dense double coat and thick fur around the neck made it look like a lion. Though looked fierce, she was extremely obedient to me. Unfortunately, she was killed in an accident and was the last dog I rear

This theme is a tribute to my Chow Chow named Toffy.

Latest Version: 1.00
Added on: 2009/05/30

Note: I strongly recommend to use the header file to customize your blog title, description as well as the dog thumbnails. If you have difficulty to do it yourselves, I can help at the cost of $10 to change the title, description and the 4 thumbnails. It’ll cost $30 to change the top right dog image with your own picture. Contact me to make the request.

Important: The Doggy Love theme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported. Please read the Terms of Use before you download it. If you find it troublesome to read the full terms, just remember one item as below will do:
You must keep the footer link and a footer script intact to enjoy free usage

Main Features

• Compatible with IE6, IE7, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera
• W3C XHTML and CSS compliant
• Gravatar enable

Blog Title and Description
By default, the blog title and description are using the Arial font. You can change the font style by following this instruction:
- Download this PSD zip file (also include the font that I use that is available free from fontstock.net.)
- Extract and open the PSD file in the Photoshop program
- Add the title and description using your desired font
- Save the image using this name: bg_header_new.jpg
- Upload the image to your server in the /images folder

View all my themes

Change log
2009-05-30 v1.00 - Release

In my search for the Wordpress resources, I have yet to see a site which includes ALL the projects under the Automattic umbrella until I stumbled upon Wptavern.com. It looks interesting to me so I decided to find out more about this site.

Checking the archive and the “About” page is a good way to get an overview of a blog. The first article was posted on Jan 23, 2009. It seems that Jeff, the owner of this site, has a clear vision about what to do with the site. He bought the domain from Wphacks.com and aims to make this site a central community for Wordpress users.

Let’s take a look at the site structure of Wptavern. Since this site discusses everything about the Automattic projects, it is good to create different categories for the projects. Wptavern only has categories for big projects like bbPress, BuddyPress and WPMU. There is no designated place for the smaller projects yet. I think having a category listing all the articles relating to the smaller projects would help users to find what they want.

One limitation in fostering good relationship with the readers using the blog comment system is that the interaction interface is not as friendly as the forum. That’s why Wptavern installed a forum and used that as the main communication channel instead of the blog comment system.

I am wondering since bbPress is a forum software developed by the Automattic team, why doesn’t Jeff use it instead of the vBulletin. bbPress may be less functional than the well-developed vBullentin, but wouldn’t it be exciting to install it in the first place and witness the improvement of this software made along the way?

There is another innovative way that Jeff promotes his site. Every week, a new podcast is posted (in fact, more than 1 podcast is posted weekly). Anyone can participate in the podcasts discussing a wide range of topics about Wordpress. You can even find podcast interview with Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Wordpress.

Instead of being a fanatic follower of Wordpress, Jeff looks at the projects undergoing in Automattic in a critical way. He doesn’t always agree with the decision made within the team. One of his posts foresees 6 ways in which Wordpress could die. I cannot be more agreeable with the article.

Just as I am committed to making my themes a success in the Wordpress community, I can see that Jeff is also committed to making his site a prime location for Wordpress users to hang around.