The Blog Peoria Project » Themes

Advice for picking a new theme

Billy Dennis — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:35:24 +0000

I’ve recently replaced every available user theme at the Blog Peoria Project, which cut the number of available themes almost in half. Some of you had to pick new themes, or you were shunted over to the default Blog Peoria theme.

And some of BBP members have never changed their theme or even made any adjustments to their sites, like add a User Widget or upload a new header image.

I’m not going to lecture people about how to make their blog look pretty or functional. But I will link to this site that tells people how to pick a new blog that fit their needs and sensibilities.

New themes for Blog Peoria members

Billy Dennis — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:00:04 +0000

Via Weblog Tools Collection:

Beauty

Two column, WordPress 2.8 ready theme with an options page and featured posts using SmoothGallery.

Game RV

Game RV is a compatible with WordPress 2.8 with Gravatars, threaded comments, widgets, etc. It has a right single sidebar.

Facebook Look 2

Three column theme that looks and feels like Facebook.

All three of the themes have been uploaded. Give them a test run and if there are any glitches, let me know.,

Site news: A new direction for default

Billy Dennis — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 06:24:56 +0000

If you previously were using the WordPress Mu Default Theme you may have already noticed some changes. The WPMu Default was, in fact, the default theme on this site. Today, I changed the default theme to a slightly modified version of “White as Milk,” which I think is a prettier theme and more more basic in design. This will be the theme brand new bloggers have assigned to them when they sign up. So, if you never bothered to change themes after you created your blog, you probably are seeing the White as Milk theme. You can change back by picking “Kubrick.”

Themes: All themes now BuddyPress friendly

Billy Dennis — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:00:10 +0000

What is the use of having all this spiffy new BuddyPress functionality if your theme doesn’t display the admin bar? Or won’t properly display the content from the BuddyPress widgets, like the list of recently updated blogs?

Answer: Not much use at all.

So, I spent four hours pouring over all the themes, eliminating the ones that didn’t work with BuddyPress. And frankly, some of these themes were so ugly, I had to question why I ever added them in the first place.

As a result, I am now displaying only themes that:

1. Display the admin bar.

2. Display the recent site-wide blog update.

3. Displays them both without breaking the theme.

Of course, I discovered that some themes that did not work are currently in use. I didn’t delete them, but I did make them unavailable for anyone else to use. I’ll the bloggers themselves decide whether to change.

These themes include Vistered Little, Kinky, FastTrack and Librio. Others’ like the popular NoteBook Chaos broke completely and had to be put out of their misery.

I’ve set up this site’s Test Blog with a theme switcher to let users see that these themes look like like in use. Unfortunately, the switcher will continue to let users test out themese that aren’t really available for permanent theme selection, like the ones mentioned above, plus a handfull of specially hacked up sites, like Justice Blog of America, Heinleinblog, Riceblogger, [Not] So Serious and NTPL. Just be aware of this and don’t be surprised if you can’t permanently switch to a particular theme that you tested. And if you get locked up using the Theme Switcher and change the theme any more, click here.

And here’s a big plus for Blog Peoria members: If ANY member finds a theme they are lusting over, contact me and I’ll try to add it to the line-up. But be warned: I’ll check it out for WordPress and BuddyPress compatibility before I’ll make it available. Here’s the place to look.

Site news: 30 new themes added to Blog Peoria

Billy Dennis — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:10:06 +0000

Here they are. None of them are tested with WordPress Mu (at least not with THIS version), but none of them are in Beta. Report any problems to me.

Vikiworks Infinity
Agregado
City Lights
Color Paper
Countryside
Dilectio
Dozen Roses
Fervens A
Finance Blog
Flower Fields
Fluid Blogging
Freedom Blog
Girl’s Theme
Healthcare Blog
My World Blog
Perfect Sunset
Personal Blog
Blak Magic
Social Blog
Sports Blog

Site News: New theme: Mike Little’s Journalized

Billy Dennis — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:35:52 +0000

‘Journalized’ has been around for years, and it came in Blue, Sand and Winter versions. The new Beta version includes those versions as “skins” and includes three others. This version also supports uploadable headers and a choice of 1,2 or zero sidebars.