With the launch of the new theme for GotChance, I had promised that I will release the old theme for free. And, here it is now under the name of Sacred Blue. This is my 3rd free wordpress theme after Brown Rush & Green Bug. But, this one is much more sleeker and comes with more customizable options.

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Features :

• Widget Ready
• Many customizable options
• Optimized for easy ad placements
• Sidebar optimized for 125×125 ads
• Valid XHTML & Valid CSS
• Supports Related Posts plugin
• Supports Subscribe to Comments plugin

For more information, check out the theme page. Don’t forget to let me know about any problems that you may encounter. I’m open to comments and suggestions as well.

Useless Facts :

• This theme was named after a color (blue) not because my previous themes were named so. It was a co incidence.
• I’m half asleep as I write this post. The time here is 1 AM now. So forgive me if i missed something.

Magazine themes for wordpress. A lot of such themes are available both for free and for sale. To check out a long list of magazine themes, check out this post and this post. I’ve also written two posts (one, two) comparing some magazine themes. Most of these themes look great and attractive.

Many bloggers who are starting up tend to get tempted by these designs and start using them. But, as the name suggests, these are aimed for magazine-style websites and not for general blogs. Of course, no rule tells you not to use a magazine theme for a blog, but still your writing need to satisfy certain basic qualities to get the best effect.

1) Many Categories

Do you tend write posts under a variety of categories ? Then, magazine themes are apt for you. Because, these themes help you manage them efficiently.

2) Images for Each Post

Most of these magazine themes have a thumb rule to display a small image next to each post on the front page. As I said, only little things like these make such themes look good. So, you must pay attention and add unique image for each post.

3) Video Blogging

Also, many magazine themes provide a separate area on the homepage for displaying video. Of course, you can add videos from Youtube and other video sharing websites. But, video blogging makes this space look much more personalized.

4) Update your Blog Often

These magazine themes give a very professional look to your site and thus users will expect professional content from you. They’ll like you to update your blog very frequently. “New Articles” on the homepage is displayed for a reason, and not to display the same articles for weeks together.

5) Less Interactivity

This is not a proven concept. But, my opinion is that, these themes give less priority to commenting. And the comments and the comment box are less visible to the user. Thus, it might affect the level of interactivity of your blog.

These are just my opinion. What do you think ? Have you used magazine themes on any of your blogs ? What is the effect ?

This is the second post in my Comparison of Magazine Themes series. In this post, we’ll see about Block Magazine Theme and Revolution News Theme. I chose these two because they were so close in the layout and look.

Block Magazine

Block Magazine is a paid theme by Adii and is sold at UBD. magazine-style theme. After seeing themes like The Morning After and Revolution News themes, i have to say that there is nothing special in this theme. As in the Your Revolution theme, i don’t like the colors. Too flashy. I like the way the Recent Posts, Popular Posts and the Recent Comments are displayed. That saves good space. The “Welcome” block on the top right, sorta degrades the theme’s quality. I’m not going to go deep into discussing this theme. There is nothing special in this theme when compared to Adii’s nex Premium News theme. That is a really nice one.

Revolution News Theme

Revolution News theme is a paid magazine-style theme by the popular Wordpress themer Brian Gardner. This theme basically comes in three flavors : Magazine, News, Sports. But, all the three have a magazine-style layout. Each of them costs $100 with a single-domain license. I wouldn’t say the price is too high. But, it could have been better.
Coming on to the theme itself, the colors are very pleasant on the eyes. Very clean layout. I like all the three styles’ layout. The “Subscribe” button could have been made better. The category pages follow a layout similar to the homepage and looks nice. Nothing much to complain about in this theme and that too without using it.

Pros

• Good ad position
• Clean layout and colors
• Different styles available

Cons

• The price…
• The basic stylesheet (link style etc..) is kinda boring. Could have been more Web2.0-ish

This is the first post in my Comparison of Magazine Themes series. In this post, we’ll see about The Morning After and Your Revolution. I chose these two because they were so close in the layout and look.

The Morning After

The Morning After is a free magazine-like theme by Arun Kale. The theme was created based on a brief survey on the WordPress forums about what people would want to see in a unique magazine-style theme. To my knowledge, it is the first magazine-style theme to be released(see below). Not only the first, it is my favorite. I use this personally on one of my sites and i’m loving this. This theme has many features that are essential for a magazine. Especially, i really appreciate the use of Custom Fields. I love the way the posts are displayed on the homepage, and the recent posts section. The Morning After doesn’t fall behind on the post display page also. It is very nice too like a professional magazine. If i wanted to choose a magazine-style theme and didn’t have money to spend, i’d definitely choose The Morning After. To look at an excellent implementation of The Morning After, go to PopSofa.com

Pros

• Excellent Layout
• Very good use of Custom Fields
• Integration with Email Posts Plugin (a typical magazine feature)

Cons

• Colorless. By default it is fully in grayscale

Your Revolution

First of all i’d like to tell that i have no personal vengeance against Adii and this post is truly unbiased. The first thing that stuck me when i saw Your Revolution was its color. It was too bright and was a heavy strain on my eye. Of course, i complained that The Morning After was colorless. But, i didn’t want this much color either. Anything like the Revolution News Theme will be optimal. Coming back to Your Revolution, i’d tell that it gives less emphasis for the posts on the frontpage. That is, the first and the second column on the frontpage are equally wide. But, its is logical that the first column needs to be wider than the second.

Your Revolution gives excellent position for the 300 x 250 advertisement, which was absent in The Morning After. Your Revolution’s single post page look impressive too. Though Your Revolution’s category page is nice, i like The Morning After’s better. Also, Your Revolution has a poor header design which is a big drawback. To conclude, i’d say that Your Revolution isn’t worth your bucks when The Morning After is available for free.

Pros

• Good Positioning for Advertisement

Cons

• The color scheme
• Poor header design
• The “Can-do-better” type of layout

UPDATE : Sorry to have mentioned that The Morning After was the first Magazine-style theme. Its looks like Mimbo Magazine theme was released before The Morning After. Sorry for the mistake. Thanks for letting me know Darren.

A month or two ago, when i was searching for Magazine-style wordpress themes, i found none. But, today, after just a short time, there are 6 magazine-style wordpress theme available. Three of them are free and three of them are paid. In the upcoming posts, i’ll cover the various aspects of these themes. I’ll split this into three posts and will post in the upcoming days.

As of now, i’ll post the list of them. I’ve ranked them in terms of look, feature, quality and others.

1. The Morning After – Free
2. Revolution News Theme – Paid – (wanted to rank this the same as “The Morning After”. But “The Morning After” won over because it is Free)
3. Mimbo Magazine Theme – Free
4. Block Magazine – Paid
5. Your Revolution – Paid
6. Jello Wala Mello – Free

I’d like to tell that, the ranking mentioned in this post is in no way influenced by my previous post. I’ll write more about these themes in my upcoming posts.

Ross requested a right sidebar version of my Brown Rush theme. I finished it long ago. But forgot to release it and now it is here now.

Description

Brown Rush is a pretty dark theme with white backgrounds for everything. It is a two column theme with a widgetized sidebar. It means that this will work with the Sidebar Widgets plugin. Theme has been tested on Wordpress 2.1 and 2.2

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If you liked this theme, please take a moment to Digg it, Stumble, save to del.icio.us etc.. using the “Share This” link below.

Here is another cool Wordpress theme. This time, the design is not home-made. It is from Free CSS Templates. It is called Aquaria. It is a fancy, 2 column theme. As usual, this theme is widget-ready too.

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If you liked this theme, please take a moment to Digg it, save to del.icio.us etc.. using the “Share This” link below.