Posts Tagged ‘download’
Finding WP Themes & Making Tumblr Theme Gallery
Let’s take a quick look at some background…
Once upon a time we were all content with the Wordpress Theme Viewer. It was updated frequently, it was simple and searchable with multiple filters, in short it was everything that a Wordpress theme repository/archive should be. What it wasn’t ready for though, was the exponential growth of the Wordpress blogging platform and the consequent increase in free theme development. Keeping the Theme Viewer repository going was a lot of hard work, and keeping it running on adequate servers a costly affair. Little by little it died a slow death.
But parallel to this phenomenon was the emergence of what is now a household brand: theme galleries. The theme gallery trend began with a couple of the orginal CSS design galleries. People saw an easy opportunity to make some cash out of displaying other people’s work in nice tidy boxes, stick in a rating system and you have yourself a PR5 site in a few months. This trend caught on with Wordpress themes too, so that now it’s no longer a case of figuring out where to find WP themes but rather which site is best.
My search method
While there are many ways of going about finding themes here are some tips for sources that never fail to produce results:
• Weblogtoolscollection News: this is probably the number 1 spot for the latest theme entries.
• Flickr with the search terms ‘Wordpress Themes’ and the filter ‘most recent’: This may surprise some people, but actually I’ve come across some of the best WP theme offerings as a result of surfing Flickr photos. It’s visual, it’s large scale and it’s up to date.
• Just Skins: a slightly young collection but worth bookmarking nonetheless. You’ll notice their collection has a penchant for the ‘light and airy’ type theme. Not a bad thing at all!
• WPThemesPlugin: Straight forward. This is a personal collection of themes, currently totaling 14, but each one is worth a look.
• Smashing Magazine: Start with the link here but also take note of Smashing Magazine’s ‘related posts’ in the footer to this page. You’ll find a whole retrospective collection of themes covering the last couple of years.
• FreeWPthemes.net: The title says it all really. There are currently 68 themes on this site, many are worthy of dressing your blog with.
• Kate’s Theme Viewer: Much in the spirit of the old Wordpress Theme Viewer, this site showcases a collection of themes that have caught this blogger’s eye. Many of the other sites listed here don’t offer the ability to test out themes. Kate’s collection does.
We could go on and on but I’ll stop here. If you want more then I suggest asking google for help. But before I go, there’s just one last resource I’d like to share. It’s a theme list of my own that I’ve just started and it’s powered by Tumblr. I’ve called it ‘ThemeSpotter‘ because let’s be honest it’s a practice that’s not unlike train spotting or plane spotting. Here’s a screen shot of the site. Check it out and let me know what you think.
The one major drawback of using Tumblr to power this site is that it’s tag system is not yet functional. Once we’re able to use tags, then I’ll start adding filters (1 column, 2 column, 3 column, magazine style etc) which will make navigating the list far easier. At the moment it’s just a case of surfing through the collection. But rest assured that only the best themes get entered here.
Just a final note on how I build the tumblr site and how it works for anyone interested in starting their own free gallery. First of all you obviously need a Tumblr account. Go get one now, it’s free and takes less than a minute! Second you’ll need to download the one page of code for the theme. It’s called ‘Silo Theme‘, follow the link for complete installation and operation instructions. So once you’ve got both your Tumblr account working and the theme in place with any modifcations you may have made, I would then suggest one final piece to the puzzle: Screenlr. This is a simple image capture app designed specifically for Tumblr and it allows you to capture screenshots on the fly and upload them directly to your account.
As you can see, it also allows you to add captions with the image so really in terms of operation times this is a very fast process. Whenever I spot a new theme I like, I simply hold down ctrl + alt to capture the image, write a few lines and click ‘create post’ and a new entry goes into to Tumblr! Ok that’s all for now. Stay tuned for more blogging tips and talk.