Using Child Themes in WordPress is a great way to modify an existing theme, however the CSS @import directive is slower than it has to be, so you should try and avoid it. Here’s why. If it takes 200ms to load the child theme’s stylesheet, and 200ms to load the parent theme’s CSS, a modern web browser should take approximately 200ms to load both of them, because modern browsers...
Introducing Semicolon
Semicolon is a brand new magazine theme for WordPress. It’s simple, clean, and it’s got quite a unique grid layout with support for featured posts. Semicolon was initially created for WP Magazine, an online news site about WordPress in Russian. It’s got support for featured posts, a social profiles menu, related posts, author bios, and a few widget areas. Head over to the demo...
Social Menus in WordPress Themes
I’ve seen tens, maybe hundreds of different plugins, all with different approaches at creating social profile links in WordPress themes via widgets, menus, shortcodes, and “insert this piece of PHP code in footer.php” and whatnot.
A few days ago I stumbled on what I think is the right way.
Lessons Learned from Building and Supporting a (Fairly) Popular WordPress Theme
Around five months ago, I released Expound – a free magazine theme for WordPress. A few days ago, Expound has passed 100,000 downloads in the WordPress.org themes directory, which I’m super proud of. I have collected some thoughts along the way, which you may find useful.
Expound for WordPress.com
The magazine-style theme Expound has just been released for WordPress.com users. Some slight changes and updates will be pushed back to the self-hosted version in the coming weeks.
Expound: A Free Magazine Theme for WordPress
Meet Expound — a free magazine theme for WordPress. Freshly baked, straight out of the oven, filled with _s goodness, a responsive layout, wicked support for featured posts and more! Expound was initially built for WP Magazine, a little blog with a big goal to change the perception of WordPress in Russia. It supports up to five featured posts on the home page, post thumbnails, custom...
7 Tips for Better WordPress Theme Development
I gave this talk at WordCamp Norway 2013. It covers several tips and tricks that will make you a better theme developer.
You can follow the slides and the notes/transcript below. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to ping me here or on Twitter, I’m always happy to help :)
Theme Publish is now on WordPress.com
I released a WordPress theme called Publish earlier this month, and today, thanks to the awesome Theme Team of Automattic, Publish has been made available to all WordPress.com users. Publish is a clean and minimal WordPress theme, perfect for (but not limited to) single-author blogs. While working on shipping Publish to WordPress.com customers, a bunch of improvements have been made to the theme...
Publish: A Free Minimal and Responsive WordPress Theme
I’m pleased to announce that Publish is now available for download in the WordPress.org themes directory. Publish is a theme I’ve been working on for quite a while, started back last year and then released to GitHub in February this year. When I started contributing to _s, I did a complete revamp of the theme, but kept the main intent — a minimal blogging theme with focus on the...
What WordPress Theme Developers Can Learn from Twenty Twelve
We’ve all been waiting for the new default theme for WordPress, and it has finally arrived. Without a doubt, Twenty Twelve is one of the best themes I’ve ever played with. It’s so simple, clean, good-looking and filled with so much awesomeness inside. I’m sure that by now you have downloaded the theme, or at least checked out the demo. In this short review I’d like...