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WordPress 3.4 RC1 has been released

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The first release candidate version of WordPress 3.4 was released two days ago, exactly nine years after the first version of WordPress was released (Happy birthday, WordPress!).

As always, a new version means new features, and in v3.4 one of the more exciting new features is a theme customizer that I think will be the start of a new view on user-based design customization. I have been looking into this feature and will definitely add support for it in my themes once 3.4 is released. All WordPress themes on andreasviklund.com have been tested with the 3.4 beta versions, and will be tested with the release candidate(s) as well. From what I have seen so far, they should work perfectly well with the new version once it is released.

For a well-written overview of other new features in WordPress 3.4, see the “10 things you need to know…” by technosailor.com.

Online tools for CSS3 transforms, gradients and other effects

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Here is a recommendation for those of you who are curious about what CSS3 can be used for, as well as for everyone who wants to get started with using CSS3 transforms in a really easy way:

John Allsopp, the main developer of the excellent visual CSS editor Style Master, has created a set of useful tools for playing around with (and thereby also learning) CSS3. Using a simple and easy-to-understand set of sliders and values, it is possible to experiment with some of the the different possibilities of CSS3, such as creating advanced multi-colored gradients, shadows and 2D/3D transform effects.

I love these kinds of tools (especially the fact that each change is reflected directly both visually and in the printed code output), so I recommend it and hope to see more tools added to the list in the future.

Update: John posted a Twitter comment mentioning that he has just uploaded a new version of his tools, which includes even more options. Highly recommended!

Bold and emphasized text in the Inland CSS template

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The Inland template (and the related Inland Earth and Inland Wood templates) have been updated to fix an error that several users have spotted: Text marked up with and tags have not got been displayed as bold and in italics as expected. This is because of the CSS reset that was used in the beginning of the CSS documents for each templates, and it has now been fixed to make these tags work as intended. I have also added additional styling for links in the #extended part of the layout, to give it a different appearance than in the first version of the templates.

To add these changes manually, you can add the following lines to the stylesheet of your Inland-based websites (no matter which of the versions you use):

i,em {font-style:italic;}
b,strong {font-weight:700;}
#extended a{text-decoration:underline;}

The new versions can be downloaded from each template page, or from these direct links:

Inland v1.1 (.zip)
Inland Earth v1.1 (.zip)
Inland Wood v1.1 (.zip)

Two new templates: Inland Earth and Inland Wood

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Two new free website templates have been released: Inland Earth and Inland Wood. Both are based on the popular Inland CSS template, with additions such as background images and CSS3 effects that change their visual appearance. As with Inland, the design has been in focus – while simple and effective code has been a top priority. Both templates include the NivoSlider image slideshow plugin, and a set of beautiful photos by Thomas Wallström have been included to bring more colors into the designs. This is what the new templates look like:

You can read more about Inland Earth and Inland Wood and see live demos on their respective template pages, or download them directly from here:

Inland Earth: inland-earth.zip (1.4 Mb .zip)
Inland Wood: inland-wood.zip (1.5 Mb .zip)

Theme test site upgraded to WordPress 3.4 (beta 2)

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The theme demo site where you can preview the WordPress themes from this site, has been upgraded to the new beta version of the upcoming WordPress 3.4. I’ll be reviewing all themes and make sure that they are fully functional with WordPress 3.4 once it is released, but I would still like to ask for your help. If you spot any bug or error when you browse the demo site, or if you download one of my themes and use it with the 3.4 beta and run into problems, please let me know about it.

WordPress 3.4 will introduce some new features which I will look closer at soon, including a new theme customizer which seems both interesting and useful. With version 3.4, it will also become possible to install child themes hosted at the official WordPress theme directory, from inside the administration area of your site. Both those features are highly relevant for me to support, so I will write more about these features once I have experimented with including support for them in the themes.

Enhance your WordPress theme with code snippets

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As much as I love building themes for WordPress, I am much more of a CSS designer than a coder. In order to make theme development easier, I started to build a library of useful code snippets that I could re-use in future projects. Seeing how useful it was, I started looking around for sites with more snippets that I could use. Today, WordPress Tavern published a post with a link that is well worth passing on to anyone who could find short code snippets for WP-theme development useful…

WPfunction.me contains a collection of snippets which you can copy and paste into the functions.php file of your theme to add new features to it. Using a simple interface, you can sort snippets by category and then select the features you want to add. After selecting, you click a “Get my code” button to get all the code you need. Paste the code into your functions.php file, and you are all ready to go.

It is not the largest collection of WordPress-related code snippets I have seen, but the way that features are selected and the code is customized according to the selections that are made, is simply beautiful. Check it out, and if you want more code examples to choose from, move on to the excellent list of code snippets compiled by CatsWhoCode.

Moving into the world of Creative Commons

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Starting today, all future free HTML/CSS templates (both new designs and updates of previous releases) will be released under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. It will not mean any difference in terms of how the templates can be used, modified and redistributed, as the templates will remain free to download, free to use for both commercial and non-commercial purposes and free to modify and redistribute. The only difference in practice will be that attribution must be given when the templates are used or redistributed. By using an established license, there will be no more confusion about copyrights, limitations and the legal status of the designs.

To learn more about Creative Commons, I suggest watching this video presentation.

(Note: The WordPress themes will still be GPL)

New Drupal theme: Inland

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The Inland CSS template has now been ported into a theme for Drupal and added to the Drupal themes page. The Inland theme for Drupal was created by Nick Young, and the theme includes support for the Nivo Slider header image slideshow. The project is under active development, and Nick is planning to add support for all layout features included in the template. If you use Drupal and you are looking for a new look for your site, check it out!

Coming up: Drupal and WordPress theme versions of the Inland CSS template

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Drupal theme designer Nick Young, who have made the Drupal themes linked from this site, is reporting on Twitter that a Drupal theme version of the Inland CSS template is in progress and that it will be released soon. I can also reveal that I am working on a WordPress theme version, as well as on expanding the CSS template with a layout for mobile devices. Exciting news coming up soon, in other words. Stay tuned for updates!

Pinning images from this site on Pinterest

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The online pinboard service Pinterest is a fast-growing site for pinning and sharing images and links of various kinds. In terms of popularity, it is a huge phenomenon that is used and appreciated by a large number of people worldwide. But Pinterest has also got a lot of criticism as the concept of pinning images can violate copyrights. This can make the seemingly innocent act of sharing a photo into a crime, as explained in this blog post from the Wall Street Journal. Since site owners have different views on copyright and pinning, I want to clarify my view regarding pinning images from andreasviklund.com:

Pinning content from andreasviklund.com on Pinterest is perfectly OK. I encourage it, and appreciate it as it helps others find my work. If you are inspired by the templates and themes that you find here, do not let scary blog posts like the one above stop you from using Pinterest – atleast not for images you find on this website.

I have added a “Pin it” button to the sidebar, and I am working on updating the layout of the template gallery and the single template pages to make it easier to share screenshots for those who want to. I will also be around myself, with a pinboard dedicated to design inspiration. More about that in future posts…