Kickass Webdesign has a theme called Kickass-Noir. It’s a theme that’s quite classy with its gray, white and black feel. It also has a film reel for a background image. Best of all: it’s widget-ready! What more could you ask from Kickass Webdesign? 
Plus points on:
- Creative design
A film reel as a background—quite cute and nifty. Also, the use of the grayscale makes it even look more nostalgic than anything.
- Fonts
The fonts used here are pretty big so anyone could read the blog entries. By default, the font-size is pretty good so you might not have to worry about changing those details in style.css. There might be people who would say that the font size is too bis so you might as well change that the moment that you see for yourself how it affects everything.
Minus points on:
- Too many fixed stuff on the layout.
In case you don’t like the widths of the divs, etc. try making a set for your friends’ project. Well, in any case you need such stuff, you wouldn’t have much trouble. In any case you forget to
- Fonts too huge.
Maybe in a way, it was a pretty good font but it’s really not the same as with the other much more common WP layouts.
In any case, it’s still up to you. You could choose to simply leave the theme at that but if you like something else, you could come up with your own Your blog is your space. I personally think movie review blogs would look good with this layout. Or maybe even those that talk about movie stars and other such news.
Written by Groucho on September 27, 2006 under Uncategorized
Do you want to set your mark on your blog but are having trouble with finding a framework to suit your needs? K2 is a simple, fully customizable two-column theme for Wordpress from the authors of the default Kubrick theme. It’s clean-cut layout can be adapted to your needs by selecting and creating styles on the K2 options panel, and you can upload your own header images.
Some things about the theme (all colors are from the default setting)
Color scheme: blue, white
Number of columns: two (sidebar is on the right)
Headers: gray
Links: gray for the main column, blue for the sidebar
Text: gray
Search box: at the sidebar, upper part
Images in the post: customizable header image
Other distinguishing features: A navigation system called rolling archives, which lets you navigate through search results and archives without reloading the page. It also has AJAX-powered features like live commenting and livesearch, which means your reader can comment and search your blog without reloading.
K2 was the first theme outside of Wordpress.com to support widgets, and it comes with
sidebar modules, created by Ben Sheratt. These modules allow you to fully customize your sidebar to include whatever plugin you wish to add or create if you’re feeling adventurous. A widgetized 3-column K2 created by Bharath Kumar which can be used without K2 is now available, and it has the same versatility as its source. Go hack it, if you want!
Something about the theme creator:
Michael Heilemann authored the default wordpress theme Kubrick. Other developers include Chris J Davis, Zeo, and Steve Lam.
Information:
Download K2
Forums for modifications—Look like a pro!
Written by Groucho on September 25, 2006 under Uncategorized
Click the image for a better view.
Are you using WordPress as a CMS and a blogging app? If you are and you are wondering how to make sure that the readers of your blog would feel that each of your posts and articles would have specific ‘weights’ in terms of special articles, regular ones and asides, you could actually set it up using Musil as your theme. The good thing about it is that it’s a really simple looking theme that would not make you feel too overwhelmed.
Positive points for Musil:
- Distinguish the different kinds of entries that you have.
Maybe you have things you consider as ‘special features’—how should these appear on your site? Having them appear differently from the rest would be good so that people would have that clue that they are there as special features.
- Asides are really seen as asides.
If you’re someone who wants to put sidenotes, no need to worry about how to fiddle around much. Seems like sidenotes work without a hitch here.
- Widget support
Whether you are a newbie in blogging or a pro, you could customize your blog further through the use of widgets. There are some widgets that are automatically included in this theme and you just need to activate them. The widgets are: Related Posts and Scrobbler. Check out the plugins so you could activate them, as needed.
People are getting more and more conscious about how readers would benefit more from the layout of their individual blogs. Musil is definitely one of the themes that think about such factors as well as the usability of it from the user’s perspective. Maybe if you are someone who simply needs to know what would work out of the box and have a nice theme to look at at the same time, this is an option you could choose. If you’re running a news and features blog, you might also want to check this out or even modify it.
Music lover? Some people might not understand what it is about sharing playlists with other people but there’s something about putting up your personal playlist for the whole world to see. It says something about your personality and it could also be a good way to start a conversation with other people online. If you like such things, you could use the Scrobbler widget on your WordPress-powered blog.
Scobbler? Audioscrobbler? What?
If you haven’t heard of Audioscrobbler, it is basically a service that keeps track of the listening habits of different people. Whatever kind of media player you are using, as long as you have the Audioscrobbler plugin, the songs that you listen to will be added to your music profile. Nothing here about downloading music. It’s really more on music listening habits and the nice thing about the database is that you could have so many nifty stats regarding musical preferences and the like.
Scrobbler fun
If you have the Scrobbler plugin, the nice thing is that the readers of your blog won’t really feel some site-reloading and stuff because of AJAX. They would simply see the updated list on your blog. Less of a hassle, right?
What you need
Scrobbler!
WordPress 2.+
PHP4 and up
an account on AudioScrobbler/LastFM
Once you have the requirements, you shouldn’t find it difficult to install it. When you have the Scrobbler plugin active, you don’t have to put the function call for Scrobbler on your template. You could simply use the widget 
Don’t you just love such nifty widgets? 
Technorati Tags: music, wordpress, widgets, lastfm, media
Written by Groucho on September 17, 2006 under Uncategorized
Click the image to view it better.
Do you love the color orange and want a widget-ready theme? You can check out Lisa’s Orange Crush WordPress theme. Here are some things to note about the theme:
Colors: orange, white, gray
Header: predominantly orange; has space for your blog title and description but it looks like it wouldn’t be too friendly with blogs with long titles
Posts: Each post would have a section but it’s not within box. There are, however, orange lines beneath the title of each post. The date of the posting is underneath the title. It looks quite elegant actually. The categories of each post do not appear though so you might want to tweak the theme’s template before using it.
Sidebar: As is commonly found in sidebars, there are links, the calendar and archives, the link to recent posts. One of the nice things about it is that the categories and subcategories show up nicely. The subcategories are indented. That is something really nice and awesome.
Blockquotes: no fancy background colors or borders whatsoever.
This widget-ready theme is good for bloggers who want to be taken a bit seriously and still show some funk through their layout. The orange color isn’t too bright so it doesn’t hurt the eyes. It’s pretty refreshing, considering that it has orange, somewhat a strong color.
This WordPress theme could probably be used by those into serious writing or a bit of problogging. That or a food blog, perhaps. They say that the color orange stimulates the appetite that is why it is a popular color used in the marketing of fastfoods. In case you plan to use this, make sure that your blog title is short enough so it wouldn’t be a problem later on.
Technorati Tags: themes, wordpress
Text widgets are probably what some people would consider as useless or not so cool. Think again! These text widgets might be the ones you could really use more often than not!
The WordPress Widgets plugin has the text widgets there by default. There are other text widgets that are available online. Some of them are even capable of better things liek inserting HTML and PHP. It’s really interesting.
Funky things you could do with the text widget:
- Adding information about you.
Maybe if you have your blogger code or your geek code, you could put there. Or a brief biography.
- Adding information about your blog.
Just a little snippet so first time visitors would be able to see what your blog is all about and get their attention.
- Adding a poem.
If you have a poem that basically says what your life philosophy is, why not add it using the text box widget?
- Instant status reports.
If you just want quick updates on your sidebar as to your status, you could place them using the text widget. Hmmm. Maybe for example you’re hooked on to watching Iron Chef or playing some game, you could add something like “Currently addicted to (whatever thing or show)” on it. Nifty, right?
There are so many other things you could do with the text widgets. Only you could limit yourself as to how creative you can get on your own blog. If you would like to learn a bit more of the basics, of blogging you could check out some blog tutorials. That way you could decide on what you would do with your own blog and figure out what widgets would be suitable.
That is an example of how the horoscope widget would output your zodiac sign’s daily horoscope.
It’s written in the stars, as some people would say. As such, they’d like to know what their horoscopes are every single day! Oh boy, it’s not just enough to look at it from the newspaper. You just have to share it with everybody else who is reading your blog! It’s part of the fun and for some people, the paranoia that the stars are conspiring against you.
Patrick Chia has a plugin for those who would like such a thing on their blogs. This WordPress geek seems to have a lot of widgets on his projects page. Anyhow, the horoscope widget gets the daily horoscope from Evled.com’s horoscpe section.
Good things:
You could have a cute header text describing that section of your blog. You could have something like “Signs and wonders: A Gemini’s daily horoscope” or “Written in the stars for Aries” or even “Zodiac Crazy Scorpio.” Nice, right? It would be easy to fit in your blog’s overall look and feel.
You could easily just select your zodiac sign from the drop-down list when you customize it from the Presentation > Sidebar Arrangement > Widgets part of your blog. If you’re not certain what your zodiac sign is, there’s no need to worry. The dates are included in the list, just right beside the particular zodiac sign. Nifty huh?
The not so good things:
Wouldn’t it be better if there’s an image associated with the zodiac signs? In newspapers, it’s easy to find the zodiac signs because of the symbols included.
If you don’t like the source of the horoscopes, you can’t really change it unless you can tweak the widget itself so that you could have a different source.
Don’t you just love these widgets? Whether you’re a blogging newbie or a problogger, you sure could play around with them!
Are you someone who is constantly working on so many things all at once? Don’t you wish people would be able to see your progress? Or maybe you could keep a progress bar on your blog’s sidebar just for the sake of knowing your progress.
Worry no more! The progress bar widget is interesting. You could have different progress bars for each project you are working on. There are instructions in English so it should not be too troublesome.
Things to love about it:
You could change the color of the indicator. These are the things you could customize:
- Background color
- Bar color
- Frame color
- Frame width
It is simple to add. Just put the widget file in the plugins directory and activate it. (Don’t forget to make sure you have the WordPress widgets plugin active and that your theme is friendly to widgets )
You could directly put a link to your project’s url and when your progress bar shows up, people can click the name of your project and see how it goes. Maybe you’re working on a really fun game and a series of stories. You could have them all listed on your sidebar
The not so good stuff
If you are not familiar with hexadecimal colors, you might not find it easy to use because you’d still have to learn what number to put in the boxes. You could go read up on hexadecimal colors as soon as you can hit the create new tab option and make a Google search on it
Another not so good thing about it is that the blog where it could be found is in a language other than English. The creator of the widget could write in English so I think it shouldn’t be that bad. Then again, it’s really straightforward so you might not need a how to put it on your blog guide. Tweaking it would be another matter though.
Have you encountered difficulty in adding certain codes on your blog’s sidebar? Some plugins don’t have widget counterparts just yet so it would be really neat if you could find one that allows you to add them, right? Hooray for the Samsarin PHP Widget—it allows you to make sure you have your PHP code in place
Samsarin PHP Widget
Version 0.2 has been released last month and the creator of the widget welcomes suggestions for improvement. In any case, all you need to do is make sure that you download it, unpack it and upload it into your plugins folder so that you could start using it.
Using it is easy because it’s very straightforward. You simply place the code in the box. Actually, you are not limited to PHP code. You could place text or HTML there. Maybe even blocks of ads for those who monetize their blogs. In case you want some text on your sidebar, this is also nifty. And if you want it to be formatted, just use HTML.
A good thing about this widget is that even in the title field, you could put HTML and PHP. Nifty, huh? You could also leave that part blank, if you don’t want to add any.
This is a nice plugin. For those the PHP geeks and those of you who want to add bits of code and template tags, for that matter, now you could do it without much trouble. Because it’s so direct in terms of its user interface, you surely won’t be overwhelmed.
Find it useful? Drop by and contact the widget’s creator.
Technorati Tags: blogs, php, wordpress, widgets
Written by Groucho on September 7, 2006 under Uncategorized
Want to find ways so that people could easily donate to your work via PayPal? There is what Patrick Chia calls the Paypal Donate Widget Plugin. As with other widgets, it requires WordPress 2+, a theme that is widget friendly and the widgets plugin.
Simple install procedure
If you have the prerequisites, you could start installing the widget on your blog. It is really easy:
- Download the widget here.
- Extract the file on your computer then upload it via FTP and make sure that you place them in the /wp-content/plugins/widgets directory.
- Make sure it’s active then drag drop it on to your sidebar.
- Configure it.
Wasn’t that quick and easy to remember?
There are many developers out there who have been creating really nifty blog plugins and widgets for public use. Why not spread the love? How? By giving them a little something for the time and effort that they spend, especially if you ask them for some technical help especially if you are new to using these plugins and widgets. One other group of people I think who could directly benefit for this would be the graphic designers who come up with themes/templates/layout.
If you think that you could use this widget, go ahead and install it. In a way, this helps everyone online when it comes to getting some financial help. Aside from that, it’s fairly easy to use because it’s quite direct. In case you’re using it already and would like to suggest some improvements, you could contact Patrick Chia on his blog.
Technorati Tags: blogs, paypal, widgets
