Update: The sale at $17.00 for the scorchingly nice XD07 Theme and 3 Plugin Bundle is now LIVE.
You also get the very useful Scripts Manager and Snippet Inserter plugins as part of this deal.
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Here’s a link to a demo of the XD07 theme.
As you’d expect it’s really nice and has a number of great features to build a WordPress driven site around, such as:-
- 6 built in colour schemes plus a custom colour changer.
- A built in “Alert Box” popup optionally home page only or whole site.
- Image and video slideshow with selectable slideshow transition effects.
- 7 “Home Boxes” split into two sections, up to 4 boxes, and up to 3.
- Optional social sharing icons for articles and post and pages.
- Social networking Buttons at top and bottom (Facebook, Twitter, etc).
- A “quote” area at the bottom, with WYSIWYG editor.
- 4 editable footer widgets area.
- A rich HTML WYSIWYG editor in many admin sections.
- A custom CSS section so you don’t have to hack the stylesheets.
- Featured posts category to display posts on the home page.
- The ability to optionally turn on and off almost everything.
Plus some other bits and pieces such as add your logo or name text, phone number, and copyright notices, and the ability to disable the main nav bar if that’s something you’d like to do.
In other words lots and LOTS of options to play around with.
In this launch sale it comes with a full developer licence (client/flipper) and I’m also including TWO BONUS plugins, Script Manager and Snippet Inserter.
The Script Manager plugin is exceptionally useful for adding things like tracking and popup scripts (javascript, PHP) to your site and I install it as a matter of course on all my blogs now.
You can either add your scripts globally (e.g. for tracking) or on a page by page or post basis – e.g. for popups and similar.
You can tell the plugin to insert the code in the <head> or <footer> areas of your site which is where most scripts are placed. Without the plugin you’d have to hack the theme to insert tracking code etc and you wouldn’t have any control over which page or post it would be active on.
Script Manager is a bit of a “must-have” workhorse of a plugin that just does the job efficiently.
Snippet Inserter is a simple but very useful plugin that allows you to add PHP, javascript and HTML snippets to your posts and pages and supplies you with a [short-code-tag] to place where you want the code inserted.
For example you may want to add video embed code from YouTube to a particular page or post, or maybe some PHP, or a form. Normally WordPress doesn’t let you do this in the TinyMCE editor, but you can get round this problem with Snippet Inserter.
Both plugins come with full developer (client/flipper) licences in this deal.
The theme and two plugin bundle is just $17 for two days after the sale opens on Wednesday 17th at 2.00pm GMT/BST (9.00am EST/EDT), and will rise to $27 on Saturday morning, and then $37 at sale end on Monday.
My advice for what it’s worth is to get it as soon as the sale opens. 🙂
-Frank Haywood
What does mobile ready mean. Is this theme mobile responsive?
Hi Greg,
No it isn’t. That’s just a demo graphic with some words on it. It could say all fish have fur, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. 😉
If it was a responsive theme, don’t worry, I would have said so in BIG letters in my email and this blog post. That’s the direction I’ll be going in with future themes, but it’s quite difficult to get right.
-Frank
Hey Frank,
I like your new theme – VERY much! However, I’ve rather set a standard now that all themes have to be mobile responsive. And yes, I know how hard mobile responsive is to get right.
Is there any chance that you’ll be making this theme mobile responsive in the future?
Bruce,
Hi Bruce,
Yeah that’s a very high standard – even Starbucks UK had problems getting it right with their very simplistic site layout. But eventually responsive will be the norm I guess. Progress. 🙂
I honestly don’t think I’ll be making this reponsive later, but my goal is to make sure all my future themes are responsive.
The downside is I just don’t think they’ll look as good. There’s always going to be a price paid in terms of compromising between functionality and appearance until it all becomes the norm and designers get more savvy with responsive layouts. At the moment I see it more as something else that can break, but I’m getting there.
-Frank
Hi Frank,
Looks nice!
Question or two:
Would this theme work with creating and offering mutliple events simultaneously?
Can the Map Widget be a different location for each event posting/offering?
OR
Have you considered creating a killer event theme?
Look foward to hearing back from you.
~David
Hi David,
Are we talking about events as in seminars and webinars? Yes I don’t see why not. The home page is pretty much flexible in terms of what you can put in the “home boxes”, and you can use the sliders to promote different events too.
The built in map widget hasn’t been designed to be used on different pages with different maps in the way you’ve described, but my guess is there must be a maps plugin out there that will do this. I tell you what, if there isn’t, I’ll get a really good one created. 😉
As for an event theme, that’s a really interesting proposal you have there. I tell you what, just drop me an email on mailin [at] frankhaywood.com with what you had in mind and I’ll see what I can do. 🙂
-Frank
Hello Frank,
Thank you for replying.
I appreciate your interest and enthusiasm!
Yes to seminars. Yes to training events. Yes to webinars, too.
I am sure the Map widget plugin already exists somewhere…will have to look it up.
Please check your email inbox. I have provided you with more information and some references about event oriented themes.
Best,
David
Another great looking theme. I will second a mobile ready theme (any way to make it so there is a redirect to the mobile version instead of just responsive that we can turn on or off) I charge extra for a mobile site, so I’d love to have the option of having it go either way. And I also second the event theme! Just like David says above. If we’re going for theme requests, I’d love to see a magazine type theme, with more columns, like you have in this one, that show different categories automatically. Perhaps with a adjustable count for each section? We get to set how many of the most recent posts in that category show up in that column or area.
Hi Pol,
David has emailed me with some suggestions and examples of the kind of thing he’s after. My first thoughts are that it will need a lot of thought and planning to do what I believe is the best way of approaching it. I don’t think there’s any reason why one single theme shouldn’t be able to be flexible enough and simple enough to be used in multiple sitations and with multiple styles. It will be difficult but shouldn’t be impossible.
It would need a method where the home page is broken into different sections and adding a post to a category would then dictate where the post would show (which section) on the home page. But it would also need a method where each section on the home page can be assigned to a category to make it completely flexible. That’s the most difficult part of the news side of it covered I think.
The events side of things is whole different ball game, and I think a plugin would be the best way to go with that and then make sure it works nicely with the newsy style theme(s). Again a lot of thought and I believe a lot of trial and error too.
-Frank
One more theme idea, that I got while looking at this. You have made so many cool plugins, I’d love to see a theme that incorporates them all (or at least all the best ones). Built in. Just an idea.
Hi Pol,
Ah, now then… 😉
My stance on this is that themes are for the appearance (and a little functionality can’t be avoided) and plugins do the functionality (and a bit of design can’t be avoided). So I’m a little bit against building a theme with lots of functionality in it. I’ll think about it. 😉
-Frank
Frank, do we get the S3 plugin now, prior to release, or will you get it to us next week when it is released?
Hi Phil,
I’ll add it to the download page when it’s ready in a few days time. 🙂
-Frank
Theme looks great Frank.
Like others here, look forward to your future themes.
Keep up the great work!
Terry
Hi Terry,
Thanks, I really appreciate that more than you’d know. 🙂
-Frank