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Our Special Wordpress Theme

Posted: November 2nd, 2008 | Author: Bryan | Filed under: General, Tutorial |

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Today marks a big day for us, we’ve released the same custom theme that cloaks this very site! Well, it is a very heavily modified version of this theme, but it retains the style that we’ve got going on. I am rather partial to my minimalism themes (just check out my personal site) but this way it remains clean and sparkly.

Without further ado, I present Clean Home (v 1.1.6), our house theme. You can download it for free now right here. So what’s special about this theme? Let me list the ways:

  • Lightweight - A grand total of two images, both 2×6. The rest is XHTML and CSS.
  • Minimalistic - No more distracting of your users, with our theme, your content stays king.
  • Attention Grabbing - With a semi-customizable (1.1.3) blurb, you can say something right away that people just have to read.
  • Full Widget Support - I even took care of some all (1.1.3) of the standard widgets’ CSS for you.
  • Valid XHTML and CSS - As long as you stay valid on your end… :-)
  • GPL License - New! - Do what you will with the theme!
  • Multiple Widget - Now with three sidebars (1.1.4) for maximum customization: top navigation, blurb, and sidebar.

Go ahead and download it now! Feel free to let us know what you think in the comments! Enjoy.

28 Comments on “Our Special Wordpress Theme”

  1. #1 Chelle said at 7:29 pm on November 2nd, 2008:

    It’s definitely a nice clean design! Lately my site has been making me sick looking at it and I think minimalism is the way to go. Might give this one a spin!

  2. #2 Bryan said at 12:04 pm on November 5th, 2008:

    Thanks Chelle, sometimes a cluttered design can turn people off. If you want a little hand cleaning up, you know how to get in contact with us. ;-)

  3. #3 Sibylle Muehlke said at 10:15 am on November 11th, 2008:

    “Clean Home” is a true beauty. Being a writer I was looking for a theme with a clear emphasis on text and typography. So your theme suits me quite well. I have changed the colors and tought it some German, too, but the fancy blurb-thingy in the header makes me pull my hair out. How does one modify the text? Changing the text in the header.php is not what you’ve meant, did you? Obviously I am too thick to understand your instructions. “Use your widget sidebars in the admin Design tab to change this little blurb here. Add the text widget to the Blurb Sidebar!”? I have avtivated a text widget, but it shows in the sidebar, not in the blurb.

    Any help or hints would be widely appreciated.

    Regards:
    Sibylle

  4. #4 Amit said at 1:48 pm on November 11th, 2008:

    Hi Bryan, I am really in love with the theme. But the sidebar breaks in IE6, If you can fix it up it will be great and you will see a lot of downloads.

  5. #5 Bill said at 12:27 pm on November 12th, 2008:

    Yep. That’s a sweet template. Currently in betatweek for me own blog. I must be thick like Sybille, though. Can’t get the Blurb Sidebar thing to work. This, however, is not a criticism, ’cause the overall package is le hott.
    I’ll give you a heads up when everything goes live.
    Thanks for the good work.

  6. #6 Niekto said at 3:41 am on November 13th, 2008:

    Witam,
    I’m from Poland. I really like theme, but one thing is bad: need bigger RSS icon (need icon at all)! Regards - Niekto.

  7. #7 Tim said at 2:05 am on November 20th, 2008:

    There’s an error in your header.php file which is the reason Sibylle above is having issues.

    This line of code:

    || !dynamic_sidebar(’Blurb’) ) : ?>

    Should be changed to:

    || !dynamic_sidebar(’Text Blurb’) ) : ?>

    That should resolve any issues. Thanks for the theme!

  8. #8 Tim said at 4:04 pm on November 20th, 2008:

    Is there a way to change the blurb on the site depending on the page like you have done on this site?

  9. #9 Bryan said at 4:25 pm on November 20th, 2008:

    @Tim, the new version (1.1.5) has the fix. Sleepy coder at the wheel….

    Also, I used this code in place of the blurb, this enables a different message for each page:

    if (is_page(3)) {
    echo “Page 3 message.”;
    } elseif (is_page(9)) {
    echo “Page 9 message.”;
    } else {
    echo “Generic, site wide message.”;
    }

  10. #10 Matt said at 10:46 pm on November 20th, 2008:

    Very, very nice. One of the best themes i have ever seen!

  11. #11 xzhang said at 11:16 pm on November 20th, 2008:

    I found the error about blurb too :p

    Normally I just like dark theme but this one is so great so i use it for my blog now :D Thank a lot to Bryan!

    I have a question:
    is there any way to make the blurb display random text in a collection?

  12. #12 Rob said at 1:10 am on November 22nd, 2008:

    Wonderful theme! I love minimal stuff, and am going to use this happily on my wp site. Thank you so much for the great look, i am not a designer, so this is great!
    Cheers!

  13. #13 surya said at 11:32 am on November 23rd, 2008:

    wHAT A GreaT !!!
    I’m from Indonesia, and I really like this theme

    thanks

  14. #14 Simon said at 9:58 pm on November 24th, 2008:

    Hi there, this is a great theme really like it. The side bar seems to displaying below the main content in IE6 though, is this a CSS tweak you could fix? Thanks in advance~

  15. #15 Libby said at 3:02 pm on November 25th, 2008:

    How do I turn off the child pages in the nav? I want to use the theme, but the nav gets wrecked as soon as I add a child page. I can;t find a $depth statement or anything that seems to control this. Should I just make changes in the css?

    Thank you for the beautigful theme, by the way

  16. #16 guy yeomans said at 4:59 am on November 28th, 2008:

    Hello Bryan,

    Greetings from London, England.

    Firstly, many thanks for making this fantastic theme available - I saw it and switched my blog design straight away - I love the minimalist approach.

    2 quick queries:

    1 - In the comments above (in response to Tim) you provide the code to allow different ‘blurbs’ to be displayed on different pages. Could you just add where that code needs to go? (or is it now automatically included in version 1.1.5?)

    2 - Also, I would agree with Niekto. One of the only things I feel the design needs is the option to display a more prominent & visual RSS icon.

    I’ve hacked my subscription options (RSS & email) to be part of the sidebar. These are displayed within a Div Block. However, when I try to insert an image to precede the text of each line of the list within the block nothing is displayed (I’m a CSS nube - be gentle with me!). In essence, I’m seeking to create sidebar div formatting that can display something similar to the visual subscription options at the top, right-hand side of Chris Brogan’s homepage
    (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/).

    Any thoughts appreciated.

    Regards.

    Guy

  17. #17 Mihai Bojin said at 10:25 am on November 28th, 2008:

    I had a problem with this theme, that beeing that the wp_footer action was not called in the footer.php file.
    I am using Clean-home version 1.1.3

    If you fixed (or will fix) this issue, please tell me so I can update my blog.

    Thanks,
    Mihai Bojin

  18. #18 Mark said at 3:21 pm on November 29th, 2008:

    I love the theme.

    So simple. Exactly what I had been looking for in a WordPress solution.

    I am importing my Tumblr into the sidebar and I customized the header to have an image and switched around the fonts a bit.

    Thank you so much for your work on this.

  19. #19 Bob said at 6:08 pm on November 30th, 2008:

    First of all, awesome template. Second, despite having read countless “how to” guides about Wordpress I am still pathetic and can’t seem to modify things. So this is a plea for help. I can’t seem to modify the “blurb” on various pages like you have done on your site. I’d like to have an home page blurb and then a different one other pages. Could you please suggest how I can accomplish this seemingly easy task.

    Thanks, Bob

  20. #20 Matt said at 2:27 pm on December 1st, 2008:

    Awesome theme, guys. Keep up the good work!

  21. #21 aris said at 3:16 pm on December 2nd, 2008:

    For my ALBINO online shop I wrote my own theme for the obvious reasons. For the blog I started writting on the side at http://www.ntizain.gr I did not want to go through the same ordeal so I though I should find one. I looked at what seemed like a billion themes and this stood out because it was lovely.

    Do you like the 3D work in the header image? No rendering software involved to achieve that level of photo-realism!!! What you would call cut-an-paste, really.

    Thanks guys!
    Aris

  22. #22 Andreas said at 11:40 am on December 10th, 2008:

    Thank you so much for making this wonderful minimalist design available to the public!

    It works great for me, except for one little thing: When I tell Wordpress to show the number of posts (after the months) in the “Archive” section in the sidebar, there always appears a pagebreak efter the month, before the count. This happens even though there seems to be plenty of space left on the line…

    Do you have any idea how I can remove this linebreak?

    Kindly,
    Andreas

  23. #23 tbronson said at 2:20 pm on December 10th, 2008:

    Great minimalist theme. Thanks!

    Just upgraded from 1.1.5 to 1.1.6, and I’m still seeing a problem in IE6, as described by Simon, above.

    The right-side sidebar displays below the main content. Also the line height for the items in the sidebar menu is about double what it should be.

  24. #24 Matt said at 12:15 pm on December 11th, 2008:

    Comments can be optionally paginated (e.g. 50 per page) and in reverse order (settings > discussion in admin). Could you adjust your theme to accomodate for these configuration options?

  25. #25 Matt said at 12:17 pm on December 11th, 2008:

    Also, can you set the comment box fields (name, email, website) to be pre-filled if the user already entered this info?

    Thanks!

  26. #26 Tom said at 2:43 pm on December 15th, 2008:

    Absolutely beautiful theme. Just purchased the pro version but one tiny question.

    How do I get the tag cloud widget on/under the sidebar? It overrides the default sidebar.

    What code do I need to paste in theme?

    BTW, this theme has inspired me to start blogging again :-)

  27. #27 Anto said at 8:18 am on December 23rd, 2008:

    Very clean theme, but id vote for a revamp of the comments layout =)

  28. #28 Mike said at 4:43 am on December 26th, 2008:

    First of all, this is a great theme !
    Simple and elegant. Thanks alot Bryan.

    Ok, now the IE problem where the sidebar is appearing below….

    You need to go into your stylesheet editor.

    Find #sidebar and edit its parameter
    ==> margin :0 0 15px 0;

    I think IE is more sensitive to this parameter.

    Cheers!

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