Bespoke theming for WordPress Arcade sites

Date: 12th March 2009 at 7:00 pm | Filed under: blog, portfolio, themes | Author: Sam Burdge | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

loopy1loopy2loopy4loopy3

Screenshots from the new Loopy Pursuits Arcade Site.

I have recently entered the world of Arade Website webmastering and, being the WordPress geek I clearly am, have chosen WP as the management sytem to drive my arcade sites. I have developed two new plugins WP Games Embed (released) and WP Mochi (so far unreleased) and launched my first arcade site Zap Gamez.

In the past I have had a fair few jobs designing custom / bespoke themes for WordPress blogs and for sites that use WP more as a CMS. These jobs are where most of my plugins originate from, adding custom features to sites when no existing plugin is available to achieve the same functionality.

My most recent custom theme is for the arcade site Loopy Pursuits, for which the games content is also driven by my two plugins WP Games Embed & WP Mochi. The theme is incredibly simple - no sidebar or nav bar as such, 3 basic layouts - Home page, Category/Tag/Search results page & single page view where the game itself is displayed. Apart from the formatting of the comments there is nothing about the theme which suggests it is wordpress. No 'recent posts','blogroll' or 'tag cloud' or any other content that could be associated with standard WP blog design.

The theme incorporates google advertising interspersed with the content. My approach to google advertising with arcade sites is to use predominantly image ads as gaming is very visual, and image ads seem to sit better within a very image based site layout. I also use the standard approach of identifying key placements for ads, sometimes referred to as 'Hot Spots', which are normally adjacent to key areas of the page, such as navigation, main content (i.e. the game), etc.

During the development of Loopy Pursuits the WP Mochi Plugin has come a lot closer to releaseability. It still lacks an options page which it would definitely need, but it now incorporates the Mochi Leaderboard (score board) using the Mochi Publisher Bridge, it also now has the ability to add entire directories of games automatically too!

If you are interested in getting a custom design for your WordPress blog, or if you want an arcade website set up, or if you are trying to do something different / unusual with WordPress please feel free to get in touch. I would be happy to provide a quote for any such jobs. I have been working with WordPress since version 1.2 and have set up many WP blogs in that time, I have never used a theme by someone else, custom built is the only way for me!

6 Responses to “Bespoke theming for WordPress Arcade sites”

  • Comment by العاب
    Date: April 4th, 2009 at 11:16 am

    look at my site
    its an arcade power by wordpress

  • Comment by GameGag
    Date: June 8th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

    Wow what a great looking theams, please keep up your innovative touch.

  • Comment by EnjoySilk
    Date: September 18th, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    It’s so beautiful theme!

  • Comment by Frank
    Date: January 9th, 2010 at 2:13 am

    Great theme. My site looks great with this. Thanks

  • Comment by web rs
    Date: February 1st, 2010 at 8:38 am

    How can I download this theme .. ?

  • Comment by WpArcades
    Date: July 4th, 2010 at 4:45 pm

    That looks sweet. Nice job. Wordpress is the best to make arcades on.

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Growing Userbase for my Simplistix Theme for WordPress

Date: 12th February 2009 at 10:25 pm | Filed under: blog, themes, wordpress | Author: Sam Burdge | Tags: , , ,

After releasing my WordPress theme Simplistix into the wild a few weeks ago I have been very happy, and somewhat surprised by it's popularity. It has received hundreds of downloads from my site and over 700 downloads from wordpress.org in the last 12 days. I knew that there was a niche for simple, text based blog themes as I had seen a few sites such as www.plaintxt.org that are entirely devoted to these type of themes. But, with all the sophisticated and complex wordpress themes on offer, Simplistix feels like quite a humble little theme — perhaps that's part of it's charm.

Anyway, seeing the download stats made me feel curious about who was using the theme. I had already seen it being used on a couple of blogs because, as with most wordpress projects, I had received some suggestions, ideas, support requests and constructive criticisms from members of the wordpress community. I did a bit of further research on google and instantly found loads more bloggers using my theme. The main thing that struck me was the diversity of subject matter that these blogs covered – science, computer programming, economics, movies, music, art, fashion and many more. It was also nice to see instances where people had modified the theme, adding in their own site headers, sidebar widgets, google advertising, etc.

I felt so inspired by seeing all these sites using Simplistix as their theme that I decided to write this post featuring some of my favourites. So here they are:

TOP PICKS

www.flyhypersonic.com – The seatbelt sign is illuminated
www.thewherewithal.org – Blogging about credit, debt, money, economy, theory
nicolasulloa.com/blog – Music, Animation, Graphic Arts and Illustration
www.ianthewebsite.com – If you could be any blog, what blog would you be?
2chicksblogging.com – Blogging for Change Training since 2008
feedingme.com
blog.nakedsteve.com – Oh hey is that a monome?

THE BEST OF THE REST

phoward.com/blog
ponasniekas.nespalvotas.lt
www.bigtechcenter.info
www.bletherskite.com
blog.xieer.com
www.bestmusiccenter.info
www.businesstechnologytimes.com/wordpress
likeitreallymatters.com
hasibul.info/blog

I am planning an update to the theme in the near future where I will add an options menu which will allow you to control colours, fonts etc.

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Simplistix and 76 Digital Orange Themes Now Available @ WordPress.org

Date: 31st January 2009 at 3:38 pm | Filed under: themes, wordpress | Author: Sam Burdge | Tags: , , ,

My WordPress themes 76 digital orange and Simplistix are now available at wordpress.org. Here are the links:

For some reason WordPress uses my forum username 'sammyb' as the author name for the themes. With plugins it reads the author name from the plugin file, this obviously doesn't work the same way with themes!

2 Responses to “Simplistix and 76 Digital Orange Themes Now Available @ WordPress.org”

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WP Holding Page Theme

Date: 30th January 2009 at 1:59 am | Filed under: themes, wordpress | Author: Sam Burdge | Tags: , , , ,

The WP Holding Page theme for WordPress is intended for use at times when your site is undergoing maintenance, or is under construction. There are a few themes and plugins out there that also serve this same purpose, the main advantages of this theme are:

  1. Simple basic classy design.
  2. Easy to install & works 'straight out of the box'
  3. Configurable text,colours, fonts and styles via an  Options Page

You can enter you own text for your holding page via the WP Holding Page Options tab in WordPress.

INSTALLATION:

  1. Download the theme from the link at the bottom of this post.
  2. Upload the theme to your wp-conent/themes folder.
  3. Select the theme from the 'Appearance' page in your WordPress and activate it.
  4. Optionally you can configure the theme via the 'WP Holding Page Options' tab under 'Appearance' in WordPress

CONFIGURATION:

You can configure your holding page via the 'WP Holding Page Options' tab under 'Appearance' in WordPress. Here is a list of available options:

  1. Title text
  2. Body text
  3. Text colour
  4. Background colour
  5. Font style
  6. Title size
  7. Text size
  8. Page alignment

Options page screenshot:
options

THEME SCREENSHOTS:

hp1hp2hp6hp3hp4

DOWNLOAD:


5 Responses to “WP Holding Page Theme”

  • Comment by pressitfor.me
    Date: January 31st, 2009 at 3:00 pm

    WP Holding Page Theme | Sam Burdge…

    The WP Holding Page theme for WordPress is intended for use at times when your site is undergoing maintenance, or is under construction. There are a few themes and plugins out there that also serve this same purpose, the main advantages of this theme a…

  • Comment by WP Holding Page | Simple Themes
    Date: February 25th, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    [...] Release Page [...]

  • Comment by Under Construction Themes for WordPress
    Date: September 3rd, 2009 at 7:00 am

    [...] WP Holding Page Release Page [...]

  • Comment by Don’t show your working | Blog Mum | WordPress made easy
    Date: November 27th, 2009 at 1:54 am

    [...] will need: the WP Holding Page theme; the Theme Test Drive plugin, and of course a WP [...]

  • Comment by WP Holding Page Template
    Date: May 2nd, 2010 at 4:23 am

    [...] Preview — Download [...]

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Simplistix WordPress Theme

Date: 20th January 2009 at 7:16 pm | Filed under: scripts, themes, wordpress | Author: Sam Burdge | Tags: , ,

The Simplistix WordPress theme is elegant, simple and light. It has a newspaper look and feel, with a typewriter style header. It is a greyscale variation of the 76-digital theme set.

simplistix

FEATURES:

  • 2 Columns.
  • Gravatar support.
  • Flash header displaying blog title and tagline.
  • Compatible with many plugins, as listed below...

INSTRUCTIONS:

  1. Upload the theme to your wp-conent/themes folder.
  2. Select the them from the 'Appearance' page in your WordPress.

PLUGINS:

The theme is set up to work with the following plugins if they are installed:

  1. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator — Create a sitemap page.
  2. Get Recent Comments — Display recent comments in the sidebar.
  3. Jerome's Keywords — Attach tags to posts and have them display in your sidebar.
  4. Theme Switcher — Switch between the different themes you have installed.
  5. WP Navigation Tool (NAVT) — Create custom links for the tabbed navigation across the top of the page. Just create a group called 'tabs', then add links to it. This plugin is highly recommended!!
  6. PageNavi — Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.

DOWNLOAD:


24 Responses to “Simplistix WordPress Theme”

  • Comment by Simplistix — Simple Themes
    Date: January 21st, 2009 at 4:48 pm

    [...] Release Page [...]

  • Comment by pressitfor.me
    Date: January 21st, 2009 at 4:58 pm

    Simplistix WordPress Theme | Sam Burdge…

    The Simplistix WordPress theme is elegant, simple and light. It has a newspaper look and feel, with a typewriter style header. It is a greyscale variation of the 76-digital theme set….

  • Comment by RickHap
    Date: January 24th, 2009 at 11:19 am

    Sam,

    Simplistix is a very nice Wordpress Theme. I like it so much I’m using it!

    I recommend that you provide a child theme with this distribution. It makes it easier to change the theme and keep your original in place.

    I did notice an issue with swfobject.js. I was unable to get the banner to work with the supplied v1.4 file. As a check, I tested the code outside of Wordpress with no success. It could just be the file. My fix was to download the latest version of the swfobject, v2.1 and make a slight change to the code in header.php.

    There must be an issue with Advance Search 2.0 with Wordpress 2.7. I was unable to get Search with the latest version. Installed Advanced Search v0.6 and installed with success (your sites plug-ins list v0.6).

    I will email you info on the changes.

    Rick

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: January 24th, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    Hi Rick,
    Glad you like the theme! Please email me your updated header.php. I will also look into getting it working with the latest advanced search plugin, and hopefully make an update within the next few days.
    Thanks!
    Sam

  • Comment by RickHap
    Date: January 24th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    A comment on sidebar.php in the Simplistix theme. I’ve run into a conflict with WP 2.7 and Jerome’s Keywords. The tagging and cloud function is improved within WP 2.7. The tag section can be replaced with the following:

     

  • Comment by RickHap
    Date: January 24th, 2009 at 4:32 pm

    Code did not post. Contact-form-7 does have some limitations.

  • Comment by RickHap
    Date: January 24th, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    Sam,

    I emailed you some info on the changes. From what I have read, others have had challenges with WP 2.7 and Advanced Search 2.0.

    Rick

  • Comment by eggplant64
    Date: January 30th, 2009 at 6:04 pm

    Hi there - great theme! I’m really hoping the updated php is coming soon… I similarly couldn’t get the header to work. Downloaded swfobject 2.1 but, as something of a novice, don’t know what I should be changing…

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: February 1st, 2009 at 1:03 am

    Hi Rick & eggplant64
    I’ve updated the code now using swfobject 2.1
    Download from the link above.

    :)

  • Comment by eggplant64
    Date: February 3rd, 2009 at 9:27 pm

    Thanks!

  • Comment by JoeD
    Date: February 5th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

    I thought I posted yesterday, but maybe I didn’t hit submit.

    Just to say, thanks for creating a really nice theme! I’m using it on my site http://www.thewherewithal.org.

    Just a few thoughts - first, I have some problems with the tagging function. Perhaps there is a conflict as RickHap says. Was wondering whether you could post the code that uses the wordpress 2.7 tagging function?

    Also, some have been in touch to say that the site is pretty hard to read on some computers, because of the small font sizes. Perhaps Macs in particular. Maybe relative font sizes instead of absolute might be an idea? I’m going to have a play at customizing this myself, but I’m just learning…

    But apart from that, perfect!

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: February 5th, 2009 at 8:16 pm

    Hi JoeD
    Thanks for your input. The theme’s looking great on your site!
    The tagging problem has been solved with the latest version (version 1.3 available to download above).
    The font thing for Mac I’m guessing is possibly to do with the scalability of the courier font on some systems.

    I found this info:

    font-family: “Courier New”, Courier, monospace;

    Courier is the most common monospace (typewriter-style) font. The Mac version of Courier is scalable; the Windows version is not. Therefore the scalable “Courier New” is preferred, as it is usually available on both Mac and Windows.

    I will look into the possibility of setting the font size in em rather than px. I think your suggestion of relative font sizes is most likely the solution.

    Sam

  • Comment by JoeD
    Date: February 5th, 2009 at 8:54 pm

    Thanks! Look forward to the update

    Joe

  • Comment by Paris
    Date: February 6th, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    hi. very elegant theme. thanks for your effort. i’m having trouble with the tabbed navigation. the link to the NAVT plugin you have up this page is dead. I want to be able to link to both an outside site and, of course, the blogurl, which doesn’t count as a page and so is not showing up. help would be appreciated!

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: February 7th, 2009 at 11:12 am

    Hi Paris

    Here is the link for NAVT plugin on wordpress.org:
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-navigation-list-plugin-navt/

    The plugin can do everything you have described!

    Sam

  • Comment by Paris
    Date: February 12th, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    Thanks again Sam. I have one more question for you if you would be so kind:

    I’m building my own WP theme and I would really like my Comments to behave like yours — when you click Comments in Simplistix, it takes you to the single post page, scrolled down to the comment box.

    I notice two things: when you rollover Comments link in Simplistix you see xyz.com/blog/p=123#respond and it takes you to a page #comment, however the standard comments_popup.php on my site on rollover gives me /?comments_popup=9
    and takes me to a page with just the comments that looks all screwed up.

    I notice your comments.php and comments_popup.php files are different, but if I try replacing mine with yours I just get a blank comments page.

    Can you offer any help here? What factor am I missing?

  • Comment by Paris
    Date: February 12th, 2009 at 6:59 pm

    Forgot to add that if you can help me to remedy this I’ll make a donation of a six-pack of imported beer!

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: February 14th, 2009 at 2:48 am

    Hi Paris
    The solution is probably to do with a mix-up between the two files ‘comments.php’ and ‘comments_popup.php’.

    Notice in the header of Simplistix the line:
    < ?php //comments_popup_script(); // off by default ?>

    This means that the comments_popup javascript is not included as the line in php is commented out.

    Search your theme’s header and see if the line:
    < ?php comments_popup_script(); ?>
    is included anywhere. If so remove it, or comment it out with ‘//’ as in simplistix.

    I hope this helps, as I like imported beer very much! If this doesn’t solve it, perhaps you could send me a link to look at.

    Cheers,
    Sam

  • Comment by kojik
    Date: March 15th, 2009 at 4:00 am

    Hey- great theme! Was just what I was looking for, but I was wondering if there was a way to change the font in the header (the ‘typewritten’ title?)

  • Comment by kojik
    Date: March 15th, 2009 at 5:47 am

    Another related question- I’ve installed NAVT without any problems, although I am unsure as to many of the configuration options. Is there an easy way to go about changing the “tabs” font to courier as well?

    Basically I’d like to have all the fonts, everywhere, be in courier.

    Many thanks!

  • Comment by kojik
    Date: March 15th, 2009 at 7:09 am

    Scratch the last question - I figured out how to change the font on the tab menus- was a matter of finding the right headings in the CSS.

    /me is a n00b :/

  • Comment by Simplistix WordPress Theme
    Date: September 28th, 2009 at 10:09 pm

    [...] Demonstration — Download URL [...]

  • Comment by Ben
    Date: December 2nd, 2009 at 8:39 pm

    Hello,
    Thankyou for your theme, it is just what Im after since I havnt got the technical ability to implement my own designs.
    I have just 2 questions which may or may not be possible. Firstly I notice that the flash reloads itself everytime you navigate to a new page. Is it possible to make it so it doesnt refresh everytime. I am good with flash but I know this isnt something Flash can control.
    Also, and this is just a minor design tweak…. When a tab is selected it would be great if the line at bottom of the selected tab disappeared so that the white space within the tab becomes part of the main page. That way it is nice and clear what page you are in! I hope you find time to help me out. Thanks again!

  • Comment by dedos
    Date: July 7th, 2010 at 10:51 pm

    congratulations for the theme, i’ve downloaded it and will much likely use it in some geekish project, thanks.

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