A simple 5 page site built for music composition, sound design and music searches company 'little bits of mischief'. The site is built in php / XHTML and features Flash audio and video players. It's always a pleasure for me to build simple, classic designed sites. I particularly like the red, white, blue colour scheme in this design.
Check it out: www.littlebitsofmischief.com
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.
This is a basic flash tutorial which explains how to apply an animated shine effect to a logo or image, as displayed in the example. This technique only really works well with colour logos.
You will need Flash 8 or above, as the effect utilises the filters which were a new addition in version 8. The source file for this project is available for download at the bottom of the tutorial.
Leave a comment if you find this useful!
GETTING STARTED
CREATING THE SHINE
ANIMATING THE SHINE
ADDING THE EFFECTS
Hi!
I’ve been searching for such a tutorial for a long time!thank you!!
I just wanted to ask if it’s possible to activate the effect on rollover with actionscript, it would be for a website!
thank you very much,
Valentina
Hi Valentina
You could attach the effect to a button or movie clip rollover. You could attatch it to the rollover state of a button without any actionscript. You could also activate the rollover effect in as2 using the following method:
1. Select the shine (Symbol 3) movieclip and give it the instance name ’shine’
2. Add this action to frame 1 of the ’shine’ movie clip:
stop();
3. Create a button. you could make it transparent by setting it’s alpha to 0.
4. Add this action to the button:
on (rollOver) {
shine.play();
}
I hope this helps.
Sam
Hi Sam and thank you very much for your infos. I am a newbie of flash and actionscript so I always need every step to be clear like in your tutorial to do it 
Could u help me out with a sample flash file?you could send it to my email if that’s not a problem for you.
I would really like to understand both ways to make such a rollover button, love your tutorial!
thank you very much,
valentina
I have updated Lazer's site, the main change was reversing the background and text colours from white text on black to black text on white. I would say the effect is more positive than negative though 
Check it out: www.lazersonic.com
The WP Background Tile Plugin for WordPress applies a tiled background image to your blog. It is as simple as this:
Applying a repeat pattern to the background of a webpage is easily done using css:
body {background-image: url(example.jpg);}
However, if you're not into writing code, or don't know where to insert the css into your wordpress theme, then you will find this plugin much easier. It can also be an easy way of testing out lots of background images before deciding on one you are happy with.
INSTALLATION:
USAGE:
CREATING A BACKGROUND TILE:
A background tile is an image which is repeated in both directions over the background of a webpage. Look closely at the background of my site and you will notice the green background is not a matte colour, but a subtle texture. Right click on the background of my site and choose 'View Background Image' (Firefox) or 'Save Background As' (IE) and have a look at the image. You will notice that it is small (16 x 16 pixels), as you don't need much of the pattern to make it tile. Stripes and other geometric patterns can work well for a subtle effect.
Tip: Check out the free online Stripe Generator tool, it's a really easy way to create striped background tiles.
Background tiles can also be used for larger images such as a logo repeat. An example of this is www.mrdupes.com. To achieve this type of result using photoshop the 'offset' filter can be very useful.
GETTING THE URL OF A FILE YOU HAVE UPLOADED WITH WORDPRESS:
DOWNLOAD PLUGIN:
WP Background Tile Plugin | Sam Burdge…
The WP Background Tile Plugin for WordPress applies a tiled background image to your blog. It is as simple as this:
* Create a background image
* Upload it
* Apply it as the background via the WP Background Tile options page
Get the plug…
[...] WP Background Tile [...]
Hi,
This is a nice idea. Thanks for plugin.
But I want to ask a question.
Why did you create a table? Can we save tha background image as an option?
Thanks.
can you make a plugin like this to show post in a magazine like layout.
http://perishablepress.com/press/2008/08/04/two-column-horizontal-sequence-wordpress-post-order/
Hi beauty blog,
I have a plugin which does exactly that! Here’s the link:
http://www.samburdge.co.uk/wordpress/wp-post-columns-plugin-2
I have this nice plugin running in my blog, but it isnt XHTML compliant, I think because of the ‘&’ signs used to pass varibles.
Could you replace ‘&’ signs with ‘&’ to correct this?.
I have tried, but my knoledge about php isnt enought to find where is called the function.
Thanks in advance.
Hi dogday
The plugin doesn’t use any & symbol, this error must be coming from your theme! Also, if your theme already uses a background image then the plugin may not work.
Sam
great plugin.
one question; what if i dont want this tiled? just a single image. non repeating.
Hi,
I tried it on my site (see comment header) and it tiled only the upper half of the page. I have WP 2.7.1. on that particular site.
Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks,
Charles
Hi,
what part would you input the tile file?
Also my nav tags (about, contact, …)
and Sidebar Tags (category, archives)
are all jpegs … I am looking for ways to input it into the php but cannot find any help on that…any help?
Kira
Hi. Great Plugin
How do i get it to center a larger picture?
Thanks
Great plugin! I’m using it on two sites and it works like a champ! But on ONE of the sites, the background won’t display in IE8, while it works just fine on the other. Any ideas?
(www.pdrjunction.com and http://www.hailreporter.com)
hello
nice plug in. i use over there ( http://www.monk.gr) and its work great.
thanks
Great plugin, but appears that Firefix/Netscape doesn’t like the background as a body style tag, while it works fine in Safari, hoping we can get it to work though.
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Please how do I just rotate a simple circle in flash on mouse over and stop on mouse away.
Hi Lynette
I don’t see how this question relates to this article, but:
1. Draw a circle
2. Convert your circle to a button
3. Create a keyframe on the over state of the button
4.select the circle in the over keyframe and covert it to a movie clip.
5. edit the movie clip to include a motion tween
6. on the first frame of the motion tween edit the frames properties - setting rotation to either clock-wise or counter clock-wise