I am proud to announce an all new version of the venerable Independence Day WordPress theme:

http://imjtk.com/Independence-Day/

When Luke and I asked Google the other day it had over 150,000 links for the old theme, so it is by far my most popular free wordpress theme, but it was starting to show its age. So I have created an all new version.

Version 3 is a semantic, Fixed Width, HTML5, All American WordPress Theme. It features custom-menu, sticky-post, microformats, rtl-language-support, translation-ready, post-formats, and custom thumbnails.

I just wrapped up a new custom wordpress theme for 5 Minds Computing. The client had a very specific idea about how he wanted it to look, sort of a retro-tech vibe. The client is happy with the results, and I think all things considered it turned out well. As simple as it looks there are some very cool features under the hood including the css rollovers for the WordPress menuing system that I wrote about previously.

As always, if you are interested in a custom wordpress theme for your site, just click on over to the contact page and drop me a line, I’ll be more than happy to read over what you are looking for and we can discuss how we can implement a winning wordpress solution for you.

I’ve been creating custom WordPress themes for a living exclusively for half a decade or more now, and there are a number of features that I code repeatedly and have developed and refined over the years. One of these is a “featured post” section – a way to highlight a certain post or a series of posts section on the front page of a custom theme. Today I thought that I would share my preferred way of creating a featured posts so that you can cop my code for your custom WordPress theme.

The first thing that you will want to do is familiarize yourself with WordPress’ query posts. As with most things WordPress there are a myriad of ways that you can use query posts, the simplest of which is something like this:

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There is a standing joke with my awesome girlfriend Jenny about me always asking google everything and anything – and like with most good jokes there is some truth to it – I always ask google how to do anything before I give it a shot. Today Google let me down, I asked it how you can use the CSS technique of “sliding doors” with the WordPress menuing system for this project I am working on – and Google was no help!

So – I had to let go of my crutch and figure it out on my own, and, after much Knight Ridering ( another inside joke, I love you P. ) I finally figured it out. Jenny was there for this whole process – and at the end I said – and you know what the best part of this is – and my smart gf said “You can write about it and be the first result in Google for WordPress menu with sliding door css” – is there any doubt why I love her so?

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I’ve been posting about the Shopp WordPress plugin lately, so I thought that I would post the first project that I completed with it and the new framework I have been using – so here it is Neurvana Edge. The code is just a pretty as the site itself . As flexible as Shopp is, I still had to hack it a little to make it do exactly what the client wanted, but in the end I think his custom e-com wordpress theme came out very well indeed.

Hey Now! I have completed the first new custom WordPress theme with the new framework – It was difficult giving up my venerable old framework that took me years to create but it was time for something new, clean, and modern. The results are impressive – it took some time to get up to speed but I am very comfortable with it now and my WordPress themes will now all be fresh and state of the art.

More importantly the client says: “It looks great, Great Job! – The CSS is excellent, I am not going to have any problem if I need to make changes. Your work is excellent. ~ J”

Over the past week I have been revamping the custom WordPress theme over at Lucernex to give it a more modern look without changing other aspects of the existing site. Additionally the client also had a number of very specific functions and plugins that they wanted to keep that I had to work around and interact with.

Joe V – The President of Lucernex – says:

Jim – this is excellent, my whole team loves the new site!

Over the last month I created a very cool, challenging custom WordPress theme for the good folks at The National Center for Weight and Wellness. Dr. Kahan is big time, he’s been on numerous national television shows and even talked at TED!

I think it turned out great, and Dr. Kahan just emailed me a thank you, so it’s all good…

Over the last few weeks I designed and developed on a custom wordpress theme for a very cool client – The Mental Health Social Worker.

Like all projects this custom WordPress theme had it own set of set of priorities and problems, but the client and I both like the way it turned out – so win/win

I spent a large chunk of my time over the last month getting re-acquainted with BuddyPress. BuddyPress says that it is: “Social networking in a box.” and while that is true enough what BuddyPress really is – is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to turn your WordPress powered site into your own social network.

You can build a social network based on the power and flexibility of WordPress, but BuddyPress is not for the faint of heart – especially if you want to do extensive customization. It is not nearly as simple as creating a custom theme for a WordPress site – but it is very powerful indeed, and if you have a multi-user WordPress powered site it is definitively something that you should investigate.

And if you decide that you need help implementing a custom BuddyPress solution, just let me know – I have extensive experience with not only getting it all working but customizing the look and feel and getting a BuddyPress site bent to my ( and my clients ) will.