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”

If you are ever looking for a way to make select boxes look the way you want them to instead of the way your OS wants them to, you will have to roll your own if you want your efforts to work on all the browsers out there ( I’m talking to you Internet Explorer… ).

I had good luck with this simple example.

Since I have become more successful designing WordPress themes then I could have ever guessed when I first looked into how it was done, I once again confront an issue that has haunted my professional existence – managing growth.

What I am trying to say is that I need to take on a partner that has some experience with WordPress themes and is an xhtml and css maven. If you are the right guy ( or girl ) I’ll split the total price of the project with you – I’ll do the Photoshop and client management and you’ll do cutting up and WordPressing.

Bounce over to the contact page if you are interested.

– Yep Another free, creative commons licensed WordPress theme that I am setting free: WasImJTk

This one is a little special because it was not designed to be a freely available creative commons theme but rather it was the previous theme of imjtk.com. This theme served me well and when it was time to re-boot the site, I thought, hey, why not give away the old WordPress theme…

So here you go, feel free to download this theme and do with it what you will – but if you do please respect the creative commons attribution license and give imjtk a link somewhere or another ( that’s the attribution in the attribution license ).

Note: This theme is now hosted and updated over at Doc5.com

Recently I have been doing allot of clones jobs, that is, creating WordPress themes that try and visually emulate existing sites. In these cases I have been creating these new WordPress themes for the owners of the existing sites so there are no ethical issues…

Most of the time the original sites are done with old school tables so I don’t have the option of using the original html files. The existing css files vary greatly in their usefulness. So, what I generally do is recreate the most important parts of the site in Photoshop so that I have all uncompressed graphics for the main areas and cut that up for the headers, repeaters, footers, etc. and make a basic xhtml document form that.

My philosophy is that I am not trying to recreate the original site exactly, I am trying to make it 90% similar and bloggify it with the other 10%. Here’s an example:

Original Site   .   My Blogified, Cloned WordPress Theme

This WordPress Theme is about 90% done as I post this…

All right then, I have decided to try and raise a few bucks to help me create my next free WordPress theme. I see it as sort of like a number of folks all ponying up a few buck a piece to commission a new, cool, standards complaint WordPress theme.

I like releasing the free themes, but as my little family grows and life occurs it is harder and harder to spend time in front of the computer except for working on paying clients sites. So I decided to split the cost of the next freebie theme – I am trying to raise half the cost of what I charge for a custom theme for my clients.

I have created over 65 WordPress themes and as my experience increases so do the quality of my themes, so I am confident that I will be providing the WordPress community something of value with this new theme.

The chip in system makes it easy to use your PayPal account or a credit card to contribute as much or as little to this project as you would like and it has the added benefit of being vetted by a third party. Everyone that contributes over $5 and wants a thank you link will get one.

Just use the Chip In widget on the top of the left hand sidebar to get started.

a {
color: #E6EDF5;
text-decoration: none;
background-color: transparent;
border-bottom-width: 0px;
border-left-width: 0px;
border-right-width: 0px;
border-top-width: 0px;
}

a:visited {
color: #E6EDF5;
text-decoration: none;
background-color: transparent;
border-bottom-width: 0px;
border-left-width: 0px;
border-right-width: 0px;
border-top-width: 0px;
}

a:hover {
color: #F37821;
background-color: transparent;
border-color: #98D2E7;
border-bottom-width: 1px;
border-left-width: 0px;
border-right-width: 0px;
border-top-width: 0px;
border-style: dotted;
text-decoration: none;
}