Just when summer seemed to have come back, back we go into fall. It’s definitely getting colder. Well, I think today is going to be an inside day for me although the oak has almost completely shed it leaves, and they need to be tidied before the next wind or they will be all over the neighborhood. I have a neighbor who is very fussy about his garden and keeps me up to scratch as he doesn’t like to fall out from my side. It’s ok though, I just saw the youngster from down the road, and he is coming after school to rake for me. He has a nice friendly face and freckles on his nose. Shades of summer I suppose. The thing about him is he does it in such a cheerful manner you know he’s a willing worker. He has told me he is saving for a special project but what the project is so far he hasn’t divulged. Maybe I can introduce him to an e commerce site?  Let’s carry on from where we left off and look at the rest I have to offer you.

1. Shopping themes

Here you have a free WordPress theme for you in the shape of Vanilla Cart. It’s a simple clean e commerce theme with a lot of white space and an integrated shopping cart. I love that word Free.

2. Store press E commerce

This WordPress user e commerce site has been built by Sitemile, and you will be able to purchase it online. Not that much different in use to most of the others but it’s the look of it that will decide you. It is PayPal integrated and you can use it with the latest WordPress. You can blog on the site about an article for inclusion in the ecommerce section. Actually, it has a host of features you will enjoy.

3. From Upthemes for you

Simplecart is an ecommerce ready to go site for your WordPress. This enables you to turn your WordPress immediately into a money site as it is.  It lets you create your logo to include in the site which enables you to brand yourself. There are several price options available from $50 upwards. If you want to join as a member you are allowed 2 downloads a month after the initial subscription fee and a monthly fee.

4. Tobashop

This is a made for WordPress theme in the form of Ecommerce. It has all the necessary items you will need. One of the really nice things about it is that it makes the thumbnails for you when you upload your photographs. You might definitely like to give Shopaholic a try.

5. From ThemeForest

Called EnViashop this theme is available at the Price of $30 for a single use be it personal or client. The Extended license is a little hefty at $1500. One of the joys of it is it come with the shopping cart already integrates and ready to use. It allows you to work out shipping costs not for just one use but for many. Prices can be set per items. It is both PayPal ready and Google check out ready. I would take a look at it for yourself and see all the special items that are already installed and waiting for you to use.

At the end of the day it’s what appeals to you. I can show you suggestions, but you know what you like.
That’s all for today folks.

Well, I woke this morning thinking. What does it take to be a designer for WordPress? It was better than thinking about all those leaves I watched falling yesterday. I have a huge oak tree in the garden and although, it is glorious in summer, giving dappled shade and having lovely low branches for kids to climb in, in autumn the leaves start falling. First they change color slowly, sort of looking a little older than those sprightly little green shoots that come out in spring.  Then you see them rapidly going brown. That tinge around the edges of the leaves start to curl up, and then they start to fall. One little gust of wind is all it takes, and you have a million leaves lying under the tree saying rake me, rake me. Now who can I get to do that? What’s that kid’s phone number?  There now I can get back to ideas about designing for WordPress. There are several tips one can get on designing, and I am going to look at a few of them. I eventually want to design a new site myself, and I have been collecting ideas.

1. Build your own theme options panel?
This is a very good idea if you want to be able to make changes to your theme without having to do heaps of coding. You can get a great deal of info and all the necessary code from Blog by Lost in the Woods.  That incidentally is a cute blog with a great drop down panel where you can view the various Themed articles’ Thanks Dan.

2. Codes, codes and more codes
You have to remember when I first started to learn about codes I went goofy eyed. I saw codes as a language that was meant to exclude me from a land I wanted to visit. Thank heavens for something that helped me along the way. I now no longer get scared stiff when I look at it. Actually, I have started to understand it. Am I qualifying as a geek? That being said you will need to add a few lines of text to be able to read short codes and see them on your theme. A few lines incorporated into the functions.php section on your theme will be all you need.

That is all that is needed and to learn a whole lot more of things you can do with short codes, you need to mosey on over to Smashing Magazine.

3. Understand WordPress’s Conditions
This next one takes a little bit of work. Remember these guys are fully fledged the ‘G” word.  Yes, you guess it, they are geeks. However, if you go through the conditional statements and work them out for yourself, you are a whole lot further to making WordPress work for you the way you want it. You need to read up the basic php codes. If you are ready to take that giant step to your way into WordPress go over to Web Design and start learning. Remember its all about code.

4. Get Faster Results
We all want things to happen faster for us. When you have the ability to load something into a post by just replacing the text already there and calling it something else, it makes life a whole lot faster. This is called dummy posting.
Head on over to your test install on WordPress and create a post with all the necessary like pages posts and categories. Now in your admin panel on Word Press go to the tools sidebar and Export it. When you want a new post you are going to import it instead.

5. You Have Got The Theme Now Make The Widgets.
Making your own widgets isn’t such a bad idea. They are then totally in keeping with your theme. If you want to get all the great info on how to do this try visiting Justin’s website where he tells you step by step what to do.

DeVison is an excellent WordPress theme which evolved from ThemeShift. Precisely, it is known as a complex WordPress distinctly designed for interaction among businesses. The designers paid special attention to what they believed are the most necessary elements in efficient business relations on the web.
The aim was to have it done in no time with the greatest professional distinction. To evaluate its service is to say that it’s a master piece of technology in the twenty-first century which does not require any major expert intervention for application. Any amateur can read the instructions and follow with them in setting up the device.

Content Slider

The content slider, it is a magnificent strategic application within the web designing industry. It facilitates the movement of the pictures and content without clicking the mouse. What a fascinating eventuality to web designing culture! Who would not want to have DeVison installed in their computer?
The beauty is that it can be applied with such simplicity it is unbelievable. The only requirement for easy application is a custom field to facilitate the process. The featured content slider simply adds content to pages or posts then the custom slider continues the procedure. Imagines in this slider are mostly linked to pages or post and they open them when needed. It can be either a video or an image in a light box.

Widget Areas

We know widgets are essential resources adapted in customizing of home pages, footers and side bars. Side bars and footer are known to be the nested areas and they converge into sub widgets. Further they are the devices which create home pages, static pages and categories.

4. Color Schemes

These are also vital to the successful application of the DeVsion software. Slowly it has become an important aspect of its function. The significance of the four color scheme is that it lends itself to variety. The designer does not have to be slavishly confined to a bland grey, black or even white. The opportunity is now extended to blending color designs with what seems to be a tapestry.
Usually the colors range from green to red, grey to blue. Often designer adapt a jQuery display of colors as part of the strategy to attract greater diversity in the interaction of visitor on the websites. Some customers can be discharged easily with dull colors whereas some love it. The 4 color scheme attempts to satisfy a wider section of the internet community.

Feature List

Full feature list is inclusive of Thumbnails WordPress. ThemeShift Admin, 4 color Schemes (red, green, grey, blue) , optional iQuery Style Switcher, DeVison Custom Widgets, Nested Widgets with post categories; Customized featured content; Multilevel dropdown menu; Image Gallery, built-in plugins, validation comments from search engines and WP Page Navin Plug in inclusive of PSD files.

Framework for WordPress Theme Development

People who often build and develop WordPress themes are most likely to be fed up with the repetitive code writing and constant mark-up checking during the development process. All they want to do is to focus on the theme design and developing the features. WordPress development framework is a good solution for this. Using this framework, designing and coding a WordPress theme can be a lot faster. The framework minimizes the time required for the development, and reducing the boredom that comes from WordPress’ back end codes that are repeated in every WordPress theme.

This post is not discussing about how to find the best framework. This post is about how to find the suitable framework that can work well for people who are developing WordPress themes. People who are experienced developers will probably choose the powerful and feature rich Carrington or Thematic. People who are still a novice, should try the Whiteboard framework or even download a stripped out and blank canvas theme to make the designing process a lot faster and easier. The blank stripped out canvas theme can be found at the bottom of this post.

Which one would you use?

Thematic – WP Framework

Thematic is a highly polished WordPress Theme Framework that is built upon the 960.gs. At first glance, its backend may look daunting and complex, but you will soon realise just how well organised it is and easy to use. Its power is based upon its flexibility and its simple customisation, you would be very hard pushed to find a project you couldn’t use the Thematic WP Framework for.

Carrington – The CMS Theme Framework

Being by far the most powerful of all WP frameworks, Carrington was built with both developers and end-users in mind, it truly is the complete WordPress package. Upon download, the first time user may be put off by its undoubted complexity and its endless features and options, but don’t be put off. You must persevere with this framework, and when you learn all the ins and outs (with help from its in-depth documentation and forums) you will receive your just rewards, you will see how beneficial, rewarding and time saving Carrington can be. As the tagline goes, it may just be the best thing since you the wheel and sliced bread.

Theme Hybrid

Theme Hybrid is WordPress Framework developed by Justin Tadlock. As with all Justin’s’ WordPress themes (the excellent Options theme), you know that you are getting a very powerful and versatile backend, but still very easy to use and develop upon. Theme hybrid truly is built with simplicity and power in mind.

The theme club has two types of membership, free and exclusive. Free members can download and use the themes for free and participate in the forums. For $25 you can join the exclusive club, which gives you access to tutorials and you are able to post questions on the support forums.

WP Framework

WP Framework is a great starting point when first learning about the WordPresses structure and first stepping into theme development as well as for the experienced user for quick development. Under the hood its foundation it is very solid, and this framework will cut down on your theme development time and allow you to focus directly and from the off on project-specific features. WP Framework is completely extensible, flexible and the starting point for theme authoring and customization.

Buffet Theme Framework

The Buffet Framework is a WordPress theme framework designed not only for the theme developers who will be using the theme actions and filters to create child themes, but also for the end users who would be able to add and remove what they want. Like most WordPress theme frameworks, the Buffet Framework utilises WordPress actions and filters to allow theme developers to add additional content without editing the templates files using the child theme concept.

Whiteboard – WP Theme Framework

Whiteboard will never be as powerful as the Carrington framework or the Buffet framework, it has been developed for simpler development requirements. Simply, it has been designed to speed up the process of designing and coding a WordPress theme by eliminating the time spent on WordPress’ back-end PHP that is repeatedly used in every theme. It is clean, noted, and very small, weighing in at 76kb, its amazingly compact.

Thesis Theme

The Thesis Theme is a framework that has been built with great typography, a dynamically resizable layout, intelligent code, airtight optimization, and with lots of flexibility that make it versatile enough for most projects. Have a look at this video review of Thesis 1.5.

The WordPress Starter Theme Project

Similar in idea as the Whiteboard framework, The WordPress Starter Theme Project was developed for those who hate repeatedly doing the same actions every time you start a new WordPress project. This is a very easy to use framework, which is ideal for the novice to learn the basics of WordPress structure.

Ashford WP Framework

Ashford has been built to be as simple as possible to use, it is also packed with many useful and powerful features. You can create and edit content with Adminbar, Hints and Admin-In-Place, choose from dozens of page layouts (including a content carousel), content can also be customized using widgets and multiple sidebars and of course all code validates and is fully SEO.

Ashford, like most frameworks, uses child themes, making it even easier to develop with. Unfortunately, child themes for Ashford are as yet limited.

Sandbox

The seemigly ageless Sandbox, is a useful tool for WordPress theme designers and developers, it can be easily developed solely with CSS, so beginners will feel comfortable not having to worry about PHP. Experienced developers and designers can accomplish almost anything with minimal work, thanks to the rich, semantic markup and profusion of classes dynamically generated by the Sandbox.

The main feature of the Sandbox, and the feature that has made it very popular, is its markup. The class-generating functions included with the Sandbox create an extensible and semantic XHTML structure. Please note, the Sandbox has only been tested up to WP 2.6.

OnePress Community

The OnePress framework is an integrated website and forum solution. It is, simply, a WordPress theme to serve as the foundation and framework for your web site and online community. Leveraging both WordPress and phpBB projects, OnePress provides a set of features focused on helping you build and maintain your site from the inside out.

PSD Framework for Creating WordPress Themes

If you have ever found yourself reusing elements from previous designs when starting up Photoshop to create yet another WordPress theme, then this PSD download is just for you.

Blank WP Themes

Blank themes are not a development framework, as such, they are a blank canvas for quickly and painlessly starting a WordPress project. Below you will find the best of them.

Blank WP from Anna Linea
There are six themes within this download package.

There are so many WordPress themes available on the web that you can choose from. You only need to determine whether the WordPress theme that you choose looks good for your blog or not.

Footer and header scripts are the things that you have to include in your blog. It will be an additional benefits it the theme that you choose provides an option box where you can easily add these scripts. You need to choose a theme that looks great and attractive. You also need to make sure that the theme has all of the features that you need, and makes your blog look attractive.

These are some points that you need to consider when choosing a WordPress theme for your blog:

- User Friendliness

You need to find a user friendly WordPress theme to make sure that the readers can easily navigate through your blog.

- SEO Optimization

SEO is one of the most important things to consider when choosing a WordPress theme. There are many well designed blogs on the web that increases the number of on-site links to the homepage which is good for the SEO. Other things to consider are the text headings and tagline. Ultimate Blogging theme and Thesis are the best for SEO Friendly Themes.

- Social Sharing Plugins/Widgets:

Another thing to look for in a WordPress theme is the plugins/widget friendliness. You should choose a theme that allows integration and navigation of social sharing plugins and widgets easily. There are many WordPress themes with built in social media options that you can choose from.

- The Frequency of Update

Find a theme that is updated regularly. Regular updates will help to prevent the theme from breaking off when the important files are updated.

Recommendations from WpThemesPlugin

- Thesis

Thesis theme is one of the best WordPress themes that you can use. This premium theme is very SEO friendly, and designed to be a solid foundation for any kind of website

- Ultimate Blogging Theme

The Ultimate Blogging Theme is suitable for bloggers who want to focus more on the marketing of the blogs, rather than dealing with messy codes. The theme is Google friendly with the option to easily put the keywords in the title tag.

- Free Theme Layouts

I highly recommend the themes from  FreeThemeLayouts.com. The themes at FreeThemeLayouts are simple, well designed, and functional. There is also a forum where people can easily get help, tips, and support.

All of the things mentioned above are the things that you have to consider when you are trying to find the Best WordPress Theme for your blog.