In recent weeks we’ve been making it a habit to feature modifications that were done by designers in the Showdown… Why? Because at WooHQ, we totally value awesome design! And this week doesn’t look like it’s gonna be any different…

(Also view the NEW Showdown for Week 9!)

Aperture may still be a relatively new theme around here (at least in comparison to old school favourites like Fresh News, Gazette & VibrantCMS), but it’s fast becoming one of our most popular themes. So up for today’s contest is Sean O’Brien’s AUS120.com & Chan Min Maung’s Phoe Chan. So let’s see whether they’ve done Aperture justice with their awesome modifications (you get to decide of course)…

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Get out & meet real people

Personally this is one of my most anticipated releases on WooThemes ever (I get overly excited at times, okay?) and judging by the feedback you gave us on the teasers before, you’ve been looking forward to this release as well. But let’s get back to the beginning…

Antisocial was designed by Tim van Damme and it was based on his very popular personal “business card” design (or at least in principle). The ideas behind Antisocial is to create more of an aggregation space for personal users / bloggers to create an overview of their online activities and this should already be evident on the homepage, which looks more like a social profile, instead of a traditional blog.

For the first time ever, we’ve also implemented a little bit of something the geeks like to call Microformats. Essentially all this means is that there’s a little hCard in the sidebar of Antisocial, which can be indexed in a more unique way. Sounds tricky? Not at all… Antisocial features a little section in the backend where you simply need to enter your personal details and we’ll create your hCard for you!

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Unique Features

These are some of the more unique features that you will find within the theme:

• vCard and hCard facilities for accessible contact details.
• 3 completely widgetized zones with 5 custom widgets including a neat re-usable social profiles widget and dedicated zone.
• A neat AJAX calendar widget that is beautifully styled – this plugin required.
• A unique comment form with a JQuery plugin that grabs your Gravatar without a page refresh – plugin available here.
• 10 amazing colour schemes to choose from!

Last month when we released the 24 Social Media Icon Set by Alex Latimer, we promised that we’d soon follow it up with a full web icon set in a similar style… So as we’re approaching the end of the month, we thought it’d be good idea to brighten up your day with another freebie (just because we all hate paying bills).

The full hand-drawn icon set (again in Alex’ signature) style comprises of 60 individual, unique icons which will cover most of your web design bases. The icons are supplied in a 64 x 64 pixel size and as transparent PNG’s; so you have enough flexibility to integrate them in your unique designs.

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1. Before we start
2. Setup WordPress
3. Translate using Codestyling Localization plugin
4. Updating a theme
5. Translating a child theme

Before we start

All our themes will support localization and include a language file (.po or .pot file) which contains all the English texts. You can find this language file inside the theme folder in themename/lang/.

Setup WordPress

The first step is to make sure your WordPress config file is setup with your locale. Open wp-config.php and modify the line below, or add it if it is missing. We’ve set it to Norwegian in the example below. See the complete list of language codes and country codes to find your exact locale.

/**
 * WordPress Localized Language, defaults to English.
 *
 * Change this to localize WordPress.  A corresponding MO file for the chosen
 * language must be installed to wp-content/languages. For example, install
 * de.mo to wp-content/languages and set WPLANG to 'de' to enable German
 * language support.
 */
define ('WPLANG', 'nb_NO');

Once this has been done you need to translate the language file in the theme using a plugin.

Translate using Codestyling Localization plugin

Install and activate the plugin and go to Tools > Localization (shown in your language), then follow the instructions on how to translate the theme.

Codestyling Localization plugin allows for easy translation

Updating a theme

If you update your theme to a new version which has an updated language file, you’ll need to rescan your theme using the plugin and then translate the new strings. Find your theme in Codestyling Localization plugin and click the Rescan link to have the plugin update the po file.

Update your PO file by rescanning the theme

After you have rescanned your theme, click Edit to translate any new strings the plugin found when rescanning. Remember to generate a new MO file after you have translated your new strings.

Translating a child theme

If you are using a child theme and have template files in the child theme that needs to be translated, you need to translate this through Codestyling as well. To make the plugin recognize your child theme so it can scan it, you need to add a functions.php file in your child theme (if you haven’t already got one) and add the following:

<?php

// Load the textdomain for translation
load_child_theme_textdomain( 'woothemes' );

?>

Now you can use the plugin to translate your child theme as well!

It’s been a really hard slog, but we’re proud to finally announce that all 42 of our themes now function on the exact same “framework” or WooFramework as we’ve semi-affectionately dubbed it. All of our newer themes (since Aperture’s release) has been using a beta version of the WooFramework, whilst older themes has been updated to 2.0.x to accommodate the framework (for help upgrading an older version of a theme, see this tutorial).

So what does this really mean?

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This week we’re featuring two modifications of one of our older themes (again) – Over Easy – but judging by the amount of awesome modifications of the theme in our showcase, this is one of our most popular themes to date. Originally designed to function like a business / CMS theme, we’re surprised that today’s two contestants have managed to turn it into a design portfolio, which just makes their mods so much more awesome!

Last week we had a battle of the designers and it seems that this week is going to continue that trend… But hey, we’re sure that you guys aren’t complaining, because this means that you get to vote & comment on some really, hot eye candy…

So up for battle today, we have the Affiliated Woo Worker – Kirstin Pauk – who will be going head-to-head with the brilliant They Creative team. The coin flip says that They Creative will be up for scrutiny first…

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Here are some basic guidelines on how to update a theme and framework to it’s latest version.

1. Find your version number
2. Have you made modifications?
3. Updating modified template files
4. The WooFramework
5. How to update the WooFramework
6. How to manually update the WooFramework

Video Tutorial

Find your version number

1. Check which version you are running by looking under Apperance -> Themes:

Find your theme version

2. Login to our website and find the changelog for your theme in your dashboard or under the theme documentation:

See the changelog for newest version

3. The next step is to download your theme from your dashboard (where you originally downloaded the theme), by logging in to our website and clicking Account in the top right corner and My Downloads.

Download new theme from your Dashboard

Once you have downloaded and unpacked your theme on your computer, you need to determine which way you want to update your theme based on the following:

Have you made modifications?

If the answer to this is NO, then you can simply update your theme by overwriting the existing theme files, although we highly recommend making a backup of your current theme directory (e.g. rename /wp-content/themes/freshnews to wp-content/themes/freshnews-old/), or to install it into a new directory (e.g. /freshnews2).

If the answer is YES, then you will have to make a decision on how to proceed based on how many updates that have been made on the theme. You can check this by looking in the changelog.txt in your theme folder and see all the changes since your theme version which we found above. If there are many changes in files you have modified, then you might be better of just installing the theme to a new directory, and reapplying your customizations.

After you have uploaded your theme, you should make sure it’s activated and then go over the Options Panel and see if there are any new additions that need to be edited.

Updating modified template files

If you have modified your files, and you can see that these files have been updated in the changelog.txt, then you need to inspect exactly what changes have been made so that you can update your existing file to the new version. This is most often described in the comment behind the actual file like this:

*** Fresh News Changelog ***

2009.08.19 - version 2.0.6
  * footer.php - removed tabs.js
  * includes/theme.js - added superfish, tabs
  * includes/js/superfish.js - superfish new file

In this example from Fresh News changelog.txt, we can see that there are 3 files that have been updated. So for updating footer.php you would need to edit yours and remove the line where tabs.js was included before.

You can also use a program to list the differences between your existing file and new file, to see what the changes are, and merge the two, on both PC and Mac.

The WooFramework

All our themes run on a code framework called the WooFramework, which includes general functionality across all our themes. The WooFramework is located inside your theme folder in the “functions” folder.

To check which version of the framework you have, simply look in your theme options panel

Framework version

You can see what the latest version of the framework is by checking the Changelog on the documentation pages

Update Framework

How to update the WooFramework

Updating the framework is simple thanks to our update functionality built into the theme. In the theme menu you have an option called Update Framework. This function will upgrade the /functions/ folder in your theme automatically to the latest version.

How to manually update the WooFramework

If the automatic framework update doesn’t work on your server, then you’ll need to manually update the framework using FTP.

1. Download the latest framework from our server.
2. Unzip this file on your computer.
3. Upload the framework files and folder via FTP to your themes’ functions folder
4. Make sure you overwrite all files and subfolders

After rebooting my personal blog yesterday, I thought that I’d throw this one out there for some feedback… during the previous 6 months, I got a lot of positive feedback on the design I previously used on my blog, and my readers seemed to like it due to it’s clean, uncluttered style (which made reading easy I assume).

So not to stroke my ego, but would you be keen for us to port this design to WooThemes and release it (most probably a free download) on here? I’m asking based on the feedback I got on the design and also the recent popularity of Mainstream, which is a theme / design in a similar mould.

Here’s what the design looked like (it will obviously need a few minor design adjustments before we could release it on WooThemes):

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Feeling rather inspired this morning, I decided to present myself with a new challenge: to develop a new tumblelog framework built onto our favourite platform – WordPress. A few hours later and I’ve got the basic ideas in place for where I want to go with this. But nothing around here at Woo would ever be complete if we didn’t throw this out there for your feedback first…

So… Recently I’ve been very impressed with Tumblr and have been surprised by their popularity and adoption rates. Looking at myself however (and the difficulty in posting on my own (full-on) blog, I can understand why micro-blogging is becoming the publishing medium of choice (Twitter probably being the ultimate proof in the pudding). With that in mind then, I’m definitely keen to develop a framework (and subsequently a set of tumblelog themes) for WordPress, but I’m also intrigued by the prospect of possibly porting these designs over to Tumblr.

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Last week we took a little break since our previous Showdown, but today we’re back with the 6th installment of the first season of the Showdown. Up until now we’ve had wins with big margins, others with much smaller margins and we’ve even seen underdogs beating out the much favoured competition. So what will happen this week? Well, that’s kinda up to what you say and how you vote…

This week, we’re featuring two amazing mods of one of our older themes – Proudfolio – which has been around ever since we re-branded & relaunched as WooThemes last year. I picked both of these modifications – GoInnovate & Move Design – based on the fact that the websites just do not look one bit like the default Proudfolio… Both are also for design agencies, so the quality was kinda expected… We’re expecting a fierce battle however…

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We’re an excitable bunch over here at the WooThemes HQ and nothing excites us more than working with great individuals and getting to share upcoming theme concepts with you lot! This time around we’ve got a new design from now-WooThemes legend collaborator – Liam McKay – to show you…

We approached Liam in July and asked him to design a follow-up theme for the hugely popular Gazette Edition theme (which is also one of our all-time best-selling themes). The result is a superb, content-rich magazine- / news-style design titled The Daily Edition. Let’s have a look at the design…

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For about 2 months now, we’ve been using the Prologue2 theme for WordPress as an internal Twitter- (i.e. Yammer) and Campfire-like communication method. Why? Well, the team was working slightly different hours (so Skype not always an option and sometimes too demanding & in-your-face) and e-mail became too much.

We still needed to keep up to date with what the team was working on at any given stage though. So Prologue2 was our solution. (Preferred over Yammer or Campfire, because it’s awesome and it’s free.)

Before I tell you how we’re using P2, here’s some extracts from Matt Mullenweg’s blog post on the matter:

We found a solution in Prologue which added a posting box to the home page and gave it a Twitter-like feel. Now Automattic had a pulse, a place where the incredible amount of activity was chronicled and captured. It was low-friction and hassle-free, we all started using it more.

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Coffee Break - A nice business theme

It’s been quite a while since I’ve contributed anything to the WooThemes repository, so when I finally managed to sneak in some Photoshop time, I wanted to draw inspiration from our own WooThemes website design, as we have been getting quite a few e-mails asking if our theme is available for sale. Obviously we want to keep our own design unique, but I  designed Coffee Break with a similar layout, so we could offer the public something similar in style.

The homepage layout consists of a jQuery slider at the top, which is great for showing of your most important content. We then added a nice mini-featured area below the slider, similar to the one we have on our homepage. You can add the sections with an icon to the left by just adding WP pages, and adding them to your options panel. We also added two sidebars, one for the homepage and one for the blog, and also a nice 2-column footer where you can have some basic information about the website.

Do you like the theme demo and the 17 alternative styles? Any other features that you think we missed? Let us know in the comments.

If you’re an outsider, our development cycle – and especially our release schedule – may seem completely random at the best of times. This is probably compounded by us showing you teasers of upcoming themes and then releasing other themes before those we have showed (which frustrates you, since you want those awesome concepts to be released like yesterday, right?).

In actuality though, our development cycle and release schedule is far from being random; it’s just very, very agile & flexible. So whilst we always have an idea about which themes we’ll be releasing next, we’re more than happy to chop-change that according to the “outside” demands. So here’s a little run-through of our development process…

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