Last week we previewed Therapy – a new theme design by Izuddin Helmi – and this week it’s more of the same awesomeness…
When we approached Izuddin – approximately a month ago – about designing a new theme for us, he pitched two separate mockups to us: the first being Therapy and then he also sent us another concept titled my.stream which was completely different to Therapy, even though it borrowed some of its style. We obviously couldn’t resist the awesomeness and instead decided to negotiate an increased fee if we bought both concepts, because we just knew that all of the Woo fanboys & -girls would love to choose between both these designs…
my.stream is – at least in function – a very similar theme to Irresistible & Therapy, in the sense that it’s a personal blog-type design with enough space to include a lot of multimedia. You’ll also note that the design again sports Izuddin’s signature elaborate background + transparent layers approach, which has been present in so many of his designs for us.
Without teasing you too much, this is what the design looks like:
my.stream - Homepage
And? First impressions? Do you like this design more than Therapy? Which one should we release first?
44 Responses to “Streaming Your Teaser”
Both the designs look awesome, but one thing could be me, are the backgrounds the same only with different colours?
The backgrounds are the same yes and we’ll release both themes with the same sets of backgrounds to choose from!
Beautiful… and, my only wish would be for a style option that has a dark text/light background combination for the main text/content areas (better readability, and all).
As a side note, I’m loving the increased use of font replacement you guys are doing lately. Just so’s you know.
We’ll try to throw a dark-on-light style in there as well. No promises though, but good point nonetheless.
And as for font replacement… We’re playing with it and feedback up until now seems to be positive. So we might start using it on more themes in future.
Mystream > Therapy
Sweet & simple feedback.
This seems to be an elegant theme.
I like both of them but my.stream is the one I prefer to be released first. Have a project under development right now that I would use it on if it were available.
Mystream is a great addition to the Lifestream/hub set of themes.
A general comment: I’d like to see Woo develop backend admin options for uploading user-unique backgrounds and the option to strip imagery out to generate a minimalist version. Big Easy is an example of Woo delivering color options which are thoughtfully executed, but there could also be a black type on white background version. You could add style options to your basic framework: font color for example.
Please please please release Mystream next, it’s what I’ve been looking for! I dont know if you do pre-orders but I really need this theme for a client.. it’s just perfect timing!
Hehe, we love the fact that you would love to pre-order this theme!
Then would you let me have it first please? ;D
I am like so desperate, it’s the perfect layout and design.
Would you be able to email me an approximate release date?
Thanks
N.
Nice design, but there’s not really much content on display. It feels more like a reference hub than a throbbing center of news.
I think Therapy is a more versatile design.
What do you think makes Therapy a more versatile design?
I can see Therapy being much more easily tweaked to suit a variety of demographic groups, even corporate. The top blurb area, wider main content area, and more content visible “above the fold” being key.
Mystream seems a lot more sidebar-heavy with the focus on single, sequential posts.
I most like the design of Therapy although my.stream will make a perfect companion to it. I’m hoping you roll out Therapy first as in yesterday
Hehe, well yesterday is not gonna happen, but very soon is more realistic.
I hope you’ve seen the online demo already?
Sure have. I’ve already spent a couple of hours with it in CSSEdit trying out different ideas on the welcome area and main navigation. Tweaking themes is in my blood.
That’s what we love to hear from our beta testers!
I definitely like Therapy better! It’s a bit more striking and exciting. I’ve been waiting on the edge of my seat for it!! I like it because it has more menu options / dropdowns which I would have to build in on my.stream.
One tiny tweak I might recommend for Therapy is to line up the the_excerpt text with the little thumbnail that goes with it on the index page. Just a tiny thing I noticed when checking out the live preview today.
Therapy definitely seems to be the more popular theme and since it is closer to being ready, it’ll probably be first to make a release. And we’ll definitely tweak the styling on those images.
I always thought the development of a fully widgetised page, as hinted at in Irresistable was the next big thing from Woo? Having such versatile options such as all sections (including blog, featured scroller, etc) with selectable option widths through the control panel, would be a big step foward and shoot Woo through the stratosphere surely?
Put all this into Backstage, Please. (Woo Rocks)
We’d love to be able to do this, but in theory this is far harder to accomplish. I think we’ve gone a long way in making our themes as modular as possible, but unfortunately the WP platform still presents us with some limitations. We’ll continue pushing away at those boundaries though.
Coming from Izuddin, mystream is very much like Irresistible, however still unique. I would prefer mystream before Therapy.
Therapy! First and foremost.
Personally I think it looks better, no offense to Mr Helmi as mystream looks great also, just not my cup of tea.
I noticed the link to the demo in the comments and it’s shaping up really nicely.
I saw someone above talking about a fully widgitized page and there’s already a theme out there that can do this.
Although, for one to really take it to the next level, one should be capable of drawing DIVs anywhere on a page to create any type of design they would like through an AJAX interface. The DIV’s would of course be widget areas, content boxes, etc. By anywhere on the page,
I truly mean anywhere on the page through the use of fixed/absolute positioning. I know this is possible and it’s just a matter of time before someone does it!
However that’s off topic. My vote is for Therapy.
In my humble opinion, this is placing too much power in the hands of non-designers. That’s not meant to offend anyone, but earlier this year I listened to Mark Boulton talk about typography in the same way: sometimes too many options are a bad thing.
We obviously craft our designs, using our extensive experience & knowledge in the field, which is also based on current best practice. So I’m not saying that we always know what’s best, but we have a pretty good idea about that and sometimes that just shouldn’t be changed.
Oh that’s perfectly reasonable.
That sort of thing would be more appropriate as a standalone framework if anything. I wasn’t suggesting you all should do it, more just as an aside to another comment.
As far as ‘too much power’ in the hands of non designers, I tend to disagree with that sentiment. More appropriate, too much power in the hands of non coders hehe.
By that I mean, your themes already serve as a great starting point for non pro designers (like me) that like to mess around with CSS and such without having the knowledge to sit there and code an entire theme from scratch.
This also goes for actual designers as illustrated in the showcase.
However I digress, maybe I just need some Therapy? lol
I agree with Adii. Too much flexibility can be as problematic as too little. However, I think each theme has an underlying conceptual system that could be modular and reconfigurable, which would be an added value to users.
my.stream Loooks Better However icant give good point about it till i see it alive
My vote is for Mystream. I hope it comes out on next release, would be a very good purchase.. probably the best out of any woothemes. I’ll be the first to buy this however.
Thanks Wooteam for making my life easy!
Tee.
Mystream is my fav. I vote for mystream 100%, need a fresh theme for my blog asap please
Personally, I didn’t like it. Perhaps you could release Therapy as a paid theme and my.stream as a free one?
We still need to decide which of these two will be free & which will be paid. Comments on both posts seem to be a little mixed, so we’ve got a tough task deciding which is which…
I dont mind paying early to get mystream as soon as it’s ready adi. I possibly can’t wait no more than a week..
.
I like mystream the best, free or paid I would get either.
Any idea on release date?
If Mystream is released for free then I’ll probably pinch myself and wait until then. Therapy looks like a premium theme anyways. But release mystream first if you could
Therapy all the way!
Want to see this one before Therapy
Agree with above! Mystream all the way
I like Mystream better, it looks soo bubbly and fresh. Prefer if it was free aswell!
I really like this theme and the ‘Lifestream’ idea is a great one but there is a problem that is really unrelated to this theme that bothers me about social media.
I have friends on Facebook, Myspace and twitter. Some are on all three and some are only on one. Some are only on one because someone else showed them how (sad, I know).
If I want to get a message out to all of them then I must tweet it, facebook it and if I’m feeling really sadomasochistic, myspace it. If I have a website that streams the feeds from each of these I get a website that has three entries for everything I put out. This isn’t a problem of the theme… just a problem of the disparate nature of social media and the lack of a centralized clearing house for such things.
Le sigh… the burden of being on the bleeding edge…
Why not try something like this? http://ping.fm/
It’s a great delivery service, no question but my problem lies more in the following of the feeds rather than the posting to the feeds.
I don’t really mind posting to each feed in order to reach all of my friends and family. What bothers me is trying to make my website a catchall for all these feeds and thusly junking it up with the same status updates from the various feeds.
The problem lies in that there are SOME updates that I only want to go to Facebook or maybe only to Twitter. So even if my lifestream was following Ping.fm, it would miss out on updates that I post directly to the particular social media site.
It’s one of those things where you want everything but you just have to suck it up and accept that you can’t have everything. If you would… what would I pine for? How would I pass the sleepless hours?
Anthony – try FriendFeed. All your stuff, one feed. I love it. (Although now that they’re owned by Facebook I’m getting more nervous about it..)