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In The Company of Royalty
13. Oct, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Theme Concepts
Last week we previewed F01.01 by Veerle Pieters (which is coming along nicely btw) and today we’ve got a new design by another female design supremo – Sarah Parmenter. And obviously we don’t need to tell you that both of these are in support of the We Love Boobs campaign we’re running in October.
If you haven’t seen it yet, then you’re not following us, are you?
Anyway… We’re all about the design, the WordPress goodness and the themes; so we’ll get to it already. We gave Sarah a very clear & simple brief (that’s what we’d like to believe okay) about her design for WooThemes: “Design a girly / alternative version of our Antisocial theme to support our Breast Cancer Awareness campaign.”
The end result? Royalle…
Royalle - Homepage
Royalle - Inner Page
Note: If the guys are feeling left out, we’ll also be releasing Royalle in a variety of colours; so there will be quite an extensive list of styles / colour schemes to pick from. You can preview the blue version (Homepage and Inner Page) so long.
Basically we wanted Sarah to create something that is a blog, but is not a blog at the same time. We’re finding that there’s a big move away from fully-fledged blogs for individuals these days in favour of aggregation spaces (like Royalle or Antisocial) or tumblelogs (which we’re working on). For us, it’s a case of not trying to reinvent in the wheel – Antisocial has been very successful and we wanted to build on that momentum.
So what are you thinking? Do you like? Anything we missed in Antisocial that should make the cut this time? Fire away with those ideas / suggestions / feedback, so that we can release another top-notch theme for your perusal.
And beyond that, *please& support our Breast Cancer Awareness campaign. 
44 Responses to “In The Company of Royalty”
13 October 2009 at 8:40 am #
Interesting stuff, looks fantastic. And all for a good cause, perfect.
13 October 2009 at 8:55 am #
Verrry original in good way! I hope we can add categories in the side bar through widgets. Is the width of the sidebar a bit lesser that the usual themes? Also, the contact details can have an option to be deducted, right? and a different background image also possible in available styles?
13 October 2009 at 9:29 am #
Options & widgets: that’s the name of our game. Royalle will be as customizable and flexible as possible; so no need to worry about that.
13 October 2009 at 8:57 am #
Hi Prashant,
The widgets will be fully customisable and the background image is a repeating .png file that can be overlaid any colour you wish or removed completely.
Sarah
13 October 2009 at 10:24 am #
Ok, Thx, got it. Good Design!
13 October 2009 at 9:05 am #
Looking great! For a great cause too.
Love your work, Sarah
13 October 2009 at 10:17 am #
I really like this a lot!
I don’t know if this would be difficult or not..but to have the option of having the menu (Home, Archives etc..) to be at the top as a horizontal menu bar.. essentially replacing the current VIMEO, FACEBOOK etc icons?
13 October 2009 at 1:13 pm #
I agree, a optional layout switching the menu and “social buttons” around (might make it too similar to Therapy and My.stream but, meh, it works) would be nice.
13 October 2009 at 1:50 pm #
That may be possible, but obviously those icons are there for a reason, as it supports the overall purchase of the theme. We’ll look into adding the optional layout though.
13 October 2009 at 1:08 pm #
Sarah,
absolutely gorgeous! The typography! The framework! Absolutely love it. Just one request. Could we please get styled support for a live stream plugin? I will instantly give up all thoughts of My.stream and gladly pitch in for an all out donation going pink by purchasing this theme.
13 October 2009 at 1:49 pm #
Ditto on the Lifestream support. It’ll be available as a widget (via the 3rd party plugin) and we’ll take care of the awesome styling!
13 October 2009 at 2:08 pm #
Superb! Can’t wait to get my hands on it
13 October 2009 at 2:10 pm #
And uh yes, “Life”stream, not live stream, all excited, my fingers just went bananas on the keyboard <.<
13 October 2009 at 2:15 pm #
nice Theme then i love it.
Greetz
13 October 2009 at 2:16 pm #
This looks fantastic!
13 October 2009 at 2:29 pm #
Oh another, not entirely Royalle related, request. I love the idea of the square shaped social networking icons you got going over the different themes (Antisocial, Therapy, My.stream).
I appreciate that these might be individually designed by the theme designers themselves but I would love to be able to change, for example, Royalle’s icons to the ones used in Therapy or Antisocial. Any chance for you to release them as individual icon packs enabling me to switch them myself, at least for paying customers?
13 October 2009 at 2:44 pm #
Aah… That’s actually a pretty cool idea!
Noted and definitely on our To Do list!
13 October 2009 at 2:38 pm #
It’s pink!
13 October 2009 at 2:38 pm #
And that means?
13 October 2009 at 4:35 pm #
I’d happily design some icons for you guys to use with the theme, but the way it is designed is that you can change the icon colours simply by changing the hex code used, and it will still appear styled as in the original theme, as it’s using an overlaid .png file.
Thank you for all your comments, do keep in touch, I’d love to see how people use it!
Don’t forget boys, it won’t just be available in pink, there’s some other beautiful, manly ones available too!
13 October 2009 at 5:57 pm #
Simply beautiful. Love the Typography.
I will definitely be using this for some of the authors I work with!
14 October 2009 at 12:35 am #
“Aggregation spaces” ?
Should I laugh or cry ?
14 October 2009 at 12:37 am #
Why would you do either?
14 October 2009 at 6:04 am #
Nice typography + cool design.Overall good work.
14 October 2009 at 12:37 pm #
I like the layout, But not really a pink fan myself. Although I guess it does go along with Bewbs month!
15 October 2009 at 2:26 am #
There’ll be plenty of alternative colour scheme options. So whilst the default colour will be pink (in support of #woobs), we’ll include many alternative options for your pleasure!
14 October 2009 at 12:40 pm #
I like the overall design, but I don’t think that the button links at the top right of the page are unique enough.
Perhaps using the same icons from the original Antisocial might work better?
14 October 2009 at 12:40 pm #
Overall it’s solid. I assume that you’ll be giving multiple css options if you put it out as a theme..like the others you offer. I’m not crazy about the background.
15 October 2009 at 2:25 am #
Options? Of course! That’s the only way we know how to roll here at Woo HQ!
14 October 2009 at 12:45 pm #
I love the layout and the typography. I wouldn’t be big on the colour, but I presume there will be options. The only suggestion I would add is to make the social media icons much smaller. They kind of jump out at you in my opinion and are jarring with the flowing nature of rest of it. It’s very elegant though. I love the flourishes next to the previous and next buttons.
15 October 2009 at 2:23 am #
Noted and we’ll have Sarah look into that for us!
14 October 2009 at 1:13 pm #
I adore many of your themes v-much and since my mother died of breast cancer at the age of 49, 12 years ago, I’m totally behind you guys on this campaign.
I’m a club member. Admittedly I have not looked at every theme so forgive me if this post is out of step with what is so already.
I encourage you to include more sidebars in future theme development and updates
The sidebars I’ve become accustomed to working with including:
- Top wide sidebar
- Left & Right Sidebars
- Bottom Wide Sidebar
- Before the entries (top of each main / content page)
- After EACH entry
- Below the entries (bottom of each main content page)
- Inline sidebar (both posts and pages) (widget placement inside entires similar to how pics / media are placed now)
- Header and Footer area sidebars (following in step to your
homepage 1 + homepage 2 + homepage 3 config in vibrantCMS for example and fore go the use of build in widgets such as cats, pags, archive etc, let the user fill these areas with preferred widgets instead.
ALSO:
Please include comment area on BOTH Posts as well as Pages on all themes (maybe add on/off in theme options?):
`
`
Please retain ability to align headers (left, center or right) I mention this as I see your headers are nicely centered in the mock-up)
Also there is a bug in WP that as far as I can tell Woo has not yet address or worked around:
here is what I got:
some plugin / widgets break in Woo themes due to a WP bug, not a woo themes bug
what happens is, WP notes a new sidebar, or fails to note one. when it notes a new sidebar, it flushes much about everything and messes things around. when it fails to note one, it “forgets” to register it
when you activate inline widgets in vibrantCMS for example,
then the only way to show what is meant to be in homepage 1, 2 and 3 is to use: right sidebar, homepage 1 and homepage 2, everything slips “up” one sidebar and homepage 3 is redundant.
it’s related to the way that the widget recovery function is written
basically, all sidebars should be ‘named’, rather than numbered
else WP messes around with them when you add sidebars and/or switch themes
the key is to work around it
hope this helps and is seen as a contribution the way I mean it.
warm and pink regards
Ralf
PS. I think I may use this theme for my daughter’s blog which I’m writing for her grand partents and extended family as she’s only 12 days old now. It’s really very lovley work. Well done!!!!
15 October 2009 at 2:22 am #
Sorry to hear about your mom; but happy to be supporting an awareness campaign that will hopefully play an influential role in decreasing the mortality rate for breast cancer.
With regards to the sidebars… Our newer themes include names for widgetized spaces; so we should hopefully have solved that “bug”. And your request for sidebars galore have been noted too!
14 October 2009 at 1:20 pm #
Those are really nice … I’m looking forward to the final color selection (and then of course what I can do with it, HA). I’ve been playing around with a lot of different icon sets lately, and I think a theme like this would be really good for trying out new icons and backgrounds to see how the feel of the interface changes.
15 October 2009 at 2:18 am #
I think that’s one of the main reasons that I like Royalle so much; I can see people customizing the heck out of it!
15 October 2009 at 1:20 am #
The theme look good but the color scheme is too girly!!!
Anyways Good Luck with your theme…
15 October 2009 at 2:15 am #
Did you see the blue version?
We’ll obviously release Royalle in quite a few different colour schemes, so there’ll be a guyish version in there somewhere…
15 October 2009 at 12:09 pm #
It’s not to bad. pretty good and damn clean. Need a live demo of it tho so we can see the inner pages better and functions.
and also plus add some reply buttons instead of text =)
16 October 2009 at 2:22 am #
Beta preview should be available soon!
16 October 2009 at 11:41 am #
Just one word: WOW!
16 October 2009 at 6:41 pm #
LOVE this theme.
I am torn between the two #weloveboobs layouts, but plan to purchase one or the other for my next redesign!
18 October 2009 at 4:33 am #
Remember if you buy one theme you get a bonus theme with it, so you could get both
17 October 2009 at 9:34 pm #
Very cool! I’ve been trying to find the right theme for my wife’s new site. She looked at hundreds and wasn’t really sold on any of them. I showed her this one, and she was sold immediately. THANKS!
How about an ETA?
18 October 2009 at 4:33 am #
Glad she’s found a winner. E.T.A. Last week of this month. Not long now…