WP Designer Showcase Theme

Small Potato over at WP Designer has released a premium theme for showcases. It’s a very nice theme, although there are a couple things I would have done differently.

One is the CSS hover effect over the images. I think it would look better if the background had a little transparency allowing the image to still be seen. Or removing it and displaying the information below the images.

The second is the rating stars. I think these should have been customized for a better appearance. If this was a free theme, I wouldn’t expect them to be changed. For a premium one, I would. Here is one set that I created a while back: Simple Stars for WP-PostRatings Plugin. The plugin is already integrated into the theme.

The best part of this theme is that it’s customizable.

It comes with 5 different color schemes and 8 layout variations.

There is a demo available for Showcase.

There are three licensing options to choose from. Single Domain, Multiple Domain and Developer. Also, a credit removal option which costs a little extra.

Thank You Google, for the Cache

I just did something very stupid this morning. Am I alone? No, this can happen to anybody, especially when you wake up so early in the morning which causes you to not think as clearly! Which is why a lot of people drink coffee in the morning, except me.

What did I do that was stupid? I deleted the Free Advertising Every Month entry. I can’t believe I did that! It was completely by accident. I started to panic because I don’t subscribe to my own RSS Feed so I wasn’t sure how I was going to get it back. Then, I remembered Google Cache and entered in cache:www.softtechreviews.com and there was the entry!

Lesson learned. I will not just click anywhere without thinking first. I am now subscribed to my own feed. And, I will make more frequent automated backups. Once a week is not enough.

To WordPress: Please force me to enter in my password before allowing entry deletion or any other important changes, rather than asking, “Are you sure you want to do this?”.

Free WordPress Theme: The Forest

The Forest is a new free WordPress theme. This theme looks really great and allows you to keep the sidebar looking clutter-free. Check out the demo and click on each of the sections in the sidebar to display it. The only thing I think that should have been done with that is to change the cursor to display the hand, because at first I didn’t know to click on them, I just thought they were empty.

If you would like to change that, just add this to the style.css under the appropriate section (sidebar) so you can find it later:

.trigger {cursor: pointer;}

All this does is styles the trigger class in the sidebar to display a hand, instead of the I-beam. If you have any problems, please let me know!

Thank You Akismet

Although I don’t receive a lot of real comments from real people, I do receive a lot of spam. The ones that either place a whole bunch of links with keywords that would probably fill your entire screen or leave a comment that has nothing to do with the entry that was commented on.  And, most of these links point to a .info domain. Can’t we just do away with .info all together since the majority of the ones I’ve seen are spam? Or, at least get a plugin that doesn’t allow .info sites to be entered into comments! Anyone, is this possible?

If it wasn’t for Akismet, I would have a lot of spam to remove from the comments. Akismet does such a great job all on its own! Why anyone needs more than one anti-spam plugin, I have no idea. I’ve never needed anything else.

Thank you Akismet for catching spam and allowing real comments to be added!

AJAX-Enabled Wordpress Themes

AJAX seems to be a very popular feature on websites. I was curious as to how many WordPress themes are AJAX-enabled. Here is a large enough list of themes that have AJAX built-in.

I am not including a preview with these themes, but there will be a link to the demo (if available) and the website for more information and to download the theme.

1. BloxPress
   • Demo
   • Website
   • Feature(s): Customize layout by dragging blocks.
2. Ubiquitous
   • Demo (Unavailable)
   • Website
   • Feature(s): AJAX-enabled search.
3. Giraffe2
   • Demo (Unavailable)
   • Website
   • Feature(s): AJAX comments.
4. Commodore, Splat, CLI2 and IAK
   • Demo
   • Website
   • Feature(s): Command and window style.
5. Unnamed
   • Demo
   • Website
   • Feature(s): AJAX shelf, live comments and preview.
6. AjaxBerlee
   • Demo
   • Website
   • Feature(s): AJAX comments and search.
7. Binary Blue
   • Demo
   • Website
   • Feature(s): AJAX enhanced paged comments.
8. Lush
   • Demo
   • Website
   • Feature(s): AJAX-enabled search.
9. Lush Greenz
   • Demo
   • Website
   • Feature(s): AJAX effects.
10. Durable
    • Demo
    • Website
    • Feature(s): AJAX-enabled search.
11. IntraBlog
    • Demo
    • Website
    • Feature(s): AJAX comments.
12. iScattered
    • Demo (Unavailable)
    • Website
    • Feature(s): AJAX style switcher.
13. Simplus
    • Demo
    • Website
    • Feature(s): AJAX comments.
14. ajaxBosa
    • Demo (Unavailable)
    • Website
    • Feature(s): AJAX comments.
15. ajaxEmire
    • Demo (Unavailable)
    • Website
    • Feature(s): AJAX comments.
16. Balance
    • Demo (Unavailable)
    • Website
    • Feature(s): Unknown.
17. ajaxQwilm
    • Demo (Unavailable)
    • Website
    • Feature(s): AJAX comments.
18. ajaxSubtle
    • Demo (Unavailable)
    • Website
    • Feature(s): AJAX comments.
19. Ernest
    • Demo (Unavailable)
    • Website
    • Feature(s): AJAX effects.
20. Web 2.0
    • Demo
    • Website
    • Feature(s): AJAX comments.
21. Reflect
    • Demo
    • Website
    • Feature(s): Unknown.

This list probably doesn’t include every AJAX enabled theme available, but it is all I could find right now. Also, the themes that begin with ‘ajax’ are modifications of the original themes.