About Sideways

I’m fascinated by the whole horizontal-scrolling idea, especially for portfolios, but don’t feel it meets my own desires for this site. Nonetheless, I just had to dig in and create a working horizontally-scrolling WordPress theme. So I present to you Sideways Portfolio. Here are some brief points…

• Horizontal scrolling through all archives and blogs.
• Non-scrolling on single posts and pages.
• Dark, grungy background.
• Clean, simple. Not minimal in a design sense, but free of unnecessary features.
• No extra plugins are required.
• GPL-licensed – use as you wish, personally or commercially, modify to your heart’s content.

Release Notes

0.9.0 – The first release. Please let me know about any bugs you find in the comments on this post so that I can do any necessary repair work for the next release. All releases are free to all purchasers.

Frequently Asked Questions

These will surely be asked…

How do I replace the title text with my logo?

The easy way is to open up the canvas file, add your logo to the background, then export that area as a logo file. You may need to adjust the padding of the #header #title area in the style.css file to line it up nicely.

How do I get pictures to fit the post areas well?

For the purpose of the demo, I’ve gone into the Settings > Media panel and have set thumbnails to 180×180, medium to 240×240, and large to 360×360, which matches the width of the post area.

What about comments?

I have purposely not included any comments functionality in this theme. After a lot of experimenting, I finally decided it best to leave them off.

What about widgets?

Where would I fit them? This theme is designed to be very simple and is really targeting portfolio and photoblog users, not blogs intended for discussion and community necessarily.

Demo & Purchase

Live Demo

Free Download

about old news
release notes
faq’s
screenshot, demo, purchase & download links
affliates – earn 50%!
comments & support

About Old News

I couldn’t sleep one night – kept having a creative idea about a wordpress theme that resembled an old newspaper, but was still built around the actual content (the news itself) and not the graphic design. That vision changed a bit as I coded it, but the essence of the theme is that of a newspaper look and feel. Ultimately, it’s a personal blog theme, probably not the best for a business, but great for blogging.

The theme was developed in a WordPress 2.8 testing environment and is fully 2.8 compatible, right down to the threaded comments. Here are some things that I think make it stand out…

• Focus on usability – very easy to navigate, fonts are large, padding is somewhat generous.
• Built on a grid, so it’s easy to customize to different sizes.
• Plenty of comments throughout the files to help you customize it.
• Planned for some ad spaces.
• Breadcrumbs are built in – no plugin needed.
• Includes every possible theme file except a home.php. I plan on developing a few optional home.php files and offering them separately.
• Works just as well in plain white with no background (see screenshots) for an example.
• jQuery tabs are built-in for the top widget to condense some sidebar space.
• Used soft gray lines to guide the eyes through the content flow.
• Four widgetized areas in the sidebar, the fourth at the bottom which appears only on the front page.
• GPL-compatible license. Credit to me is appreciated, but not required.

Release Notes

Release – 0.9.1, July 1, 2009 – added a horizontal listing/menu of child pages of the current page under the breadcrumbs in page.php.

Current Release – 0.9.0 beta, July 1, 2009

Why beta? I’d like to give it a week or two of use by others to see what bugs I might have missed. Then, when it’s ready to submit to the themes directory, I’ll upgrade it to 1.0. So please offer feedback in the comments below or via my contact form so I can make fixes.

I’d also like to thank a few friends on Twitter who tested the theme before its release… @jamesgarland, @joshhemsley, @ianroke, @cottonr, @jasonlinas, @Whodeeni, @stubbyd, @passionsista, and @wayne_etc.

Frequently Asked Questions

I’m assuming these will be frequently asked…

How do I replace the header’s title text with my logo?

Graphically, I would put in a transparent png, take a screenshot, clip your logo against my background and re-insert it as a jpeg. But that’s just me.

As far as the code goes, take out the following from header.php:

and insert this:

 alt="" id="logo" class="site-title" />

Your image file can be .jpg, .gif, or whatever, but store it in the /images directory of the theme’s files. Either name it logo.jpg or change the link in the above code accordingly. This will show your logo and will have an alt= text of your site’s name.

How do I insert adsense, amazon, or other script based code into the ad space?

This will require some working knowledge of css and html. In the sidebar, you’re basically going to need to create a div with margins and put the script inside that div to space it away from other elements. For example, if you want to insert a 250 pixel wide ad code into the 300 pixel wide sidebar, I would do this…

You say the theme supports threaded comments, but they don’t appear.

You must turn on threaded discussions in your admin panel under Settings > Discussion. I set my levels to 3, but you can do whatever you’d like.

I’ll add more to the faq’s as I hear questions frequently asked.

Screenshots, Demo, & Download

Working Demo

Free Download

Update: The Ministry Theme was initially intended to be a theme for purchase, but because of the swirling debate surrounding commercially licensed WordPress themes, I’m attempting to remain above reproach. You may donate below, but the theme and all code is now licensed as GPL.

The Ministry Theme has been a LONG time in the making. It’s a premium WordPress theme designed with churches and ministries in mind. The support site, www.ministrytheme.com, will be launched very soon, but you can go ahead and pick up a copy now! The theme features…

• A clean, but easily skinnable, light design.
• Custom home, archives, and links pages.
• Tabbed sidebars (that degrade in IE6).
• A DHTML menu that follows your page structure.
• Front page post thumbnails.
• A widgetized sidebar.
• WordPress 2.6 ready with image and caption styling.
• Gravatar/avatar support in the comments section.

I’ll soon be opening up a forum for support, but for now you can contact me with questions or support requests. Please note that I’m available for support and will offer tutorials publicly soon, but customizations will be handled on a quote-per-hour basis.

Check out the DEMO!

Visit www.ministrytheme.com to Download the Theme. (Downloading of the Ministry Theme has been temporarily disabled while I enhance and improve it for its next release, due in late February 2009.

Bible Scholar is basically the theme I use for my blog (currently) at www.brandonacox.com, enhanced so that it can be applied to any WordPress blog. It can be 2 or 3 columns, depending on how the owner wants to style the site. It has room for ads, a nice search function, and the built-in ability to use the blogroll without using it site-wide. The preview page includes instructions. Note that I’ve updated it as of April 24 to include threaded comments and to reflect some changes suggested by WordPress. The theme provides gravatar/avatar support.

View the Demo

Download the Theme

If you’d like customizations made, a logo designed, or if you download this and use it, feel free to contact me.

I’ve completed work on a custom WordPress theme I’m calling Balance of Blue. I designed it with business applications in mind. I’m an advocate for using WordPress as an entire site solution and content management system, so this theme was created to highlight the potential for that kind of usage.

Please note: I’ve updated this theme and have based it on better code, so it now supports gravatars, tags, and other important features.

View the Demo

Download the Theme

If you’d like customizations made, a logo designed, or if you download this and use it, feel free to contact me.