UPDATE: Thanks to all who have commented, but I’ve now made the theme FREE for everyone. Thanks!

I really like giving things away. It feels good and it gets the word out about this site. So this week, I’m giving away three copies of my newest WordPress theme, Old News. It’s a great theme for blogging, has an old newspaper feel, is built for threaded comments, ad space, etc. The cost of the theme is normally $15, but I’m going to give away three copies.

How can you be one of the recipients? It’s simple. Just retweet this post. I’ll know about it because I pull in tweets via Backtype, so your tweet will become a comment below. At the end of the week, I’ll choose 3 from a hat and arrange getting the files to you. Linking to the theme’s sales page won’t increase your chances, but it would be a nice gesture. And hey, I’m offering 50% to affilates! Just check the page.

I’m quite excited about an offer from Bizcard to give away some business cards through my blog.

Bizcard is an online print marketing company. Its goal is to help anyone easily turn their idea or artwork into business cards, postcards and other print products.

Bizcard is currently offering 3 lucky winners a set of 500 business cards each. Winners can select from hundreds of design templates categorized in several industries. They can also upload their own artwork.

Bizcard has implemented several eco-friendly practices such as eliminating the usage of harming photo processing chemicals, and continuously improves itself based on customers’ feedback. It plants a tree for every order they receive.

So what do you have to do to win? It’s simple, leave a comment or tweet about this post (your tweet will become a comment via backtype). Next Friday, three winners will be chosen randomly.

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