What would you like to see in a theme?

Both of your magazine sites look awesome! I too have been waiting for someone to create a really good magazine/newspaper theme. Thank you so much for doing this!

A big thing for me would be the ability to display posts throughout different rows and columns on the home page, and by category if we want. Exactly like you’re doing in both your examples. You display content both horizontally and vertically, and I’ve never quite been able to figure that out.

Another really cool thing you seem to be doing… in the Split Magazine site under the “Magazine” heading. You’ve got three posts there, each seem to have their own image associated with them. You click to see the full post, and there’s the full sized image as well. How’re you doing this? I’d definitely want this capability built in to the theme.

Anything else? Hmm… colors don’t matter much since that can be changed. The sidebar(s) should definitely be widgetized.

Thanks, bryan868. Would you like the theme to be compatible with any particular plugin(s)?

Anyone else? What would you like to see in a theme? What, according to you, makes a good theme?

Your feedback would be most appreciated!

Right now I can’t think of any other plug-ins that I’d want it to work with out of the box. But I’ll let you know.

However… for the Split Magazine site. You have thumbnail images right above those three posts. When you click to view the full post, you see the full image as well. How do you accomplish this? If it’s a plug-in, then I’d want that to be compatible. ??

Yes, that’s done using a plug-in. I’ll make sure the theme is compatible with it.

What else would you like to see? How important is Widget support? Would you like it to be a one/two/three-column theme?

Your feedback is appreciated. Thanks for your time ??

Great, great themes. Who would have thought WordPress was capable of that? Well done.

I personally would like a WordPress magazine theme that looks like those cool magazine themes at ijoomla.com

Yeah, those ijoomla themes look great to me, except maybe they have the joomla look even there.

Well, whatever you do, I support you, bro. And if you can start a business creating such great magazine themes with WordPress, go for it and I could even be your customer. ??

Good luck.

Great, great themes. Who would have thought WordPress was capable of that? Well done.

I personally would like a WordPress magazine theme that looks like those cool magazine themes at ijoomla.com

Yeah, those ijoomla themes look great to me, except maybe they have the joomla look even there.

Well, whatever you do, I support you, bro. And if you can start a business creating such great magazine themes with WordPress, go for it and I could even be your customer. ??

Good luck.

P.S: Widgets are very important, and 3 columns are essential for a magazine type layout (my view)

Personally I enjoy three column themes, or more. They feel less blog-ish. Widget support is fairly important. It makes updating the sidebar much easier.

One thing I’ve seen in newspaper/magazine type themes is content displayed over multiple rows and columns. I’m not sure how this is accomplished, but for examples see: washingtonpost.com, latimes.com or nytimes.com.

hi halfbloddprince!
your themes look really great. important to me is the possibility to set an post as sticky, something like an featured article.

but your themes are already perfect to me. especially the “split-magazine”.

Those are great looking themes, they achieve quite a bit I’m still coding into my own.

*jealous*

To Bryan868,

to display an image with a post on listings etc, there are two methods I know of:

– You can use a plugin called, IIRC, Post Image, and with a bit of tweaking code, insert a function that displays an image that you pre-associate with the post/page.

– You can list the excerpts, and use the ‘optional excerpt’ field to insert an img tag.

Either way works, the first one is better. Took me a few tries to get it to work properly though.

Those are great looking themes, they achieve quite a bit I’m still coding into my own.

*jealous*

To Bryan868,

to display an image with a post on listings etc, there are two methods I know of:

– You can use a plugin called, IIRC, Post Image, and with a bit of tweaking code, insert a function that displays an image that you pre-associate with the post/page.

– You can list the excerpts, and use the ‘optional excerpt’ field to insert an img tag.

Either way works, the first one is better. Took me a few tries to get it to work properly though.

This might be less important for a newspaper/magazine site which uses set categories, but I think designing your theme with Ultimate Tag Warrior would be a good thing. Other plugins that I think are cool but aren’t always easy to implement well are Gravatars and something for image galleries.

Like Bryan said, colors aren’t too important since they’re easily customizable, but 3 columns (or even 4) would be preferred. ??

Thanks for your comments, people. Hmm.. Ultimate Tag Warrior, eh? How important is tagging for you? And would you like to see your tags in the form of a list, or a tag cloud?

Three columns seems cool. Would you also like non-magazine-style themes? The best one I’ve done so far can be seen at Pomegranita.

Out of curiosity, which plug-in is it that you use for that, halfbloodprince?

And yeah, tagging would be cool. I’d like to stick with magazine/newspaper themes really, since there aren’t a lot out there. It’s rather unique.

the following would make my list:
– widget support
– plugins that support Flickr
– easy to adjust header image via code or available plugins
– proper css that allows for text wrap around images
– possibly an even more minimalist version that can support a photoblog (one where the user can update images or flash images easily)
– code must be compatible with embeddable source code like from YouTube etc.