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Blog Themes, Plugins, Tips, Tutorials and More!

mystiqueMystique is a new, free WordPress theme that succeeds in its attempt to top a lot of the available commercial templates in terms of design and functionality!

The Mystique theme has some nice features including three built-in widgets; Sidebar tabs, Twitter posts and Flickr gallery. It also features several page templates with different layout styles and many other theme options which are accessible from the backend Theme options page.

The theme has some minor issues with Internet Explorer 6/7 at the moment, which I’m sure will be worked out, but at the moment it works great with Firefox and IE8!

A demo of this great looking theme can be seen here.

To download the latest version of this theme, please visit the Mystique page on the WordPress Theme directory or visit the Mystique Theme homepage.

urbaneUrbane is a new free wordpress theme by the awesome developers at blogohblog.com. Urbane has an integrated theme options page that let you specify the categories to use on the home page, configure your feedburner/twitter settings and much more. The theme looks absolutely great!

Urbane is a colorful, rounded theme design that has a lot of features built into the theme. The front page has a CMS type layout with everything you would possibly need to have, all displayed on the home page. A really useful feature is the auto-generated thumbnails feature, which works without having to mess with resizing pictures yourself.

Theme Features

  • Drop-down menus
  • Feedburner settings (RSS and Subscribe by e-mail)
  • Twitter settings
  • Tab for Popular and Recent posts
  • Featured post section at top of page
  • 3 sections to pull posts from different categories on home page
  • auto generated thumbnails (for both home and the single entry page)
  • threaded comments ( enabled in the admin section)
  • widgetized sidebars and 3 widgetized sections on the bottom

Download

To download the Urbane theme, please visit the Urbane WordPress Theme page at blogohblog.com

compositioCompositio is a new two column theme, made to for those who want to feature a lot of their content in the front page. The theme features a unique light blue design. The theme has random square shapes in the background and a really nice graphical layout.

Theme Features

A nice feature of this theme is the logo changer. You can use the default WordPress setting (“blog name”) or you can use your own logo. To use your own logo you must upload it to the root folder of the Compositio theme and name it logo.png. You can also use the PSD Logo Template in the source folder of Compositio Theme. (Image limitations: Not more than 590px/85px).

To activate the logo option go to: Administration Panel > Appearance > Logo Options, and select logo type.

Other Features

The theme is widget ready and the CSS is customized for the default widgets to match the site style.

The theme does not require plugins as they are already integrated into functions.php, so there is no need to install them. The only plugin you need to install manually is FlickrRSS (included in the theme folder).

Download

To download the theme (.zip-package) please visit the Compositio theme page.

To view the Compositio theme in action you can view the demo here.

Amadeus - A New Widget Ready WordPress ThemeAmadeus is a new Widget Ready WordPress Theme which has just been released by headsetoptions.org. It is a 2 Column theme with an eye-pleasing green and white color scheme.

An added bonus with this theme is the fact that it is Adsense ready and it has a very professional look and feel about it. The theme is a fixed width one which can be good thing when it comes to heavily configuring your blog later.

Amadeus also has a very Web 2.0 professional look to it with the cool looking RSS and Technorati icons and crisp text fonts.

Installation Info

  • Upload the Amadeus theme to your WordPress themes folder.
  • Upload the supplied plugin files to your plugins folder.
  • Activate plugins
  • Activate theme

Download

To download the Amadeus WordPress theme please visit here.

On the whole, Amadeus is a clean, professional theme which is Google Adsense ready and well worth considering for your blog. Hmmm, come to think of it, I’m kinda tempted to change mine to this one as well. :)

glossybluetheme.jpgThis great new theme is called Glossy Blue and is a very techy looking, Mac style WordPress theme which features the excellent Web 2 Mini icons, from nDesign-Studio.com. The best thing about this theme is it’s great use of Web 2.0 colors and is an ideal theme for any technology-related blog or even a general website. The theme is widget ready and has been tested on both WordPress 2.0 and 2.1.

The Glossy Blue theme contains all required template files such as index or category view, search, comments, 404 error page, single view and a static page template. Another great feature is that it contains a print.css file within the theme to ensure that your blog page looks great when you print it out!

The designers ndesign-studio.com have also included a Photoshop PSD file if you wish to further customize this great theme.

To download the Glossy Blue theme and the PSD file (if required) please visit; http://www.ndesign-studio.com/resources/wp-themes/glossyblue/

screenshot.jpgI just came across a nice new theme by Pilkster on his new themey.com blog which has a great look and is based on the look and feel of the brand new Apple iPhone. As you can see from the screenshot the theme is a single column theme but it is very eye-catching and professional looking. The normal sidebar contents are displayed below all of the posts.

The iPhone theme is built on the famous K2 structure which makes it easy to adapt to suit your needs and it also should support a wide variety of plugins out of the box. The theme also supports pagination and has a built-in options page. This is a nice theme that’s sure to be popular.

For a full and comprehensive review of the iPhone theme you can visit the Theme Critic.

typoxp-reloaded.jpgThe popular theme TypoXP Reloaded has recently been updated and the latest 1.1 version is a really accomplished theme with built in support for a lot of popular plugins.

TypoXP Reloaded is a cleanly coded, two and/or three column, fixed width WordPress theme with valid XHTML. It is also Widget Ready. The theme features both SEO optimization and Google Adsense optimization bulit into the theme which definitely makes the choice of using this theme a whole lot easier, :)

I believe this theme has to be considered as one of the better WordPress themes yet released.

So, check out the TypoXP Reloaded theme now. It will be worth it. The page also gives details of the huge range of plugins supported by this theme.

redoablepic.jpgThe Redoable 1.1 Theme is a brand new theme by Dean J Robinson that is WordPress 2.1 compatible and is based on the great K2 theme. It supports sidebar widgets, has built in support for a dozen or more popular plugins and it also has an easy to use admin interface to help configure the theme to suit your needs.

Some of the other new features included in the Redoable 1.1 Theme are; Livesearch built in, a choice of two different single post layouts, and a dynamic style preview feature which allows you to change between dark and light colour schemes directly from the admin area. This is a complete and very usable theme. With all the built in functionality that this theme has, and the extra functionally that the extra plugins give it, I’m sure you will enjoy this theme.

Plugins Supported

The following plugins are supported by Redoable and all are highly recommended. All you have to do is download them, add them to your plugins folder and then activate them.

Installation

Download the zip file. Extract and upload the Reodable 1.1 folder to your wp-content/themes folder on your web server. Go to the presentation section in your admin, and select Redoable 1.1. Set your options in the theme options panel. Enjoy.

For further details about Redoable visit the Redoable homepage

Download

Redoable 1.1 Theme for Wordpess

mistylook3.jpgIt’s great to see that the Misty Look Theme has been upgraded to Version 3. The theme is designed by Sadish on WpThemePark.com and it has some really nice extras.

Custom Header Image

In version 3 you now have the ability to import your own header pictures directly in the presentation admin area. The pictures are then cropped to the right size and it will automatically become the new default header for you blog. This is the first WordPress theme to accommodate ‘Custom Header Image’ feature.

The theme also incorporates many other upgrades, in line with the recent release of WP 2.1, and the full list can been seen here.

Theme Features

MistyLook V3 has a lot packed into it for just one theme. Here is a short list of some of the features of this theme;

  • Sidebar Widgets Compatible.
  • Theme Options page allows you to exclude/sort Pages for the top Navigation bar. Options page also supports Asides. Asides are ‘quick bits’ of information you want to post. They do not have to look like a regular post.
  • Includes Page Template for an Archives Page. Just create a new page and use ‘Archives’ as the Page Template.
  • Includes Page Template for a Contact Page. Just create a new page and use ‘Contact’ as the Page Template.
  • Includes Page Template for the Links Page, so you can display all the links you have in a separate page.
  • 404 Template and Search Template too.

All in all, this is a great update to an already great theme. MistyLook is one of the highest downloaded themes on the WordPress Theme Viewer site at the moment. It is also cool to see this theme being used by some of the Top Bloggers, such as John Chow dot Com blog and many others.

I would highly recommend this theme to anyone looking for a good solid theme. It looks great, it’s cleanly coded, has nice page templates and lots of cool features built-in. Recommended. :)

Download

Misty Look Version 3

Anaconda - Ultimate 3 Column WordPress ThemeA new theme called Anaconda has recently been released and it is perhaps the most complete theme design that I have come across in a while.

Anaconda is a flexible, 3 column WordPress theme which is designed entirely using CSS. The middle column and left sidebar are flexible and adjusts to browser size. The theme is also SEO optimized! It seems my search for a good CSS based, 3 column WordPress theme is finally over!

Plugins Supported

Anaconda has inbuilt support for 15 popular WordPress plugins out of the box. The theme is designed to work perfectly with all these plugins;

Plugins

Version Tested

Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro All versions
Ultimate Tag Warrior 3.14
Related Posts 2.02
Nybbles Sidebar Modules 1.0.1 (comes integrated)
Quoter 1.1
Edit Comments 0.3
Brian’s Latest Comments 1.5.7
Noteworthy 1.0
WordPress Widgets 1.0.2
FlickrRRS 3.0.3
Extended Live Archives 0.10beta R18
Time Since 1.1
Gravatars 2.6
Favatars 2.0
Subscribe to Comments 2.0.8

Widgets Supported

Anaconda is also 100% widget ready and provides 17 builtin WordPress widgets for you to extensively customize your site without writing or modifying a single line of code! The following widgets are integrated into the Anaconda theme directly, or are available as a separate plugin/widget;

  • About Widget (built-in)
  • Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro (Plugin & Widget)
  • Archive Widget (built-in)
  • Aside Widget (built-in)
  • Calendar Widget (built-in)
  • Categories Widget (built-in)
  • Delicious Widget (built-in)
  • Flickr Widget (built-in)
  • Links Widget (built-in)
  • Meta Widget (built-in)
  • Pages Widget (built-in)
  • Recent Comments Widget (built-in)
  • Recent Posts Widget (built-in)
  • Related Posts Widget (built-in)
  • RSS Widget (built-in)
  • Search Widget (built-in)
  • Tag Cloud Widget (built-in; requires Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin)
  • Text Widget (built-in) – You can create upto 9 text widgets to include your custom text in sidebar.
  • Google Search Widget (comes with widget plugin)
  • Del.icio.us Widget

You can place any of the above onto one of your sidebars by simply dragging and dropping them from your Sidebar Widgets control panel under the Presentation menu.

Configuration

The Anaconda Theme will work, without any configuration, right out of the box. However, it has been designed to be extensively customizable for those who need it. Customizations can be easily done using the Anaconda Options control panel in the Presentation theme menu. The theme has built-in support for inline and sidebar asides. It also supports Ajax commenting, Live search, fixed width layout if required.

Conclusion & Download

Anaconda - Ultimate 3 Column WordPress ThemeThis has to be one of the best themes I have seen this year and it is a likely contender to replace the current theme of this blog!

To download the Anaconda, Ultimate 3 Column WordPress Theme please visit here;

Happy New Year!!!!!!

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