Free Designer Resources for your WordPress Theme: Icon Sets

Sometimes all it takes to add the finishing touch to a drab design is choosing the right design element. There are numerous resources available online but sometimes it gets too overwhelming to search for them. We’ve found a few design resources that you might be able to incorporate into your WordPress theme design:

Free Outline Icons from Vandelay

these minimalist, outline style icons designed by Grandiz for Vandelay Designs will go well with Swiss-style, white spaced WordPress themes.

Free Brands Icons from Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine is giving away Simple Icons by Dan Leech. This set contains 100 white icons that have transparent backgrounds and can be used for popular websites, apps and organisations.

Free WordPress Post Type Icons from Fribly

Add some style to your custom posts with these sticker type icons. Icons are transparent and in png format. They include: status, link, quote, video, audio, image, gallery and aside. May be used for both personal and commercial projects.

Social Media Icons from Harkable

These sharp and sleek social media icons will add polish to any WordPress theme. Add that extra wow to your website using these icons. (PSD and PNG format)

Clean and Colorful Social Media Icons for 2013 from Mascot Agency

These simple yet vibrantly colored icons have that Windows 8 graphic quality about them. More icons are included in the actual download.

Icons are a great way to add a signature look to your website when done the right way. Enjoy these free resources to add that signature look to your site.

WordPress Themes 2013: The Must-Have List

WordPress Themes are here to stay. Throughout the years, we’ve seen many different design styles and trends – some good, some not so good. With WordPress powering a colossal 1/5 of the entire Internet, WordPress Themes have become big business with many individual theme shops and developers pulling in millions every year.

Any way you slice it, WordPress is here to stay, and for that reason so are the free and premium themes we’ve all come to know and love. If you have spent any amount of time searching for the top WordPress Themes, you’ll notice that several names continue to appear at or close to the top of the list. Elegant Themes, Themeforest, and StudioPress to name some of the more popular ones.

In this article, we’d like to introduce you to some very creative and compelling WordPress Themes of 2013. Each and every one of these themes was released in 2013 so you can rest assured these are among the latest and greatest that WordPress has to offer.

Stay in the know with our list of the top overall WordPress Themes as well. Updated at least once per month, this article covers the best WordPress Themes in all the different categories including responsive, portfolio, magazine, business, and E-commerce just to name a few.

For the time being, here are a few of our absolute FAVORITE WordPress Themes for 2013.

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35 Creative and Hilarious Examples Of Well Known Caricatures which will make you Laugh Definitely

When I asked a friend of mine, who is a model and has a perfect shaped body, about how to stay fit she said that I must exercise a lot and eat less and also try to remain happy all the time. This view is shared by many other nutritionists and gym coaches too. Humor can play an integral role in keeping us fit and healthy. Humor’s role is not merely entertainment. It is also a medicine for keeping us fit.

Wikipedia defines a caricature to be a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person, animal or object to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. Almost all newspapers and magazines have professional cartoonists to design quality cartoons and/or caricatures for their publication. Cartoons/caricatures are a powerful and sarcastic tool to comment upon any social or political situation. The controversy that arises every now and then over cartoons is proof of the fact that cartoons command an equal impact as, say, news articles.

Below I present you with 35 hilarious caricatures of well known public figures. All the images have been twisted intentionally to make them more interesting and hilarious. So scroll down and enjoy.

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StyleShop – Elegant Theme’s 81st (And It’s an eCommerce One)

Elegant Themes has just released its 81st theme – the robust and beautiful eCommerce theme StyleShop – and it’s worth the wait. Say goodbye to the glossy mail order catalogues and get your glossy magazine fix with StyleShop Premium WordPress Theme.

StyleShop is glamorous and edgy and not your typical and functional looking eCommerce theme. You can tell the difference from the way the design elements have been seamlessly integrated into various sections of the theme. The attention to detail and the thoughtful process of making sure the user experience is pleasant and enjoyable is a trademark of Elegant Themes. The homepage is clear and easily navigable. It greets you with an impressive dynamic slider you would love to showcase your products with. It also includes a mini slider you can use to feature specials or specific product categories you want to bring attention to. You can also set up a mini gallery of your hottest, latest, most popular products as a teaser to the rest of your inventory. The great thing about this theme is the integrated WooCommerce plugin that handles the whole checkout process ensuring a seamless handling of transactions with popular payment methods.

Styleshop Premium WordPress Theme looks great on smartphones and tablets with its fully responsive design. It even has a side menu especially designed for smartphones to facilitate a faster shopping experience. This responsive theme can be easily customized with the powerful Theme ePanel that allows you to tweak and adjust design features as you please. In addition, the theme comes with lots of shortcodes you can use for more detailed control over the theme.

Features:

  • Responsive Design
  • Theme Options
  • Shortcodes
  • Page Templates
  • Perpetual Updates
  • Secure and Valid Code
  • Browser Compatibility
  • Complete Localization
  • Unlimited Colors
  • Unparalleled Support

StyleShop Premium WordPress Theme includes top-notch tech support provided by Elegant themes’ support staff to help you setup your site and get it running in no time.

Get StyleShop And 80 More Themes for $39

Check Out Our Favorite WordPress Themes for 2013

We play favorites. Surprise, surprise! Yes, we do. Especially if we know that what we find is really great and we want to share them with as many as we can. We’ve seen how many of you have benefited from our Best WordPress Themes for 2012 post and we hear you. Finding the best WordPress themes in the marketplace can sometimes be overwhelming, what with all the amazing graphics and all the features packed (sometimes bloated) into these themes. But not all these themes are created equal so we’d like to give you a push in the right direction with our comprehensive list of what to look for in WordPress themes.

We’ve updated our Best WordPress Themes for 2012 list and come up with an updated version – Best WordPress Themes for 2013. What’s great about our updated list is that not only have we’ve broken down these themes by categories making it easier for you to find what you need, the great news is that we will also be updating this post several times each month all year round. If you’ve been wanting a one-stop shop for the most updated themes in the marketplace, make sure to bookmark this page. We will be updating WordPress themes according to theme categories such as: Responsive, Portfolio, Magazine, Business, eCommerce, BuddyPress, Frameworks, HTML5, Real Estate, Free, and Premium. Yup, the list includes the best Free themes too. All these themes have made it into our list of favorites for good reason.

If you’ve been wanting to update your own website or you are searching for a great theme to use for your clients, head on out and check our post – Best WordPress Themes for 2013. You might find just what you are looking for. While you’re there leave us a comment on what else you want us to add to our list. We’d love to hear from you.

Cool WordPress Themes for Churches: 2013 Edition

Churches and other religious or advocacy centered organizations have very specific website needs. Most of them require a combination of magazine, events, multimedia, and community features rolled into one theme. Here are some great WordPress themes that have great features and functionalities that can address those needs:

The Good News

The Good News Premium WordPress Theme is a theme specifically designed for churches but it is flexible enough to fit other uses. This premium theme includes: custom posts (Events, Sermons, Media), custom templates (Events, Sermons, Media), custom widgets, a contact form, 11 PSD files, and a complete HTML version, everything you need to set up your church’s website. The Good News is also responsive.

Evolution

Evolution Premium WordPress Theme from Elegant Themes is a simple, clean, responsive multi purpose theme that can be used for any type of website but it can also work well for advocacy groups or church and religious blog sites. Pastors or church leaders can use this theme to publish regular preachings or inspirational articles to inspire their readers beyond the Sunday sermon. This theme includes several useful page templates such as an image gallery, portfolio, a blog feed, and a member login template, among others.

Peacemaker – The WordPress Theme for Churches

Peacemaker Premium WordPress Theme is an excellent church theme that incorporates all the elements of church related activities into one theme. A notable feature is its events countdown feature which is a helpful events management tool to inform people about upcoming events. This responsive premium theme also includes: four custom post types (Events, Videos, Audio & Galleries), custom widgets, a unique homepage slider builder with the Slider custom post type, layered PSDs for detailed customization, and extensive documentation for easy setup.

Genesis

Reaching your audience has never been simpler with Genesis Premium WordPress theme, a church theme that’s designed to help you create a dynamic and responsive church website easily. This premium WordPress theme includes a simple custom solution for events that other events plugins complicate. This responsive theme also includes an unbranded theme options panel, unlimited photo galleries (masonry style), video, MP3 streaming, PDF download capabilities, and other useful features to enhance your website.

Spurgeon

Sunday preaching time too short to say all you have to say? Not a preacher but inspired to write all your thoughts and insights from your personal devotionals? Write about it and take all the time you need in your very own website. Spurgeon Premium WordPress Theme is a great way to compile all your thoughts and share them to as many as you can on your website. This responsive premium theme is equipped with features to help you easily publish your messages to inspire people and encourage them in their faith.

Saving Grace

Saving Grace Premium WordPress Theme is a theme geared towards charities and non-profit organizations. What’s unique about this theme aside from its outstanding layout and typography is the built in donation facility, via PayPal, using its donation page template and donation button and progress bar. This functionality takes advantage of impulse donation and gives visitors the option to donate straight away. This theme also includes 5 alternative color styles for you to choose from.

Malachi

Today’s church generation is so much different from before. Technology has changed a lot of the traditional methods of reaching people and replaced it with multimedia and audio-visual systems. Malachi Premium WordPress Theme integrates these modern tools and gives you a theme that is in step with today’s demands giving you technical functionalities that include podcasts, streaming music, and music videos. These modern communication tools are seamlessly integrated within the theme so you can create a website that can effectively reach today’s tech savvy generation.

Check out the WordPress themes above to see which ones will match your needs.

2013 Is Here: Time To Update Your WordPress Theme!


New Year. New Look. Say goodbye to all the holiday trimmings and get ready to update the old. What better time to start the year with something new and something fresh! If you’ve been wanting to revamp your website and give it a makeover now is the time to do it. Design trends and the gazillion features have sort of settled, the fads have faded, while useful and relevant features have been embraced and integrated into the basic WordPress theme structure. It’s a great way to start 2013.

Take a look at all the gorgeous WordPress themes that have been released the past few months, read our reviews and see for yourself:

Fusion Theme from Elegant Themes

Specialty WordPress Theme

Harmony Theme by Elegant Themes

Origin WordPress Theme by Elegant Themes


You can also check out these articles on WordPress trends, plugins and other resources to beef up your site:

Header.php and The WordPress Header


In a previous article, we ‘deconstructed’ and brokedown a basic WordPress theme into 5 sections namely: the header, the menu, the sidebar, the content, and the footer. This time we are going to dive a little deeper into one of the sections and try to dissect it a little bit more.

Here’s how we defined The WordPress Header in that article:

The header is the structure that traditionally sits at the top of a web page. It contains the title of the website. It may also be referred to as the masthead, head, title, and banner. In all WordPress Themes, the header is found within the header.php template file.

Most themes have a header image that displays at the top of the page. This image is generated by a graphic defined either in the CSS value for the property that represents the header area or through the use of a custom header feature in WordPress. In themes that don’t have the custom header image feature, you can easily define a background image for the header image using CSS. (source: CSS for Dummies)

Not to be confused with headings (more on this in the future), the WordPress header is an important and strategic element of any WordPress theme because it is the first thing the visitor sees on your site. A good header communicates and reflects the content, purpose and intention of the site. It establishes your personal brand. Much like the cover of a top selling book or magazine, the header serves as a teaser of what can be expected from the rest of the website. It should be interesting enough to encourage visitors to explore the site even further. Not all headers require pictures or images. Some websites use beautiful typography as headers and they work just as well. Cluttered headers crammed with outdated blinking gifs and ads should be avoided as they are surefire ways for visitors to hit the back button in a jiffy.

The header.php file

header.php should contain everything from the DOCTYPE tag to the end of the page’s navigation. This means that all <head> tag information, meta tags, <title> tag variables, and other information must be included in the site’s header. This template file also must contain the <?php wp_head(); ?> tag, which places valuable WordPress version-sharing information, and other website information, within the head of the document. It must be placed before the closing </head> tag. (source: speckyboy.com)

The coding experiment

The header is set in an h1 HTML tag and features one template tag used with two different options or parameters. Basically, the first one displays the URL of the website in a link, and the second one displays the name of the blog or website as set in the Administration > Settings > General panel. When the user moves the mouse over the header title, the header can be clicked to return back to the main or front page of the site as set in the Administration > Settings > General panel.

Let’s experiment a bit with this basic header code. The code below contains two sections (the head and the body)

<HTML>

<HEAD>
<TITLE>My Home Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY>
<H1>Blogging Experiment</H1>
This is an experiment.
</BODY>

</HTML>

and it will produce something like this:

Blogging Experiment

This is an experiment.

Of course, this is just plain simple html without any CSS styling applied yet. Sample CSS code that can be applied:

#header {
background: #90a090;
border-bottom: double 3px #aba;
border-left: solid 1px #9a9;
border-right: solid 1px #565;
border-top: solid 1px #9a9;
font: italic normal 230% ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif;
letter-spacing: 0.2em;
margin: 0;
padding: 15px 10px 15px 60px;
}

If you want to experiment a little further and test your html coding skills you can check out this nifty tool on the W3Schools website. Simply submit your code and see what happens. You can make it as simple or as complicated as you want. Check it out here: W3Schools.com Try it yourself.

30 Realistic and Inspirational 3D Artworks 2013

Some people believe that genius is something intrinsic, something inherent within a man and genius cannot be taught. You cannot be trained to become a genius. For e.g. you cannot be trained to paint like Da Vinci. Although this notion is true but some people take it far too seriously. Some students skip classes because they think that traditional education will tamper with their natural instincts. Others try to start a business without reading a single business book. Of course these people are flawed in their thinking. Albert Einstein once said – “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” So you see success has two parts. One is learning the rules of the game and the other one is playing better than others. This former aspect, learning the rules of your trade, can be trained and taught.

Below I have collected 30 artworks for those artists who want to learn the rules of art. These artworks are not genre specific. They vary from the children’s comic character The Incredible Hulk to the portrait of a simple innocent girl, from the picture of a super hero to Ibn Tulun Mosque. So scroll down and enjoy.

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