// Excel Free WordPress Theme
// Apr 16th, 2008 & filed under WordPressFinally!
Looking for a cool, and different WordPress theme for free? I present to you, Excel. Voila!
Some of you who have been following me prior to this blog, will see similarities in this theme. I released a theme in November last year, almost identical to this, and I have been selling it for $20 from then until now, with 100% of the proceeds going to charity.
With the help of proceeds from the theme, my uncle has smashed through his initial target of £4,000.
Now, I may release a theme in the future, which will help to raise more money for charity, but for now, I’ve pulled the initial theme off the ‘market’, revised it (made it better), and I’m now releasing it for free to you all.
Let me get into the features…
The 6 column grid…
Firstly, this is a theme for people who appreciate attention to detail…’pixel peepers’ if you like. Those who love order, structure, and like everything to line up correctly. You see, this is one of the very few WordPress themes which sticks to a strict horizontal grid. Right throughout, from the navigation to the comments box, every section of this theme has its place.
This shouldn’t be a ‘feature’, but sadly, this basic principle of design isn’t even understood in its simplest form by some ‘designers’ (not that I’m a master either, admittedly). Rather than marking it as a ‘feature’, I’m really just informing you.
Rotating header images…
The header images of 622×190px, rotate with every refresh. Again, this isn’t your average rotating header images. These images rotate without any WordPress plugin, nor do they rotate using the method Chris Pearson uses. No, these images, which you will place in the /headers/ directory of the theme, rotate as many images as you place in the folder, without altering any code whatsoever. It’s a really neat way of doing rotating images, thanks to Dan Benjamin of A List Apart.
Inter-post ad integration…
This is one of those things every Adsense user wants to know how to do, but finds it difficult to find the answer. Many people would like to be able to place a banner below their first post on the homepage of their blog. However, they soon find out that the banner appears below every post, violating the Google Adsense rules, as you’re only permitted to display 3 content ads on any given page.
Well, your headaches are over. In Excel, I’ve done the dirty work for you, so all you have to do is go to the index.php file, and put in your 468×60 adsense banner. I have it clearly marked in the file, so anyone can understand what to do.
Built-in author comment styling…
There has been an ever increasing desire among WordPress bloggers, to have the comments on their own blogs, identified from all the comments of their visitors. This has led to the use of a WordPress plugin in order to achieve the desired effect. However, Excel has it built-in. In most cases, without changing anything at all, your comments will be styled differently than your visitors.
Built-in separated comments and trackbacks…
Again, this is an issue more would desire to have in their designs, but have no clue how to do. On top of that, very few themes come with it. Rather than having trackbacks breaking up the flow of conversation in the comments, I’ve placed the trackbacks in an ordered list at the end. Plus, what’s especially nice about the way I’ve done this, is that the ‘Trackbacks’ title does not appear when there are no trackbacks to the post. Cool, eh?
Also…
- Post image styling
- Code for 125px ads in the sidebar
- Valid CSS and XHTML 1.0…
So how do you get it?
To get the theme for free (remember, I was charging $20 for this), all I ask you to do, is sign up to our mailing list (please remember to confirm).
P.S. Along with a download link for the theme, I’ll also send you the url to an awesome link building and blog marketing discovery I made at the end of last week, which will really help every blogger. At this stage, not many know about it, so it’ll put you ahead of the competition, and save you heaps of time!
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I thought I was already signed up for the ABD newsletter? Oh well I’ll just re-sign up. Great theme
Exactly my thoughts. What about those of us who are already avid readers? (which will be most of the first group of readers, as we received the email!).
EmmaShireen and Karl - lol
Yeah, I should have sent it to you folks first, but I was too busy trying to make sure new subscribers would get it immediately after they sign up!! Sorry.
You should be enjoying access to the download now
Armen,
thanks for the quick response. We’re only ribbing ya’, you know
As for the theme, I quite like it - definitely the equal of almost any other wordpress theme available. This could of course be due to the driving force behind a fact that was discussed in an earlier post - I have a grid aligned desk.
All in all, I’m a big fan of clean (almost to the point of austere) light, design. Kudos.
Karl - I know. I was just dashing around like mad trying to get it sorted.
I’m glad you like it. It’s certainly one for those who like things presented with order. I wish I had shown it to you before i released it, ‘Austere’ would have been a great name for it!
Maybe the next one will be named that, you never know.
Love it! Using it for my personal blog (gettinpersonal.net) and web hosting blog.
EmmaShireen - I’m glad you like it. You’ve got a bit of editing to do though.
On another note, how many sites do you actually run? It seems like there’s a never ending list!
I run 15, lol. And yeah I’m too busy to edit it right now. Probably do it next week because right now I’m dealing with a family death
EmmaShireen - I’m extremely sorry to hear that. I’ve just shot up a prayer for you and your family.
No single person could run 15 blogs, and make them successful. Impossible. That’s a tip, and it’s completely free!
Not 15 blogs, just 15 websites lol. Only 5 of them are blogs. The others are forums, directories and one is a web hosting company website. I’m not crazy enough to run 15 blogs lol
I like how you have the simple things already included (comments, trackbacks, adsense etc) in the theme which all themes should have by default imo. That is definitely a bonus which puts you ahead of many other people however Armen the design lacks something.
IMO the header does not flow easy and is probably the main culprit. Hope you do not mind me being picky
btw even 5 blogs imo is too much…
Well, I’m able to handle it. I guess it depends on the person and how their life is. I dont have a job or kids, so I have the time and I prewrite a lot of the material. Plus their different niches that I’m passionate about which is a key blogging factor.
And ones a personal one so it doesn’t count, IMO
Thank you for the theme. I didn’t know before that you have another blog here.
—
Nice
EmmaShireen - I have a post just waiting for me to hit the publish button. If you’re looking for blogging success, it should interest you, and you might find that even running two or three blogs in a way which will drive success, is a real challenge. I speak from experience, and I’m just trying to guide my readers so that their efforts are worthwhile.
I read your post about your friend discouraging you. I’m glad it hasn’t. But, there is a path to blogging success which is more than just running sites on topics you’re passionate about. Believe me. Stay tuned my friend
Jermayn - Thanks for the support, and you’re totally entitled to your opinion. There’s no design which suits absolutely everybody. Maybe the next one will be more to your liking.
Do you think it would be better if the photo went right across the width of the page?
Nice - You’re welcome!
I actually like how your header does not follow the same trend as most, it however just seems a little blocky and does not flow nicely imo. Its kinder hard to explain what I mean as its more of a gut feeling.
@ Armen: Looking forward to it! I came across this blog from a post someone made about the contest and I enjoyed what I read so I have stuck around :p
Jermayn - It’s slightly similar to how Tim Ferris has his blog.
EmmaShireen - I’m glad!
The post is now up for you to enjoy. I must confess though, it’s really only skimming the surface. But, your chances of having a popular blog without following theses steps, will be greatly reduced.
I signed up but my email did not have the link to the theme, just a verification link.
Doug - That’s just a confirmation email for the fact that you signed up (it’s a safety issue. Stops people from registering your email without your permission), otherwise known as ‘double opt-in.
Once you confirm, you should get an email with a link to the theme.
Ok….i signed up checked my email..click confirmed the email link… .but I still cant find the download link…help?
thanks
Thanks so much for the theme! I put it up on my blog. I made a small adjustment to the pictures by putting a wavy frame around them with an inner glow. I think it looks quite nice and keeps it blocked without it feeling as blocky. Click my name if you want to see what the headers look like.
Carl - If you signed up, and confirmed, then you should have received an email with the download link. Let me know if there are any issues.
Jacqueline - Nice touch.
To everyone - if you don’t like the black boarder around the images, then just change the colour. You can even use the image space to place one image, and use it as your logo.
Check out http://armenthomassian.com/ for an example. It’s a good example of what you can do with this theme with a bit of imagination.
Two words: Very Clean
Just subscribed! Cannot wait to check out the theme. Its great that you are making it availablef for free. Hopefully you will get your reward from other means.
moserw
http://www.nela.in
Hi,
I’m setting up a new site and I decided to use this theme. However, the google banner ad insertion doesn’t work. I pasted the google ad code exactly where it should be in index.php and it doesn’t show on the site. The site isn’t ready to be viewed yet but I haven’t changed much yet. When I look at the page source, the ad code doesn”t even show up in the code.
I have been using the theme. I like it. When I add “pages” will links to the pages show up in the vacant gray area next to About? That would be nice. The rotating images sold me me on the theme. Already making good use of this feature. Thanks for a great design
Michael Soriano & moserw - Thanks!
Ross - Sometimes Adsense doesn’t appear immediately after placing the code. Has it appeared yet?
Doug - Yeah, when you add a ‘page’ within WordPress, it will appear in the horizontal bar across the top. I advise you have no more than five though, to keep it looking good.
Thanks for the encouraging words.
Very nice. Added some color for my site.
gestroud - Nice work with the theme. I like the customisation.
Hi Armen,
I looked at literally hundreds of themes before I picked Excel, and even then, sat on it for weeks, before finally taking the plunge yesterday. I’m very much a newbie at hosting WP, and have limited knowledge of code, so plugins and codes changes are huge challenges for me. Anyway, I have a couple of little problems and forgive me if these are 101 questions but…here goes:
1. I have a problem with clicking on tags - which I’m using as a major piece of architecture to navigate through the site - clicking on a tag word in the right side bar only brings up half the original post, and it’s not intuitive that the reader needs to click in the header to bring up the rest of the post. Also, the shortened version deletes any image, so in effect, it’s not possible to load a photo at the top under the header, or the tag page leaves a big hole.
What i need is for the whole post to come up when I click a tag word, not half. Is that possible?
2. Dumb question….How do you edit the left side bar? I see someone is using this for adsense, so there must be a way, but I don’t see it in Theme editor interface? I don’t want to monetize my site with adsense right now, but I don’t like the way my tag words are running into each other, and almost appear jumbled on top of the category file reference, whereas others I look at are all neat. Can I fix that?
3. This one is minor, but I couldn’t get one of the plugins to work - it’s a picasa photo album widget for the side bar, but the reason for needing it has evaporated.
4. I’ll also mention as I’m writing that I am looking for a WP plugin that will search availability on properties by checking calendars. If anyone knows of one, or can point me in the right direction, I would be grateful.
Anyway, the big problem is the search by tags issue - as you can see, I had to add an ugly note at the side of the tags to explain this would be necessary. I guess I could make that a more discreet text file, but I am hoping you know how I can fix that.
Other than that, everything is perfect!
Best Regards,
Joanna
http://www.eastendbuzz.com
Joanna,
Thanks for the compliment of choosing Excel over so many others!
1. The reason you don’t see the full post is for SEO purposes. It’s to stop punishment from Google for duplicate content. If you have duplicate content, you’re more likely to be placed in the supplemental index, which, if you don’t know yet, is bad.
Do some research on ‘wordpress duplicate content’, ‘wordpress supplemental index’ and things like that. I’m sure terms like that would result in article to further inform you.
If you don’t care about Google, then it’s a simple change of code, where you change ‘the_excerpt’ to ‘the_content’ in the pages where you want to display all of the article.
2. You can insert content in the meta area (left sidebar) in the various template pages. You’re desire to separate your tags is good, but I’m confused; there should be a comma and space between each one if I remember correctly.
But, to change, just look in the ‘index’ file, and and every other applicable file, and look for Tags ‘, ‘, and between the inverted commas, you can put whatever you like to have between each tag.
The fact of the matter is, Tags are not complimentary to most blogs. You’ll be far better off using Categories. Ironically, I have a half written post in which I mention my issue with Tags. It’ll be posted within the next 24 hours, so look out for it
3. I know nothing of that plugin, and I wouldn’t know why it isn’t working. When creating a theme, you tend to make it as generic as possible, but, sometimes conflicts occur.
4. Try the WordPress forums, or search Google.
I hope this helps
Armen,
Thanks for your quick response. Well I can see the problems are all tag based, but I can’t see how I can do without them as I need to leave location as it’s own category. SEO is important to me, so I don’t want to mess with that either, and by the way, was floored to receive a comment on one of the posts within 3 hours of unblocking google! And it wasn’t spam, or anyone who knew about it, it was from a local journalist who is a complete stranger to me! And I though Google was going to take 2 weeks to find me!
1. Anyway, I see one of the problems is with the “Read More” file - basically, there is no text, yet it is showing FALSE in the code. All I am seeing is a blank with dots, like this […….] and no link to the continuation page - that’s a problem as the convention is have it say “more…..”, then click to read the full post. That’s what is missing.
And yes, I did search WP help to learn how to customize and did what it said , then got a parser error, which destroyed everything in the index.php. Ooops….but it’s OK now, I put it all back….
Of course, now I am stuck again, sorry.
2. Regarding the lack of space and commas to separate the tags, I checked and all are typed correctly below the posts exactly as it says, and the code also looks correct to me (see copies from main index template and page template below). Interestingly (or maybe you’re asleep by now), the tags are displaying correctly in the meta area when pages are clicked from the category widget - it’s only when tags are clicked or latest posts are clicked that the tags in the meta area appear with no comma or spaces between them (see, I’m learning a bit already…:-))
Here’s the relevant code: Main Index:
Posted by
On
Filed under
< ?php if (function_exists('the_tags')) { the_tags('Tags ', ''); } ?>
< ?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ''); ?>
Editing page:
Posted by
On
Filed under
< ?php if (function_exists('the_tags')) { the_tags('Tags ', ''); } ?>
< ?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ''); ?>
So what’s wrong with it?
I’m sure this is me being dumb, but I need it explained to me in very simple language, because I have no clue what i am doing wrong.
And I still love the theme by the way and want to make it work right.
One thing - I’m just wondering if I corrupted anything as it doesn’t seem to be behaving as you are telling me it should,. I had tried installing a collapsible category plugin yesterday. That didn’t work either, so I removed the widget, but half the code is till there, Could that be the cause? I’m running version WP 2.3.3.
Thanks for your patience.
Joanna
I created a special page template to show the latest 3 posts in the blog category with prev and next links. Unfortunately, the side bar is totally messed up. You can see it at raillery.tv/blog
What am I doing wrong?
the code is too long to post.
Hi Joanna: I went through the same issues you did with the tags in the meta area. As you noted, the code resides in several templates and you need to apply the same fix to each one.
I documented the fix I made for my site, which required a combined CSS change and a change to how the tags function was being called.
I’m now struggling through my own refinements of the design, and have a question for Armen. I know the site was designed on a horizontal grid (aka columns) but was there a specific vertical type grid you were aiming for? A quick troll through the stylesheet shows an 18 pixel type baseline, but other type elements range in height from 32 to 40 to 50 pixels.
Stunning theme, it’s exactly what I’m after!
Quick question…is the sidebar fully widgetized in the Excel theme?