PixoPoint

We have recently added some improvements to the menu system within the PixoPoint Template Generator.

Dropdown shadow as seen in the Revolution Generated theme

Most of these changes are under the skin, improvements to cross-browser compatibility, bug fixes etc. However one of them is the addition of subtle shadows to dropdown menus. You can control the depth of the shadows from within the menu editing panel (depth of 0 gives no dropdown at all). Hopefully some of you will find this a nice addition to your site.

This feature is not yet available within the Suckerfish dropdown menu generator but it will be available eventually. If you have any suggestions for improvements, bug reports or just want to comment on the service please leave a comment in our support forum.

A new version of the Simple CMS theme is now available.

Simple CMS theme for WordPress

Download Simple CMS theme version 1.5

The Simple CMS theme does not display comments, tags, categories or anything not needed for a basic static website. The theme folder only contains four PHP files, header.php, footer.php, index.php and 404.php. Unlike regular blog themes, static themes do not require large numbers of theme files.

New features

• Simplified code
• Improved SEO
• CSS indenting
• Improved code comments

Support

As per usual, all bug reports/improvements will be dealth with through our forum. As this is intended for developers, we will not be providing support for basic theme modifications.

We have received numerous requests for the implementation of a magazine style templates into the PixoPoint template generator. We originally intended to launch an entirely new magazine style theme of our own creation, however Brian Gardner of the Revolution themes recently announced a new site, RevolutionTwo.com, which features a wide range of great magazine style themes which are all GPL licensed. Since they are GPL licensed we have been allowed to implement these directly into the PixoPoint template generator. Instead of having to modify the Revolution themes code to create the magazine style theme that you want, you can simply modify a few options in the template generator, hit the export button and have your very own magazine style WordPress theme!

Revolution Generated

Revolution Generated template for the PixoPoint template generator

The design of the Revolution Generated template is based on the Revolution Church theme. This is a great design and we have ported it over to look almost exactly like the original design. Since we expect most people to use the design for non-church themes we have removed some of the ‘churchy’ styling on it and replaced them with a more generic design which will hopefully be more suitable for those of you looking to modify it for your own purposes.

Note: The home page of this template is still under development. We are yet to implement a content gallery and there is a minor bug in IE which causes the date and feed links at the top of the pages to be slightly out of alignment. If you find any more bugs, please let us know and we will fix them ASAP.

Demo

You can see a live preview of the theme in the template generator … Live preview demo

Or if you want to dive right in and start editing … Start editing Revolution Generated

To download the theme, go to ‘Upload/Save’ and choose ‘Export to WordPress’ in the editing area.

Improvements over previous magazine themes

A common complaint heard from users of magazine themes is they have to add a custom field for every post they create. We have alleviated this problem by allowing you to specify a default image URL in the themes WordPress admin page for each section of the home page. When a default image URL is specified, that image will be shown in the particular home page area whenever you forget (or can’t be bothered) to add a custom field.

We have also made it easier to control what content is shown on the home page. Instead of making modifications to the theme code, you can now alter which categories of posts and how many characters from those posts are displayed in the various sections of the home page directly from your WordPress admin page.

These changes are all GPL licensed, so feel free to use them in your own themes. Links back to our site are much appreciated though

Credits

All credit for the styling of this theme goes to Brian Gardner of RevolutionTwo.com who created the Revolution Church theme which this template was based on.

The Aqua Vaccinium template features a smooth blue and green design and has a prominent dropdown menu built in (no plugin needed). The template was originally released as a standalone theme, but has been incorporated as one of the standard templates in the PixoPoint Template Generator.

Download template as a WordPress theme

Download Aqua Vaccinium WordPress theme

The big blue bar

The blue section (below the main menu) is controlled via the ‘Main menu shadow’ section in the ‘Main Menu’ box in the template generator control panel.

If you require any (paid) customisations specific to your site, please get in touch via our contact form.

Naming

The word Aqua came from the mixture of the blue and green tones of the design. The name Vaccinium is the genus for a variety of berries including blue berries which we baked a pie for in honour of the new theme.

Hellish Simplicity is a minimilistic two column design with a distinctive red, black and white design. It was created as the blog theme for http://ryanhellyer.net/ and by request was made available to the public as a free download and has now been added as one of the default themes to the PixoPoint template generator.

Download template as a WordPress theme

Download Hellish Simplicity Version 2.0 (link coming soon)

Modifying sidebar widths

The grey border which runs down the sidebars in Hellish Simplicity are created via the sidebars graphical background. If you change the widths of these sidebars, you should modify/create a new graphic to match the new width.

Copyright

This theme was not originally released as a truly open source theme. However it is now available with a BSD license.

Basic blue is a minimilistic two column template which was designed as a simple base for more advanced designs to be created from.

Download template as a WordPress theme

Download Basic blue 1.0 (link coming soon)

Basic blue as a base

This design was used as the base to create the other templates for the PixoPoint template generator including ‘Hellish Simplicity’, ‘Aqua Vaccinium’ and ‘Yoghourt’. By simply editing the various options in the template generator, the Basic blue template was morphed into the other drastically different creations. With minimal work, you too can develop your own entirely new designs.

Creating your own templates

If you modify one of the core templates in such a way that you think it would be suitable as one of the core templates, then please post your saved XML file in our support forum. If we think it is up to scratch, then we’ll consider adding it as one of the build in designs along with credit back to you as the author.