FreshPick – Free WordPress Theme
Today we have a very cool free WordPress theme which I ported from a template by one of my favorite free template designers, Erwin of Styleshout. Like the last few previous themes, it is coded for WordPress 2.7+ only, and it won’t work on previous versions. It has a number of cool features, including a featured post box, custom archive and search templates, an options page, and four widgetized areas (including a widgetized footer). These features will be gone over below.
And now onto the features in more detail…
Featured Post
As you can see on the demo, this theme has a featured post box, along with room for a featured image. The box will display the latest post, unless there is a sticky post defined, in which case it will display the latest sticky post. A featured image will be displayed on the left, with an excerpt displayed on the right.
To get the featured image working, simply upload a 280×250 image, and paste the full path to the URL in the custom write panel. Thanks to this tutorial for the code.
If no image is defined, the below default image will be used instead:
This default image can be overridden by replacing the freshpick/images/img-featured.jpg file, which should be 280×250 pixels as well.
Single Post Image
On the same post settings menu, you can also set a wide post image that will span across the top of your post content. The image should be about 510 pixels wide. Although the height can vary, it probably shouldn’t be any higher than about 250 pixels.
Again, make sure you input the full path to the image in this box.
Archive / Search Templates
The archives template is something that was present in the original design that I thought would be cool to implement into the WordPress theme, and was actually pretty simple thanks to the template hierarchy. All archive pages, including categories, monthly/weekly/daily archives, and tags will have the following template. This also applies to search results.
Flickr Photostream
This is something I’ve implemented in a few of the other ported themes here, including Miniml and Transmission. It is displayed by default in the left footer. Here’s how to set it up:
- In WordPress 2.7, go to the Plugins -> Add New. Type “flickrRSS” into the search box.
- Select “flickrRSS” from the results (should be first). Install and activate it. It will say it hasn’t been tested with your version of WordPress yet, but I’m using it now with WordPress 2.7.1 and it works fine.
- Once activated, go to Settings -> FlickrRSS, and select to display 4 user photos. This is how it’s set up on the demo, although you can play around with these settings if you find something you like.
- Obviously, you’ll also need to input a Flickr user ID, which can be obtained by clicking the “Find your id” link on the FlickrRSS page in your admin panel.
As a visual reference, here’s a screenshot of how mine is set up at the moment.
And remember, it’s okay if your settings vary slightly, specifically the User ID – but also the display settings as well. The FlickrRSS can also be used as a widget (more info on widgets below).
About Text
Similar to Mountain Leaves and Underwater, the FreshPick theme has a theme options page to control the “about text” and image, which is displayed on the right footer by default.
This should be pretty self explanatory, although here’s some more detailed descriptions of the three different options.
- Title: You could change this to something like “About Us” or “About This Blog,” whatever you think would be appropriate. The default is set to: “About”
- Image URL: If you have a small avatar-like image (around 40×40), simply put the full path to that image in this box. If you don’t have one, no problem. A mystery man will be displayed if that is the case.
- Message: You can write a little about yourself and/or your blog in this box. Just a few sentences would be enough.
Widgetized Areas
As mentioned above, there are four widgetized areas:
- Sidebar
- Left Footer
- Middle Footer
- Right Footer
The following diagram will illustrate where exactly these widgetized areas are. Click to enlarge.
Conclusion
Remember, since this is a WordPress 2.7 theme, there are features like comment threading and pagination, as well as Gravatar support.
That should be everything. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the theme, and thanks again to Styleshout for the template. Remember, any support-related inquiries should be posted in the forums.
Oh, and if anyone was wondering, my internet problems (internet was pretty much slower than the slowest dialup) has now been resolved.
Posted in Theme Labs
