The Unstandard WordPress theme is released / shared with the intent of breaking the typical blog mold. Farewell to the blase reverse chronological text heavy front pages, and hello to visuals & imagery to lure visitors deeper into your website / blog. A WordPress theme comprised of a - grid aligned - images for forward facing pages, and clean textual presentation on the inner pages. Originally developed for personal use, and modified for release, I felt that an update to the WordPress themes made available on 5thirtyone.com was due.
I hope that the theme is enjoyed and will serve as the foundation for future WordPress driven blogs. Please read through the details below before downloading and installing.
Screenshot
Note, the publicly available download is a modification of a personal project
Download
Known to be compatible with WordPress 2.3+ (including 2.5 RC2). If you are running an older version of WordPress, please, stop what you are doing and upgrade! To install, download and unzip the unstandard directory and upload to wp-content/themes.
The Unstandard - Version 0.1
Search bar graphic - Zipped Photoshop (PSD) file
Those interested, Sener customized The Unstandard for widgets & comment gravatars (unsupported).
If you find this theme download helpful, consider a small donation which will be put towards a flat of Rockstar or Haribo Gummi Bears.
Instructions
The theme requires the use of WordPress custom fields in order to display the lead and secondary images displayed on the home page, index, and search results.
- Create a 593px x 225px lead graphic. While composing an article, create a new ‘key’ under Custom Fields titled
lead_image. For the corresponding value, paste the direct URL to the hosted image - Create a 293px x 150px secondary graphic. Create a second ‘key’ titled
secondary_imageand paste the direct URL to the hosted image in the ‘value’ field. - Posts that do not have a
lead_imageorsecondary_imageincluded will serve a plain grey box. As time consuming as it may be, it might be worthwhile to go through your archives to include images for your popular posts.
Reference screenshot if the directions above are not clear.
Sam
Mar 19th, 2008
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Have you noticed an increase in pageviews since ‘breaking the mold’?
Dave Bowker
Mar 19th, 2008
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What he said!
Just wondering if you could release some stats, ie before the redesign and your old theme, and the clickthrough ratio of having an image represent the post as opposed to an excerpt in the last design.
Are more people clicking an image to read the post rather than previewing the excerpt to read the post?
- Dave
roycifer
Mar 20th, 2008
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i know it says its compatible with 2.3+ but has this theme been explicitly tested on the 2.5 release candidate?
neve
Mar 20th, 2008
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No shit! This is great dude! Thanks for sharing!
Kai
Mar 20th, 2008
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I love it!
Really - keep up the great work!
Alisa
Mar 20th, 2008
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Wow, this is absolutely amazing. I love all of your themes, but this blows all your others out of the water.
Bayliss
Mar 20th, 2008
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YES!!! Derek - this is awesome. This may even make me change my blog back to wordpress.
Derek
Mar 20th, 2008
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Yes. Tested with WordPress 2.5 RC1 with local development environment.
@Dave: I’m going to poke around Google Analytics to see if I can pull up previous figures.
@Sam: I have noticed an increased CTR for front page posts.
chris
Mar 20th, 2008
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Great release Derek !
Trackback
Mar 20th, 2008
electric weekend – The Unstandard WordPress theme