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
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.
197 Comments
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Have you noticed an increase in pageviews since ‘breaking the mold’?
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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
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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?
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No shit! This is great dude! Thanks for sharing!
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I love it!
Really - keep up the great work!
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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.
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YES!!! Derek - this is awesome. This may even make me change my blog back to wordpress.
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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.
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Great release Derek !
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Excellent stuff!
We’d just like to say a huge ‘Thank You’ for this one. We’re already using it at our place.
Definitely one of the best themes made available so far this year.
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Really one of the greatest WP Theme so far.
But just one day too late. I’ve waited a long time for this Theme to be shared/released and finally I’ve bougt NEWS from Quommunication yesterday. Argh!
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O-Jay, personally I think this is better than ‘News’ from the company you mention above.
And free!
All credit to Derek, I think he might just have upstaged the Quommunication bunch!
I can see Unstandard become very, very popular, very quickly. I feel quite proud to be one of the first to use it.
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I love it! Can’t wait till I go home and play around with it.
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@ron, I really like that wood texture background you used with Grid Focus.
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Excellent theme. Thanks!
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I know orange isn’t for everyone but I would like to hope that the CSS is clear enough to spend some time tweaking colors to suit different tastes.
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@ Piggy and Tazzy: this is my opinion, too. But at the time when I purchased NEWS the “Unstandard-Theme” wasn’t available. So it was really bad luck to spend 75 $ in a theme which can’t beat this one here.
@ Derek: personally I love orange and I use it always somewhere on my websites. Thanks again for the release of the new theme!
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Excellent! Blogging with emphasis on visuals. Downloaded and will play. Thanks Derek;
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is there a way to take away the image borders?
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the image borders for links i mean. i dont want the linked images to have a border but there isnt a way to add the border tag to the custom fields
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Eric, you don’t make any sense. Linked images do not have borders. If you want to style the images on the front page, you should probably look at the CSS. Besides, I don’t think Derek is open to helping people who remove any attributes to 5thirtyone from a downloaded WordPress theme. I didn’t know you authored Grid Focus (according to vasthtml markup and CSS you did).
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gee thanks for the help chris, and how do i not make sence? when you post images using the custom fields wich is pretty much what the layout is for, becouse the images are linked they have the link borders around them.
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one of the best free wordpress theme, good luck~!
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Hui new theme!!!
Thanks a thousand man, I have been using your grid theme and I am delighted to see you keep releasing wordpress stuff.
get a paypal donate button
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Nice theme.Great job.
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I’ll side with Chris. You’ve taken ownership of the CSS removing any attributes of 5thirtyone so I’m going to assume you know how to edit the stylesheet. Btw, there is no CSS border styling applied to images applied using the custom fields.
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hey. joining in saying thanks for this awesome theme.
i am having the same issue as Eric, though, in that the images on the front page have a blue border around them. i believe it is a browser issue. safari doesn’t have this problem, and i’m not sure about firefox yet, but ie6 and ie7 show this border. it then turns reddish after following the link. i haven’t spent a whole lot of time in the css of this theme, but didn’t see it where i thought it would be immediately. this site (5thirtyone) does not show up this way, however. seems odd. if i figure it out, i’ll post it.
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If it is a browser thing it may be related to the reset rules that I stripped out. Try adding the following to the stylesheet if it is an IE issue:
a img { border: none; }Btw, I made sure that the stylesheet in the download included the rule. Re: Eric’s original comment, it is not a CSS border being applied to images.
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Great submission Derek!
I wanted to know if you’re alright with us adding the bottom bar you use on your site, the space you use for del.icio.us, myquire, and flickr. I’d like to add some additional space to my own.
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The 0.2 release that I am working on whenever I have down time is going to support widgets (at least there will be an option widget friendly download). I’m just going through looking at some of the more popular widgets to make sure the matching styling is in the stylesheet.
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update: the border showing up around the images is not browser related. safari is the only one that does not show the border. it only shows up on the left and top of the image, and it is inline with whatever your “a and a:hover” settings are set for in the css. as i played around with them, this is what i found. i’m working on finding a fix for that.
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Fix is in the comment above and with the download.
a img { border: none; }I had made the mistake of misinterpreting Eric’s request as I had assumed that he was referring to some type of extra styling being applied to images that were inserted using the custom field.
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yea i been working on it to and cant get anywhere. like nathan its only on the top and left sides.
also working to blend this theme in with Grid Focus wich i think would look awsome.
if i get anywhere with the borders ill post it
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so we need to re-d/l the theme?
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Read the comments. I already mentioned that the theme was updated OR you could edit the stylesheet following this comment.
Eric, I’m curious why you removed the stylesheet notes altogether after someone had called you out on replacing 5thirtyone. These themes are distributed free of charge. For the sake of others who visit a site using a 5thirtyone theme, the notes left in the markup and in the footer serve as a means for others to find and download the theme for their own use.
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if your going to get me to put the credits back atleast try to get me to add them back on the footer of the layout. 90% of people dont even know how to look at the creds of a stylesheet
but becouse you did help so kindly i am sorry and will put the credits back, thanks for the help.
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Thanks for releasing this Derek. Upon noticing it as a refresher to your site, I’ve been absolutely enamored by it.
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Eric,
“if your going to get me to put the credits back atleast try to get me to add them back on the footer of the layout.”
Nice to admit that your greatest talent is in stealing other people’s work. A sad affair…what is even sadder than that is your blatant attitude about it. Boy, do I hate people like you.
This theme is phenomenal and the least you could do is give the proper credit (although this should go without saying). This theme will become very popular, so you will look like a fool sooner or later. Then again, you sped up that process on your own.
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you talk about “people like me” you think your any better, you come to this site and make a rude comment talking about hating people to soemone you dont know and in a conversation that doesnt have anything to do with you, i admitted i was wrong for taking the credits out and said i was sorry and yet through all this “peeople like me” i havent made one rude comment, wich cant be said for you. You the only one that just made yourself look like a fool.
i guess when someone thinks they know everyone on earth thay dont feel the need to evolve and develop manners.
and what blatant attitude did i have, saying i was sorry? i was stating the fact that if i was going to say anything about somoene stealing my credits i would say it about them removing it from where everyone sees it.
I came here looking for help, i got it and also admited i was wrong, and said i would fix my mistake. i guess “people like you” cant leave things alone”
thanks again for the help Derek, it was very nice of you to help me conidering what i did do.
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Derek,
Thanks for releasing this theme! It looks great. And thanks for letting me know about fixing the stylesheet.
PS — Found another code stealer: http://tinyurl.com/3a3z67
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Love your theme very much,
When I browse Category of time, only show just 4 navigate a picture, how similar to you, show 16 pictures?
Thank you!
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@Derek, This theme is awesome. You cease to amaze with your Wordpress theme development skills.
@Eric, It doesn’t take that long to add the credits. Sorry for the hostility but if your an avid reader of Derek’s blog then you should know him and his followers don’t take kindly to code stealers/theme thieves. It would have also helped your case if you had kept the credits intact because unfortunately once people see those missing they assume your a bad person and act accordingly, that’s why Chris seem to attack you in the first place.
My advice is when having a problem like this analyze the code using an extension or add-on such as “Firebug” and/or do research before contacting the original author. It saves them and you sometime from what they may consider an amateur question.
P.S. Use spell check. It’ll help your case.
-Raz88
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why is it that people that speak proper english think the whole world can speak it so proper. for some of us (like me) we are just learning english and yet you expect me to just know it perficly like you dor or others that have been raised speaking it. Im so sorry that i cant spell. and has far has using spell cheak, if i did that i would never lear how to spell now would i. i have also had my first child born just over a week ago so diving back into dreamweaver and putting in the credits is im sorry to say is not at the top of my list. i said i would put them back and i will. you think becouse i took the credits out that i am just a horrible person and you critizise me for everything. thats like saying someone that breaks the speeding law is a bad person. as for saying anything else in this post im not going to. the only person that has been helpfull to me is also the only person that has a right to be angre or upset with me in anyway. for you all to like derek so much mabey you should start learning from the way he acts and the way he helps people. being a smarta** and critizizing people becouse there not good at english wont make anything better.
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Beautiful theme and free with clean code, thanks Derek.
Comment policy needed?
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@derek: any luck finding the analytic stats for dave & sam’s comments about increased pageviews & clickthrough ratios with the new design
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If anyone has a significant amount of familiarity concerning Google Analytics and comparing older archived information with that of a specific time frame drop me a note via email. derek • 5thirtyone.
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Is there any easy a to widgetize the sidebar. I know most designer types are not fond of widgety stuff but I was trying to use it with my “should be famous” blog as it would be perfect with the pictures as highlights. And what to do to make the footer maybe hold the recent comments, and the pages instead of the links list? Is this difficult?
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@cooper, it should not be too difficult to widgetize the theme. I didn’t have too much free time to get the current revision out but if you don’t feel like adding widget support yourself, the 0.2 version will include a widget-friendly download.
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Thanks Thanks Thanks Thanks Derek !
Just what I was looking for. One night of take-it-apart-do-damange-mess-up and I will come up with what I always wanted ( a mix of visual + text heavy {for text heavy posts i “might” have} )
haha - have fun boss
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First sorry for my bad english.
Thx for this Theme, its great, but i have a problem with the images when i browse categories. There are no images and something is wrong then IE shows the placeholder red cross.
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Did you make sure to include images using the custom fields as specified in the instructions above?
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yes, i make it like the how to above, but something is broken on the way to finish.^^
I try it out, then i think that the mistake is on my side.
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It’s great ! it is ± the same as i designed in photoshop, what a great coincidence ! Can I use it and adapt it for my personal use ?
Gabriel
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Hi all, what an awesome theme - going to be using this to replace scribbish - do elegant. Great news on the upcoming 0.2, anyone want to point me in the direction to add the del.icio.us links to the bottom in the interim period?
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Hey Derek, is there a way to widgetize this? You can view what i have thus far here –> http://www.onegiantvoice.com
I am trying to add the delicious/flickr/news feeds all the way at the bottom, but more important, I am trying to link the top nav to pages i can create within wordpress.. Currently i am not aware of how to create a page in wordpress and link it to the top nav within this theme.?
Any help would be great!
thanks again,
J
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@justin, you’re going to have to wait for me to release an official widgetized version. I am not available at this time to offer a mini tutorial to add support before the 0.2 release. Give me another week or so to finish some work.
If you create a page in WordPress and view the finished page, you can copy the URL from the preview and edit the header file to reflect the copied URL.
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Great theme but just one problem. I have downloaded the theme and am customizing it on my computer (local host). The lead image doesn’t load even after saving it in the images folder and giving that address:
C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\themes\unstandard\images\example.jpg
Any ideas?
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No worries, I worked it out. I had to upload it through WP and then use this url: http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/example.jpg
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RC2 has been released (http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-rc2). Looks like nothing is broken
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Just a comment to say that some of us other designers really appreciate those like yourself, who blow away the junk ‘themes’ with real, quality work.
Well done Derek.
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I’m thinking of adding navigation through the pages on the index, but even though it says page2, only the latest articles appear, any assistance would be appreciated, otherwise the theme is pretty awesome
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Hello, great theme. How can I add the same footer part as you have and can you make widget support ???
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Awesome theme Derek.
I will definitely be studying the code for my own education.
Brilliant use off the custom fields.
Cheers.
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Hello, thank you for such a funky theme. I have been wanting to change my website theme for ages and this looks like an interesting approach. I have edited the theme a bit to add “popular posts” and a simplistic flickr panel, so now I need to go and create some secondary_images.
Thank you again
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An excellent release, Derek. Ahead of the game.
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Ah - does this “If you create a page in WordPress and view the finished page, you can copy the URL from the preview and edit the header file to reflect the copied URL.” translate as ‘you have to play around with the files..’?
It would be really good to have Pages above Posts (or optionally vice versa) without having to do this
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Phenomenal theme, absolutely beautiful. I’m not sure about the overheard of adding images to every post; I guess it’s a trade off between having something so startling beautiful and having a dull looking “just another wordpress weblog”.
Great work…now I’m wracking my brain to see if I can find a project to use it in
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Thanks. I’ll wait for the widgetized version, I played around with it but I’m not very good at it and made a bit of a mess, so in the meantime I’ll work on my pictures for past posts, so they are ready.
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nice one derek!
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I’m still experimenting with this theme on my website but I just wanted to stop by and say thank you VERY much for providing such a unique theme free of charge. It is unique, modern, professional but still fun. I will personally donate what I can later on tonight and I hope others do the same.
Just as a suggestion for the next version — and it is just a suggestion, you are the expert! — I think it would be great to have the categories below the posts displayed with images as well. I am going to work on tweaking the CSS and HTML a little to get something nice but I think it would be a great addition (for someone who uses categories correctly and doesn’t have 234,300,044 of them). I have 5 categories and I think I’m going to create images that will stretch all the way across the footer.
Once again I’m very excited to have found this and thank you so much!
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Question to anyone who could help me out: if I want to use a query_post to exclude categories from appearing on the home page, where would I input the query_post condition? It went before the loop on my last theme, and worked fine, but for some reason I can’t figure it out with this theme. I’ve been trying to edit the index.php file.
If you could let me know where I should input this (file and line number would be great) I’d really appreciate it!
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Hey Derek~ Thanks for sharing this theme. This is my favorite so far. Keep up the good work!
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Hey Amy
query_post can be inserted after line 4 of home.php for controlling what is output as the primary or feature post. For controlling the output of the secondary posts, edit line 18 of the home.php. It contains the query_post function that controls how many post show up as secondary post. Just simpy insert “&cat=”, without quotes, right after “showposts=9″ and include what categories you want to exclude.
-Raz88
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For those interested I’ve uploaded and linked (underneath the original download) the search bar graphic. I noticed some users had simply overlaid a second color over the gradient. If you have Photoshop, tweak the color layers to taste and use for your own site.
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I just modified this theme for my new personal blog, thanks a lot dude this is exactly what I needed.
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Derek - what a fantastic theme! I’ve downloaded the current version and have slightly tweaked it for my needs. Fear not, you’ll remain in the credits, along with a note about me tweaking it and something about chocolate biscuits
Looking forward to version 0.2 as and when it becomes available.
Thanks for your hard work - I’d toyed with buying a template which would be image-driven. Thankfully, I found this little beauty!
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Would it be possible to add to the next release the possibility to give categories images. Then if a post does not have its own image it will fall back to the image for its category, makes more sense to me than having a grey box.
Thanks for the great theme, thats the only thing I can think of that I would like different.
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Great theme, Derek! I’m using it for my blog now, and it works perfectly with WordPress 2.5 (final).
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Excellent theme. It must have taken quite some time to create something so different .
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I’m using this over at my site http://www.niallwalsh.net and have had pretty positive feedback so far. I just think it looks so much slicker than just another Wordpress blog.
Fantasic work and thanks for sharing!
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Wonderful theme! Just wanted to thank you for sharing. I have used it on my blog (katmilk.com) and slightly altered it. Hope you don’t mind. Thanks again, and great work!
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i love it!! thanks so much, i had fun editing it ^___^
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Awesome theme!!! Lovin’ it
Just perfect for my new site
Thanks a lot!
btw this theme works with 2.5 final release too
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Great theme! I’m planning to use it for my site, probably when you release the widget-ready version. Have you seen the new TimThumb PHP script? That would be an awesome script to integrate into this theme. http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/04/02/timthumb-php-script-released/
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Download seems to be buggy…doesn’t unzip w/out breakage….
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Ne’er mind. IT’s a Stuffit problem. Macs are such buggy fuckers….
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Anyone else having troubles with header page categories? I can create them all day in WP 2.5, but they don’t show in this theme. The stock HOME ABOUT CONTACT LINK FAVORITES appear, but are not navigable.
AMAZING theme, by the way. Pretty staggering.
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I’ve been a fan of your work for a long time, but this is pretty much the first time I’m actually going to use any of your work [and it's for a project page for school]. I wanted to design a similar image-centric layout, but yours is just absolutely perfect.
Thanks for sharing your talent to the WordPress community!
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@Tod the header links are hard coded meaning you need to edit the
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Anyone else have a problem with wordpress stats not working with this theme? Beautiful theme by the way!
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I had a great time playing with this theme… there is a chance I could have messed something up myself, but do you think the home tag instead of content in the divs and style sheet could have something to do with it.
You can check out my variation at http://www.purestyledc.com
Tell me what you think
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@Mike, not sure why WordPress stats wouldn’t be working. I’ll add a note to check if there is anything theme related. Nice job modifying the theme though. It’s a completely different look!
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Great work Derek, this is one of the nicest themes I’ve seen for a while.
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Derek, This is fabulous! As a photographer, I have been looking for a theme that i could use for my blog that emphasizes the use of images. Looks like my search has ended. And what a find this was. Thank you!
Off to update my blog!
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This site design is phenomenal! I’m currently using it for my personal blog and (of course) I gave credit where credit is due. Thanks so much!
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@Design Bliss: Thanks for that link! I was modifying the Unstandard and wishing I had an auto thumbnail script - now I do :). I just integrated it into my modified Unstandard and it works wonders. I haven’t figured out how to make it conditional though; ie if I don’t specify a secondary image it uses TimThumb, but if I do specify a secondary image (because I’ve got something cooler in mind or the automatic thumbnail doesn’t look so good) it should grab that image. Maybe it’s something for Derek to consider for his v2 of Unstandard?
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Derek, awesome theme. I was doing a bit of styling on it and decided it to release it to the public here http://goscreative.blogspot.com/2008/04/free-wordpress-theme-unstandard-remix.html. Thanks for making this kick-arse template!
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I can’t see the Post Title in Opera, it’s blurry. A screenshot. Please fix ASAP, if you have time…
http://xs226.xs.to/xs226/08152/shot414.jpg
I’m using Opera 9.50 beta 9864 build.
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@Stahn I tested the theme with the current build of Opera 9.27 and it rendered as it should. I can’t test for beta releases of browsers right now. Have you changed anything in the templates?
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Nope, the screenshot was from your site =P
I filed a bug report on Opera.com, hope they’ll get it sorted.
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Must be a bug with the beta? Loaded Opera on Mac OS X and Windows for the site and didn’t see the same results.
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Great, great theme Derek, im setting it up and modifying it too, since a lot of work has done already when you launch the v0.2 can you make a little tutorial on how to upgrade without messing around with 0.1 and make it widget able ?
Another question i have is the next, i had setup an background image for the blog wich appears in home and search pages, but on single page i cant make it to apper, any ideia ?
Thank you
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Added to my gallery:
http://wpmagthemes.com/galleryphoto-heavy-themes/the-unstandard
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I’m sorry but after many try, it can’t load the lead and secondary images… what is the problem? I follow all the step but it doesn’t work… Would like it to work
PS: Very nice work man
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Derek, the error was fixed on latest build, 9903