That’s it, time to stop talking and start doing… I have been working on various WordPress themes for what seems like ages. I have announced several times that I am in fact working on them always with a plan to release one as it is ready. I have not found the time to follow through with it, until now.
The theme has been released, grab yourself a copy and let me know what you think.
Introducing Charlene, a minimalist WordPress theme.
Following the introduction I need to insert a disclaimer to fend of the onslaught of possible mean remarks regarding the name. No, I do not name everything female names, but I do have a problem and that is giving human names to many things. For instance my Macbook is named Cindy, my backup device is named Gertrude and on of my previous dogs went by the name of Charlie. Charlene popped into my head when searching for a name for this theme (I have never known a Charlene), I went with it.
This theme is being released slightly redone and recoded based on a theme I once used on my own blog in the past. Having uploaded a screenshot to Flickr and several months down the road I noticed that more than 1 person had asked if this theme was ever to be released. Having been a total slacker and failed to comment back I never knew that it was a theme people would enjoy. Now four months later I am answering that request.
If all goes as planned I hope to make this theme available for download by this weekend. I am spending a portion of this week adding some pre-planned functionality into the theme, working out some of the kinks and overall clean up.
Why Get Into the Creation of Themes for Public Use?
I am not necessarily looking to get into the business of themes, however as I stated earlier I have been working with WordPress for quite awhile. I believe shortly after I did my first WP install, 2.0 was released, so I feel like I have a decent handle on things. In that time I have created a few themes, good, bad and some pretty ugly. (Hey I don’t mind being honest).
Over the past year or so with the majority of my business being in the WordPress theme arena I have come to develop a framework that I build on quite often. It is an ongoing process and consistently improves. I also spend a great deal of time designing themes just for fun. (That’s a precursor to a sequel if you didn’t catch that.)
That mixed with a few oldies that I am now converting to my updated code base, gives me reason to go ahead and share some of them with other WordPress users. Give back, if you will.
More will be written on the theme itself when the time comes. Looking forward to making it happen soon, stay tuned.
Looks very promising. Can’t wait to try it!
Thanks for the comment and the encouragement. I’d be lying if I didn’t mention that release will probably be delayed a bit (time flies!), but I would rather take the time and do it right. I plan to drop a short update post today once I get a handle on where I ‘m at with the clean up. I am also in the process of getting some much needed feedback on it.
If you feel like giving it a trial run once it’s closer to ready, shoot me an email via my contact form.
Hello!
Just some suggestions. For me, a minimal theme is to focus on the content itself and to appreciate those typography and their mix. I’m testing several themes to achieve both. Looking forward to see yours!
Willow
@ Willow, exactly! This is why I have delayed releasing it a bit. Things started to get busy and the last thing that I wanted to do was feel rushed in releasing a theme where the main focus is content. I do plan on having it finalized relatively soon, check back or drop me an email if you would like to test it out.
This looks promising,
been surfing around quite a while now for a high quality minimal two colomn theme and I believe this might just be it. And yes, this very blog design looks great as well, havent seen this good work since the barecity theme was released, and thats a few years ago. Looking forward to see the end version, take care!