Archive for 2010

blankSlate3! The Stripped Down Starter Theme for WordPress 3.0

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Update 11-26-2012:
WordPress 3.5 will be released soon and with that update I will be creating a new blankSlate theme to take advantage of the update. Stay tuned for more info. Also, I have added blankSlate on github and plan to with the new version as well. The idea is that the community can work on this together and make it the best it can be. You can download or fork the repo here. Feel free to add to it and send me a pull request to update the theme for all.

Update 3-15-2011:
The blankSlate Theme has been updated to better support WordPress 3.1. Clicking the download link below will get you the newest version of the blankSlate theme. A couple of things to note with this version. First, I left many of the div tags in the loop files. I did this because quite honestly I was tired of adding them back in. Second, my daughter is teething and I have 4 themes to build that required the use of this theme. That being said, I was more rushed than I would normally like, so if you find anything wrong with the theme, please let me know and I will correct it immediately for everyone else!

WordPress 3.0 has been out for a couple of weeks now. With that in mind, I decided it would be a good idea to redo the blankSlate theme and make it compatible with the new functionality that WordPress 3.0 has to offer

For those of you who aren’t already familiar with the previous version of the blankSlate theme, it is a theme that has been stripped of all style and structural elements. For me, a blank canvas is the perfect way to start any new design! I created this and share it with everyone because it saves time. I always took the time to strip out what I didn’t need from the default theme to use as a starting place for creating themes. Having the blankSlate theme in my toolbox eliminates this first step and saves me valuable time.

Previous versions of the blankSlate theme have been based on the Kubrick theme that was WordPress’s default theme. WP 3.0′s release however added new functionality, and the new default theme, twentyten, to go with it. While the previous version of blankSlate is actually still compatible with WP 3.0, it lacks some of the new functionality such as custom post types and navigation menu management. So if you use the previous version and want to continue, feel free to do so. If you want to take advantage of some of the new features however, you will need to add the supporting code to that theme, or just download blankSlate 3.0

Changes to the default theme:

  • All styling removed
  • Most structural markup has been removed
  • Eric Meyer’s Reset stylesheet added
  • Class and id names that are not dynamically created have been removed

Things remained the same

  • Divs surrounding posts were not removed
  • Divs surrounding the widget areas in the side bar and footer were not removed
  • Most of the functions in the functions.php file were left alone
  • Style sheets for the WYSIWYG editor in the back end were left in tact

This theme is completely free to do with as you please. It is released under the GNU General Public License with no strings attached except for one: If you find this useful, and know someone else that might find it useful as well, tell them about it!

I must admit that I was a little rushed when I created the new version. I think that I got everything, but if you happen to notice anything that I missed, please let me know so I can make the proper updates.

Disclaimer: This theme is offered for free, and “as is”. I will try to help out where I can though, so if you run into any issues, please comment on this post and I will do what I can to help. That being said, there is no warranty, or guarantee that I will be able to offer support.

Download the blankSlate Theme here

Posted in web development | 21 Comments »

How to Build a Better Light Tent

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Do you shoot product photography on a budget? Have you ever looked at the light tents that some companies sell and thought “well that is great, but it cost’s so much”? Do you sell things on ebay, but feel your photography is lacking?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, this video is for you. In this video, I go over what you will need and how to build a bargain basement light tent that will produce great results, and be around for the long haul. You should be able to build this light tent for around fifteen dollars and it shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes of your time.

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Posted in photography | 3 Comments »

Without a Job

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

To be quite honest, that title stings a little bit. My ten year career with my previous employer has ended through no fault of my own. The company that I previously worked for decided to close the building we worked in, leaving myself and many others without a job to go to.

Unfortunate for sure, but I intend to raise a glass to new beginnings! So while this situation might be bad for my personal finances, it should be good for you, or the few of you who are regular readers of this site. With all of my new found spare time I intend to add a bunch of new articles to this site. The majority will probably be tutorials in web design and photography, but I will probably throw in some free WordPress templates and miscellaneous articles as well.

The first item to come up will be a video on how to build a better light tent. I should have this complete in the next few days. Don’t want to give away any spoilers, but I have one more part to shoot that involves a cat high on the catnip. Should be quite entertaining.

After the light tent video, I will be concentrating on the soon to be re-branded beer review site. With the re-branding it will be getting a real design for the site and many many more reviews on the hand crafted beers that you love. If there are any beers you would like to see reviewed in the near future, send me a message. Assuming that I can score these at any of my local beer distributors I will get the team of tasters together to throw back a few and put our thoughts into words.

Aside from that, I have a ton of new content planned for here, as well as a few sites I am also involved with. So with that, stay tuned, new content is coming.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »