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Free WordPress Theme Frameworks for Theme Development

Bobby Jay — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 07:28:25 +0000

Developing a WordPress theme from scratch is a time consuming task and needs a lot of knowhow of PHP coding. More chances of error are there which means less productivity and more hard work. Theme framework is a flexible foundation for theme development that eliminates extra volume of work by providing a basic groundwork for theme development. They serve as parent theme and allow us to build child theme based on their framework.

Framework increase productivity and eases the life of theme developer. Very little knowledge of php is required. There are premium wordpress theme frameworks that provide you same functionality as free wordpress theme frameworks, but in this article we are considering only free wordpress theme frameworks.

Most compelling benefit of free frameworks is, you pay nothing and can create professional looking theme that may cost you 500+ if hire some developer. Why not to save some bucks and use it in future projects. I am listing the main features for quick selection to start your work.

Thematic Framework

This is open source, free, highly customizable and best suitable for beginners to develop professional looking theme. More features are,

Fully Search Engine Optimized
13 widget ready areas,
Free & commercial support for child theme,
Sample child theme available for quick development
Wiki guide for customization,
Styling for popular plugins
Editable footer text,
Options for multi author blog

Demo

Hybrid Framework

Hybrid is a user friendly framework with support for 18 templates. Search Engine Optimized framework with 15 built-in plugins for better compatibility with theme.

Developed with child themes in mind, so you’ll never lose your customizations.
SEO optimized. No need for plugins to handle this anymore.
Theme options that are about content/information. Templates for everything.
13 page templates.
15+ plugins supported within the theme.
Attachment handling like you’ve never experienced.
Advanced breadcrumbs beyond any other theme.
Ability to run just about any type of site.
And over 20 tutorials to start.

Please also note that latest version of Hybrid Theme framework is WordPress 3.0 compatible which means you can use latest features of WP 3.0.

Demo

Carrington The CMS Theme Framework for WordPress

A CMS theme framework for WordPress that makes it easy to create unique looks for different categories, posts and comments just by creating custom templates.

Demo

Buffet Framework

The Buffet Framework is a framework designed not only for the developers who will be using the theme actions and filters to create the child themes, but also for the end users who would be able to add and remove what they want.

Like most WordPress theme frameworks, the Buffet Framework utilizes WordPress actions and filters to allow theme developers to add additional content without editing the templates files.

4 Widget ready framework

Search Engine Optimization – includes many SEO features such as breadcrumbs, headings, canonical URLs

Support for Microformats – compatible with some of the microformats like hAtom, hCard and XOXO

jQuery Powered – comments form validation, SuperSleight for IE6, Superfish menus, jBreadcrumb included

Packaged with CSS Frameworks – comes with 960gs and Blueprint CSS

Action & Filter Hooks – using the parent-child theme concept (with inline documentation)

Theme Options – organized in tabs, with features such as custom RSS feed links and custom footer messages

Theme Extensions – allow end-users to enable/disable features using the extensions feature

Plugin Compatibility – works with WP-PageNavi, WP-Print, Subscribe to Comments and more

Localization – fully localized, ready for translation

Free, Open Source – under the General Public License (GPL) v3

Demo

WP Framework

WP Framework is ever simplest framework to serve as the starting point in WordPress theme development. It provides you with commonly used functions and features. So you have basic functionality when you start new project using WP Framework. Due its simplicity, this is light weight and less feature rich framework with only one sidebar widget.

Other Resources to Help You in Theme Development:-

These are most popular and highly documented theme frameworks to start your work. Tell me about your choice of free wordpress theme framework so we have an idea of most popular framework now a days.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

How to Disable Multi Site option in WordPress 3.0

Bobby Jay — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 15:54:27 +0000

We have already discussed in detail how to enable multi site option in wordpress 3.0. I have received various e-mails and requests for guide on how to disable multi site feature already enabled on wordpress 3.0 due to incompatibility of various plugins with multi site feature.

Disabling multi site feature is very easy and needs just editing of one file. Let me to recall specific step of enabling multi site option. You might remember that we have modified config file and added some code.

All you need to delete this code;

define( 'MULTISITE', true );
define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false );
$base = '/';
define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'localhost' );
define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' );
define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );

After removing above lines now change the disable the multisite feature by replacing true word with false;

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

But moving onward to disable unwanted feature, do remove extra sites that are hosted on same wordpress installation and follow above procedure.

Before editing your config file make a backup of it and enjoy WordPress 3.0 with disable multisite feature.

How to Enable Multi Site Option in WordPress 3.0

Bobby Jay — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:26:35 +0000

WordPress 3.0 is a feature rich blogging platform that is merged with WPMU. Feature that allows a user to run multiple websites from single installation is known as Network or Multi Site Option. This feature is disabled by default to simplify the blogging platform for those who don’t want to run multiple blog from single installation.

This article is aimed to guide you on how to enable multi site option in WordPress 3.0. Procedure is very simple, open the file wp-config.php file located in WordPress root folder and add this magical line;

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

After you add this line and upload it to root folder, you need to click network option found under tools menu. You will see a page like having two options for creating your network of blogs.

Select your desired option and click install. But be sure that you are clicking right option as per your required configuration, because this process is irreversible and you would have to install fresh copy of WordPress 3.0. So be careful.

[adsense]

After installing your desired configuration, next screen will welcome you with some instructions to modify your config and htaccess file for proper working of multi blog option in WordPress 3.0.

Just follow the instructions and upload the files to respective locations. For changes to take effect, re login and you are notice a new menu bar of Super Admin. This menu offers you to add site and add user and options for proper configuration of your network of blogs.

Download WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious”

Bobby Jay — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:52:16 +0000

Today WordPress has released final and stable version of WordPress 3.0 code name “Thelonious” after releasing three release candidates. This new version offers a sexy theme called Twenty Ten which is feature rich theme.

[adsense]

Theme developers have introduced new APIs that eases implementation of custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies. WordPress Thelonious been merged with WordPress MU, which makes it possible to run more than one blog from the same installation.

This open source blogging platform has been contributed by 218 developers and you will like its lighter interface and contextual help on every screen. The 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements make your life easy like updating bulk plugins at once with a single click.

Disable Directory Browsing To Secure WordPress Installation

Bobby Jay — Mon, 31 May 2010 21:07:00 +0000

We use various tricks and hacks to secure WordPress installation. If directories are not secured, anyone can access installation folders and directories. Your blog have major security loophole which needs immediate attention and remedy. Someone can easily browse plugins and other folder. People browse your themes folder and get very important information.

Apache webserver allows directory browsing by default. This issue can easily be addressed by various methods.

Disable directory browsing by placing index.html file:-

Simply create a blank index.html file.
Upload to directories for which you want to disable the browsing.
Browsing for all those directories has been disabled. Visitors will be shown a blank index.html file.

Disable directory browsing using .htaccess:-

Find your .htaccess file which should be on main directory.
Download it for editing purpose.
We need to add Options All –Indexes to the file to disable the directory browsing. Add this magical phrase exactly in the beginning of file and save it.
Upload the file to your main directory and you are done

Another method to secure WordPress installation is to disable directory browsing through CPanel.

Disable directory browsing in CPanel:-

Login to your CPanel and open index manager.
You will see listing of all directories available at your site.
Select the directory for which you want to disable the browsing.
Select no index and save it by clicking Save.

By doing so you have disabled directory browsing via CPanel. Once you followed any one method, directories will not be accessible by accessing the directory directly.

No One is Helping You Out? – Let’s Steal Our SEO Strategy from The Big Boys!

Bobby Jay — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:49:35 +0000

To be a successful blogger, it is compulsory that you are blogging with some strategy in mind. Without strategy you have no pre-defined milestone, have no clear objective and goals to be achieved in the future. Use intelligence with strategy.

If you want to be a successful blogger, you need to follow some Guru’s advice and instructions. They will obviously share their experience with you. But what to do in a situation where no one is really helping you or he is not sharing his success secrets. Why not to use some intelligence here to help yourself, instead begging for help. Here I have a solution, why not to steal some clues from blogging gurus. What would you say, isn’t that a good idea? I am totally against of such type of practices like stealing etc. Actually we are going to do some in-depth analysis but I am naming it stealing because we are doing all this without permission of owner of blog. So let’s steal some ideas and clues to find out answers to our questions.

First of all we need to list at least four or five blogging Gurus for our project IGI (I am Going In – My favorite Pc game by codemaster ).

After making a list of four to five Big Boys, this is not Big Boy of Bollywood alledged Star Amitabh Bachan; but is A Big Blogger, we are going to analyze the SEO strategy of these Big Boys.

Friends, sitemap submissions to search engines play a vital role. In my opinion, almost 70% of future site ranking depends on it. A good sitemap with a proper configuration is vital. If your site map is not properly configured, then all your hard work is in vain, let me say that again. If your sitemap is not properly configured, then your hard work is in vain!

Basic Sitemap Setting:-

The WordPress plugin for Google sitemap has many options in which there are some basic settings. Set these settings as per your liking, for instance, notify Bing, Google, Ask etc. Building mode has two options and I recommend marking a check in both check boxes to decrease our time wasting our efforts. Then come to post priority setting. Better to select don’t use automatic priority calculation. Manual prioritizing is good option. We have values ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 where 1.0 is the highest value.

Now Stealing the Setting from Big Boys:-

Here we have analyzed and observed the Big Boys blog for the setting of:

Tags,
Categories,
Achieves,
Author pages,
Their change frequency,
And Priority for indexing.

Let’s start our mission. We will analyze the sitemap setting of big blogs from their sitemap.xml. For this purpose open the internet explorer, type the site name followed by “/sitemap.xml”. It means that complete address would seem this;

www.yourbigblogger.com/sitemap.xml

and you have output stating all hidden and compulsory settings from which we found answers of some important questions.

Shall I include tags in sitemap?
Shall I include category in sitemap?
Shall I include achieve in sitemap?
What should be change frequency?
How much prioritizing number should be allocated?

After analyzing the Big Boys sites, we found that, they have included tags and categories in their sitemap, resulting in increased number of indexed file in search engine and increased internal site links, a definite SEO Boost.

Archive was not included by most of Big Boys while others did. It might be they have some solution to avoid duplicate content. My recommendation is not to include archive in your sitemap to avoid duplicate content. Analysis also gave us an inside of priority ranking of their site contents.

So our recommended setting for sitemap, after analyzing the Big Boys is;

Include Tag and Category in site map with 70% (0.7) daily change priority.
Don’t include archive in sitemap. Give it 0.0 priorities.
Don’t include authors’ page in sitemap.
Posts and static page should be given same priority with daily basis.
Allocate 100% (1.0) priority and daily or hourly change frequency to your home page.

Shortcode Function: An Ease for Bloggers

Bobby Jay — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:20:53 +0000

You probably have faced the situation where you want to insert some special function of your own choice in your article. If you are unable to find a plugin fulfilling your requirement, you need to write your own snippet. But this is not easy. We are bloggers, not the coders.

Writing a plugin in php is not an easy task and one have to get familiar with basics at least. So how to get our custom made feature in WordPress.

I faced this situation while inserting Google adsense in middle of my posts. I was supposed to rely on plugin and to manually insert the code in my posts. Matter is not ended here. I also need to customize the output of plugin. All of this became very hectic. Then after Googling on net, I found a solution and am very happy with it.

WordPress supports shortcode. What is short code?

Short code enables you to make you custom made function or event, triggered by easy to remember text line. For example, I created a shortcode to insert the adsense within my post which I call with help of simple syntax “adsense” , word adsense is with in braces. By inserting the code , I am able to insert Google adsense within my post, pre-formatted as per my choice.

[adsense]How did I do that?Lets understand the basic code of short code.

function showads() { return 'your code here '; } add_shortcode('adsense', 'showads');

We have following benefits of using shortcode functionality;

Time saving activity,
Custom Made Event,
Ability to design Custom Functionality,
Prevents from coping and pasting long codes,
No need to install plugin,
Database is not modified and have compact size.

We declared a function called showads, and instructed WordPress to add it as short code which is called with the help of text line “adsense”. So my shortcode command to insert the adsense is “[google_ads]”.
You can create your own function by simply putting the code with in the code given above. Eight different uses of shortcode have been demonstrated in an article. Visit it , understand the code and have fun.

Link: 8 fun & useful shortcode functions for wordpress

Importance of Categories in SEO

Bobby Jay — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:31:05 +0000

Being on first page of SERP is the dream of every blogger. Many factors are involved in SEO for better page rank and being on first page of SERP. So don’t overlook the minor points which may lead to better SEO.

We do publish post and place them in proper categories. We make general categories like Blogging, electronics, Entertainment. All of these cover wide area of domain.

A better option for naming the categories is to narrow the category name like we can use Blogging Tips, Mobile phone and movies for all above stated general categories depending on subject of our article.

Let’s make it more clear with help of some example. Suppose you have a category “Operating System” and you put all Linux, UNIX, Windows, related posts in the said category. But it will be more beneficial with respect of SEO if, your article is on windows tricks and tips and you create a category under operating system with title of “Windows Tips and Tricks”.

Now when a user enter the keywords in search engine for windows XP tricks, you have more and better chances to be on first page of search engine as compared to general category list which are not comprehensive in meaning.

After you have decided to include the category name in your topics URL and you are using permalink structure other than %category%/%posts%, you need to change the permalink structure to include the category name in your posts’ URL.

Read our article on How to Safely Change Permalink Structure? for permalink migration. By following the steps given in our article your links will not be broken and still you will be able to use new permalink structure in your posts.

How to Safely Change Permalink Structure?

Bobby Jay — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:49:54 +0000

No one want to write article over article when no one is paying attention to him. Good traffic with comments encourages and we feel more enthusiasm in our work. Without search engine optimization, getting more and more traffic is worlds’ toughest job. Concentrate on the source of traffic you are getting. Few people are very good in website marketing and social networking and they get referred traffic. Read our article on traffic analysis for more in-depth view so that you can concentrate on your weak area. Hence it is clear that we can’t live in blogging world without SEO. If your site is properly optimized for search engine you will be getting traffic from search engine.

In the start of my blogging career I was using the permalink structure of /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ for many reason. One reason was to avoid duplicated content in shape of similar post title. Read our post on Permalink Structure Selection.

Then I have decided to change the permalink structure to /%postname%/.html. But here I faced a problem that if I change the permalink of my site I will lose all my traffic coming from search engine and my site will have broken links. So how to change permalink structure without losing the traffic from search engine?

We have a solution in shape of plugin from Dean Lee. All you need to download and install the plugin.

After installing the plugin go to Setting–>Permalinks Migration

Here you will see the current permalink structure, which may look like;

Do not change any setting; just go to your permalink setting and set /%postname%/.html as your permalink. Save your setting and enjoy 301 Permanent Redirection.

Mechanism behind this working is, plugin is receiving all the traffic with your old permalink structure and where it find the URLs with old structure it is using 301 redirection to your new setting of wordpress built-in permalinks and all links are in working condition.

9 Reasons to Self Host Your WordPress Blog

Bobby Jay — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:09:35 +0000

Majority of bloggers start blogging from free blogging service like BlogSpot or wordpress.com so that they can gain knowledge, information and now how of blogging. Both of options have their own set of features which are limited and in some cases, important features that make blogger life easy are missed. Removal decision of FTP support from BlogSpot is good example.

After your experimental blogging on these free services, if you are a serious blogger then you will switch to the self hosted blog.

In this article we will describe what are the benefits and advantages that are the core of Self Hosted Blog.

Own Domain Name:-

You will have your own domain name which is far better than subdomain names and you have opportunity to build your brand image. Purchasing domain name has also impact in page ranking, which we is describe in page rank section of same post. You have variety of options to select the domain name of your own choice while in BlogSpot and wordpress, this option is not available. You have to select these services name as subdomain and most of times, your desired title of is already occupied.

E-mail Address:-

Most important feature is having own domain e-mail address which you can use while communicating to others. This will make very positive image in visitors and they pay attention to e-mails having primary domain name.

FTP Account:-

When you purchase hosting plan for your domain, you will have secure and dedicated FTP account. As we described above, BlogSpot is dropping FTP feature from its service. FTP makes uploading more easy.SSL and many other features are available depending on your hosting plan.

Page Rank:-

Page rank is the most important factor of blogging. You will have higher page rank if you have your have self hosted your blog. Your purchased domain name will define its age which is taken in account by Google in PR. In future, faster servers will also play vital role in page ranking. So self hosting has an edge here over wordpress.com and BlogSpot, as they are shared between millions of users.

SEO:-

Search Engine Optimization means more and more traffic and wordpress is highly rich platform in terms of SEO. You have a long list of plugins and themes that optimize your blog for search engine.

Adsense and Affiliate Marketing:-

Adsense is primary source of income generation. Self hosted blog gives you full control over Google ads to display hence your CTR (Click Through Rate) is increased. Same is the situation with affiliate marketing. They prefer the self hosted sites or blogs. CTR also exists here. So maximize your CTR through proper display and customization of your Google ads. You can easily find heat map and put the ads in that particular location.

Themes and Plugins Support:-

Self hosted blog is in your control and you can easily install or customize your faviourate theme. WordPress as blogging platform is champ in this domain. It has hundreds of beautiful and SEO optimized themes.

Non-ending list of plugins is available at wordpress for extension in features. You can customize your wordpress with help of these plugins and save yourself from extensive and complex coding.

Read our Article on 12 Essential Plugins for WordPress

Blog Reputation:-

Self hosted blog reflects that blogger have spent money and is serious about his project. This creates positive image in people and they regularly visit these blogs.

Social Networking:-

You can easily and conveniently build community for your blog. People happily follow blogs who have established their brand image which is not possible without self hosted blog.

Read our Article on Social Networking, Way to Increase Traffic