This theme doesn’t scream at you, instead it takes a step back and lets the user read. Please don’t spoil it by putting ads on it!

Early Morning - A refreshing child theme for Thematic

You also have some nifty options:

• You can upload your own logo
• It comes with it’s own custom designed Twitter widget, so your visitors can see what you’re doing from your blog
• If green isn’t your style, it comes with 5 background options that you can select from the Early Morning Theme Options (Green, Turquoise, Brick Red, Gray and Black)
• Has a one column page template and archive template
• It’s been tested and works on Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, Opera 9, Chrome, IE7, IE8

In order to install it you have to download the Thematic Theme (from which this child theme inherits all of the functionality), upload both themes (Early Morning and Thematic) to your server in the themes folder AND THEN ACTIVATE the Early Morning Theme.

Related posts:

1. Green anyone? Try Commune – Thematic Child Theme!
2. Street WordPress Theme
3. Charisma, Free Genesis Child Theme

Photo by kylejones

I made quite a few changes to the theme. New header, logo, typography and a nice RSS button. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to make all these changes. The last time I implemented a WordPress theme I wanted to quit my job as a web-designer.


There are a few reasons behind all this easy, quick and relaxing way of creating a new theme:

• I didn’t develop one from scratch and instead created a “Child Theme” – your theme inherits another theme and you just overwrite the css to suite your needs (also helps if you what to update your base theme to a new version)
• The theme template on which my theme was developed, Thematic is really well developed (and it is continuous in development)
• I already had the design done – I’ve thought of starting my own blog for quite some time now, but I’ve only managed to get the Photoshop layout done ( now I realize that I’ve delayed this for quite some time because I was scared of the time and effort I would have to put to create my own theme… guess I was wrong…)
• I didn’t touch a single .php file… not even one… This is I would say is the main reason for such a quick and easy turnover (about 2 frustration free hours). The base theme is so well implemented that from css and a text widget I was able to make the changes… (the text widget was needed for my RSS icon )

This is by far a finished theme, but it’s a great start for me.

On the to do list I’ll add:

• organize my blogroll links
• change the information that is displayed on the right side of the blog
• design the footer
• add extra information to the footer (like popular posts… provided someone actually reads my blog )
• maybe redesign the main body of the blog…
• add information to the About page
• create a contact page
• redesign the comments area (currently it looks ok but it’s the default one from my template theme)
• add link for homepage on logo

I’ll come with and new post about how my theme development evolves in a few days.

I still have a lot to learn from using WordPress. Initially I thought : “4 menu tabs in the admin interface??? I remember it to be a lot more complex… “. It turned out that it is . So besides learning to better communicate my ideas and concepts I’m also learning about this great blogging platform.

Until next time, have fun!

Related posts:

1. New Web-Design and Development blog
2. 10 design tips for your custom wordpress theme built with thematic
3. Content design – what makes a good landing page