Categories
Gadgets Magazine Office Technology Themes

Revolution Office

Revolution Office comes from the creme de la creme of site designers Jason Schuller (of Revolution Two). Although this design is called ‘Office’ its use is pretty universal and is suitable for almost anyone. With Web 2.0 looks and beautifully crafted composition we cannot stress enough just how nice this site is, please go to the homepage and check out the demo to see for yourself.

Available as a WordPress theme only however Revolution WordPress themes are becoming very well known for supreme quality and an amazing level of after care support. Buts that enough about Revolution (as you can probably tell their a bit of a favorite of ours) lets check out Office theme and see if its any good!

Office is a pretty minimal site which means your visitors arn’t going to have any trouble finding their way around and getting to the information they need quickly. The homepage has an impressive image slider (please try this out in the demo it has such a cool smooth sliding action!!) with a link from the images to the appropriate page or featured article. The slider could be used in so many ways, it could be turned into a very dynamic looking menu or a showcase for photography or any products you are selling or reviewing, your imagination is pretty much the limit with this one. If you do go for this theme please post links and show off your sites below, we would love to see how you have developed this!

Features

  • Beautiful image scroller
  • Breadcrumb enabled
  • Gravatar enabled
  • Widget ready
  • RSS 2.0 enabled
  • Unlimited fast support
  • Suitable for almost any use

office-home
Click for homepage, categories and post page

When you do a search or click on catagories / featured content you are presented with a very nicely layed out page with thumbnails of each item with a text excerpt, rather than just a huge page to scroll down containing all the related articles, or worse a horrible built in google type search results page.

The articles or pages themselves are simple and effective, with a two column look, lots of room for your content and a content details section at the side. This allows visitors to see which sections of your site the article comes from for easy backtracking, and an RSS 2.0 feed. Here’s our only gripe with the design of office, below the content details is a recent content section showing the titles of all the latest storys or pages. This would be so much more effective as a related content section, this way if a visitor has not found exactly what they wanted then its easy for them to quickly get back on track.

So as you have probably guessed we love this design and cannot recommend it enough.

Now here’s the important choice you have to make if you want this site! Themes from Revolution Two are availible as free downloads directly from their site however, the free versions arn’t exactly easy to find and come with no support what so ever!! Not even an instructions.txt in the zip file! Worst of all its not always the most upto date version of the site. Speaking from experience this can be a very frustrating and time wasting way of trying to get their sites up and running quicly even for an expert. Googling dosen’t help either as their support forums are closely guarded and locked to anyone who hasn’t brought their support package. Although slightly pricey their support is unlimited across all their themes and very very quick so even a newbie can get the site up and running in a matter of hours. They even offer customization techniques and tutorials and all questions answered by experts. Their standard membership package only lasts a year however if you want lifetime option then there is a Revolution Pro Plus Membership available for not much more than the standard price! Quite frankly its the option we have gone for and haven’t (yet) regretted it! However if you carn’t afford it, or have a lot (months!) of time on your hands then plug for the free option.

Don’t forget to post and show off your versions of this site below!

Categories
Magazine Newspaper Themes

The New Yorker

newyorkerThis is a huge, huge site. If you ever wanted to run an online newspaper with retro broadsheet style then here is your chance. This is a WordPress compatible ‘theme’ and comes complete with all the widgets and plugins that you will need to have complete control over your newspaper without ever having to resort to using code. This is basically a ready to go CMS newspaper site.

If reto is not quite your thing then the fonts and styles used are pretty easy to customize aswell as colours etc.

Features

  • Comprehensive theme control panel (136 settings)
  • 37 Widgetised areas
  • Dynamic drop-down navigational menu
  • Advertisement banner management
  • Dynamic video block
  • Compatible on all major browsers
  • Suitable for magazine sites as an entry page or complete site
  • Painstakingly validated code (XHTML and CSS)

If you are going to manage and update this site yourself then we would recommend reading through the homepage and demo (links below) very carefully if you are not familiar with WordPress. This is probably not the best site for newbies, however for the price ($39) it stands head and shoulders over other traditional newspaper solutions available.

Categories
Bands Themes

Band Website

Well the name says it all really! Band Website is a very minimal and easy to use site. Available as a stand-alone website and a wordpress theme this is a very customisable site which is easy to install (standalone, wordpress is always easy!) and has an impressive gig / shows calendar. It also has advertising space in the side bar for your bands latest merchandise. Most importantly it is easy for the fans to use and find the information they want quickly, which should be the main priority of any site and more than often isn’t!

Features

  • Available as a complete installable site and a WordPress theme
  • Very easy to customize
  • Currently reduced to $30 (Paypal)
  • Easy to use gigs / dates calendar
  • Edit, add and delete shows directly on the page
  • Link directly to venue from shows page for info and bookings
  • Photoshop files included
  • MP3 player built in
  • Built in image gallery and contact form
  • Suitable for bands, artists, bars / venues, anyone who needs a shows/gig based site

Home page of the band website
Home page of the band website
The shows page with links to venues and booking agents
The shows page with links to venues and booking agents
Blog page so you can keep fans / visitors up to date with your latest news
Blog page so you can keep fans / visitors up to date with your latest news

Useful contact form for your fans
Useful contact form for your fans

This is not a free theme however it is cheap enough to be a very affordable solution, currently on offer at $30 (down from $60) I would recommend having a look and seeing if this is the right site for your band or client.