I like this theme, its not overly fancy however it is put together well and functions properly. The color scheme is not over bearing and there is an optimum amount of space to allow the user to get their words out there in the blog instead of some themes that squish the content area and make the posts hard to read. Great job, I hope my first theme turns out as good as yours did.

@Mike – Thanks for taking a peek at ‘Dirty Girl’. If your thinking about a grid design look at the Blueprint CSS Framework mentioned in the write-up. It will save you tons of time.

k.

Hi there -

I mean no disrespect.

However, this looks amazingly close to Khoi Vinh’s (www.subtraction.com) Web log layout….

Was that perhaps, your inspiration?

No disrespect taken. I looked at several ‘GRID’ design layouts when I created this. Subtraction was one of them. I don’t think there is any way I could completely recreate that design but I did like the layout of the posts and the post meta data. I liked the way he had three post with either full-content or extented excerpts and then several (I have 5) very short excerpted posts. The post meta data on the side gives a much needed white space area before the actual meat of the post. I also used elements from several premium & non-preium grid themes including the one used for this site – News. The uniqueness comes in that I used Blueprint CSS Framework and started with Sandbox Theme. Then added the ability to monetize the site with ads on the home page banner. A site logo could be used in place of the text site name. The sidebar has css styled WordPress Blogroll, RSS & Login links. Hopefully it is unique enough on its own. If not people can add or take away as they like.

hi kerry can you look at http://standardatl.com/wordpress and see why my post look funny?

Thanks!!

Hi, the theme is great but i have 3 questions.
1. When i click in your demo on Archives->2008 (Yearly Archive 2008)->Older Posts then the right sidebar jumps to the bottom of the page (Firefox 2.0)
2. I could not put the widget “recent comments” on the sidebar. Is this not possible ?
3. The Pages didn’t show the comments. I need pages with comments not only posts.

Thanks

This looks worryingly like Subtraction.

Khoi would not be happy.

@Ben Holmes – No cease and desist just yet.:) As mentioned above, I looked at several grid designs. The navigation is from ‘f8′ by graphpaperpress.com/demo/f8/. The post list is from subtraction.com sort of. The side navigation is from a wordpress theme I found a few years ago that I no longer use and cannot recall the name or location now. The ability to navigate to previous and next posts from a custom WordPress loop is code I found on weblogtoolscollection.com. I used css from ‘News” premium theme for some of the text design/layout. This is as close to full disclosure as I can get without further research. Khoi’s happiness – or not – is his own doing.

@Tobias

1. When I click in your demo on Archives->2008 (Yearly Archive 2008)->Older Posts then the right sidebar jumps to the bottom of the page (Firefox 2.0)
1A. This was due to my DVD posts. I removed them from the demo and the sidebar stays in place in IE7 and FF2. The DVD posts had inline executed php and they were not formed properly unless they were displayed in the single.php template.

2. I could not put the widget “recent comments” on the sidebar. Is this not possible ?
2A. I placed both the recent comments and calendar widgets in the sidebar. They show up in both IE7 and FF2. They are on the demo site now if you would like to look. Since removed.

3. The Pages didn’t show the comments. I need pages with comments not only posts.
3A. The site was coded this way intentionally. I do not except comments on my pages only on posts. You can copy the ‘comment template include’ from single.php and add it to page.php. This will fix the theme for your special case. Look for this code in single.php and add it where you want it in the page.

<?php comments_template(); ?>

Even easier would be to backup the page.php, make a copy of single.php and rename it page.php.

Thanks.

Hi Kerry,

Great theme, thank you for making it available. Im giving it a test run at the moment.

I have 2 questions:
When i enable widgets, i completely lose the side navigation on the right in the black blocks. Any idea why?

Secondly, im a little unsure of what to make of the numbered blocks on the top right. Is that intended for advertising space?

Thanks again, i think its one of the best themes ive come accross.

Brendon

@Brendon – The sidebar.php is designed this way. It allows you to use widgets in place of the sidebar blocks I created. To use both widgets and the sidebar blocks you will have to edit the sidebar.php file a bit. Take a look and see if you understand what needs to be done.

The blocks were designed for advertising but the space can be used for anything you see fit.

“No cease and desist just yet.:)”

That’s not a healthy attitude to copyright. You’ve been featured on some fairly high traffic sites today, and there are a lot of people who have a great deal of respect for Khoi that will see this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you did hear from him.

“As mentioned above, I looked at several grid designs. The navigation is from ‘f8? by graphpaperpress.com/demo/f8/”

Unfortunately, the navigation and image layout in f8 is a major rip of subtraction imo.

I know using the style of your fav designers is a good way to pick up good techniques, but just reproducing the exact same thing is kinda lame imo.

oh, and the home button doesn’t display properly in ff3 for me …

1) Don’t rip off designs
2) Even when you’re making a theme, don’t rip off designs.
3) If you DO rip off a design, make sure it’s not something as high profile as Subtraction.

- Adam

@Dan/Adam – what would you suggest at this point? Removal of the theme? Apologies? This is such an insignificant effort – imo – that I didn’t think anyone would care. Much less comment to the negative. Dan you are accurate in assessing the coding exercise. I was learning blueprint and using the WP Sandbox theme as a base for grid design. To me there are huge differences in my design and subtraction but that is in the eye of the beholder. I am sure the code is different if nothing else. But I suppose others perception is the reality. Care to comment further?

What about the WP CODA Orange theme? I copied from WP CODA which is a copy of .panic’s CODA marketing site.

@Dan – fixed the ‘home’ button. It didn’t work in ie6/7 either.

If you’re going to rip off Subtraction, at least try and change the names of the images. button_continue_off.gif and button_add_off.gif both have the same names as look-alikes on Subtraction. While it is possible that you drew inspiration from several sources, the first thing I thought when I saw this design was “Hey, Subtraction with colored links and messy whitespace.” Why Smashing Magazine posted this under “30 Free High Quality Wordpress Themes” is beyond me.

@Ryan – You’re right, high quality is in the eye of the beholder.

Bah, who gives a fsck.
Everybody rips everybody off. All using the same html and css. All using the same colors. All using the same fonts. Methinks Dan has too much time on his hands.

I don’t quite understand… too much time on my hands that I wound up reading smashing magazine and saw this… indeed.

Anyway, I never implied that this was an intentional copy of subtraction, clearly seeing the navigation elsewhere has confused kerry, since it makes it seem like the design is perhaps open, but f8 obviously copied it originally.

Obviously Khoi’s grid is a great place to start, and I think that if you added in your own navigation, you could make this a very good theme.

Intentional or not, this is still a good lesson in why you should be very vigilante when using various design resources you find on the internet. Always make sure you are allowed to use something. I usually e-mail artists/designers even if their works says that it is creative commons, because most people don’t know which version they are using or why, and getting permission from them in a formal e-mail covers you in cases such as this.

Hindsight is 20/20, but if you had e-mailed the author of f8 and asked to use that work, then you would have completely avoided this problem.

Inspiration and trying to replicate one’s design is often considered a good way to learn and practice. It is a valid way of learning new techniques. However, releasing your “inspired” work to the public is crossing that fine line with many others.

Such as, this current site’s template is a fairly modified version of Quommunication’s WP Template “News” – http://www.quommunication.com/news/

If Kerry were to release this site’s current template as if Kerry made it, I would consider it wrong.

That’s my $0.02.

@Adam – I agree. I purchased ‘News’ theme several months ago ($70). I was finding my content would sometimes break the theme. I also found in the Quo forums owners of the theme with the same issues. This was again about the time I discovered the Blueprint css framework. I converted my version of the theme to this framework and that was that. I felt the derivative work was under the sames license as the paid version. I still credit Quo in my footer.

@Dan (AUG 26) – Again it is perception. As much as I see and know the differences (subtraction has a much better feel & feature set as a theme than ‘DIRTY GIRL’) the perception by many is it was a copy. ‘DIRTY GIRL’ will return just with a new coat of paint and a different ‘feel’ than before.

Thanks, you wrote wonderfull.

Now, this is fairly rediculous.

First of all, Khoi is pretty well known for his ‘excellent design’, which is meant to influence others, no?

Secondly, he is a major proponent of the grid design, and likely has made a pretty good career and dollar off of being a leader in that school of design. But, he hasn’t anything up on the web to showcase exactly what is so good about it, and how he does it, other than a ppt, and a few jpgs of a yahoo rip off. So, shouldn’t his site’s design be seen as that defacto grid design site we’re all looking for, as it is for some people? And, as a result, shouldn’t it be replicated? I don’t see the need for limiting the potential of a good design, especially since a lot of bloggers could improve upon it.

Perhaps that’s the real issue here. There might be improvements to the design of the ‘grid master’. This sort of inability to see the benefits of open source and standardization goes completely against the theory of the grid design, and developing frameworks in general. You would have to be completely insane to think that we need a billion grid frameworks to figure out what works. We need to use what works, and make it better, not reinvent the wheel everyday of our lives.

Khoi, if you’re reading this, give us something to chew on, where’s the beef?

@Clifton Evans – I understand your thoughts completely. That is why I created ‘Dirty Girl’. INSPIRATION. Because of perception ‘Dirty Girl’ is retired. But not to fear, she will return. Stay tuned to the demo site – dirtygirl.kerrywebster.com. Once it is complete I will post the new theme for everyones consumption.