Hey Everyone, here is the third installment of the Simplistica* theme, now available for download! I have worked tirelessly over the past couple days to get the theme prepared for release and I really feel that it is worthy of a download. The theme has numerous improvements over v0.2, and it has really come a long way in a few days. There are too many improvements to list here but just a few are: more valid code, better firefox support, more styling on the single post page, an archives page template, and many more improvements.

More Valid Code

The SImplistica* theme is now about 99% W3C certified valid code. There are a few small glitches due to the method used to achieve the Safari/Mac OS X style search bar, but the truth is that although only Safari shows the Apple-style search bar, all other browsers display a normal search bar, and I look at it as a little present to all the OS X users out there. Other than that, the code validated really easily and most of the original errors were due to the fact that I forgot to close a <li> tag in the sidebar. The theme should now work well in all browsers, however, if you encounter an issue, please feel free to contact me and I’ll try to get the issue resolved.

Author Info

At the bottom of each post now, it displays a bio of the author of the post. It pulls this information from the “Bio” section in your WordPress Users section. It will also pull a photo of the author from the Custom Field for the post with the key “Avatar”. Just set the url to the photo as the value and it should display the picture. The image is sized down to 75px X 75px regardless of the original size. I think this is a nice touch, and adds a little polish to blogs, especially those with more than one author.

Share/Participate Section

In addition to the Author Info, there is also a Share/Participate section on the single post page. This will display a link to the comments, your RSS feed, and the share this button if you have the widget installed. If you currently have the widget installed and have it selected to show automatically, you may want to turn this feature off in your Wordpress settings in order to prevent duplication of the Share This button.

Download

Simplsitica* v0.3 is available for download now on the Download Page. Like always, it is free for personal use and $35 for commercial use.

Notes

Unfortunately, this will probably be the last version of Simplistica* for a few weeks, at least. I’ve dedicated a lot of time lately to the development of the theme, and I have some other projects I really need to be working on. Furthermore, I want to redesign my blog at MikeMartinRacing.com which will, of course, be based on Simplistica* but with a more magazine style front page. I’m still undecided if I will release it or not, it depends on how the development goes and how ready for the public I believe the XHTML/CSS/PHP is.

Hopefully, you decide to try out Simplistica*. If you’re looking for a clean, fast, and easily customizable theme which can be modified to fit a variety of applications, Simplistica* is right for you!