Shaken and Stirred Web - Shaking up the web with our creative minds

Tracking Down Bugs & Providing Support

With the launch of the “Shaken Grid” premium theme becoming closer and closer, I’ve begun prepping for the expected support questions, bug reports, and feature requests. Luckily I came across this great WordPress theme that does exactly what I needed. Using WordPress 3.0′s newest features, it allows you to setup your own ticket or bug tracker straight out of the box.

Need Theme Support?

I will now only address support questions and bug reports that are posted to the “Theme Zone”, so please head there if you need support on any of our themes (including the free version of Shaken Grid).

Teasers: Shaken Grid – Premium

I’m sure a lot of you are wondering how things are coming along with the premium version of the Shaken Grid theme. I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from users of the free version, and I am doing my best to include all of the feature requests I’ve gotten up to this point. Development is beginning to wrap up and soon all that will be left is testing and polishing things up.

For now though, the teasers below will have to hold you over until final release. You can also watch a short video of user interactions with the options available on rollover of the featured images.

Don’t forget, sign up using the form below and we’ll let you know when the premium theme is released!

Theme Options Panel

theme options

Homepage Header

header

A Premium Version of “Shaken Grid”

The reception of our free WordPress theme, “Shaken Grid”, has been outstanding! It has been featured on many sites, including Mashable and Smashing Magazine, and has received a bounty of happy feedback. It has also received a plethora of feature requests and we hear you loud and clear. That is why we have decided to develop a premium version of “Shaken Grid” and release it on a yet to be decided theme marketplace.

This is the BEST theme I’ve ever come across. It was so hard for me to actually share it. I want it all to myself.

— Lucid, from the comments

Tell us what you want

Before we begin development, we want to hear what features you’d like to see in a premium version of this theme. Some features that are already on the to-do list are:

Comments
Theme options panel, allowing users to basically customize the entire look and feel of the theme without touching any code.
Social sharing options (Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc)
Polished design
Many more color-schemes

Let us know what you want to see in the premium version in the comments section!

Find out when the premium theme is released

Introducing Our First Free WordPress Theme, “Shaken Grid”

We’re proud to announce the release of our first free WordPress theme, “Shaken Grid”. This theme is perfect for you if you’re in need of a gallery/portfolio website or if you just want a website with a unique grid layout that not many websites have taken full advantage of yet. “Shaken Grid” uses the jQuery Masonry plugin which “arranges elements vertically then horizontally according to a grid.” The result is a gap-less layout even if you have varying post heights. View the demo for an example.

View Demo Download (1.45mb)

Choose between two color schemes (light or dark)

Features

Multiple Color Schemes – Choose between two packaged color schemes (light and dark).
Theme Options panel – Easily change the color scheme of your theme, your favicon, and add stat tracking code through the theme’s options panel in WordPress’s administration area.
WordPress 3.0 compatible – Take advantage of WordPress’s new menu system (Appearance → Menus)
Gallery layout – Unique (and gap-less) grid layout perfect for a gallery/portfolio. Also supports blog posts.
Enhanced for modern web browsers – Uses CSS3 (font-face, transitions, drop shadows, rounded corners) and jQuery
Progressive Enhancement – Theme displays fine in older web browsers and Internet Explorer 7+
Widgetized Sidebar

Theme Options Panel

Add gallery posts in under a minute

Yes, you heard right: Easily add a gallery post in under one minute, it’s that simple to do. Using WordPress’s post thumbnail feature, all you have to do is upload your image, click okay, and hit publish. Check out the demonstration video to the right, it was all done in 40 seconds! (View full screen for better view)

Weekend Watch: “The Influence of Print Design”, Jason Santa Maria

This is a great presentation from the kickass designer, Jason Santa Maria, about how Print Design and storytelling has affected the way he designs for the web, and how it has shaped his career. If you’ve got 12 minutes to spare, it’s well worth a watch.

“Impressing is not just done by good design; it’s done by brave design.”

— Elliot Jay Stocks

jQuery More/Less Text

was recently asked by a client to add a functionality that only displays the first few lines of a block of content with a “More” link at the bottom which when clicked, would expand the content to show fully. This can easily be done with just a little bit of jQuery and CSS. If a user doesn’t have JavaScript enabled, the page will just display the content expanded and hide the More/Less buttons.

Check out the code below for an explanation on how to do just that.

View Demo

The HTML

First you want to setup the basic structure of your content so that you can enable this functionality.

<div class="more-less">
<div class="more-block">
<p>The Content</p>
</div>
</div>

Anything that you place into the “more-block” div will be expandable. The “more-less” div is needed to hold the More/Less link and the [...], which is added using the jQuery, saving you the time of adding those small parts.

When Pixels Attack

Ever wonder what would happen if 8-bit characters from the days of the NES attacked New York? Yeah, me too. If you’re one of the many who have spent hours wondering the same thing, watch the video to see one possible scenario play out.

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod.

Mike Kus: Time-lapse Design Process

This is a pretty slick video of Mike Kus’s (@mikekus) design process for the presentation he gave at FOWD London 2009, “Graphic Design: The Forgotten Web Standard”. The video is only 3 minutes long and it’s worth a watch. Each design has beautiful typography and color, and it’s definitely interesting to see everything come together in the end.

I couldn’t find the actual talk he gave now that the FOWD website has been redesigned, but you can view the final slides here.

Credits to Carsonified for the video.