Nov.18.2007
Wpdesigner v8.0 Is Here
- Filed under: Wpdesigner.com
Actually, 90% of it is here. This design launch is a bit rough. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning; I need some shut-eyes.
With every project or redesign, there’s only so much preparation you can do. At some point, you have to launch it then grind out the bugs as you find them. I can’t squash any bug at this moment because I’m going to sleep.
Take version 8 for a test drive and tell me what to improve. Thanks in advance 
It seems pretty pointless to have ‘Read more about WPd…’
I mean you may as well have the font a little smaller, as it is an image not an excerpt. otherwise, nice theme man
Just two suggestions:
1. on the about page, make sure the header doesen’t come up.
2. If the user is a regular visitor , you can remove the header graphic or replace it with an ad or something, as people already know and love wpdesigner, and don’t want to get distracted by the aboutpage
also make the about page bigger because the header’s pure clickbait and you can display some of your best themes as examples.
otherwise the theme looks gorgeous.
Anirudh
wow I love the look amazingly clean and beautiful. If I may nitpick typography in the side bar needs more work. On you main page, while scrolling down I somehow am getting confused discerning the heading from the text, I would have given the backgrounds a slightly darker shade.
I can’t get the search function to work and that is really anoying.
Why not place some ads in the sidebar, its to empty right now
Sure there are little things here and there, but over all I really like the look and feel.
One thing I would add though is I think there needs to be more to separate two posts on the front page, perhaps a solid line border or something a top the div that the title of the next post goes into. Sure the title coming up makes it known this is now a new post, but I’d personally like a little something more there.
The main critique I have is that the sidebar is too wide.
Hi Small Potato – I love the new design, of course. Your designs are really great – so clean and easy to read. Just the right touch of gradients and white space. Nice job!
Congrats on the new design. It neat and I like it.
The first think that struck me was the date stamp on posts. It’s off to the left, centered on the line between the white content space and the background. Why’s that? At first I thought it’s Opera rendering wrong, but after trying Firefox, Safari and IE 7 and seeing your screenshot I realized you meant it this way. It kinda distracts attention from the post itself I think and looks broke.
Other than that, as mentioned earlier, the typography of the sidebar could be better…
Cheers!
Great site Small, very clean, a few bugs but you’ll sort them out.
Keep up the good work.
See ya!.
Woohoo!!!!
Greats stuff SP, looking forward to engaging with this new installment of wpdesigner. I love it, It’s very SP and looks great. Keep it coming and hope to see some more video blogging from you man.
I like the wide side bar, I like the entire design and set up. This is just perfect and will be happily purchasing it when it is available.
Marion
Design is lovely, nice choice of colors and … I like your logo.
ahh… the search button is cute
Hi Sp!
I like this theme, its wonderful!
thanx Sp, you are doing alot for WP.
wow, I like your new wp theme
SP,
I agree with others that the About box is overdone … make it text, with a link that actually spells out the name of the blog with an arrow or raquo, rather than a single image.
But the sidebar is fine, dude. Leave it.
The text size in the content column could stand to be slightly larger.
The date thing is cool … leave it. It looks fine.
Sidebar is kinda empty.
You need to show somehow that the search bar is for searching. Right now, it just looks like an input box. That may be a moot point as most of your visitors are bloggers and would “get it” regardless. Up to you.
I’ll leave it at that. Overall, it’s a good upgrade.
Nice new design, seems like you’ve built it over JWM theme. Like the new logo too!!
Hm…
Can’t find any bugs, but I have a two thoughts.
Make the about blurb that is directly below your logo text based.
And the sidebar is a little empty…
Wow, this is awesome. Clear and clean, as everyone has said. The colours are great, and the subtle gradients are awesome. The logo, the nav, the search bar…oh, and the post date calendar is cool, too.
Do you plan to update the premium themes category to match the regular themes?
Great redesign you got here!
I just redid the design on my WP-theme blog today aswell
http://wordpress.jepson.no
I really like the new design, but I think the icons at the top right (for RSS and the likes) should be a little bigger so they catch the eye. Also, it isn’t totally clear that the categories fall under that “category” headline; they could be confused for annoying paid links, given their names.
Hi SP,
I was looking around for WordPress themes and my husband told me to check out this site. I like the new themes. I don’t know about the burnt orange arrows on the top right-hand side. They kind of work for me but maybe you’ll put some other icons there.
I have a blog on Blogger and everyone says I should look at moving to WordPress. This theme rocks and thanks for the freebies you offered.
where’s your fourm link?
it looks you donot like wp’s tags.
also there’s no tags in your preview post.
[...] Parece que la primavera le llegó a muchos diseñadores y esta vez es el turno del sitio web WPDesigner, uno de los proveedores de themes para WordPress más grandes de la red. WPDesigner esta estrenando ya su versión 8.0. [...]
Great redesign, just a few points, I know others have already mentioned some of them.
1) The date section, I like, but my thinking is that it acts as kind of a divider between posts, but isn’t in line with the post header, for me it would fit better there, although I appreciate that it is currently in line with other meta details.
2) Not all images are clickable, some are some aren’t, is this on purpose?
3) The orange arrows and bullets don’t fit, they look like they have been lifted from another site for some reason. Why not make them red, to fit with the rest of the theme?
Keep up the good work!
@Harley – I’ll remove the “read more.” I was rushing
@Anirudh – I agree. Having the about excerpt on top of the About page content is redundant. I’ll work on a custom About page template.
@Arpit – Thanks bro. I tried darker backgrounds for the sidebar headings, but it distracted me from reading the main content.
@Erik – I tried the search; it’s working. I’ll fill up the sidebar in time.
@Darin – I think the date buttons are adequate in terms of distinguishing where posts begin and end. The date buttons are not doing it for you?
@Sahil – I wanted a wide sidebar
@Miriam – Thanks!
@Cosmin – I’m using the date stamp to balance out the main content area and to separate one post from another. Picture the layout without the date stamps, it would be awkwardly empty. I don’t really know how to work around that yet and the date stamp is my only solution for now.
@Karl – Thanks Karl. See ya
@Nomad-Nur – Ah, I’ve been lagging on the videos. Will soon will soon…
@Marion – I’m not planning on selling this one right now. I’d like to expand on this design and build my network of blogs around it.
@Igor, Fath, Rasikh, sabareth – Thanks guys!
@Nathan Rice – I tried plain text for the About excerpt. It was more distracting than graphics. I’ve tried several variations and this one seems to be the best one, crisp text with a little shadow to make it easy to ready. Treat it as an informative banner that a lot of users will simply skip
@Aaron – I used JWM for the comments template, but had to change it up last minute. I’ll re-work the comments template today.
@Brian Purkiss – Thanks for the suggestions, I addressed those issues in my comment above. The sidebar will be filled in time.
@Omer – I wanted to keep it looking clean. That’s why the icons are small. The category block will be moved further down the sidebar. I think that will help.
@Christerical and Alex – The orange arrows are not red, but I wanted some a little more contrast for that area.
@Alex – Which image isn’t clickable?
@bssn – The forum link is now the Support link. That’s temporary. I will create a full support page leading to several other areas of Wpdesigner. And it’s not that I don’t like tags. Categories are easier for me to keep track of.
Say on Gluttony Revision one, you can click on the image for a larger view if the preview, but not on the image on the release of your previous theme.
Sometimes I like to see these images bigger, but to be honest, I don’t remember how they were in v7!
Oh I see. I’ve been lazy on updating my WordPress theme demo installation, which explains why I don’t have larger previews and demo links up and running. Wpd7 was released before the launch of this redesign so a larger preview wasn’t necessary.
the new design is great man … i very very like it
Loving the re-design, really a massive improvement. One small question, please can you tell me how you got the different colour comment for the admin (you)??? I would love to implant this in my site soon.
Thanks for the themes, I’m using a modded one on my site now, take a look. Thanks once again.
Lewis – I’m using the author highlight plugin and some css custom styles to customize for it.
Congrats on the release! Everything looks great.
@SP
They don’t fully not do it for me, but I think there could be a little something more to make it clearer. Or am I alone on this?
fantastic! looks really neat. Although, why don’t you have any ads on your blog ?
Awesome job as ever !!! hmm will wait for the side bar to fill up
Great theme! So clean! I’m a big fan of your work. What tools do you use to create your templates?
I use Photoshop.
Awesome!
@Darin: I agree with you in that it’s a little difficult to tell between posts, but that’s only when my screen is tilted at a certain angle. Once I tilted it back, everything looks perfect. The color differentiation is subtle and looks marvelous.
SP, I wouldn’t change it, or if you do, maybe make the top of the header a little bit darker gray?
Overall very nice.
There are a few comments on here that just account for personal preference, and you will never be able to satisfy all of them as what one person prefers, another will not.
Pretty much the only thing I would take care of is the linking of the buttons in the sidebar. The hit area of the button spreads horizontally to the right edge, but doesn’t add any padding above or below the text. Again this is personal preference, but I’d take the link padding off the right, or add link padding to the top, bottom, and left to make the hit area the full box.
Again very nice.
Dave Bowker
Very nice SP! I said it before and I’ll say it again, I love the browns. The sidebar content (though a little sparse as Nathan said) looks good and is well organized. One suggestion, perhaps a rollover of the nav buttons. Even something as simple as flipping the background gradient on hover would make them pop a little more.
First congratz with this great theme
.
I’m also busy developing my own theme and by seeing your new theme I will totally change my sketches. Less is more!
My comment at first sight.
Do something with the search box. It has a great look however it doesn’t stand out as an search box. I only noticed it after somebody in the comments told me it was cute. Perhaps you could give it a standard text “click here to search”.
Greetz,
TheM
It’s pretty clean and well designed. Congrats
There are two things however that’s looking a little odd.
This comment section which lets we people to submit our comments is slightly on the bigger side. However if talked about uniqueness, then it’s a good change.
Secondly, the red color for hyper linked font, specially the one in “Showcase: Gallery Theme” which says “feautures” is looking a little odd. White bold or some other ariants can be used keeping in mind the visibility.
Overall pretty good looks
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[...] before I finish this redesign post, sorry WPdesigner, my theme is better than yours! Plain is not the way to go nowadays… Posted in: Design + Leave a [...]
Love it SP, just love it.
y me pregunto yo: “Web Designer 8 is Here!”?, Donde?, no encontre ningun link para descargar o checar a fondo el concepto, igual y no estoy entendiendo de que se trata. Si me explican un poco se lo agradecerè.
Gabriel.
Hi SP, I like the new layout, but I just have one problem. The header image (with the about blurb in it) doesn’t show up for me. I have now tried 3 different computers all with IE7. Am I alone?
Lonely. You’re so lonely. I kid I kid…
So far, I haven’t had a complaint like yours so I’m assuming you are alone on this.
Hmm wierd. I worked out my AV was blocking it – it strips ads out, but not sure what it is about your banner it didn’t like.