This is a snazzy dark grey theme with splashes of greenery (hence the name). The original template is an open-source design by Pat Heard from FullAhead.org.

I have included, as of Version 2.0, an Adobe Photoshop template file that allows the painless creation of custom theme “middle-space” images (hint: the “middle-space” is the large section between the main content and the sidebar that has lots of “greenery” in it).

I get lots of questions on this theme surrounding the menu tabs at the top. By default only a few choices are shown (homepage, about page, and the archives) because, quite frankly, there’s not a lot of real-estate up there to be showing a dozen page tabs – and there’s a secondary navigation in the sidebar that shows ALL pages. However, I have included all the PHP code you’d need (inside the header.php file) to allow your pages to be tabbed up top.

[DOWNLOAD] v2.2 – 17 JUL 08 – 732kB

[LIVE DEMO]

This is a clean, snappy theme that is a conversion of the public domain template by the same name designed by the folks at SixShooterMedia. I really liked the style and class of this template so I converted it just for fun. I intend on periodicaly updating it with small tweaks and improvements.

[DOWNLOAD] v1.6 – 17 JUL 08 – 37kB

[LIVE DEMO]

Clean, classy, and crimson… that’s the best way to describe this theme. It supports widgets and discriminating tastes, and as you can see it’s fairly light with a fine classy polish. The navigation tabs add some transparent wow, and the look and feel is easy to sink into. This latest version of the theme took me quite a bit of time to tweak just the way I liked it, so I hope you enjoy.

[DOWNLOAD] v1.5 – 17 JUL 08 – 138kB

[LIVE DEMO]

One of MANY, MANY reviews I’ve received:

I’ve looked at hundreds of WordPress themes, and I have to say, Crimson Sunrise is the most technically advanced I’ve seen yet.

- If you add pages, it adds tabs to the top.
- It comes with built in functions for doing things you’d normally have to hunt the Codex for
- It Looks GREAT

Either way, I think I’ve found my new favourite theme for WordPress.

As I stated in an earlier post (while alpha-testing the software) this is a major software upgrade with a gazillion improvements. As with any massive change there will be some broken WordPress themes and plugins to fix… but the sunshine on the horizon is nearly blinding. I really can’t wait to dive in on this release and start developing websites. I think the huge upgrades to the design and operation of the administration interface is paramount to customer adoption and usability (every developer knows that user self-sustainability cannot be over-stated, period).

And if the new release wasn’t enough, the WordPress website itself just got a sweet redesign too! Very nice, Matt!

From Matt Mullenweg‘s official announcement:

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

Here are some stats from Peter Westwood that he just posted about:

WordPress 2.5 has been released and includes a huge number of changes over the WordPress 2.3 series. Rather than list the changes in detail which would probably take me some days to write out I offer the following statistics and information about the WordPress 2.5 release:

• In development for 185 days (6 months 3 days to be precise).
• Changes to 364 files with 54008 insertions, and 29136 deletions for more detail you can view the diffstat output.
• Patches committed from over 110 different contributors.
• Over 1300 individual changes made for more detail you can view a complete changelog.

As a note of trivia, currently I have had 67,814 spam comments caught by Akismet before they could see light-of-day.

So, you may be wondering why there’s not wallpaper here for Wallpaper Wednesday? Well… in the name of doing-my-own-thing I am going to break that months-old tradition and just toss out wallpapers whenever the heck I feel like it. Nobody really comments on wallpaper, anyway, so if you wanted wallpaper you could go to a REAL wallpaper site, like Digital Blasphemy or any others I have linked here.

There will be biting and jovial cynicism here soon enough.

WordPress Theme – Thin Green Line :: I released version 1.1 of this WordPress theme today. I made many, many tweaks to the cascading style and added some smarter PHP to create the navigation menu. And speaking of this new theme of mine (you know the drill)… if you click here – BlogFlux – and say all sorts of great things… I’ll be your best friend.

Call of Duty :: I was reminded, as I pondered the failed German advance on Moscow, that had Hitler studied his history he might have taken pause at the long land march, what with Napoleon’s embarrassing retreat. And unfortunately for both these brilliant fools they didn’t have the Princess Bride movie to assuage their doomed plans.

You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this… never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
- Vizzini, The Princess Bride

While we’re on the topic, Edward Tufte has some wonderful books on the visual display of information. One of his most well-known pictorial representations of information is a drawing showing the geographic path Napoleon took towards Moscow, and his retreat, and the decreasing girth of the path represents the dwindling numbers of French troops.

A little of the smooth… :: I’m reminded that a similar style of jazz to smooth jazz is Latin jazz. Now not all Latin jazz is smooth, but much of it has a smooth feel to it and can be used as such. A great example is the phenomenal Latin guitarist Jesse Cook. This boy’s got album after album of some stunning smooth latin jazz… perfect for setting some ambiance.

UPDATE: The above line about the wallpaper “reminding you of something” was referring to my former WordPress theme where I had a section of that wallpaper lightly superimposed onto a sunrise landscape of relief. Since this theme is no longer being used this reference is no longer pertinent.