WordPress Fun: A Free WordPress Theme
If you have been following Smashing Magazine for a while you know that we love high-quality freebies. Over the last years we’ve featured a number of designers and developers who released their work for free — among other things we presented high-quality free fonts, free WordPress themes, free wallpapers and, of course, free icons. You can find many of them in our section Freebies.
Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place which is why we support designers and challenge them to release something for free in order to be featured on Smashing Magazine. And the results are quite often pretty impressive.
Today we are glad to release a wordpress.fun — a free professional WordPress-theme. The theme has 2 columns, thumbnails integration, a “featured” post section as well as a nice grungy design. The theme was designed by Maleika Attawel from Germany, purchased by Smashing Magazine and is now released as a gift for our readers.
Download the theme for free!
You can use the theme for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission — please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish, but if you are planning to release your modification, please ask our permission first.
The main illustration (Teen Blogger (Punk Boy)) was created by ChinHang Chung and purchased by Smashing Magazine from iStockPhoto with the extended license “Electronic Items for Resale (unlimited run)”. Therefore the illustration is redistrubited legally.
- Preview (0.56 Mb)
- Download the theme (.zip-package, 2.2 Mb)
- Download PSD and EPS (.zip-package, 5.1 Mb)
Motivation behind the design: the idea
What do you generally do when you want to create a WordPress theme without having an actual client? The initial reaction would be; you despair. All the things we have learned as good web designers such as evaluating a client’s specific needs, doing proper field research, wireframing, finding the proper grid concept for content placement, selecting a colour scheme and visual elements to support content, choosing good type, tailored to … oh wait … this is just a theme.
A theme, by definition, is a subject of discourse. In the case of a WordPress theme, it can be anything. And in the delicate case of my humble theme, the subject is fun. Plain and simple. The idea was to create a theme that is fun and usable, heavy and light, eye-catching and robust, specific and yet generic enough to be used in a variety of ways. The theme is not designed to replace true and proper web design, ergo it is not tailored to suit a specifc niche, nor complement distinctive content. However, depending on your explicit or non-explicit purposes, the design might find a good home.
The prerequisites
Like all creative processes, it started with an idea. While I am a great fan of minimalistic designs, I also admire complex and graphically intense web compositions. The only prerequisite was that it doesn’t take ages to load and that the total size of the graphics doesn’t add up to an enormous sum that would only enable those with mighty speedy internet connections to work. That was the only aspect I had to keep in mind to get started.
The design process
I had decided on going with a simple two column layout. No fancy modular or column grid, but a simple hierarchical grid like the majority of blogs use. As a page’s length is variable, it was clear that only the content that is extra but not mandantory could reside at the bottom of the page. So all navigational aids (such as categories or friends’ links) as well as a “most discussed” feature would take their position at the very end of the page.
Because I wanted to keep it as elementary as possible and void content clutter, it was clear to me to do away with too many features that would blur instead of sharpen the reader’s perception when visiting the site. Hence, I kept it rather simple and thus set aside the left column for featured content and the right column to display the newest blog entries.
Here you have the result of my humble efforts (preview) and here you can download the theme for free.
Special requirements
The theme is built with WordPress 2.5.1 and is only partially backwards compatible. The theme also works with WordPress 2.6. As this theme uses a few .png files, it is recommended that you make sure that the image paths to these are correct (for IE6). You find the two CSS rules in the ie.css file inside your theme folder. The theme can be used with or without widgets (below the fold).
Last but not least…
We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists. You may not know it yet, but we might feature you in one of our upcoming posts.
If you would like to release a high-quality free font, a WordPress-theme, some wallpapers or an icon-set please contact us — we would like to support you (both financially and with the broad coverage on Smashing Magazine).
pakalika
October 21st, 2008 4:43 pmAmazing theme. Nice color scheme and nice layout. Everything is working fine!
I have however a problem. The sections at the bottom of the page aren’t growing (I have a lot of categories) so the text overflows those boxes.
I noticed that couple of people have the same problem and some (like noelgreen.com) have it working properly.
Hope someone can help me out.
Later,
pakalika
BillyG
October 22nd, 2008 1:13 amThank you Jason of #197 for posting that code, I’ll use that when I’m ready to post a picture in the featured sidebar. I assume you use the same img src code as needed for the single post thumbnails (which is just a normal img src tag without the size parms for those who haven’t figured that out already), but how do you get the post excerpt itself in the featured sidebar in the first place?
Jason
October 22nd, 2008 2:26 pmBillyG -
Have you created a category titled “featured” and then marked the post under that category? I think that was all I did, but I may have forgotten something else I had to change first…
BillyG
October 22nd, 2008 2:52 pm@Jason: Thanks! I didn’t read that ‘trick’ anywhere. I appreciate it!
I was waiting to diagnose your line count situation once I got the feature sidebar working on my site, but now that I, my short post has the same amount (5) in the center and in the featured section. If I find out, I’ll post it here. Thanks again. btw: where did you read that about the category name? TIA,
aman
October 22nd, 2008 10:35 pmHi
your theme is looking so beautiful . I have a free gadget blog and I think this theme suit to my gadget blogI “arunword.wordpress.com”.How can I use this theme. Is it posible that you include it in wordpress free template list?
oda
November 2nd, 2008 11:45 amHEYHO,
J have a problem. How can I switch to the full view of the similar articles. I want to see the full article at the mainpage, without clicking on every article.
I hope, you understand my poor english!
koellmania
November 5th, 2008 11:20 amGreat Theme! I’m looking for a tutorial, which show, how to create this wonderful vector icon @ header, yeah.
@oda, search in the index.php (in the theme-directory) –> “the_excerpt()” and replace that with “the_content()”.
Mohd Nazif
November 5th, 2008 11:03 pmUsing this theme right now..I love it!!
thanks a lot!!
jeremy
November 6th, 2008 10:39 amHey great theme, please can you tell me how to get the thumbnail images working? How do I set the thumbnails in my post they they populate the home page automatically?
Dave Strife
November 6th, 2008 8:57 pmGreat work, but…how can I change the link color in the post? I hate the underline and yellow background in all my links. If I can change it, tell me wich line is in the template, please.
Sorry for my english, I only want to change my link color :P
Nurvina
July 26th, 2012 1:22 pmVERY new to WordPress. Using this theme for my webpage and I love it BUT I need to add my cpomany logo where the name of the site shows up in the top header. I don’t really know anything about CSS or coding. Sounds like people in prior posts have tried but are having issues.Any help you can provide to do this would be greatly appreciated. Hopefully you have an updated version with this and a custom header image coming soon! Thanks.
Heliand
November 12th, 2008 1:14 amTo create a left side Widget all u have to do is to add this in column-one.php :
I have a question .Is there a way to remove bullets from output (the once in widgets) ?
franc3s
November 12th, 2008 10:58 amCan someone help me in adding an image to the post?
I read the readme file, but I can’t understand what “A normal post contains a custom field. The name of the custom field is “thumb”. When writing a post, create a custom field with a key of thumb and a value of the image path” means… Where is the THUMB FIELD?
Thank you all
Heliand
November 12th, 2008 5:51 pmSorry i forgot to add the tags in my previous post.so the code that u have to add is the following:
<?php
if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('extra-content-three') ) : ?>
Herbshirt
November 14th, 2008 4:51 amI was using the Sociable plugin. The images for delicious etc got distorted. Obviously theres something automatically resizing the images in that Featured column? Is it simple enough to disable that feature?
Herbshirt
November 14th, 2008 5:23 amAnd…
I use /%category%/%postname%/ for my permalinks. So should I just hard code those urls into the navigation.php. Is there a better way or a reason why I shouldn’t do that? I find the links were getting messed up otherwise.
Ezz
November 14th, 2008 9:39 pmI don’t like cartoons themes ,,, it’s look like children blog ,lOol .. But it’s nice ,,, I like your blogs so so so much ;)
Keep it up and heavy
C YA Ezz
twelve81
November 22nd, 2008 2:54 amGreat theme and I started to translate it to German: http://twelve81.tk
If anybody is interested in the theme-files, don’t hestitate to contact me.
Greetz,
Markus
Michel Morelli
November 23rd, 2008 10:34 amI have make a drupal version of this good theme, see DrupalFun Link. If someone want it send me an email to michel AT ziobuddalabs DOT it. I need to fix something before to release it to all.
Jonathan
November 24th, 2008 8:17 amI really like this theme, however…
“Quote” tag do NOT seem to work?
Is there solution for this?
Thanks
Joseph Hollak
November 29th, 2008 1:42 pmHello,
I noticed in the comments above that users of this theme were discovering some trouble with posts in the “Featured” category on the left-hand side of the page when using the sociable plugin.
I’m having the same problem. Which is a shame, because the “featured” posts are typically your better posts with solid content that you want visitors to focus on, and it would be nice if visitors could share the content of these “better” posts socially to gain you some additional traffic.
Has anyone figured out a way to keep the little social plugin .pngs from stretching in the left-hand “featured” column? If so, I would love to hear from you.
Joseph Hollak
hollak AT gmail DOT com
Matt
December 1st, 2008 5:04 pmIf anybody could help me out for a quick second, that would be awesome.
For some reason, the bottom of each of my posts, before the footer, is misaligned. I’ve sat here looking through the css and php, and can’t find out where to make any type of edit.
Here is a link to one of my posts Link
If you notice that at the bottom of the post under the comment box, that the “page fold” is about 20-30 pixels to high, and that the bg image starts to repeat itself. It also covers up my submit/video comment button. Any ideas would be great!?!?!?!
Thanks
coks
December 16th, 2008 3:04 amHello!
I update my word-press to 2.7, and the site was crashes IE7. Any chance to update the theme?
Thanks!
Jas
December 20th, 2008 4:27 amAm not able to open the .psd files. Am using windows XP and files seems to have been zipped from Mac OSX. But ideally it shudnt give an issue. Am I missing something? I already installed the theme but am not able to remove the old header text :(
Note: Photoshop (CS3) is giving error: Not a valid photoshop document
chris
December 22nd, 2008 8:45 amlatest firefox update stops displaying the navagation. (about contact and such) any ideas looks fine in IE and safari
http://www.daddydayone.com
chris
December 22nd, 2008 8:56 amNever mind my last post it just doesn’t size correctly anymore i have to make sure the window is maximized to display properly
Thanks,
Jay
December 29th, 2008 11:03 amFor some reason the columns on the bottom do not expand when there are more then a certain amount of links and categories added. Anyone know how to fix it so the links do not stretch over the column boxes?
Rob
December 30th, 2008 5:40 pmI am also having the same problem as Jay with the stretching of the links over the columns. Can anyone please help with this?
dirtyvonp
January 1st, 2009 2:38 amHi There,
The theme is great and I am just starting to use it out.
I manage to make a post in the fetured Area as well as putting an image ( thanks a lot Jason # 197) !
My problemis that the post in the feature category also show up in the news categorie the last post… How could I fixit in order thatthe post under the featured category only appear in this area ?
My blog here
Rafal
January 5th, 2009 11:03 amThis is great theme .. :) Nice job!
ib
January 7th, 2009 9:03 amIt realy look nice, but it gives below error.
“Fatal error: Call to undefined function get_mostcommented() in /home/wordpres/public_html/wp-preview/wp-content/themes/Wordpress Fun Theme/extra-content-two.php on line 7″
How can it be fixed?
ariel
January 16th, 2009 11:56 amyeah I get the same error also :
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_mostcommented() in /home/www/legoguru.com/wp-content/themes/WordPressFun/extra-content-two.php on line 7
pls help
ariel
January 16th, 2009 12:15 pmHi Guys
If you get this error I have good news for you:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_mostcommented() in /home/www/legoguru.com/wp-content/themes/WordPressFun/extra-content-two.php on line 7
Go to the following site and download the plugin:
http://www.wp-plugins-db.org/plugin/wp-most-commented-posts/
and follow these instructions :
HOW TO INSTALL?
* Unzip archive into your plugins directory /wp-content/plugins then go to your WordPress administration menu, and choose Plugins tab then activate the WP-Most Commented Posts plugin
* In your sidebar.php add these lines:
Most Commented Posts
* You can change the ammount of displayed posts by editing plugin and changing number in line eleven:
function get_mostcommented($limit = 10) {
where limit = 10 means number of posts.
hope this helps!
http://byteandpixel.com
Cyrus
January 17th, 2009 2:37 pmI went ahead and created a demo. Feel free to link to it. . Thanks for a great theme by the way!
yaddi
February 3rd, 2009 6:41 amcool…
Gilbert Palau
February 9th, 2009 9:41 pmthe download link for the theme doesnt work for me
Danzig
February 12th, 2009 5:10 pmWhy won’t the contact form work?
Also why does the text at the very bottom stack up
one word after another in IE???
David
February 18th, 2009 4:22 pmHi,
I was curious if you could post adsense to this. I know there is probably a way, I’m just a newb to wordpress and need the help! :)
Thanks! :) :)
_Dave
Mami
February 27th, 2009 3:29 pmHi
Some of my guests have problem with commenting.
They say, page slides up and they can not comment.
When they try to read the topic, they can’t go down the page, because it slides up
Is there any solution known ?
Thanks
Myri14
March 7th, 2009 5:51 amHi, I have the same problem that Mami (comment 239), I really appreciate some help!
BR
Bryan Lee
March 8th, 2009 10:44 pmI really like this theme but it would be so much better with a right sidebar. Can someone please post a writeup on how to implement a right sidebar with this theme? I need a place for adsense and widgets.
RaiulBaztepo
March 28th, 2009 2:29 pmHello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language ;)
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
Aditya
April 3rd, 2009 12:33 amawesome looks, but a very restricted theme…readme says “You must have at least 5 categories & 5 comments for this theme to render correctly”…
for me, a theme should be very much flexible with the blog content so am not a fan of themes which rely on images and psd modifications…
Kobo
April 6th, 2009 3:25 amForgive for English language. How it is possible to alter css that navigation was displayed on the right, to make mirror display of a template.Navigation in this case interests, float:left does not leave.
Dominique Falla
April 11th, 2009 8:26 pmAwesome theme. I’ve added it to my list of 11 best magazine style themes. http://www.moonsaildesign.com/branding/11-awesome-free-wordpress-magazine-style-themes/. Hope you get lots more downloads.
Thanks!
moofasa
April 13th, 2009 11:36 pmHow do you enable widgets? THis is all the readme.txt says:
“8. The theme ca be used with or without widgets. You will find the content displayed in the following files (if you choose not to use widgets):”
Ok, so where is the step to use it WITH widgets? :)
Mr.Knop
April 27th, 2009 1:00 amHello, I find that this template is really wonderful.
Hum..Can I adapt this to another support blog ? Like Pluxml.
And after can I release my modification on the Pluxml’s template gallery ?
Moreover a link would be present in the footer and the support’s link would re-aimed towards here.
I hope you have understood that I’ve write because I can’t write english very well =)
You can answer to me thanks to my e-mail^.
Thanks a lot!
Blogwurm
April 29th, 2009 12:35 pmDanke, habe mir das Template mal gesaugt und ein wenig abgeändert.
Vielen Dank
Guru
May 10th, 2009 9:26 pmBy far, the optimal theme I have ever come across. Sleek, simple, not resources hungry, cool, and most important, FREE! Thanks for creating and sharing with all of us. I am happy to give you an honorary mention on my site: Life is Delightful. Visit it within a few days and spread the publicity! :)
Mario
May 23rd, 2009 1:25 amHello!
For the first time.
Thank you and super made.
Only I have the following problem:
On http://www.funnypage.at/blog/kategorie/bilder
should being indicated more contributions than only to one.
What belongs here changed?
LG, Mario
mwafi
May 27th, 2009 8:57 amvery nice :-)
Sascha
June 8th, 2009 8:57 amIch finde das Design großartig, aber wie kann ich die featured article anzeigen lassen? Bei mir bleibt der Bereich leer. Bitte um Antwort!
Gruß, Sascha
Michael
July 6th, 2009 8:23 amThis may be a dumb question, but for the images like “contact”, etc. How do I add my own email so when the person clicks the image, they end up sending an email to me?
thanks
Timo
August 10th, 2009 11:53 amDanke für das Design. Nutze es in meinem neuem Blog.
Liebe grüße von Lübeck nach Lübeck
Stacey
August 22nd, 2009 11:19 amLove this theme but am wondering if there is a way to make the extra columns at the bottom (Categories, Most Discussed, Links) extend down as you add text in there. It seems as though I am limited to only 9 categories and if I create more categories than that the category list extends down but the grey background in the Categories box does not extend. Any help is greatly appreciated!
quin
September 23rd, 2009 8:02 pmIt’s very cool, I like it.
Alex
October 2nd, 2009 11:23 amCool design. I like it lots. Thanks
Cippy
October 7th, 2009 2:58 amhi there… i really loved your theme.. a loooootttt…. =)
i was wondering, how do i change th home page font “wordpress for fun” into my blog tittle….
and also change some of the widget…..
you have to excuse me… i’m a newbie….
please help….
Alliey
January 25th, 2010 11:37 amThe easiest way would be to edit the image “logo.gif” and change it to say something else. It has a transparent background, so if you make a new image make sure to make it .gif or .png with a transparent background, with the same name. Just overwrite the old image file.
Hope that helps!
fungama
April 12th, 2010 8:27 pmReally a nice theme but extra column is used that is decreasing its beauty
Bob
October 7th, 2009 5:35 pmWhat do I need to do in order to get the homepage thumbnails to display? I created a Custom Field called “thumb” and added the link to the 125×125 image, but it displays the image name in text.
Claudiu
December 27th, 2009 5:15 amMake sure the path is correct, usually that’s the source of the problem. Good luck!
Alliey
January 25th, 2010 11:36 amto make the images appear, make sure to use the img src code in your extra field – once you create the “thumb” extra field, input it something like this –
Put the full path just to be safe, and you should be good to go. Took me a bit to figure that one out :)
Fiala06
October 23rd, 2009 11:20 amThis is a great theme. The only problem I am having is the archive page. I’ve created a page named “archives” w/ the archives theme set for that page. I cant get it to show up when you click the archive button in the navigation bar. When I click that button is says the archive page address is “http://fiala06.com/?page_id=18″ when its actally “http://fiala06.com/archives”.
Site: http://www.fiala06.com
Any thoughts? Thanks
arnolem
November 7th, 2009 1:25 pmRead the ReadMe :)
For your Archives page, Edit the page and use the archive template (on the right, under the save button)
Emma
December 30th, 2009 12:21 pmHello, I am using your theme but I have a small problem with the featured post item. It is working, but not properly. It won’t show the latest items from a certain category, it just shows the latest posts in general, alltho I think i got the coding right.
Can you maybe help me?
This is what I’ve got; ‘?cat=17=featured&showposts=5′
hsmin75
January 15th, 2010 4:52 pmHello ….
You can use a nice theme ….
Can I ask you something …??
Posting images on the left sidebar and featured parts Why’d you want to know
James
February 10th, 2010 11:47 amI uploaded your theme to wordpress and was messing with the widgets. I can not figure out how to get any desired widgets to show on the page. The only sidebar content is what was coded in php – nothing from wordpress will show. How do I add widgets to the sidebar on this theme?
Thanks
Claus Bonne
February 25th, 2010 5:40 amThanks for a great theme.
In order to get the pictures work in Featured, you need to add this code into colum-one.php
ID, $key, true); ?>
My version is at http://www.clausbonne.com/wordpress
Roke
May 19th, 2010 8:55 amIm using this template and i find some minor bug, in the index.php the post is recovery with the and the quotes like “” are not showing so some plugins dont work like wp-syntax.
If you click in the post you can see correctly so i change in the index the for
Best Regards.
kadın
July 12th, 2010 2:15 pmyour page very nice. Thanks
FearlessFife
September 4th, 2010 6:14 amI was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of the font used for the title logo? I love the theme but would just like to re-title the logo in the same font.
wp-fun.co.uk
November 26th, 2010 7:45 pmHmm, nice name for a theme.
thalhah
December 21st, 2010 11:19 amthanks. really nice. i like it soooo much
Alex
January 5th, 2011 5:06 amVery very very nice
sujeetha
January 15th, 2011 1:26 ami use this theme for my blog…wat is d space left for friends & links, its always empty for me…could u pls tel me hw i could manipulate dat space n use it for some other purpose or atlest how do i fill it?…my blog: musicshunt.blogspot.com
thank you so much in advance!!
J
April 8th, 2011 1:06 pmThough this theme looks great, from the perspective of somebody who is now going through the back end, THE GUY WHO BUILT IT WAS RETARDED. I have never seen such a restrictive overly complex system. It takes advantage of very little of what makes wordpress user friendly in its refusal to be compatible with the widget system and the blatant disregard for the fact that if you want other people to use your theme, YOU NEED TO MAKE IT FLEXABLE. Then to make things worse, it requires several plugins that really have nothing to do with what makes a blog design great. I’ve pretty much had to rebuild half the stuff you did, and after redesigning the colour scheme and graphics, I am giving you NO CREDIT.
Steve
June 8th, 2011 3:57 amFirst I would like to thank you for this excellent theme.
However I have one small issue with it. At the moment I am running WordPress 3.3.1 and when I make a post with pictures in it the layout is distorted when I actually click on the image. This obviously does not happen when I remove the link from the image.
I guess that WordPress has it’s own way of navigation through images in a post marked as “Gallery” that does not work well with this theme.
There is a workaround for this, if you force it to open in a different window but I would like to have people cycle the images on the site just like it works with the default WordPress theme.
Any input is appreciated.