Considered one of the premier sources of blogging news, commentary and information, The Blog Herald has gone through different iterations since its inception in 2003. Among the notable designs is Brian Gardner’s grey-themed three-column layout released in 2008. The Splashpress Media design team, led by Ia Lucero, has decided to release this theme as Performancing’s November theme release as the Herald Theme.

Sporting a grey-dominant color scheme, with red and blue highlights, the Herald Theme looks clean and crisp, with a wide main content area, and two sidebars to the right. The middle sidebar us wide enough to contain an ad block of 125×125 pixel buttons or a 250×250 banner, and supports featured posts, which will display only posts from a defined category or tag. Each sidebar block and footer column can be customized using widgets for easy drag-and-drop rearranging.

The Herald Theme is optimized for use with WordPress 2.8 and newer. Dropdown menus use jQuery.

Download the Herald Theme

For a live preview of the theme, click here.

To download Herald Theme, click here.

Tags: announcement, blog herald, herald, Themes

Categories: Themes

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Green is the in thing today. We do want to save the Earth and the human population from a radical change in climate. The Avocado Theme reflects this philosophy, both with the green-themed color scheme, and with how the editorial and design team of Performancing strive to be green in the way we live and work.

The Avocado Theme uses a three-column layout with rounded corners. The green-dominated background and sidebars are highlighted with orange headers and icons. The theme is optimized for use with WordPress 2.8 and above, and supports various features like threaded comments, post classes, image captions, galleries, and drop-down menus.

We have included in the theme ZIP file the Photoshop file and font used for the header, should you wish to use the header image for your title or logo.

The Avocado Theme is a classic theme release from Performancing Themes for WordPress, and is another collaboration with designer Sophia Lucero, who has likewise designed other themes, like Too Newsy and Rubidious.

Download Avocado Theme

Download the theme file here.
See a live demo here.

Categories: Themes

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Since our latest update, we’ve also upgraded a few other Performancing WordPress themes for maximum compatibility with WordPress 2.7 and above.

• Dark Laptop
• Estranged
• Redbook
• Rubidious
• Simplicity
• Story Theme
• TDAge
• ‘Tis the Season
• Too Newsy

Similar to the earlier upgrades, these new versions include provisions for threaded comments, post classes, image classes and gravatar support.

Again, while only a few core files were changed in these, we recommend backing up your existing theme folder and uploading the updated folder (copying modifications you have made), just to make sure it works.

Categories: Announcements, Themes

5 Comments

Ever wanted to explore for hidden treasure as a kid? Well, most of us have longed for, and still do long for, this kind of adventure. Most would keep other sorts of treasures in all sorts of places, in their proverbial treasure chests. Love letters are kept in drawers. Photos in photo albums. Toys in toy closets. Blog posts, of course, precious that they are, are kept online.

But what if you can keep your blog posts in “treasure chests” of their own? This is what Performancing’s Treasure Theme for WordPress is all about. Each blog post is kept enclosed in its own box–or what you can call its treasure box. This is very appropriate for bloggers who want to consider each and every published post as precious ad gold and gems.

Another classic from Performancing Themes for WordPress, the Treasure Theme is a collaboration with designer Randa Clay, who has done various other Splashpress Media designs.

Treasure Theme is optimized for use with WordPress 2.7 and above. It supports threaded comments, post classes, image captions and gallery classes introduced in this version of WordPress.

Download the Treasure Theme for WordPress here.
See a live preview here.

Tags: Announcements, free, performancing, Themes, treasure

Categories: Themes

4 Comments

Good news to Performancing Themes users who have upgraded to the latest version of WordPress (currently at 2.7.1). We have upgraded most of our theme releases for compatibility with WordPress 2.7+. While the previous theme releases will still work, some might be missing the new functionalities that WP 2.7+ offers, such as post classes, threaded comments, and the like.

You might wish to check out the latest versions of the following:

• Blue Laptop
• College Theme
• Dark Laptop
• Estranged
• Gangway
• Modern Paper
• News Theme
• Nightlife
• Nitrous
• One in a Million
• Photopress
• Redbook
• Rubidious
• Simplicity
• Story Theme
• TDAge
• ‘Tis the Season
• Too Newsy

While only a few core files were changed in these, we would recommend backing up your existing theme file, uploading the whole thing, and copying over any modifications you have made, just to be sure.

We are also working on upgrading the other themes, and we’re also just about ready to release this May’s Performancing Theme for WordPress.

Categories: Announcements

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We are pleased to announce the January, 2009 Performancing Theme release: Too Newsy. The Too Newsy Performancing Theme for WordPress is a three-column WordPress theme that uses minimal images and earthy colors, contributing to a touch of elegance.

The theme features widget-ready sidebars, which can accommodate several different image dimensions (suitable for button and banner ads). The theme is the first Performancing Theme to support new WordPress 2.7 features out of the box:

• Threaded and paginated comments
• Post classes
• Image captions and gallery classes

Another highlight of Too Newsy is the use of the sidebar for snippets of the latest posts in a pre-defined category (which is by default the “features” category). This can be useful for bloggers who wish to highlight certain posts, such that they are not pushed down too soon by newer ones. The theme also supports gravatars out of the box.

Too Newsy is another collaboration with Splashpress Media designer Sophia Lucero, who previosuly brought us the Rubidious Theme, and various other Splashpress Media blog designs.

Usage Notes

You would need to make some sidebar edits, either through widgets or on the sidebar.php file itslf. This is particularly for the features column, where you can define a category that will have a few posts as “sticky” on the sidebar.

Also, you would need to edit the menu.php file once the theme is installed, so you can define the header and footer links. This menu is actually an unordered list (UL) and you can add or remove items as needed, and as long as the navigation bar does not get too crowded.

Update

We’ve received some complaints about the widget-capability of the theme, and apparently there was a small bug in sidebar.php that prevented widgets from properly appearing in sidebar 2. The download files have been updated (below) to fix that. If you’ve already installed Too Newsy, then you can simply replace style.css and sidebar.php.

Do note that the widgetized areas appear right below the blurb (for sidebar 1) and right after blogroll (for sidebar 2).

Download Too Newsy Theme

Too Newsy for WordPress download

See a live theme preview here.

Categories: Themes

38 Comments

We are pleased to announce the November Performancing WordPress Theme: TDAge

A free, public release version of design guru Thord Daniel Hedengren’s Swedish-language blog, TDAge is a light-blue themed design with big, bold feed and “about” images, and large-font headers. TDAge also has easy access links to a blog’s pages and categories from the headers, and has a clean-cut pre-defined template for use as an archive summary page.

TDAge is a pun for TDH, which stands for–you guessed it!–Thord Daniel Hedengren, who has developed various designs for Splashpress Media, including the Blog Herald, Jack of All Blogs, Blog Network Watch, Blogger Jobs, Bloggy Award, Audival, Wisdump, Devlounge, and many more. Thord has also collaborated with us on other Performancing WordPress Theme releases: One in a Million and Estranged Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: blue, tdh, Themes, thord, two column

Categories: Themes

14 Comments

The word “Nitrous” has a motorsport connotation to it, given the use of Nitrous Oxide (or N20) in increasing the power output of engines, and hence giving that all-important boost in acceleration and speed in times of need. This is the concept behind the Nitrous Theme for WordPress. Nitrous is a fast-loading theme that gives you straight-cut, no-nonsense presentation. The design loads fast, with use of lightweight images. The grey and blue color scheme also contribute to that European touring car feel. I can almost feel the wind in my hair!

One interesting feature of Nitrous is that nested pages are automatically added to the top navigation bar as nested dropdown menus. This way you have easy access to your static pages–including the nested ones or the “subpages”–without cluttering up the navigation area with text.

Nitrous is yet another collaboration between Performancing and Brian Gardner, released as a free monthly theme by Performancing Themes.

Update: Nitrous has been updated for compatibility with WordPress 2.7 and up. Download the latest version here.

Click here to preview the theme.
Click here to download the theme.

Categories: Themes

18 Comments

Rubidious is a three-column theme sporting deep hues of red and blue. The theme name is based on the chemical element Rubidium, which comes from the Latin term for “deepest red”.

Two light-on-dark sidebars sit on opposite sides of the main content. The left sidebar is called “menu” in the Widgets configuration page (WordPress 2.5), and is ideally made for navigational elements like links various subpages. The theme supports WordPress 2.5’s avatar features, though it should work with WordPress 2.3 just fine.

Update: Rubidious has been updated for compatibility with WordPress 2.7 and up. Download the latest version here.

Click here to preview the theme.
Click here to download the theme.

Categories: Themes

20 Comments

Performancing is pleased to release another great, free WordPress design called the Story Theme.

It’s a three column design with the content on the far left, followed by two sidebars. The color scheme uses a subtle mix of tans, oranges and browns to provide great texture and depth for your blog.

Rounded corners and a unique left margin give the impression that you have just turned the page in a compelling story.

Whether you are writing your blog to tell a story, or engage readers with a product, the Story Theme just may be the perfect choice.

You can preview the theme here.
You can download the Story Theme here.

Categories: Themes

24 Comments