A New Theme For A New Year
What a busy month it has been so far! I’ve been spending most of my time behind the scenes here at MAMD working on my new theme. It’s one of the premium magazine themes designed by Brian Gardner. His Revolution series caught my eye not too long ago and comes in four flavors: News, Sports, Technology, and Magazine. The theme I chose is the News theme. I’m pretty excited about this next level I’ve taken my blog to and I hope you feel the same.
Brian’s skills really shine through in this series of themes. All are well-thought out and include many features. Seeing the News theme just clicked with the way I wanted to enhance my blog. As you can see, the home page offers me the ability to show excerpts from quite a few posts in different categories all at once. Included on the home page is the collection of tabs at the left. This is something I’ve noticed on other blogs for a while now and I absolutely love this feature. It’s a real space-saver and promotes interactivity. I’ve narrowed it down to two categories, but it has the potential of going to four if I wanted.
The top navigation is built to handle sub-navigational links as well. Currently, my pages (black bar) don’t have child links, but some of the category links (red bar) have them. Most blogs have them everywhere you go (including my previous theme), but these encourage exploration in my opinion.
There’s a main sidebar with two mini ones beneath it. And there’s a breadcrumb added to the top of each page. Another bit of new-ness is the featured video. That area is something of an experiment for me right now as I’m not certain how reliable it will be to have something from YouTube posted there only to have it taken down without notice. But we’ll see. I hope you enjoy it.
To be honest, it took some effort to figure my way around the code, but in retrospect, it wasn’t that bad. It actually helped me learn something more about PHP and CSS. It’s a new way of running a blog and so requires a new way of thinking. Once you have the concept down, you make your posts as you normally would, while keeping an eye on the categories so they fall into the right place on the home page.
While there is a place to refer to for help with understanding how the theme works on his site, I would like to have seen a file included in the download to have everything together. Kudos goes to Brian, though, for making himself available to answer my questions. (I do plan on writing another post where I’ll share what I’ve learned about the inner workings of the News theme so that future users may benefit from it.)
As of this writing, any one of the Revolution themes can be purchased at a reduced rate of $79.95. If you’re looking for a feature-packed and professional looking theme, consider Brian’s designs.
I’m very interested in knowing what you think, so please drop me a comment to give me your opinion.
A big high-five goes out to Kyle and Mike for their assistance. 
UPDATE: And another big thanks goes out to Garry for his assistance, too.
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About the Author: Mark Sierra is an online entrepreneur and web publisher. As the owner of StarFrost Media, he continues to add blogs and products to his online portfolio designed to help inform readers on software and blogging, teach them to be more productive, and even learn how to make money online.
Tish | Jan 21, 2008 | Reply
Wow, Mark. The place looks awesome!!
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Tay - Super Blogging | Jan 21, 2008 | Reply
Wow, I love it! This looks absolutely perfect.
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Mark | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
@Tish and Tay
Thank you so much!
Seesai | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
Looks clean. The only change I’d suggest is to move the RSS sign-up right above the comment area.
Debbie Dolphin | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
A Clean Professional Theme,
For Blogging your Drum in the New Year!
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Mark | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
@Seesai
Thank you. That’s a good idea. I’m sure I’ll be tweaking this thing for days or maybe weeks to come so I’ll keep that in mind.
@Debbie
You know it! Thanks.
Christy | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
Looks amazing, very professional, great idea:)
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Mark | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
@Christy
Thank you!
Grace | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
This theme works great! No bugs found so far.
Grace’s last blog post..Timeless Posts vs News Posts
Mark | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
@Grace
Thank you for saying so. There are some things in the code that I’m going to optimize, but so far, so good.
Kyle Eslick | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
Wooooot! LOVE IT!
Looks great Mark! I’m going to be playing around with all the categories and such for awhile.
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Mark | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
@Kyle
Thanks, buddy! Click away.
Mike | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
Sweet! Looks great, buddy. Even better than the sneak peek you gave me a while back
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Mark | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
@Mike
Thanks you, sir!
Brown Baron | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
Fantastic! Great decision there buddy. Excuse me while I drool
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Mark | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
@Baron
That’s okay, buddy — it has a “drool-proof” feature built right in.
Bush Mackel | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
Very clean but honestly I liked your previous incarnation a bit more as it seemed to have a BIT more personality. Just my two cents. (#):)
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K-IntheHouse | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
Worth every penny, buddy! I am loving this theme.. the tabbed feature is definitely drool-worthy and I would love to see your code tweaks in the coming weeks. I am going to leaving my fingerprints all over checking out the new features.
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Madhur Kapoor | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
Great theme buddy . Looks really nice. Now i think i should go for a new theme too.
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Michael Eyer | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
Great theme, love the look.
Mark | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
@Michael
Thank you for taking the time to say so.
Mark | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
@K
Hey buddy, thanks! When I write my post about the theme and its inner working, I’ll be sure to highlight some of the tweaks I’ve made.
@Madhur
I appreciate you saying so, buddy.
Mark | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
@Bush
Well, it’s a work in progress, so you can expect some more of that “drummer” flare.
Full Time Blogger :: Keiron | Jan 24, 2008 | Reply
I like it! Not sure I’d pay for it though - maybe I would, I always seem to start to design a theme then it goes horribly wrong and I end up defaulting back to a freebie!
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Mark | Jan 25, 2008 | Reply
@Keiron
Thanks! I don’t know if I could design one necessarily, but working with something that’s already there is definitely easier for me. Good to see you here.