The Falkner Press Premium WordPress Theme is a 3 column, widget-ready, magazine-styled theme that comes with its own admin panel options page and a featured post slideshow on the homepage.

Basic features:

• 3 column
• Widget-ready
• Ad banner management
• Admin panel theme options
• 11 ready-made templates/color schemes
• Featured post slideshow
• Bottom bar

*Requires the latest version of WordPress (2.7 and above).

Screenshot:
Homepage

Admin Panel Theme Options

Falkner Press Theme Series Samples
Glow

Sky

Paint

My Take:
The Falkner Press Premium WordPress Theme is another cool and customizable freemium theme that has some features that most free WordPress themes don’t have. It has a section to display the blog author’s latest tweets, RSS feed subscription and Feedburner chicklet and 125×125 banner ads. Falkner Press is also available in 10 different ready-to-use templates/color schemes to suit anyone’s taste or color preference. You can download the other color schemes from the Falkner Press Theme Series page.

The theme is easy to install like most WordPress themes. The only thing that requires some special configuration are the slideshow and the post thumbnails. To know more about the installation, configuration and requirements of the Falkner Press theme, make sure that you read the instructions in the Falkner Press page or the Readme file included in the theme download. The theme author also included the PSD file for the logo in the theme download so the user can customize the logo to their personal preference.

For those who are interested in using this theme, another thing you need to know is that this theme requires the flickr-rss and twitter for wordpress plugins in order to use the Twitter section and display the author’s latest tweets and also to display your Flickr photostream at the bottom bar.

Download or Preview the Falkner Press Premium WordPress Theme.

Last month, Smashing Magazine released several freebies for designers and bloggers and it included a cool and unique calendar-style free WordPress theme called WP Smashing. I know its a not a new theme but I wanted to share it with you guys and I’m sure some of you haven’t heard of or seen it yet.

Designed and created by Greg Johnson of Bust A Theme for Smashing Magazine, the WP Smashing WordPress theme makes use of the features and functionality of Bust A Theme’s recently released theme called WP Calendar.

WP SMASHING started out as an exercise in displaying WordPress posts in calendar format. The uses for this kind of functionality are obvious and I haven’t come across a plugin or theme that accomplished this goal in the manner I was after.

WP SMASHING accomplishes this by way of a companion plugin, written specifically for this theme. Knowing that not everyone will want to display their posts this way, the plugin offers you the ability to choose how you want to display posts on the index and in the archive — using a calendar or a two-column listing of post excerpts (much like Smashing Magazine). If you choose to display posts as a calendar, the titles of each post are displayed for each day. If the title(s) are larger than the relatively small square allotted for a calendar day, a custom scroll bar is shown allowing the user to scroll through your posts.

WP SMASHING is completely widget-ready and features 4 configurable ’side bars’. One of these side bars is the right column — navigation — on every page except for if/when the calendar is displayed. The other 3 side bars are incorporated into footer. Also integrated into the footer is a contact form which includes validation and also includes options in the companion plugin.

Basic Features:

• Widget-ready
• Theme options page
• Collapsible search form
• XHTML & CSS valid
• Configurable calendar functionality
• Configurable contact form
• Custom plugin

Screenshots:

Homepage

Post page

My Take:
WP Smashing is easily one of the best designed and best looking themes created for Smashing Magazine. Aside from its good looks, it also offers some unique features and functionality that aren’t usually available in free WordPress themes. What makes this theme unique from other WordPress themes is the calendar functionality that lets the user choose to display posts on the homepage in a calendar style layout.

With the WP Smashing plugin created especially for this theme, the WP Smashing Magazine theme can be used with the calendar style homepage or have it display the regular 2 column layout with post excerpts and a traditional sidebar. The WP Smashing theme, with its features and functionality can be used either for a personal blog, portfolio site or for a company blog.

The WP Smashing theme has a collapsible search form/bar found on the upper right part of the theme. To use it, just click on the magnifying glass graphic to expand then type in the keyword/search term. This theme also has a widgetized footer where the user can display categories, latest posts, recent comments and other blog content. The post page also has an area to display banner ads so if you’re running ads or affiliate banners on your blog, you won’t have to worry about editing the file because the theme author already prepared it for you.

Once again, another cool free WordPress theme this time courtesy of Smashing Magazine and Bust A Theme. Thank you guys for sharing this cool and unique theme with us. More power and looking forward to more quality free WordPress themes in the near future.

NOTE: To download this theme, you’ll have to register first because the WP Smashing WordPress theme is only available for Bust A Theme members. Nothing to worry because registration is FREE.

Preview or Download the WP Smashing WordPress theme.

Smashing Magazine definitely loves their readers, especially those who have WordPress blogs. Why? Because they’ve recently released another free premium quality WordPress theme called Magazeen, a 2 column, magazine type theme created by the WeFunction Design Agency.

Here’s a little introduction from the guys over at WeFunction:

“We’ve created the Magazeen theme to try and pump as much style and functionality into a WordPress theme to give people something they might not expect from their standard WordPress theme. There really is very few limits to what WordPress handle, so we’ve built in a lot of custom features and options to give people a little taste of what is possible, and how some small functionality tweaks can make a huge difference to the overall experience of browsing a blog. On top of that we’ve wrapped all that functionality up in a really cool and modern theme, with nice big title fonts, and a stylish colour scheme.

Features:

• 2 column
• Widget-ready
• jQuery Latest Image Showcase
• Related Posts Drop Down
• Latest Posts & Featured Posts
• Bottom bar
• Works with IE 7, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari
• XHTML and CSS compliant

Screenshot:

My Take:
The Magazeen WordPress theme was designed with typography, grids and magazine layout as the main focus and I believe that the authors/designers achieved that. Magazeen is not your standard WordPress theme or typical magazine theme. The authors added a lot of style and functionality to it. For me, the features that stand out and make the Magazeen theme unique are the jQuery Latest Image Showcase and the Related Posts Dropdown.

jQuery Latest Image Showcase

The latest posts are displayed and presented graphically by thumbnails that are automatically created using the Tim Thumb script, same script thats used in my blog’s theme. Post title appear when the mouse is hovered over the thumbnails. Its a good way to promote and encourage visitors to check out other blog posts.

Related Posts Dropdown

This is another tool to encourage visitors to explore the blog and check out related posts. These are found at the bottom of each featured post or most recent published displayed in the homepage and is displayed by clicking on the category name.

The Magazeen theme is widget-ready and come with custom widgets that you can use on the sidebar, like the Latest Posts and Featured Posts which can be activated and managed via the theme’s admin panel inside the WP dashboard. It also has a bottom bar or section in the footer where you can display categories or other content and information about your blog (which can be managed via the theme’s option page within the WP dashboard).

Regarding the color scheme, I know some of you might not like it but I think its a stylish color scheme. Anyways, if you really don’t like it, especially the color pink, you can easily change that by editing the theme’s stylesheet (style.css file). Same goes with the fonts which I know some of you might find too big, especially the post title font. Other than that, there’s nothing bad you can say about this theme. Great design, great layout, typography and functionality.

Overall, I can say that the Magazeen WordPress theme is one cool magazine theme that’s full of style and feature-rich. I’m sure many WordPress users would love to use this theme on their blogs. Kudos to the WeFunction Design Agency and of course to Smashing Magazine for releasing this beautiful WordPress theme!

Preview or Download the Magazeen WordPress theme.

Tulus 2.0 is a beautiful 2 columned WordPress theme designed by Bat of InfoMalaya.

Hi there, if you want to try this theme, just download it. If you like to appreciate my work on this theme, just do it by drop me an email or just leave the footer that links to me on your blog..That’s all, have a nice day.. :) Ops, why this theme named Tulus? In Malay words, Tulus means sincere..quite odd right? :) If you found any bug in this theme, please inform me via the comment section. Thanks a lot.

Basic features:

• 2 columns
• Right sidebar
• Bottom bar
• Tested on Firefox, IE 7 & Opera

Screenshot:

My Take:
Tulus 2.0 is a simple but elegantly designed WordPress theme. The guys from InfoMalaya did a really good job with it and we could expect more beautiful themes from these guys. I would like to see this theme in a 3 column version which is quite popular these days. If you know a little of CSS, you can customize the theme yourself and add the second sidebar and other modifications. Looking at the files, I can say that this theme is easy to modify especially for those with some knowledge in CSS and hacking WordPress themes.

Unfortunately for widget fans, Tulus 2.0 is still not widget-ready at this time so you’ll have to wait the author to fix that or someone else to do it. ll like this theme and I’m sure most of you guys would like it too. I give this theme a 4 out of 5.

Preview or Download the Tulus 2.0 WordPress theme.

UPDATE: 09/03/07
While browsing through my files, I found the customization kit for the Dark Black theme. The kit is what you’ll need to create your own customized header for this theme. If you want it, just leave a comment with your email address and I’ll send it to you.

UPDATE: 08/05/07
I found out from Nemo’s comment that OneMoreRevision can’t be accessed at this time. If anyone wants to have this theme, just leave a comment with your email address and I’ll send the zip file to your inbox.

Dark Black is a beautiful theme scheme created OneMoreRevision for the popular Dark theme by Bartelme. Dark Black works exactly as the original theme and the only difference is the color scheme.

The Dark Black theme has been tested on WordPress 2.1.3 and browsers like Firefox, Safari, IE 6 & 7. It’s been validated as XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0 compliant and supports the following WordPress plugins:

• flickrRSS
• Gravatar
• Ultimate Tag Warrior
• WP-PageNavi

You can also download the Dark Black customization kit to create a personalized logo. Right now, the kit doesn’t include instructions so you’ll have to figure it out yourself.

Screenshot:

My Take:
The Dark Black is a beautiful “dark” WordPress theme. If you love dark themes, you’ll definitely love this one and I’m pretty sure you’ll be downloading it soon afterwards. Personally, I like it more than the original theme. I think the color scheme suits the design better. The author, Brad Bowen did a really good job with this theme.

When I first saw this theme, I was tempted to use it here on JaypeeOnline but changed my mind because I know some readers might have a hard time reading my posts with the dark background. IMO, this theme would be fine for personal blogs or photoblogs but not for blogs that have lengthy or wordy posts.

The only drawback that I can see for this theme is that it isn’t widget-ready. Although it might not be long before someone decides to make this theme widget-ready. So for those who use widgets, you’ll just have to wait. I give this theme a 4.5 out of 5.

Check out or Download the Dark Black theme for WordPress.