Templates“Simply Ornate” Free WordPress Theme

“Simply Ornate” Free WordPress Theme

My newest freebie wordpress theme is ready for download. This theme was designed with the main focus being on patterns and typography. It uses patterns from my pattern site; DinPattern.com and comes in 5 flavors.

I tried to make this theme as basic as possible. It uses one plugin (which you can find in the plugin folder within the zip file) to include a flickr feed. Just drop the “flickrrss.php” file in your plugins directory and activate within the dashboard. You can set how many photos appear in the feed, I’d suggest staying with multiples of 4 to keep the design balanced.

The theme also includes a prototype-based tab effect (via stereotabs) that allows users to browse latest posts, comments and tags. The front page is set up to show excerpts of your 4 latest posts, and also includes a mini-nav in the upper right side to allow for page navigating.

The theme also uses a ton of png transparency that does work cross-browser (even in IE 6). Click the thumbnails below for screen shots.

Simply Ornate Twirl IISimply Ornate Royal RedSimply Ornate DARKSimply Ornate Pixel GreySimply Ornate Pinkie

Demo Simply Ornate “Twirl II”

Download:

Please leave the footer intact as is, with links to both EvanEckard.com and DinPattern.com for usage. Feel free to modify any themes as well. If you do, send me a link so I can check it out – Enjoy!

Comments (26)

  • Look nice. Thanks for sharing 🙂

  • Hey – i love the theme! its amazing!
    Question though – how do i get a full post to show on the main page instead of having to click each individual post to show the picture i uploaded? Ive been trying to search for the CSS code, but i am not as knowledgeable as you are, im sure.
    any help?
    thanks,
    Joe!

  • Very nice Template, would be great, if there is any widget-function in the sidebar & gravatar-support at the comments!

  • Gorgeous, thanks for sharing your work! To be the picky beggar, I agree with Markus/#10 about a widget-friendly version. Regardless, many thanks for sharing.

    -ma

  • Great-looking theme, but for some reason the sidebar tabs won’t display. Any idea why?

  • Nevermind – turns out it was a plugin conflict with a Lightbox plugin I was using.

    I did notice a bug in your code, though, specifically pertaining to the Latest Comments in the sidebar. All comments in the list are shown as belonging to the same post, which just happens to be the bottom post shown in the Latest Posts tab. Do you have a solution for this?

  • @Jim

    Yeah, I got an email about the correct category not appearing in the comments. I also had an extra closing div in the footer.

    The zip files for the themes above have been updated, and until I can find a category fix, I just pulled that out for now. You’ll notice no category now appears at http://honker.evaneckard.com

    Also did a few minor tweaks to the CSS files – some of the comment link styles weren’t cascading down.

    And regarding widgets – I need to do some more learning to figure out how to build that in. I never use them, and always forget to stitch them in when building a theme. Time for “Dynamic Sidebar 101” for me.

  • @Joe – to get a full post on the main page, you’ll have to change the php call for the excerpt to the content.

    change line 24 from

    “php the_excerpt”

    to

    “php the_content”

  • Perfect. That’s effective enough. 🙂

  • this is for sure lovely themes!!

  • Evan. Great theme. Been following your design for a little while now, and decided to use simply ornate as my personal venture into blogging. I’ve figured out how to widgetize the sidebars:

    It’s pretty easy:

    In functions.php add this code:

    if ( function_exists(‘register_sidebar’) )
    register_sidebar(array(
    ‘before_widget’ => ”,
    ‘after_widget’ => ”,
    ‘before_title’ => ”,
    ‘after_title’ => ”,
    ));

    Then, in sidebar.php add this code:

    Now, just have to style it all. Enjoy!

  • Wow, is a Amazing Theme. Great.

    Now, we can i the sidebar widgetize .

    Sorry my englisch is not so good.

  • Wow! This is a great theme….thanks!

  • You are amazing!Thank you for your all themes.Thanks,thanks and thanks again…

  • Evan, I love this theme so much and I’m currently in the process of modifying it for my art blog. Thankyou so much for the time and effort you’ve put into making it~!

  • is there any change to move ”Continue Reading”
    if it is possible how can i?

  • Hi Evan,

    this is a great Theme. I have this on my Site. Now I have a problem.
    Can you make this perfekt Theme “Widget Ready” ?

    Please.

    Merry X-Mas and a happy new Jahr

    P.S. Sorry, my english is not so good.

  • Is there a way to display a photo with the post in the main column on the home page?

  • beautiful…
    doesent work on IE7 though 🙁

  • Evan,

    Can you be more specific about putting the whole post on the main page please. I tried waht you said here:

    change line 24 from

    “php the_excerpt”

    to

    “php the_content”

    But it didn’t work for me. Which files do I change this on?
    Any other info I need?

    Thanks man.

  • hi evan, can you make your theme “Notepad Chaos” compatible with wordpress 2.7?

    It seems “notepad chaos” widgets and other functions are not working with WordPress 2.7

    thanks in advance

  • Dude, Simply Ornate rocks. Don’t be discouraged by the lack of downloads
    I’m gonna use it as my new blog template. Peace.

  • Hi, Evan!

    Is Simply Ornate compatible with the last wordpress version (2.7) ?

  • This is exactly what I was looking for and I have been searching for days. I am wondering it there is a way for this template side bar friendly. Thanks!

  • Hi this is kind of of off topic but I was wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding expertise so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience. Any help would be enormously appreciated!

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