Welcome to the third edition of Thursday Themesday here at Gilroy Review!

As is evident from even a cursory examination of my blogs I’m a big fan of three column WordPress themes.  I appreciate the fact that one can share so much more data in so much less space than a two column theme.  So imagine my excitement when I discovered Quadruple Blue by WPDesigner- a four column WordPress theme!

Now, the biggest drawback with three column themes is that they frequently appear overcrowded – there are simply too many different gadgets and widgets competing for your attention.  One would imagine this problem would be even worse with a four column theme. But, somehow, Quadruple Blue avoids this problem as the screenshot to the right (from Mostly Harmless by Brian Curd) shows.  Of course, no theme is bulletproof once the actual blogger gets hold of it.  Check the other two screenshots below for examples of more crowded uses of Quadruple Blue on iPentimento|Genealogy and More and HaloClix respectively.

The only real flaw I found with this theme was that the primary text container was too narrow to fit a banner ad in.  Not only would this be useful for monetizing the blog, but also simply for using larger images in your post as well.  Fortunately, as the HaloClix blog shows this can easily be changed just by modifying the CSS and it still remains a remarkably clean theme.

What you can’t see in these screenshots (since they focus on the top part of the blog) is that the two right sidebars actually “end”, leaving a “double-wide” white column below them which could effectively be used as a fifth (non-widgeted) column.  Oh, did I fail to mention that all three sidebars are fully widget enabled?  I’m telling you this is an absolutely brilliant theme.

Personally, I also think it’s a little too blue, but that is, of course, easily changeable in the CSS since it doesn’t actually use any internal images.  All you’d need to do is change the HTML color codes and voila – you’ve got a red, green, purple or whatever theme instead.  If you’re a fan of widgets, you seriously need to check out Quadruple Blue!

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• Thursday Themesday: Om Nom Monster (0)
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Welcome to the second edition of Thursday Themesday here at Gilroy Review!

After starting out my blog dedicated to reviewing every work by (or related to) my favorite author, F. Paul Wilson, I knew I needed to find just the right theme to showcase those posts.  Unfortunately, I spent so much time trying to find the theme, that the blog has been very slow to get off the ground.  However, I knew my quest was over when I found Scruffy by South African web designer Cobus Bester.

Scruffy WordPress Theme-

Cobus describes Scruffy simply as “A WordPress theme with a unique “grunge” design“, but it is oh, so much more than that!

Here are some of the features that come with this gorgeous theme-

• Grid based design and layout, built on the popular 960.gs css framework
• Extensive stylesheet with declarations for all areas of the theme
• Easy to customise/expand
  • Original Photoshop files (PSDs) available for download!
• Widgetized sidebar with styling for all default WordPress widgets
• Custom paragraph styles-
  • download
  • info
  • update
  • warning
• Pull quotes
• Table styling
• Page templates included
• Fully supports WordPress’s gallery feature
• 100% Valid XHTML and CSS

So, if th elook of the theme wasn’t enough to sell you, all of those features certainly should!  There’s not really that much more to say about Scruffy.  I did a fair amount of customization for my site, but because the theme is built well and the PSDs are available for download it was relaly easy to do.

My favorite part of this WordPress theme is the way the widget boxes are stylized so it’s not just a series of lists and/or ads hanging out in the sidebar, but appears as what it is: actual content.  I also really love the scrawled “notes” on the theme like the “latest post” and “comments” with the arrow pointing to the relevant part of the theme.

Scruffy is as close to perfect as a theme can be and Cobus is to be praised for all of the hard work he’s done on it.  He has a several other WordPress Themes available as well at his website, so even if you don’t like the look of Scruffy, check out his other themes.

Related posts

• Thursday Themesday: Quadruple Blue (2)
• Thursday Themesday: Om Nom Monster (0)
• Three Of A Kind Comedy Tour Comes To Gilroy (0)
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Merry Christmas Gilroy!
As my Christmas present to all of my blog reader(s) here at Gilroy Review I’ve decided to share my latest obsession: WordPress Themes. If you’re not a WordPress blogger then you can skip these (hopefully) weekly Thursday Themesday articles, or you can start a blog of your own It’s much easier than it first appears!

Since this is the very first Thursday Themesday and it’s Christmas Day I figured we’d go with something lighthearted. I found the Om Nom Monster WordPress Theme when I was looking for a kids’ theme for one of my blogs. I never did find quite what I was looking for but, as is usually the case, I found several intriguing themes for other blogs and for future projects as well.

Om Nom Monster Kids WordPress Theme-

It seems that Om Nom Monster wasn’t originally created with kids in mind, but it seems perfect to me. According to Lindsay Carruth of Sneakykitty-

So there i was, stumped. I was trying to come up with a new theme for my blog. I’d already done a few that i liked, but didn’t want to use. They were all missing a certain Something.

And then i got hungry. I felt the urge to devour a small village of orphaned meerkats. What else could slake my thirst, my voracious appetite for… oh fuggit OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM AHAHAHAHA NOM NOM NOM #@!)(%^*)#!D++NO CARRIER

I guess that pretty much sums up this lighthearted blog theme.  When I first installed the theme from the WordPress Theme Directory it did have a few problems, but they were easily fixed even by a low to intermediate deisgner such as myself.

First off the border around the main text area is a harsh red for some reason when the rest of the theme is all in soft pinks.  Opening up the CSS Style Sheet (Appearance > Editor in your WP admin panel) I merely changed the HTML color codes for border-top, border-right, and border-left in the #wrapperborder-bottom in the #content section.

I also changed the width in both the #wrapper and #content sections (from 450px & 440px to 488px & 478px) in order to better accommodate standard sized advertising banners within (and around) the posts.

Finally, in order to make the sidebars clash less, I changed-

.widget {
background: #ffffff;
margin-top: 10px;
border: 1px solid #ccc;
}

to

.widget {
background: #ffc0c0;
a: #9D1961
margin-top: 10px;
}

The end result can be seen at Zaira’s Disney Pin Trading blog (pictured left).

It took me less than an hour to install and modify the theme and that includes the time to recustomize the Google Adsense ads and eBay listings to blend with the site.  Zaira and I both think it’s absolutely adorable, though and that’s what really matters.

What do you think of the Om Nom Monster WordPress blog theme?  Feedback is always appreciated!  And if you have a favorite theme you’d like to see reviewed in a future Thursday Themesday, just leave a note below.

Related posts

• Thursday Themesday: Scruffy (2)
• Thursday Themesday: Quadruple Blue (2)