Ares Framework brings you the simple theme but with a Theme Options Page for the Wordpress admin. (Download link at the bottom)

About the Framework

I’ve tried my best to comment everything, and certainly it’s great to know some little PHP or coding logic to understand how I did most of it. But, I’m not going to spend too much time talking about this one because, I have the last framework in production which will contain more of a documentation behind the setup I chose, and a little navigation behind the scenes.

Reminder that it is not a real “finished” theme. It’s just a developing theme, so there are errors, browser compatibility errors, and maybe extra lines of codes that aren’t needed. However, the theme does work, and for the most part is stable enough to release. If there’s anything major, like it completely didn’t zip, or a file is definitely missing, let me know and I’ll re-look into it.

Some Features

There’s a temporary demo here. It’s basically the Athena Framework, but with an options panel in the Wordpress admin. The options are stylized minimally, and of course you can add more options or take them out.

There’s a PHP file for CSS which is imported so that you can use it for any changes in CSS as well as my framework files are located in one folder for the most part (labeled cle-framework). This is to ensure an organized and clean work and everything dealing with the framework is in that folder (besides the PHP CSS file, which I believe is in the includes/css folder).

Not much to say about this theme. If you have any problems with it, suggestions on better coding, certainly just leave a comment and I’ll check it out.

Outside Resources

I’m not taking a great deal of credit for doing this on my own, or I did everything in it, so here are the resources I used to complete this theme and theme options. I give lots of credit for them and releasing their knowledge and resources for free, and so that’s why this theme is out there for free for future wordpress developers that would like to take their theme to the next level with theme options.

How to: Create a Theme Options Page for your Wordpress Theme

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to that site, and copied their code and dissected one by one. It’s definitely the right tutorial to start your foot off wet when dealing with theme options. Check out the comments as well for different problems and fixes.

Create and Options Page for your Wordpress Theme

The tutorial probably looks the same, but again, I believe the comments here helped me strip slashes from html input in my text fields. Good resource to look in.

White Board Framework

Probably my favorite blank wordpress framework. It really just gave me the basic functionality of a wordpress theme and I was able to put what I want in it. By doing that, I’ve been making sites/blogs with my framework and it increased production time on so many levels because I can almost type out all the classes and ids that I put by heart. It’s great to have your own framework, and so if you need a blank one to get rid of extra things, White Board is the way to go.

After Thoughts

I hope you enjoy the framework. I’m hoping that it’ll be easy to understand and go through to make your modifications. If you guys did anything cool, show it off here. And, in about a month or so check out my new theme/framework, which is going to have a few more page templates like a portfolio, or home page so that it can start to look like a real site. Thanks for checking my site out and good luck with your Wordpress developments.

Download Ares Framework

Here’s a quick business card template for those that need a template with all the guides (For Photoshop).

This is a blank PSD Template for a Business Card. Yes there’s a lot out there, so I just made one for you guys just in case you were looking around in the downloads category. Standard size for the business card and has guides for the all the bleed zones, cutting zones, and safety margins.

Download Business Card PSD Template

Enjoy the resource, and be on the look out for more downloads and resources.

Athena Framework – WordPress Theme Framework

Athena Framework is a WordPress framework theme that’s more than just a blank slate as you may have noticed from other frameworks. It’s actually styled to the point that it can be usable and through slight modifications, it can be a totally different theme. In addition, it contains many common functions and features that a lot of my clients request or a lot of blogs have been using such as the Share This Post feature that allows you to share the current entry to Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, and Delicious. (You can add more social networking sites simply by adding the necessary share codes – 45+ Most Popular Social Bookmarking Codes for Wordpress)

Another feature are the widgetized areas. There are 2 in the side bar which makes the framework capable of being a three (3) column layout, and also 4 widgetized areas in the footer which makes those trendy big footers you see running around lately on many blogs and sites.

Athena Framework also features an additional page template file to allow you to have a page with a sidebar, and a page without a sidebar. By simply selecting the Full Width Page template in the template section, you can quickly achieve that change.

This framework theme features some CSS3 Elements for experimental purposes, and also a Jquery Navigation Menu. There may be some frequent updates as I see some errors along the way or if you guys see any, so make sure to keep updated by following me on twitter or checking my site.

Download Athena Wordpress Framework

Thanks for checking out my theme and if you have any feedback, suggestions, or bugs just leave a comment. Keep out on the lookout for version 2 which will feature some Admin Theme Options.

Update: I have discontinued this theme. There will no longer be any modifications to it as Version 2 of this theme aka Ares Framework is released. Most of the bugs that were in Athena Framework are fixed in Ares Framework. However, Ares Framework does include the Admin Options. If you don’t like that bulk in your theme then you can still download version 1 of Athena Framework.

I gave out quite a few web resources that are almost pivotal to web development these days. They save so much time, and gives us a better hold and control on how we create websites in today’s world. Here are more tools and resources that will help your web development faster, efficient, and can I say more fun?

Placeholder Images and Graphics

Like most developers, we all come to the point where we have to go through the mock-up templates or open up Photoshop to create some placeholder images so that we can see how the website design looks with some images. I don’t know how much time I had to load up a whole new program just to make a blank image that fits a certain size so that I can upload it and then implement it into the website. Well, that portion of time is now saved by this really creative site (great minimalist design as well). Placehold.it is a site where you can simply put dimensions at the end and voila, you have yourself a placeholder image to place on your site.

There are obviously similar sites to Placehold.it but I find this one the most aesthetically pleasing in addition to a very easy name to remember without having to bookmark it.

Dummy Text and Content

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a,

If you haven’t seen this, then it’s time to get with the times. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text that designers and developer use to also placehold some content to fill the page rather than putting a bland “Content Here” or “Coming Soon“. You’ll never know how real content looks until you start having lots of it. So instead of trying to write a few paragraphs, you can simply generate paragraphs of these “Lorem Ipsum” text with the following generators. One is plugin through Firefox and the other is a simple site that generates it.

The add-on for Mozilla Firefox is pretty simple to use. You click on the button and you generate how many paragraphs you want and copy/paste it to your website.

This site is also a pretty good site for generating text since it doesn’t only provide just “Lorem ipsum” but also other content filling ways in case you think the Latin language of Lorem Ipsum seems dull or intimidating.

Wordpress Dummy Content

So you’re creating a Wordpress Theme but can’t be bothered with making pages, categories, tags, posts, and testing out the different tags like headings and blockquotes? Using Wordpress dummy content can help with that. All you do is download the XML file and then go to your Wordpress Admin and click on the Tools section and finally Import. You want to click on “Wordpress” to import posts, comments, and attachments from another Wordpress file. There’s also a plugin for this that you can use to do the same. Either way, your wordpress site will be filled with content so you can start styling and making sure you don’t miss a thing.

Frameworks – Wordpress, CSS, HTML, and More

You’re at a point of development where you’re doing the same thing over and over–Declaring your doctype, resetting your CSS margins and padding, or creating a 2 column website, etc… It’s time for you to use a framework. Frameworks are basically premade files that has common and tedious coding already inputted. When you use a framework, you’ll be immediately jumping into styling your website or coding in extra functions. You have to be careful though because some frameworks may not be suited for you. In my experience, I’ve used plenty of frameworks, and 50% of the time, the framework was just too much for me at times. There’s nothing wrong with that, but sometimes there are things in a framework that most developers don’t really need.

The best way to combat this is to make your own. I’m currently making a wordpress framework for myself that’s simple to use but at the same time has the functions I need to make the rest of my sites. Although all frameworks may not be for everyone, there’s usually one or two that fits into your field, and if there isn’t, take a framework and perhaps modify it to make your own. (Of course, take into consideration the licenses involved if you decide to release it to the public).

Here are some of my favorite frameworks for various projects:

Wordpress

I’ve only used 2-3 frameworks for Wordpress in my career and I have to say that all of them have been proven useful. Here’s my list of my favorites:

Thematic is my most favorite theme that has the most features and functions built into it. There’s a lot of magic going around in the back coding of the Thematic framework. There’s hooks and actions that you can use to add anything to your theme. In fact, this very site right here is built on thematic. Although it’s very simple, I had no problem using the framework to add everything on here from “Post thumbnails” to “Adding an extra footer widget“. By knowing a little php, you can do a lot of things, and with ease. It was also convenient that the framework also included Superfish dropdown menus as well.

Whiteboard is for coders that just needs a basic theme without all the extra stuff so that they can implement what they exactly want in the theme without spending a lot of time removing the fat off from heavily coded frameworks. Whiteboard was created by Brian Purkiss to provide a basic php framework because it was tedious to continuously make all the template files that was needed for Wordpress over and over again. My current framework is actually made from Whiteboard framework since I wanted to build upon a simple framework so I could fully understand what’s in Wordpress and what I can do to change it to what I want.

CSS

CSS frameworks have been very popular lately. They provide premade grids and classes that help layout the structure of the website and all you have to do is fiddle around with the sizes, images, and colors. Have I used a CSS Framework? To be honest, I haven’t used one because I’ve always become accustomed to just using my own or just type the CSS from scratch in addition, I found it more time consuming trying to learn a new framework for CSS when I’m already familiar with my coding. However, it doesn’t mean they aren’t useful or time saving. Check them out and see if they fit for you or not.

Here’s a link to a good blog post about frameworks: Top 12 CSS Frameworks and How to Understand Them

Now aside from actual frameworks for CSS there’s another type of CSS build that many developers use. It’s called a “CSS Reset“. A CSS Reset sheet is basically a file or can be code that basically resets all the styles of common HTML tags for all browsers. Every browser has a different default styling of simple tags like the paragraph tag or a DIV tag. The main differences are usually the margin and paddings that’s attached to them. In order to make sure that all browsers renders your website the same (or close to it), a CSS Reset is used to default everything “0″ and you can start giving numbers from there.

My most preferred CSS Reset is Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset. It’s simple, effective, and covers pretty much every tag for HTML.

Conclusion

There are lots of useful things out in the internet world that can help you save time with your development so you can get your jobs done quicker and save extra work. Why do extra work when you can automate it or find a resource that’s already premade? If there really isn’t nothing out there for you to use as a basis, then take a day off and create a framework or automated tool for yourself such as creating a photoshop action to crop all your big images or creating your own wordpress theme for faster development.

With these tools, I hope you can save yourself some time in which can be used to probably procrastinate more or simply rest and sleep for all those late nights you’ve stayed up to finish a project.

Have any time-saving tools that you like to use or made yourself? Give me a link in the comments below and I’ll check it out.

They’re not blogs, and they’re definitely not just a gallery of pictures. These sites are actual communities or a group of artists put together that strive to push forward the limits of art and graphics and show the art community their talent.

depthcore

Depthcore is probably my favorite art group that release large packs (they call them “Chapters“) of artworks that are usually themed to a subject. All sorts of digital media are included such as graphics, digital drawings, 3D modeling, photography, and even music. This group contains some pretty big designers like Justin Maller, Pete Harrison, Nik Ainley and Jeff Huang.

I enjoy their music and all of the artworks posted in these chapters. With over 30+ chapters, if this is your first time visiting depthcore, then make sure you have some spare time to browse through them. Depthcore has grown a lot since its first establishment in 2002.

Visit Depthcore – http://depthcore.com

The Raster Group

The Raster Group was created in 2001 and is more targeted to digital art and drawings however you will see some other types of art in there chapters as well. Similar to depthcore, Raster is comprised of a group of artists showing their best work.

slashTHREE

slashTHREE is much like the others however containing a different collective of artists and designers. They feature graphics, artwork, music, photography, and even motion videos. One noticeable feature is their forum. Other artists and designers are able to talk to each other and network and even submit artwork to their art packs.

Behance Network

Behance Network is a community that holds a lot of portfolios of designers and artists. They contain many different types of artists, from graphics, and all the way to interior design. If you’re a designer, you should check the portfolios here and even apply for one as they also have a job board that you can check out and even employers themselves will seek for potential workers here.

deviantART

Deviantart is probably the most popular art community that’s out there. Being a very public place, any type of art is posted here. However, some of the quality of the work may not be as great as the other design community listed. (That’s purely based on the fact that deviantart has more quantity of works than the other communities)

deviantART is also a great center for resources and tutorials. Many artists contribute and share their works and resources so others can use them and make great work from them. You can also join communities and groups so you can be around other artists and designers that have similar interests as you.

One of my favorite feature of deviantART is the ability to favorite works and follow artists. With this feature you can always be updated when your favorite artists post a new piece of work or also view your gallery of favorites for inspiration.

Design Flavr

DesignFlavr is not really a community nor a group, but another inspirational design gallery site. I added this in here because it is also another great source of inspiration and showcases art of many different fields. Digital, Web, CG, Flash, Illustrations, and more. You can submit your own, and be featured here as well.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed my post about design communities. These art groups and communities always showcases great work since the submissions to the packs and chapters are selectively chosen and filtered to show the best ones. Thanks for subscribing and following my inspiration posts. If you have other communities in mind, leave a comment and share a link. I’ll see you again next Monday.