Okay that title might be a little ambitious but I truly believe that 281 is different from most WordPress themes. 281 is a joint project between myself and Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising. Neil approached me a while back and we started talking about how there was really no strong WordPress theme that combined slick minimalist aesthetics, speed and search engine optimization. That’s exactly what 281 promises to be.
The point of today’s beta release is to get feedback and lots of it. We want to know what plugins you want to use with 281, what additions you would like to see, adjustments to the design – anything really. You will quickly notice that 281 is very similar to my current theme. Many people have asked me about my theme and if they could use it, so I decided to incorporate it into 281. Next up, what’s with the theme’s name.. 281? Well nothing really, 281 is a favorite number of mine and also happens to be the cubic displacement of modern 4.6 Liter V8 Mustangs.
281 does not use any images or JavaScript. CSS and other files are compressed and PHP has been tinkered with to reduce queries. 281 is based on an older release of K2, so 281 might be easy to play around with if you are familiar with the K2 structure.
Download 281 v0.3 beta (24kB) and extract it to your wp-content/themes folder. Head over to the WordPress admin panel and select 281 from the Presentation » Themes tab. You may also configure some settings from the 281 Options tab.
As Neil and I progress towards a final release we will likely be bundling 281 with documents showing you how to make your WordPress install even more search engine friendly as well as easy ways to tweak 281 to your liking.
Requested Feedback: Please give us your thoughts! Also as a note, this theme has NOT been tested in IE6 or IE7 yet so please keep that in mind.
PaulStamatiou.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress
Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.
With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like PaulStamatiou.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.
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Now TECHNICALLY there is a small bit of JavaScript in the little search field that makes the onfocus stuff work. ;)
You should make a test install of it so we can play with it before downloading. It looks good by the way.
Hahah, yes you are correct on that one. Maybe I should edit my post to say no externally linked JavaScript files. =)
nice .. i just tested in on my local setup and looks really nice. Looks very much similar to your current theme, except the “Pages” block.
The pages block is the only which looked kind of “out of place” in terms of layout.
I did try the theme on IE6 and ended up with ctrl+shift+esc -> End iexplore.exe process :D.
Not sure why IE is freezing with this theme.
Hehe, maybe valid XHTML code freezes IE. :-P I would have liked to have the 2 column main menu but it will only work with short page names so I had to made it single column for better user compatibility.
This looks really cool, good work guys!
hey paul.. how about making a 3 column design? I like the theme.. very clean..
Any benchmark on the speed of 281 comparing with say… the classic theme?
Nice work. The theme is clean and fast. I like minimalist themes and currently use Barthelme. This theme doesn’t appear to support widgets (Calendar, Recent Comments) otherwise I would be tempted to switch.
PS. When I enabled ‘Archives’, I got a ‘404′ using WordPress 2.0.4.
Great theme :P
Great work Paul and Neil, and thanks for sharing.
@menghua: I’m currently tinkering with a three-column layout of this theme.
Really really fast, the problem with those who use tons of scripts and whatnot is that it kills some slow manchines browser. I’m talking about an iBook G4 12″ 2004 model or slower, even 768Mb of ram wont cut it. I have a hard time dealing with hi-tech blog…
That being said , so well done Paul and Thanks for sharing.
I installed the theme and am testing it on IE7. Looks fine to me. I can provide screenshots if you like, Paul. Well done!
Very nice. I like it.
I’m going to continue to toy with this theme. I still have some work to do but will return to it later.
Why the name? Seems random , is that the intent?
Distributing a compress CSS without the original probably not a good idea Paul.
Zeo: That’s true. However, by compressing the CSS file (as well as the other files in the theme) Paul is helping you optimize page load time. Of course you’re always free to edit the file and decompress it if you wish.
Andrew: As Paul said, 281 is “the cubic displacement of modern 4.6 Liter V8 Mustangs.” Wasn’t that obvious? ;-)
nice, my website is just as simple, except i put images and used javascript and i didn’t bother to reduce queries :P
websites with much white space are very rare, and I should say space instead of white space. It’s good to see something like this.
I demand a larger screenshot!
Also, how about a screenshot of the options panel you spoke of?
My one comment would be could you make the link text more distinct from the body text? This is a pet-peeve of mine with most themes. Bloggers have a tendency to add links in the middle of text with nothing to indicate that a link is there if you can’t see it.
Another line of space between posts would be great as well.
Also, how does it handle images, blockquotes, etc, etc?
This is the blog I use for testing wordpress themes, you can get an idea of what to look for.
I love the look of this theme and would like to use it. But I would need to be able to use widgets.
Also, I don’t quite understand the concept of Asides.
It looks great, though, and I would be prepared to help further if you need the input of someone who struggles with code.
John Baker:
It was five minutes work to widgetize the theme, but I agree that it would be a logical upgrade for future releases.
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/8929/techiemonster20061101wc8.png
There is a larger screenshot, for those asking.
Looks good and I agree – widget support would be nice.
@Zeo: Actually, that is the original. :-P While it is hard to work with, I have become adept at editting that by hand. I suppose later down the line I could separate things out nice and logically and recommend tools for compressing the CSS.
Is there any chance to see a live demo?
Hey Marlo, for the time being it is running at http://limeprint.com
Also, it seems like http://www.arizonahospitalityjobs.com/ is running it as well.
Thanks, my bad. I just saw you posted that link earlier in the comments section. Note to self: read all comments before posting.
Very nice theme, thanks Paul for sharing.
@Eli : put three-column layout public please :)
hmm, nice but using a theme derived from a mustang would be blasphemous on my blog! :P
maybe I’ll create one called 1.8T, ha.
seriously though, nice work stam+neil!
Lovely!
@Peter: With Paul’s blessing, I could roll it out in short order – very few changes were made to the original codebase.
What do you say Paul? Green light for my ‘2813′ (3-col) mod? :)
nice work.
Regarding Asides, in the 281 Options page, I only see the ability to select “Inline Options” whereas the description mentions the possibility of showing them in the sidebar.
Also, when chose “inline” with the appropriate category, my “Asides” still show the post title. Is this expected behavior?
Great theme!
@wujimon – similar to how my current site has asides styled, 281 asides show the title. the only difference being that the text is smaller as well as the the metadata only shows the # of comments. As for the possibility of showing them in the sidebar, that was a remnant from the k2 options page. I don’t think the theme will have the ability for sidebar asides as it adds a lot of extra code to get it working. (unless ppl really want it)
Wow, that looks very simple. Looks better in some different font I bet, but that’s really a nice design :P
Please consider a 3 column theme… on the lines ok 3k2
Amazing at what S-P-E-E-D my blog loads now, with this theme enabled!
So far I would like to see (at least) the FlickrRSS-plugin enabled.
Thanks for input. We will be working hard to make the theme better. :)
Right, Paul. 281 is your favorite number, because its my area code and you call me ALL the time, often when I am in class….
Looks nice — but I’ll third the widgets request.
Great theme – but I’m afraid I do have one gripe.
The amount of time shaved off page load by ‘compressing’ the CSS is going to be, at best, less than half a second. Can you please, please consider providing a non-compressed version of the CSS file.
Attempting to make changes requires a lot of extra effort in identifying the structure in the CSS.
If we at least have the ‘original’ spaced CSS file – we can make changes and then, if necessary run it through any one of a number of CSS compression available on the ‘net.
@Brendan: http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/11/01/introducing-281-the-lightning-fast-wordpress-theme/#comment-36280
I think I will be supplying both in the next release. But everything really counts when you’re trying to optimize. For example, there are 2 CSS files for a reason – style.css has the theme info and is what WP reads for the admin panel, 281.css is what the theme actually uses, so as to not have the extra bulk from the theme comments.
Thanks for the mention, Paul.
SEO wise, there are questionnable choices IMO in this theme. Namely, having a post’s title enclosed in h3 tags while secondary stuff like “Recent posts” are enclosed in h2 tags seems very counter-productive to me. Just my 2 SEO-amateur cents.
Ozh, as this is a very early release we have not spent much time on the SEO aspect. In the future we will be providing a document with the theme going into detail about how to make you blog SEO friendly aside from things we have already done in the theme.
Hey Paul, great design and thanks for sharing.
IMO, since eyetracking studies from Jacob Nielsen, Marketing Sherpa and Marketing Experiments all confirm that visitors read on the left and downwards, your main column should be on the left.
Cheers
Lucky
///////////////////////
When will a more definitive version be released ?
I think the Header, Header Description and the Post Titles should be changed to the “light blue” which is either #289ACF or #38c.
Pretty. Please feel absolutely free to port this over to Joomla, where it would be very welcome.
Looking forward to test this theme on my blog. And hopefully do some edition.
One suggestion, what about a dedicated site just for the 281 theme? Like K2, Tarski, and so one. Since I consider this theme to get a large userbase, including me :P
Yes, a dedicated site would be great, it’s a wonderful idea…
Comment moderation trips the moderation notice, which reads “Your comment is awaiting Paul’s moderation.” You might want to change that.
Thanks Koma, I’ll fix that in the next update, but if you want to fix it for yourself just open comments.php and search for ‘Paul’.
nice work. i’m having problems getting lightbox to work on it though. any suggestions?
again thanks! very nice work again…
peace.
No problem Paul. I fixed in mine, just wanted to make sure you’d caught it too. Thanks for the great theme.
bv: I’m using m3nt0r’s Lightbox 2 plugin and it worked out of the box perfectly with 281.
thanks koma. i have mine hardcoded with brackets as such [] the plugin is {}. it might be worth me changing simply because it doesn’t seem to work on many themes. any other advice is appreciated.
thanks for the quick response!
nm. got it to work on k2. onward and upward. next stop…. 281
Hi Paul.
I’m trying to customise this theme for a website for my graphics course, all I want to do now is alter the text of the main posts. Like how they appear on the page. I want the colour of the text to be white, but nothing I change seems to make this happen. Could you point me to the bit of css I need to change please?
I also want to take away the headings and meta of the posts, so was wondering if you could help me with that too?
I just updated my site with 281. EXACTLY what I was looking for, thanks :)
Hi Paul,
First I want to thank you for creating this handy theme. I was searching every where to find a simple and nice looking theme and I found your one! I am still working on it but thought to leave my feedback.
I did couple of changes. But the one I want to mention is I changed the links at the bottom to a sidebar section called “Credits”. Please let me know if you have anything against that.
Post headings were in H3 and I changed them to H1. Then I used H2 as subheadings in my posts. Unfortunately I can’t get any space around it. I tried both margin and padding attributes in 281.css. Only thing I could do was adding margins to “p” which showed a space between them. Below is the code at present for it.
.itemtext h2{
font-size:1.3em;
font-weight:bold;
letter-spacing:-1px;
display:inline;
margin:10px 0 10px 0;
}
Next problem I have is image margin in IE. It nicely shows desired margin in Firefox but not in IE. Here is the code.
img.alignleft,img[align="left"]{
margin:5px 10px;
_margin:5px 10px !important;
display:inline;
}
Please point out if you can see where I went wrong.
I just couldn’t mention. Neil, thank you too.
Personally, I just dont git. how couple most people not understand all of this? Anyway. My 2pennies : )
Jonna Mercon
I’ve updated Eli Foner’s 2813 adaption of the great 281 with automattics’ widgets – get 2813 with widgets here.
(I’ve used 281 first, but I really need the second sidebar for all the stuff on the site)
Daniel
Paul, any update on this theme any time soon?
I’ve been using 281 with the following plugins, and all work without any errors or problems:
Ad Rotator
Akismet
Brian’s Latest Comments
Brians Latest Comments Widget
Counterize II
JAW Popular Posts Widget
Popularity Contest
Search Docs
Share This
Sidebar Widgets
WordPress Database Backup
I’ve also run the theme repeatedly on IE6 and IE7, on the latest versions of Firefox and Opera and had no problems to date.
Not being familiar with CSS or any other programing language I have struggled with making the theme present as I would like for my own purposes, but having said that I have managed to change its look to some extent. I still feel that I have some way to go with this and would appreciate some documentation explaining the tweaking and altering process for dummies.
All in all I think it’s a great theme and I hope to be using it for a long time to come.
I should report one more problem that I faced.
When I configured the theme for Sidebar Widgets, the Sidebar Widgets Option came up on the Dashboard/Presentation Menu, replacing the 281 Options panel.
I could only have one or the other.
This meant that I had to do without the 281 Options panel and spent a long long time trying to configure the theme for Asides.
This could all, of course, have much to do with my own ineptitude and inexperience.
What do you think?
Question: When I get into the archives while using these theme I lose the hyperlinks in the text. Ideas?
Hi! I just wanted to let you know that I edited your theme to support localization (L10N) and made a Spanish translation, which it’s available on http://www.yukei.net/2007/01/281-tema-para-wordpress-en-espanol/
Unfortunately, I worked upon v0.1 so the changes introduced with v0.2 beta aren’t present. I downloaded v0.2 beta and compared to v0.1 (the original, of course, without L10N support) and only found three changes:
1. On footer.php, changed from v0.1 to v0.2
2. On comments.php changed from “Your comment is awaiting Paul’s moderation” to “Your comment is awaiting moderation”
3. On style.css changed “input#s{width:150px [...]}” to “input#s{width:125px [...]}”
Anyway, are those all the changes? If that’s the case, it shouldn’t be hard to modify my version to integrate 0.2 changes.
And, by the way, great theme.
I am currently testing out your theme on a local install and soon will publish my blog. However, since I am no php-guru at all, I still would like to have Google’s AdSense after my first post only. Since all the tutorials on how to do this rely on the file-names and descriptions of the basic files (and not the modified ones like you use them here), I ask for help… If I take this tutorial, for example, where can I find the corresponding files in your theme?
Whatever comes out here: This theme is great, beautiful and easy to use!
@Michael – that would be theloop.php
Although it is probably much easier and safer for a beginner to just paste the adsense skyscraper code in the sidebar.
Looks like a nice theme! I’m just about to download it, but I’m wondering if there is an update on the theme, since this post is a few months old.
Mean while, I’ll try it on my local setup.
Thanks for all the hard work!
Nice template!
I had a problem with it displaying in IE. The sidebar appeared at the bottom of the page if there was a comment textarea. I fixed the problem by altering the .comments form rule in 281.css from width: 500px; to width: 495px;
I like the way my blog looks now. It was cramped and busy. It now has space to breath!
God site. Thanks!
I am trying to get rid of the list dots that appear at the beginning of each header for my navigation list and also for the sidebar, but I can’t find them in the CSS file. Anyone have any ideas where I need to edit?
Like the theme and started modding it tonight – I only have one question; how do I get a month list to show in the sidebar?
Mark.
Just wanted to say thanks for the theme! I’ve been looking for a bare bones that I could customize for a while now and finally came across yours. Works like a charm! Thanks again!
@Mark:
throw this in your sidebar to display months
<ul><?php wp_get_archives(‘type=monthly’); ?></ul>
Nice stripped down theme, If I am in the market for one I know where to come.
You need some spacing between the latest comments.
What a you have headlines that wrap into two lines the whole thing become a mess and too hard to figure out when one headline ends and another starts.
A possible bug. On all Mac browsers my first page link in the right rail stays bolded even when the others are moused over and turn bold.
I like the clean look. Fix the bad spacing and it’s a winner!
Paul, any news on when a newer version of this will be out? You seem to have hinted of future versions. Thanks, and I love the theme!
@Chris, I have a few ideas that I would like to put in the theme when I get done with finals around here. I’ll definitely blog about it when I do release a newer version though.
I’m a pro minimalistic theme but when someone say this them is a “search engine friendly theme”, does this mean content load first then everything else?!
I’m a pro minimalistic theme but when someone say this is a “search engine friendly theme”, does this mean content loads first?!
Sorry, I wasn’t sure mu comment was posted.
Hi all
How I can change avatar in this forum?
Paul,
Have you been tinkering any more the theme, and should we expect another release, or are you pretty much done with it?
I am seriously thinking of using it on one of my sites, but would like to know if you have improvements planned or if I should just tweak it myself.
Great design. And FAST.
I love this theme. It seems other people love it too. Maybe you should make a post where everyone who has a customization of the theme posts what they did? That would be legit.
@Bruce – I’ve been wanting to do things to it but I just haven’t the time anymore.
Thanks, Paul. I understand how life pulls us in different directions from some of the things we would like to do.
I may piddle with it a bit myself, as would be a good chance to learn more. Works great as is, except for sidebar falling to bottom in ie6.
Take care. You have a great site. Glad I came across it.
hello Paul! I like this theme, but i need use widget, how i can support widget?
any ideas? I use Foxy 281 v0.1. (red color looks very nice ;-) )
hey-
weeding through the CSS file is TOUGH.
does anyone have a cleaned up version?
if so, please email me at this form here:
http://www.bradleyspencer.com/contact/
MUCHO GRACIOUS!!! Brad
@Brad – all whitespace in the CSS was removed for file size purposes to speed up loading time. My next release of 281 will use gzip compression instead and have a ‘normal’ CSS file.
Thank You much Paul,
I’ll look forward to the next release.
Gracious. Brad
Paul,
Regarding a comment I made previously that the sidebar drops to the bottom in IE6, I went back and looked at it again and It Does Not. So, not sure what was going on when I made the statement. No doubt something squirrely that I did.
Any idea when you might get a chance to do the next release?
Paul,
By the way, if you would like some help in updating the theme, let me know and I will help in any way I can. Right now I am running it on my test site, and am thinking of using it on my main site, but will wait until I know more about when the next release might be.
Bruce
Has anyone tried the theme with wp 2.3?
John,
I have it running on my test site with 2.3
http://www.dkeener.com/keenstuff/kltestblog/
Had it running on my main site for about a month but decided to switch to a different design. You can use the Default theme coding for an example of how to add tagging in, which is what I did.
John,
I went ahead and put 281 back on my main site. It works well with 2.3
Bruce, thanks for answering. It’s good to know that it works. But I’m not sure what you mean by “Default theme coding”. Does that mean that 281 works ‘out of the box’ or do I have to add something from elsewhere to use tagging?
John,
It works fine out of the box. Only thing is it does not support the new tagging feature, and to make it do so I just borrowed some of the coding out of the WordPress default theme. If you want to use that code, contact me via the contact form on my site, and I can mail it to you … I don’t think I can post php coding within the comments section here, as WordPress probably strips it out. But, it is pretty straightforward coding, and like I said, I just swiped it out of the Default theme’s index.php file, modified it slightly, came up with some CSS to wrap the tags with, and added the php coding to Paul’s theloop.php file.
You weren’t kidding when you said it was fast. It is. Bloody fast.
And on top of that, it’s real easy to modify (save for the matter of the compressed CSS, lol).
Great job!
Has anyone checked 281’s compatibility with WP 2.5, which is due to be released today?
On this list:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Themes/Theme_Compatibility/2.5
it’s neither ynder the compatible or incompatible tags.
Would be good to know before upgrading . . .
You set display: block for the “code” element, but “code” is supposed to be inline. Why did you change that? I’m sure it will be an unpleasant surprise for anyone else who used “code” elements.
@Marty – because I didn’t want it to be inline. I only use code in blocks rather than in sentences so I changed it for my purpose and as it’s my theme I thought that was suiting.
I don’t know if this is a WP 2.5 bug, or not, but when I tried the theme, I could not choose the category that I wanted as “Asides”. No categories are listed in the dropdown menu.
I hope Paul hops on this bug soon!
Great theme – been using it for many months. Only request would be widget support. Great work, otherwise
Although quick loading speed is essential for a blog, I think 281 is too plain. No offense. Plus, the fact that it’s not sidebar-able is a turn-off. Unless it’s sidebar-able. Is it?
mustangs are horrible cars. a real mustang can do a 1/4 mile faster…
@Daniel – haha, you’re funny.
It’s Great theme – nice work Stam!!! Thx
I still think the “Latest Entries” needs something like an arrow to visually separate each entry. If a headline runs two lines it’s a cluttered mess.
I really do love this theme, Paul.
I think you have done a great job, especially considering that this is now one of the most popular themes on the web!
I have been looking for a new theme for my blog (http://darjon.co.nr) for quite some time now, but I have been restricted quite a lot since I switched to a hosted Wordpress blog. I would ideally love to switch back to hosted and have full control once again, and if I did, I would almost definitely choose your theme to customise. But I have a few money problems when it comes down to a self-hosted blog (its not that I can’t afford it – I’m just simply trying to save up the pennies) and I don’t want to muck around my readers yet again.
So, for now, I think I’m sticking with a Wordpress-hosted blog, but just to let you know that if I was ever going to switch back to self-hosted, I would pick your theme. :)
i love 281, but it doesn’t work with the very popular next gen gallery wordpress plugin. i had to remove a bunch of 281 CSS to get the formatting working.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etvaHh244Ok
@Daniel – that video shows the V6 mustang. A 281 is a V8 engine and considerably beefier than it’s 4L V6 counterpart.
Fantastic theme. Any chance there will be an update of it anytime soon? Widget readiness would be nice. :)
Nice stripped down theme, If I am in the market for one I know where to come.
Uploaded the latest beta and it’s now showing up in my design area so I can choose it. I’m running WP 2.6.
oops.. typo… it’s NOT showing up in my design area to choose.
This is one of the nicest word press themes that I have found. Very minimalist, making the theme very readable.
Hi there.. i love this theme.
I tried to install it on WP ver 2.6, but seems like nothing happen… looks like it doesnt exist at all. Sorry, I don’t have knowledge about CSS or PHP. Does 281 needs tweak to run in WP 2.6 ?
a neato minimalist theme. thanks!
Once a used the WordPress..but now it’s over and I’m using a chinese blog named z-blog.
It seems that you American guys like php based application…and we Chinese guys (maybe most) like asp based application….
Whatever, you WordPress theme is very cool.
one question: where is your host server. it’s one of the fastest one web server I have ever visited.
I was actually planning to make just something that looked like that. Anyway, Nice theme! I’m gonna use that someday.
I do really like the theme,but it does’t work under wordpress2.5+….Would u give me some tips,guy?
I’m having a similar problem with the 281 theme not showing up in my themes manager?
To make it show up you need to make a new style sheet. This page will show you how to do that. http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development#Theme_Style_Sheet
Nice. I was wondering if there was actually a way to speed up the page load in word press.
The site\’\’s very professional! Keep up the good work! Oh yes, one extra comment – maybe you could add more pictures too! So, good luck to your team!
Thanks for the comment Mike – I haven’t updated this theme in a long time. It definitely needs an overhaul.
thank i like it so much