www.reflectingthedesigner.com

I’ve finally gotten around to posting another free theme! This one is a theme I just did for someone, so it’s WP 3.0 compliant. The image below is a screen shot of the working theme, and has the following features:

• Two Column Design
• One Column Page Template also included as a check box option for each page.
• Sidebars include right sidebar, top sidebar, bottom sidebar, and dynamically widgetized footer
• Valid XTML
• Horizontal Menu (works great with new customizable menu found in WP)
• Vertical Menu also available if desired within the theme
• Built in Social Icons
• Built in div for Header Logo or Graphic

Let me show you what you’ll need to know in order to download this theme and edit the Header and personalize your social icons. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a brand new theme with some extra goodies thrown in. It is a widget ready theme that includes a top menu and a fun scrolling brick wall background. Click here to download this theme. The first screen shot pictures exactly what the theme looks like. Notice that there is plenty of space in the header for you to add your own png or gif to personalize this WordPress theme to fit you. Please see my post on how to add images or buttons to your header for simple instructions on how to do this. Note: instructions are at the bottom of the post.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, I’ve finally gotten another theme up! I’ve been too busy working on other projects to put more out, but here’s a cute, traditional Christmas theme to put you in the holiday spirit!

This is a widget ready, 3 column design with a top menu, footer, and built in rss image in the footer.

Click here to download this free theme!

As always, feel free to contact me if you are interested in a completely personalized and customized WordPress or Blogger theme.

No, I’m not posting about an actual scrapbook, but about my updated blogger blog called Blogger Scrapbook. Click on the image to check out this blog. After finishing my recent design project, I finally had the brainstorm I needed on how to use my recently created blogspot blogs. I gave this one a fresh, scrabook feel and it is designed to give information on how to personalize and customize your own blog. It already has a lot of great tips, and I will continue to add more on a regular basis. It will also feature free blogger themes and graphics.

Some of the tips you’ll find on this blog are the following:

• How to add a favicon to your blog
• How to add a signature to your blog (to all posts past and future)
• How to add post dividers to your blog
• How to get rid of unwanted text like “Showing all posts from…”
• How to customize your Profile Widget or make a brand new one
• How to add more widgets to every part of your blog
• How to create and manipulate scrolling and fixed buttons on your blog

And those are just the starters. So, please stay posted to Blogger Scrapbook if you use Blogspot, and make sure to leave comments or your own tips, too!

Yes, I finally got another blog theme done. This has a little bit of a western, rustic feel to it with the wood background and old linen paper. This would look great personalized with a picture of the author done in a sepia, old photo style as well as the header in a fun Western font.

Please contact me if you are interested in a personalized blog theme design. As always, I include set up with plugins and one week of support for a one time, low flat rate.

Click on the picture to view a larger image of the screen shot.

Click here to download this fresh, new, and free WordPress theme.

A screen shot of this fun, rustic blog theme design

I found this site just today and downloaded one of their free icon sets. These are some very clean and professional looking icons that I’m going to start implementing. They have tons of icons that you can pay for, but the free ones are definitely must haves if you don’t want to take the time to always create your own generic ones. You should check them out.

Here is the latest WordPress theme download that I’ve designed. Yes, I know that it’s been two feminine designs in a row. I’ll work on a more masculine or neutral theme for my next one. I do love blue and brown together, though, and I just couldn’t resist making this one. As always, feel free to contact me for info. on a personalized and customized theme complete with an abundance of great plug-ins. This template will allow you to add multiple pages and sub-pages, and you will need to edit the footer in order to activate the links for your contact info, terms of use, and privacy statement. Let me know if you are unsure of how to do this, and I’ll be glad to send you a step-by-step.

Remember, I charge less for customization of any designs previewed on my site, but I’m always happy to create something completely new for you, as well.  Click on the images to see a larger view. Click here to download this WordPress Theme.

Here is the matching twitter background. Contact me if you would like a customized or personalized version of this, as well.

Click on the image to see a larger version, and click here to download this Twitter background.

I was feeling in a springy mood, and I also wanted to try out some ideas that I’ve had for creating a different style of template using Artisteer. This particular theme has several different features I’d like to point out, especially if you use Artisteer or are interested in it.

False Transparent Header: First of all, this design makes it appear as if there is no header image but only a background image. This can easily be achieved by creating your background image in Photoshop or Illustrator that you want to use for the background and header. Save the image as a jpg or png for your background, then crop out the area where the header will be and save that as your header image. Your header will then flow seamlessly into your background.

Header Text: Secondly, while it appears that their is no header or slogan text, they are actually there. You could go into the style sheet and get rid of them, but that wouldn’t be good for SEO. However, what I’ve done here is to simply make them the color of your background and use either the header background image to house your visible text with the font you prefer or a png of the text for the foreground image. Search engines will still find the actual text, and you can have the font that you want visible on page.

Background Image Basics: Finally, as a note on background images. You should make sure to create your image so that it can flow seamlessly onto any computer screen size. You don’t want images cut off or colors to start and stop abruptly. This can be achieved by making sure that the edges of your jpg match the color of the background color you have chosen or create a png. My background image appears to be cut off, but it actually continues beyond the average computer screen to be able to fit on wider screens.

Ok, down to business. I’ve included a link, as usual, to the free theme download. There are a lot of personalized features in this theme including the little flower icons beside each widget title. You can actually upload your own created icons for any of the icons shown which is a nice feature in Artisteer.

I’ve included a footer screen shot to show the fixed position you can choose for the background as well as the nice footer links and rss button included in Artisteer templates. Of course, these are all completely editable as well. This also demonstrates the transparency settings you can use in Artisteer and the fixed background image position. I could have chosen to let the image scroll, but I like having my flowers and the fun background show on each part of the page rather than just the top.

This time, I thought it would be good to actually show a screen shot of a personalized version of this theme to give you an idea of what I mean by offering personalized blog themes not only in plug-ins and features but also in the look itself. This could be transformed into any look desired, but this was a quick and easy personalization just to give an example.

Click here to download the free template (as depicted in the first two screen shots above.) Make sure to contact me if you are interested in a personalized version of this theme. I will give price reductions on personalized versions of any of the themes I offer on this site as the basic design work has already been completed. The background image, header image and flower buttons were all created individually and are not stock images. Click on the link below to find out more information on Artisteer.

#1 Automated Web Design Software for Blogs, CMS and Portals. Generate templates for WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

My husband just recently introduced me to a great, free password security add-on for Firefox called LastPass. It also works in IE and some other browsers as well. It’s called LastPass, and I would definitely recommend that you check it out if you are not currently using something to store your passwords, or if you are unhappy with what you are currently using.

The basics are the following: after you’ve downloaded the add-on (only takes a few moments), LastPass will automatically grab all usernames and passwords that you currently have stored on your browser. After it sucks them all in, it will ask if you want to delete the originals off the computer (which you do because what’s the point of getting LastPass otherwise?). LastPass has a little icon up in the right corner of the browser where you can access all of your information. You’ll just want to make sure to go through the sites that it grabbed off your browser an edit anything that you want to (like auto-login status, favorites, security password, etc.) When you go to any page that requires a log in not already in Last Pass, it will save it for you once you have entered your info. for the first time.

The most important thing to remember about LastPass, however is your main password. You have to come up with a huge multi-character password to start that will be your number one password. All other passwords are safely stored and easily displayed when you need them. The only time you would need the big one is if you want to use LastPass on another computer, or if you want to add an extra security measure to any of your existing sites. So, just make sure to keep it in a safe place as LastPass doesn’t store the biggie.

LastPass has a lot of other nice features, as well  including automatic form fill in. You can enter as many categories as you want to (personal, business, or specifics that you need only for specific sites) and LastPass will automatically fill out the forms for you at the site. So check it out! You can’t beat free!

Yes, here is a new, free WordPress theme download. This is a one column design with a lot of warm colors. I think I was was feeling cold when I designed it and wanted to think warm, happy thoughts. I know that the footer doesn’t show up in this screen shot, but if you download this theme you’ll want to make sure that you replace some of the code in the footer to the proper URLs for your contact info, privacy information, etc. You can rename or delete the footer buttons that don’t apply. This can be done by editing the footer.php style sheet. Let me know if you need the code specifics and I’ll be happy to send them to you.

As always, contact me if you would like more information on a personalized WordPress theme that would include pluggins, set-up, and activation for a one time, flat fee.

Click on the image to view a larger version.

Click here to download the WordPress theme.