High Art

High Art goes live!

Although High Art can be used for a wide variety of things, it is primarily a theme for Artists, Art Galleries, & Exhibitions spaces. It’s packed with all kinds of features that allow you to bring the experience of an art galley to the web in a new and interesting way. Check out the demo and review some of the amazing features:

  • Promote artists and gallery shows with the Exhibits custom post type.
  • Schedule events and shows with the Events custom post type.
  • A theme options page for custom logos, theme colors, footer options & more.
  • Support for Video embedding using oEmbed.
  • Flickr integration which displays photo sets directly from Flickr.
  • 5 Custom page templates for Archives, Events, Exhibits, etc.
  • Free updates and support! (For bug fixes and errors only).

Also for a limited time there’s a free, blog only version available which has the styling of the Full version of High Art, without all of the extra bells and whistles.

Check it out!: http://fthrwght.com/highart

AutoFocus+ PRO v1.5 Released

Finally, AF+PRO version 1.5 is released — and it’s only 2 months behind schedule (D’oh!). It’s jam-packed with a ton of new and highly requested features to make posting photos quicker and easier. Let’s take a look at some of the new features:

New Flickr Integration

There’s no way for me to make the claim that this theme is for Photographers while ignoring Flickr — the leading online photo management tool. Many photographers use Flickr on a daily basis much in the same way I intend for them to use AF+. However, when it comes to using AF+, photogs often dread the thought of having to re-upload their images to WP just to use the theme. In AF+ PRO v 1.5, this is no longer an issue due to the wonderful constructs of the Flickr API and the PHPFlickr script. Now you can add Flickr Sets directly to your posts without having to upload them to WordPress! Check out this post, to see how it works.

Better Post Date/Title display options.

This was a highly requested feature since the original release of AF+ PRO. I’ve re-written the script here so that you can choose between 4 different display modes for your post dates and titles. I’ve also removed the “Anchor Image” from Blog posts so that visually, your Blog feels more like a blog.

Thumbnail Cropping

This was another highly requested feature that took a while to figure out. With the Portfolio Layout, the thumbnails are a nice friendly size, but when scaled down and auto-cropped, the images can’t shine like how they need to. With AF+ PRO v1.5 you can now make custom cropped thumbnail images on the front page which makes a world of difference (Portfolio View Only). Check out the documentation for instructions.

Tons more

Checkout the documentation page for the full list of improvements along with a change log.

AND if you haven’t already, get your copy of AutoFocus+ PRO today!

Welcome to the fthrwght blog!

Hello everyone! If you’re here reading this, than you’ve probably noticed that things have changed quite a bit around here. I’ve had this site in a temporary landing page state for over a year now and it’s time to open up the doors (at least a little) so I can show you what I’ve got in store. There’s a ton of exciting projects developing and I’d like to use this space to share everything that I’ve got going on. I’ll be leaving my old WordPress development site, http://allancole.com/wordpress live but I will not be actively monitoring it.

First up,

I’ll no longer be using the child theme structure for my current themes. All of the themes available on this site are currently built on top of Thematic as child themes (excluding Basic Maths). Thematic is a really great theme Framework that I will continue to use for 1-off, client specific projects. However, when it comes to developing themes, releasing them & making them easy to use for a large amount of users, the child theme structure simply can’t work. Some of you may have already noticed this with the latest Thematic update. Using the child theme structure has made the update and installation process much more complex than it should be. I want to make it clear that Thematic is still; in my opinion, the best theming framework out there. Its just that using it, or really any WP Theme framework to distributing child themes really isn’t ideal. I’ll try to blog about this in more depth a little later on.

Secondly,

No more e-junkie for theme purchases. E-junkie actually works really well, but it is much too complex for my needs and it’s flash interface is really tough to get use to. All future sales well be handled by a new digital delivery application called Fetch App. Once the official switch has been made, I’ll provide more details on how current users & customers accounts will be handled so no one misses out on updates or improvements.

Lastly,

New themes! I’m working on a new batch of themes to release really soon. I don’t want to get into too much detail just yet, but if you haven’t already subscribed to the feed, please do so now so you don’t miss out on anything.

All in all, I’m excited to get going with this new blog. I’ve kept things pretty elusive over the last few years or so but things are definitely changing and growing so stay tuned.

P.S. This site’s design is definitely in a rough state. It’ll also be going through some changes as well.