I decided that I would post a little preview from my workbench, since I would not have a lot of time for free-theme creation for the next couple of weeks: I’m struggling with a tight deadline – somebody (mostly me) - need to deliver 400 hours of work before 15th January 2009. So instead of using the nights for theme adapting I have found myself writing Factories and Interfaces all around the clock.

First the good news

as mentioned elsewhere on this blog. I already have finished 90% of the work for BranfordMagazine – and it’s so cool! Please take a look at the screen shoot:

Currently I'm struggling with the category list on the right - the category list is one of my favorite I-don't-link-BlogEngine-elements - together with a lot of the other widgets elements. Before BE 1.4 a theme adapter (or designer) could decide "that this theme will not support this element" when it was to difficult to style; but after the widget-zone every "nice-add-on" need to render correct! Anyway: I have managed to get the BranfordMagazine theme to work without changing anything within BlogEngine.Core, its all rendered from the /Theme folder ;-)

Now the "bad" news

Last Sunday I ended out giving up on last weeks poll winning theme ZinePress. Right now I really can't remember what it was that make me give it up:

 

Beside that the tag cloud isn't a cloud; it's more like a list ;-) And the footer is looking strange..

It is mostly the calendar - but also the first row: I could get any <blog: controls to render correct! I just came to think that some google ads maybe could look nice.. LOL

Anyway if somebody reading is dying for getting this theme - let me know and I will give it a second try.

As voted by you. Here it is the theme of week 44's poll, PortraitPress is the winner.  Original designed by Magnus Jepson for Wordpress

Interesting to se that nearly on one wants the Lemon Twist theme – that’s actually surprised me.

 

 

Theme highlights

Your able to change header photo:

Create a picture size of 187 x 172 pixel

Save it to \themes\portraitpress\images\

name it: "portrait.jpg"

Click yes to replace the existing portrait.jpg image

Refresh your browser with [ctrl]+[F5]

 

(by the way: say hallo to Celina, the youngest child in my current collection)

Preview and download

    * Preview the theme
    * Download:portraitpress.zip (54.57 kb)

Do you have a favorite blog theme that sadly only available to Wordpress or Blogger – now it's time to suggest it for adapting to BlogEngine.NET.

Lately I have been like a drug addict converting Wordpress themes for BlogEngine: I haven’t nearly finish one theme before rushing into the next. Now it has to come to an end! :-) But I won’t stop entirely: I just want to try to slow down and only do one theme a week. And to make sure that I actually converting themes that somebody wants to use I’ll ask you all to suggest your favorite theme by posting a comment to this post including at least a link to the theme preview and/or the theme homepage. At the end of the week I’ll decide what theme to adapt – if this decision is too hard I’ll put up a poll and ask you to vote for the one that I should adapt.

Please remember only to suggest themes released under GPL or CC ShareAlike type of licence, this means that I cannot adapt any commercial themes (mostly named something like “premium theme”).

Happy suggesting

Today I have adapted the Wordpress theme Angel by Blog Oh Blog for BlogEngine.net

 

Please notice

I haven't - yet - got the formatting of the start-rating right. If anybody out there have a solution please email me via the contact page.

Updates

November 1, 2008
    Highlight of selected menu tab added – thanks to rtur.net

Preview and download

    * Preview the theme
    * Download: angel.zip (28.72 kb)

On request made by Jay Smith I have adapted the Stardust - Wordpress Theme - for BE.

Startdust is original made by Tommaso Baldovino.

Updates

November 1, 2008
    Highlight of selected menu tab added – thanks to rtur.net

Preview and download

    * Preview the theme
    * Download: stardust.zip (54.46 kb)

Setup tip

1. Go to [yoursite]/admin/Pages/Controls.aspx
2. Change the Button text from (default=Search) to . (just a dot) this will fix a IE7 problem with a button that will not look transparent.