Editors Note - A new feature on Productivity Junkies – WordPress Wednesday. Gilbert Peralta of WPChemist.com will be sharing with us every Wednesday about how to optimize our web presence using wordpress.
June 18, 2010. Just another boring day in the web world? I think not!
Friday June 18th, 2010 was the release of WordPress 3.0, an upgrade from WordPress 2.9.2. It wasn’t a big deal to most WordPress users, but something amazing came with the release of WordPress “Thelonious”. (FYI WordPress names almost every theme after well known jazz musicians).
What comes as a standard default with WordPress 3.0 that is so amazing? It’s the new default theme “Twenty Ten” 1.0, which was authored by WordPress, so you know the coding is on point!
What makes this theme so exciting? To answer that, we have to look at the WordPress on June 17th, 2010 and prior. Thelonious’ predecessor, Carmen 2.9, and every theme before that didn’t come with a very impressive theme. Jane Wells, an employee of WordPress mentioned in a blog entry from late 2009, that the famous Kubric theme from 2005 was cutting edge at the time. Kubric was somewhat customizable and could look good for 2005 standards. She went on to mention that rapid advancing Internet and blogging standards of late 2009 had left Kubric as an inferior default theme. Version 2.9 did come with one other default theme to choose from; “WordPress classic 1.5”, developed in 2006.
Like the Kubric theme, the WP 1.5 theme was also outdated and leaving WP users searching for code or themes to alter their blog.
That’s when June 18th, 2010 changed everything. “Twenty Ten” comes with a ton of features and options never seen before. All prior default themes required users to rely heavily on either third party design vendors or learn complicated programming code. The new alignment features made editing your blog or pages a lot easier also. “Twenty Ten”, while it will not create the most advanced looking or functional website on the Internet, it can help a beginner build something that feels more like a website from the year 2010.
The reason I like “Twenty Ten” so much is the cool back-end customizing module. It comes with 8 beautiful HD header nature photos to choose from. Of course you can easily upload your own header, which was never possible with any of the previous themes; you had to rely on coding. “Twenty Ten” has easy to customize background image and color options. It also comes with 2 built in sidebar widget areas and 4 footer widget areas; for easy customization.
The “Twenty Ten” probably won’t fill ALL of your website or customization needs without additional coding or child themes, but it’s a great start!
Please contact us for a FREE consultation if you would like help getting your WordPress website setup and customized to fit your needs!
