iTheme Blog

Koi Theme

Notepad

Bueno

DesignPile

Indezigner

SimpleFolio

SimpleCart

SimpleCart(js) is a simple, attractive, and flexible WordPress theme that taps into the power of both Thematic and WP E-commerce.

Aperio

Berita Business Front

Vero

Eos

WPshout provided two levels of detailed tutorials with source code. Worth checking out!

Create An Awesome WordPress Theme Options Page (part 1)

Create An Advanced  Options Page

Wordpress Theme Design with Options Administration

How to : Make a control panel for your wordpress theme

Create an Theme Options Page for Your WordPress Theme

Event Calendar

Display upcoming events in a dynamic calendar, on a listings page, or as a list in the sidebar. You can also use the upcoming events widget to display your events along with the calendar.

Different Posts Per Page

Sometimes we would like to display different number of posts on category, tag and home page. If your theme does not have this function, this plugin will definitely help you.

NextGEN Gallery

A full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option. I once gave up on this plugin for a project, cause the Flash slideshow does show on my site, but now the plugin incorporates AJAX based thumbnail generator,Watermark function and JavaScript Effect. How can I ignore these new features?

A couple of screen shots here so you get the taste.

Tweet Blender

A Widgetbox widget that blends Twitter tweets from multiple sources.

MiniPosts

Want to have some variety on your sidebar? display a list of excerpts of your posts is a good idea.

PollDaddy Polls

Help your reader engage in you survey. The PollDaddy Polls plugin allows you to create and manage polls from within your WordPress dashboard. You can create polls, choose from 20 different styles for your polls and view all results for your polls as they come in.

Get Recent Comments

Make reader’s opinion counts. This plugin shows excerpts of the latest comments and/or trackbacks in your sidebar. You have comprehensive control about their appearance.

Letter Frame

Beautifully make paper texture theme.

Biz Tech

If you are a Geek or looking for a theme with serious look, this one probably suits you the best

Brazen

Simple and high quality theme from wefunction

Wooden Fence

Nice looking theme gives you a great mood everyday.

Snowblind 1.0

Versatility

Movie Theater

BlogStarter Theme

Scrapbook Mania

Gamezilla Wordpress Theme

Mainstream

Too Much Stress

Creative by Nature

Paper Wall

Crafty Cart

Here I have listed the theme options I think are very necessary and well designed. Please feel free to vote for the theme option on the sidebar (you can have maximum of three choices).

Woo theme Theme Options

Take the free theme Mainstream as an example, the javascript enabled admin panel contains:

1. General settings
2. Navigation options
3. Dynamic image option
4. Author info
5. Top ad options
6. sidebar ad options

In my opinion these options are very carefully chosen and well designed. I especially like the part that it allows user to upload logo directly and put in a cache folder. It is much better, compare to some other themes which you have to upload the logo with FTP software.

Fusion Theme Options

Fusion is a very dynamic theme, No wonder so many people are using it. The admin panel contains

1. Navigation option: people can choose between using pages or categories
2. Simple CSS: instead of messing with style.css it provides user a more convenient way for customizing the theme

K2 Theme Options

k2 has an well designed header image feature at admin panel. Please read this for more details.

minishowcase is a small and simple php/javascript online photo gallery, powered by AJAX that allows you to easily show your images online, without complex databases or coding, allowing to have an up-and-running gallery in a few minutes.

The official  version of minishowcase does not detect photos in sub folder. You need to download another version called minishowcase-scubabeer.zip if you want to modify your own, alternatively you can download the modified version I m using.

This is the link you can download the minishowcase that detects sub folders, you can also check up the result here or download the version I modified.

Sample gallery

You may be interested in the following related posts:
• How to create a Feature Article slide show with thumbnails and indicator
• integrate feature article content slide show into wordpress
• 13 Excellent Gallery/Slider Scripts
  

Issues:
1. A website that already have thousands of photos before installing WordPress. You need to display those files along with the photos in wordpress
2. You would like to display all your photos in the Media Gallery on a separate professional photographer looking page

Solution: modified version of minishowcase Ajax gallery

Features:
1. A script detects all photos in uploads folder of WordPress automatically.
2. Exclude thumbnails and small photos generated in wordpress in the gallery
3. Display your photos professionally
4. Can be modified to have a similar layout as your main site.

For those would like to get your hands dirty, these is how to modify minishowcase-scubabeer.zip. For those would like to use my version directly, you can drump to “what’s next” section at the bottom of the page to learn how to install it.

One disadvantage of minishowcase is the gallery folder is fixed (called galleries) which locates inside minishowcase root folder. I need to change this limitation to have it detect the uploads folder in my wordpress.

Change photo directory

I opened Ajax.gateway.php under library folder and change the folder directory from $base_path/galleries/$id/ to $base_path/../wp-content/uploads/$id/ . There are five places to change in this file. Then do the same thing for ajax.functions.js and you need to change four places for this one. The third file you need to change is index.php at root folder. There are two lines need to be changed. Its quite simple so far only search and replace.

Exclude the thumb nail and small photo generated by Wordpress

Locate this code from ajax.gateway.php

	// open directory and parse file list
		$num = 0;
		if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
			// iterate over file list & output all filenames
			while (($filename = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
				$pinfo = pathinfo($filename);
				if ((strpos($filename,"_") !== 0)
				&& (strpos($filename,".") !== 0)
				&& (!in_array($filename, $hidden_files))
				&& (in_array(strToLower($pinfo["extension"]),$settings['allowed_extensions']))
				) {
					$all_thumbs[] = $filename;
				}
			}
			// close directory
			closedir($dh);
		}

and replace it with this longer version which is saying if the file’s name contains 150×150 or 300xsth or sthx300, it will not be displayed.

	// open directory and parse file list
		$num = 0;
		if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
			// iterate over file list & output all filenames
			while (($filename = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
				$pinfo = pathinfo($filename);
				if ((strpos($filename,"_") !== 0)
				&& (strpos($filename,".") !== 0)
				&& (strpos($filename,"150x150") == 0)
				&& (strpos($filename,"300x") == 0)
				&& (strpos($filename,"x300") == 0)
				&& (!in_array($filename, $hidden_files))
				&& (in_array(strToLower($pinfo["extension"]),$settings['allowed_extensions']))
				) {
					$all_thumbs[] = $filename;
				}
			}
			// close directory
			closedir($dh);
		}

All done!!

What’s next

Configure your gallery settings according to Instructions.htm. You can also stylize it to have a similar look of your main site(for this part please read the instruction of minishowcase) Upload the modified minishowcase into the same level as your wp-content.
Copy _info.txt and index.php in galleries folder to uploads folder.

Your gallery URL will be http://yourdomain/minishocase
if you change minihsowcase root folder name. The URL of your gallery will be http://yourdomain/yourfoldername . have fun!!

Features:
1. Work in Wordpress
2. Accordion Slide
3. Show only top level page list when visiting top level pages
4. Show current page’s child page
5. Show allpages when visiting child page

Wordpress Code to display page list

I got this code from wordpress.org

<?php
  if($post->post_parent)
  $children = wp_list_pages("title_li=&child_of=".$post->post_parent."&echo=0");
  else
  $children = wp_list_pages("title_li=&child_of=".$post->ID."&echo=0");
  if ($children) { ?>
  <ul>
  <?php echo $children; ?>
  </ul>
  <?php } ?>

The code displays all pages. This is the html code generated by Wordpress

<div id="page-list"><ul>
<li class="page_item page-item-1611"><a href="http://design-notes.info/archives/" title="Archives">Archives</a></li>
<li class="page_item page-item-742"><a href="http://design-notes.info/blogroll/" title="Blogroll">Blogroll</a>
<ul>
<li class="page_item page-item-1683"><a href="http://design-notes.info/blogroll/this-is-a-demo-page/" title="This is a demo page">This is a demo page</a></li>
 
</ul>
</li>
<li class="page_item page-item-1096"><a href="http://design-notes.info/linking/" title="linking">linking</a></li>
<li class="page_item page-item-113"><a href="http://design-notes.info/about/" title="About">About</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

Javascripts

Now what we need to do is to create accordion with jQuery’s toggle function and make it dynamically display the page you want your reader to see. Wordpress’s “current_page_item” class is very useful here. I used it on line 5 to list parent pages and again on line 9 to show its child pages.

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$(document).ready(function()
{//hide child page
$('#page-list ul li.page_item ul').hide();
//when navigate to a child page show all pages
$('#page-list ul li.current_page_item').parent("ul").show();
//show page list when toggle
$('#page-list ul li.active ul').show();
//show cerrent page's child page
$('#page-list ul li.current_page_item ul').show();
 
	 $('#page-list ul li').click(function() { 
$(this).addClass("active");
                    $(this).children('ul').slideToggle("slow"); 
            });
 
 
});

CSS

#page-list {
float:left;
clear:left;
margin:20px 0 0 10px;
display:block;
position:relative;
}
#page-list ul {
	list-style:none;
	margin:0;
	}
#page-list ul li{
padding:0 10px 0 10px;
margin:2px 0;
display:block;
cursor:pointer;
background-color:#ccc;
}
#page-list ul li ul li{
padding:0;
margin:0;
position:relative;
 
}
#page-list ul li ul li a{
	}
#page-list ul li a{
padding:3px 5px;
display:block;
width:150px;
background-color:#f4f4f4;
}

Conclusion

I first displayed all pages then hide or show them dynamically with jQuery. Its quite handy than using php alone. You can check out the demo page list on the sidebar by navigating to pages. I made a couple of demo pages for you too.

Flexible layout design:

• Two/ Three Columns option
• Flexible width/ Fixed Width
• Dueling sidebar option
• Different theme color

Some start up bloggers don’t have any idea about what they want. They expect to learn on the fly, so flexibility is a Must

Premium Theme Check Mate Gives people some flexible Choices



Customizable Header and Logo

Many free and commercial themes have this ability, but not all of them are very effective. Here are some good examples:
WooThemes Allow you to input a logo URL

CheckMate theme can detect a logo in custom folder

K2 allows you to crop a header of your own.


Input JavaScripts like Google analytics at footer

Most premium theme have this feature as it is quite simple to implement.

Content Slide Show

This two free premium themes from topwpthemes have a simple content slider



Commercial theme from StudioPress


Sidebar Tab

From all premium themes I researched they either don’t have this feature or the tab contents cannot be changed. There used to be a plugin can do this job, but according to many people the tab widget had stopped working months ago



The ability to change what to display on post top meta data and bottom meta data

Not many themes have this feature, it seems only K2 has this option

Elegant layout that always on top of the trend

You can find both free and commercial themes with elegant layout.
Wootheme

Free Theme

Free Theme Journic Wordpress Theme

Elegant theme Cherry truffle

More resources to find great premium themes

25+ Reliable Sources to Get Commercial WordPress Themes
bestwpthemes
topwpthemes