Ok.. I’m late.. the theme should’ve been up yesterday but the latest episode of Gundam 00 upset me (will post about it probably monday, when the subs are out) so I decided to stall the release.

Anyways, to anyone interested.. it’s a free theme!

Black Bead is a semi-magazine style WordPress theme created for wordy yet content-filled site (just like Pinoy Tech Guy). I used the term “semi-magazine” since the full magazine style is only seen on single posts while other pages use a thumbnail to save space and bandwidth.

Since I got the idea to implement the magazine style of Block Magazine, my current theme, it works very much the same. Black Bead uses two custom fields: Thumb and LargeThumb (note that they are case sensitive). The values of Thumb and ThumbLarge needs to be the http location of the images attached to each post. Thumb is for the small image (64×64 pixels) and ThumbLarge is for the featured, larger image (since the max width is 640 pixels I suggest to use a lower resolution for the picture).

Use this guide if you need to learn about WordPress’ image uploader and custom fields.

If you don’t like using adding thumbnails and image banners to your posts, don’t worry, I added some code to so that if you don’t add any of the custom fields, you don’t get the image not found error hanging around your post.

Screen of the index (click to enlarge)

Screen of the single page (click to enlarge)

Features:

• Semi Magazine-style Front page archive
• Magazine-style for single posts
• Domtab integrated into the sidebar to display either Recent Articles, Popular Articles or Most Commented Articles
• 300 x 250 Advertisement Spot below the dom tab (edit ad300×250.php)
• 468×60 Advertisement Spot above each post (edit ad468x60 .php)
• Separate Trackbacks and Pings
• Semi-Minimal theme
• Submit to Social Sites:
  • Stumble upon
  • Digg
  • Technorati
  • Reddit
  • Delicious

Required Plugins:

for the DOMTab

1. Most Commented not the widget
2. Popularity Contest or if you’re using WP-Pageviews just use the Most Viewed function

Usage:

• Just add your ad scripts to ad468x60.php and ad300×250.php
• Edit ad300×250.php to change the advertisement being displayed at the bottom of the sidebar
• Depending on which Popular post plugin you’re using, you may need to edit the sidebar.php (currently set at Popularity Contest)
• Please don’t remove the links located at the footer.php. Don’t worry, it’s just contains links to here and PTG.

Want a demo? Click here.

How can I get this theme?

Download: ZIP | RAR

Like it? Hit the donate button so I can buy more of those Coffee Buns and continue creating more free themes: