Jerry D. Russell dot Com

Grid Focus Public, by Derek Punsalan is one of the most respected magazine style themes that has been released for WordPress to date. It’s strengths lie in its extreme simplicity and elegance, not only in the way it presents information to the reader, but in the gorgeous minimal code design as well.

Grid Focus Public is definitely a theme tweaker’s dream.  The code for the template is so easy to get through that it’s almost like a vacation to modify.  It’s just that much fun. Want to add something to the sidebar?  No problem.  Change the colors, menus, layout options?  Easy. Change the header, footer or anything else about the template.  A sheer walk in the park. Unfortunately, that simplicity comes with a price.

The price is that Grid Focus Public, even though it’s been updated to work with the newest releases of WordPress without a hitch, does not have a lot of the modern features that one would expect in a theme of this type.  For example, there are no options that can be set via the admin panel. There is no widget support (Though I find this more of a blessing than a curse…  I despise widgets and almost never use them.) and things like automated menus simply don’t exist.  If you want to modify this theme, you’ll have to play with the code or hire someone that can do it for you.

That being said, this theme has gained some pretty avid supporters in the blogging world, and those who do use it are not only happy with it, they sing its praises. Among the evangelical masses are such sites as Skelliewag.org and Anywired, which at first glance appear to use slightly different themes, but the difference is only due to placement and coloration of the headers and a few sidebar items. There is also my site at ADHDFamilies.org, which is currently using a version that is far less modified than I would eventually like to see…  (I know, shameless plug for myself…  Sorry!)

My opinion currently…  If you like the look of the layout and you know your way around a theme.  DIVE IN!  You’ll be happy that you did.  Grid Focus makes life a lot easier.

Jerry Blogging, WordPress, WordPress Themes Blogging, Extending WordPress, WordPress, WordPress Themes

I’m working on several WordPress based projects right now. A few of these projects will require advertising a little more robust (and profitable) than Google AdSense alone. Now I’m not saying that AdSense hasn’t made me a few dollars here and there, but for two of the sites I’m putting together I’m going to have a need to sell my own advertising blocks, and it’s much more convenient to have that functionality built into the dashboard.

Enter WPAds. Unlike a lot of ad servers for WordPress, WPAds doesn’t rely on a text file or anything else I’m going to have to spend a ton of time mucking with on a weekly basis. The code is object oriented, cleanly commented and appears fairly simple to modify if the need arises. (and it almost always does in larger applications!)

I’ve only tinkered with this plugin a bit today, but so far it seems pretty stable and worked well for me on my test installation. I’ll revisit later and give a more time-tested review.

I did not see a GPL license attached to the plugin, so my assumption is that it’s not released under the GPL, though I’m still checking into this. In any case, don’t release a derivative version if you make modifications, unless you’re sure that it’s legal to do so.

Jerry WordPress, WordPress plugins Extending WordPress, WordPress, WordPress plugins