Alex Allied v2 is Here
11
January
A week’s work on Alex Allied v2 has come to an end and you’re looking at the result right in front of your screen. Introducing the Fury 1.0 template for Wordpress.
The Mission
I had always wanted to create websites that loads quickly. No one likes to wait, and cutting down the loading time is my top priority in this project. Nowadays, fast-loading websites doesn’t have to be ugly, thanks to CSS. Conforming to Web 2.0 standards in terms of web design is also an essential part of the project. Though, I’m still working my way through reaching the standards.
CSS Coding and Hacking
It has not been an easy-ride having to fix the CSS code to work in both IE and Firefox - with Firefox being the priority of course, but there’s plenty of reference and guidance on the Internet to help me out.
Slashing the Bandwidth
My mission is to create a website that loads in no time, so graphic usage is kept to a minimum - as you can see in the amount of white space involved. Nifty little icons were used to point out important details. I’ve also reduced the number of posts displayed on the front page.
My previous blog (Alex Allied v1) design was stuffed with unnecessary contents - mostly dominated by advertisements. In Alex Allied v2, I’ve removed the greedy Chitika e-mini malls and the Amazon recommended books section, leaving the more productive Google Adsense to continue supporting my ever-drying pocket.
Naming the Theme
The name ‘Fury’ popped out of my mind during the design process, which was pretty furious. The template was initially code-named “Empty” as I’ve planned to make one with nothing but a few simple lines to mark the zones. But half-way through the project I’ve decided that it’s too bare to my liking, and since the whole layout is almost blank, I could easily stick that red furious face to spice up the template.
Conclusion
I do hope that the new template will improve the overall surfing experience here. The template will be out on testing mode for now. Hopefully there will be no buggy errors. Just in case you guys spotted one, do notify me about it. Feedbacks and comments are always welcomed. Thanks in advance!
1. Paul Tan | January 11th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
whoah. i like your “header” fonts u use in your blog posts. looks great.
2. kcyap | January 11th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Hey nice templates. Available for download ?
Very neat and clear
3. Gulengz | January 11th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
Very nice design! You could probably add a few more features such as Keyboard shortcuts to comply with some disability standards.
4. Alex | January 11th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Paul: I personally liked them too! A lil bit of Flash magic there
Kcyap: I’ll release it after your wp2 theme design competition, hopefully. hehe.
Gulengz: Will try to do that soon, coz I need a break now
5. Jason | January 11th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
Nice, neat and bright.
6. lilian | January 11th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
3 columns! I like! Frankly I found those two columns very lauyah already. Time for everyone to change to 3 columns.
7. Alex | January 11th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
Hey Alex2… haha. Damn kewl sia..looks like my site needs some tweaking too
Keep it up mate!
8. LcF | January 11th, 2006 at 11:53 pm
very nice theme!
9. Alex | January 12th, 2006 at 12:32 am
lilian: Haha, yeah. 3 columns could fit in more stuffs.
Alex: I will!
Jason and LcF: Thanks for droppin’ by!
10. wong | January 12th, 2006 at 12:41 am
Cool theme… If available for download, give me a ring
11. Kenny Lee | January 12th, 2006 at 12:41 am
A really good one, less ad!…too bad I inly know how to CnP the codes provided by others.
12. Ambiguous Wanderer | January 12th, 2006 at 12:55 am
Looking good. Cool-io! *thumbs*
13. Alex | January 12th, 2006 at 1:35 am
wong: sure will
Kenny Lee: Lolz, that’s just another way to learn.
Wanderer: Hey, thanks for the comment!
14. Wingz | January 12th, 2006 at 5:09 am
phuiyo!~~ got yapunise words wan!!! i orso wannnn~~~
15. Wu Ching | January 12th, 2006 at 7:23 am
u r indeed powerful as the emperor has foreseen! (breaths astmatically)
16. Che-Cheh | January 12th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Woooow VERY nice, cute and clean.
The empress is impress.
17. JoeC | January 12th, 2006 at 10:29 am
waaaah, breath taking liao, i like the white and white-ish designs, yep, loading time sucks. you are certainly a master in your domain, smashing page!
So, how long did it take ya? How can we learn and use CSS without getting all tangled up? cheers!
18. Alex | January 12th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Wingz: Muahaha, next time lah. I gib you one ledi.
Wuching: =.=” Which emperor?
Che-Cheh: Emperor and Empress? You and Wuching? Lolz. Thanks for da comment though, empress!
JoeC: I like them too! Erm, took me just under a week. I could show you some pretty useful resource sites to learn CSS, if you’re interested
19. Che-Cheh | January 12th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Me not empress.
Hey show me some CSS site too. Maybe you can write about ‘basic CSS’ in your blog. I wanna learn. Thanks in advance.
20. JoeC | January 12th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
yo alex my man, need your help, got a friend who uses wordpress but dun know how to change the lay out, any ideas?
i’ll definately rain check on that CSS bit
21. Alex | January 12th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Che-Cheh: Will show you those sites soon.
JoeC: Yes. Go to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes and download the themes you like. Upload them to the ‘/wp-content/themes/’ folder. Then, go to the admin interface, click on ‘Interface’ and choose the new uploaded template. Done
I’ll show you some CSS resource sites soon.
22. JoeC | January 12th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
hey! thanks for the quick feedback, thanks a bunch! cheers!
23. Bryan | January 13th, 2006 at 3:49 am
Love the design, clean and nice. Well done!
24. GeminiGeek | January 13th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
I found the fist bug in your theme, or is it the fault of the new wordpress engine.. hmm…
Anyway, try searching for something using the search on top, it doesnt work. brings me to the front page with only a headings saying “Search result for (the keyword i typed)”.
Btw, nice usage of sfir. I never tried implementing them, not sure whether its easy or not
25. Alex | January 13th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Hmm, I realized that the search function is a bit crippled. Still can’t figure out what’s wrong with that, even after I’ve implemented Semiologic’s Search reloaded plugin, the result is still the same.
I’ll look into that.
26. Hisyam | January 13th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
very nice and minimalistic. agree that it loads fast and i thought u’ve implemented some ajax since it’s the fuss of web 2.0
any reason with the japanese words?
27. Thomas Aquinas | January 13th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
this should be the DEFAULT THEME of WORDPRESS 2.0
Fast loading, neat design, artistic, creative,creative, artistic, neat and fast. Help me typing praising this site.
Share the code please!
[comments editted: repetition removed]
28. Gulengz | January 18th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Curious, how did you leave the space for those Digg and Del.icio.us links from their icons using CSS?
29. Alex | January 18th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
I declared a ‘digg’ class and set a 10px left padding amount to it, like this…
.digg{padding-left:10px;
background:url('img/digg.gif') no-repeat left;
}
Then, the text is place within the <span> tags with the ‘digg’ class assigned to it.
<span class="digg">Add to Del.licio.us</span>Done
30. Gulengz | January 19th, 2006 at 2:37 am
Hey, thanks!
31. Patrick | February 6th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Nice Layout.
Thumbs UP.
Maybe we all should design some good template that load fast like you.
32. Updates on My Wordpress Theme - Alex Allied | March 7th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
[…] March Web 2.0 and WordpressAlex10:29 pmAdd comment The long-awaited wordpress theme - Fury v1 - is expected to be released for public download within this week. It’s been tested by some helpful bloggers and everything is looking fine at the moment. Overall progress is approximately 95% as I write. There are still a few nifty little errors to handle at this point. I apologize for the delay as I’m stuck with catching up with my own life in the real world. […]
33. jefftovers » Blog Archive » I Had Hoped to Be Updating This Blog By Now | March 9th, 2006 at 10:30 am
[…] I have found a couple of themes I really like, but one of them has not been made available for public consumption yet. The other one is a little weird (layout-wise), and I’m not sure if I’m feeling it. I wish the Wordpress 2.0 theme contest site had not been hacked, because I’m sure I would have found some great submissions to choose from there. Hopefully, they will get their problems sorted out soon and have the entries available to the masses again. […]
34. My Wordpress theme is now released - Alex Allied | March 10th, 2006 at 12:45 am
[…] March Web 2.0 and WordpressAlex12:44 amAdd comment My theme is now officially released and ready for download. I’ve decided that the public version be called Alexified™ in favor of Fury. Sort of make it sounds like my own brand of theme. […]
35. LOlak | November 16th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
very superb and very nice wordpress template.
i love it and hope compatible with WP 2.0.5 - thanks
36. hilmi (internet-young-malaysia) | July 23rd, 2007 at 7:15 pm
thank!! love it
37. Ben | October 19th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Great theme! Can you help with me? I am trying to add another tab to the header called ‘Music’ (without quotes). I am not a coder and am having difficulty figuring it out. Can you help?
38. Alexallied | October 19th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Ben: Add a page and it’ll appear in it. Or, you can edit the alexified/header.php file. Copy and paste the existing tab code and replace the name and URL that comes with it.