When I started work on Redoable back in December my goal was to put together a theme that was “feature-packed”. I wanted it to incorporate a bunch of the really cool plugins that were available for Wordpress, and make them look like they should have always been there.
Starting with K2 was a good move, it already had a number of the features that I was interested in and gave me a good, well established base to work from. I went about redesiging the layout, changing the css, adding extra options, incorporating more plugins. A little over a month later Redoable was born.
Now Redoable is the sort of theme that I had always been looking for. There were a lot of great themes out there, both simple and complex, but none of them had “everything” that I wanted (I didn’t necessarily ‘need’ everything I put in…).
But in the last couple of weeks since released Redoable 1.1, and while I’ve been working on 1.2 (which will be mainly bug fixes) I have been thinking forward, and in a slightly different direction. Judging by the number of downloads that Redoable has had (way more than expected, trust me), I’m curious to what brought the people in….
Are they users that were after a feature packed theme, or did they just like the look of it, or even better was it a combination of the two. Just going on the comments on this site, and others which is has since been posted on, it would seem that it very much a mixture of the two.
Likewise there are the users who are using is straight out-of-the-box. Then there are those who are digging deeper. They are changing the colours, playing with the sidebar, and general page layouts. And best of all there those who are sharing what they find with other through the Support Forum.
So that takes me back to the initial question. Is less, more with a Wordpress theme? Having mountains of plugins isn’t for everyone. So what features would you look for in a ‘simple’ theme, and more specifically which exisiting feature from Redoable would you sacrifice for the sake of simplicity?
Once I’ve gotten Redoable to a point where I’m more than happy with it, and have the majority of bugs fixed, I will start work on my second theme. This time a much simpler one. So if you’ve got any suggestions, or requests, please share them.
(24 votes, ave: 4.08/5)
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great blog i love forum…
When I first saw your theme, I knew it was what I was looking for.
• Essentially three columns (in your theme the third is optional);
• A clean look;
• Tons of plug-ins already present.
With your second release you’ve made this theme even better.
There are some things I’d love to see, but can share these later.
I have been looking for “my perfect theme” for literally months (and my blog is still not online yet because I’m constantly fixing/adding stuff). Redoable is really the perfect one. It’s very easy to configure, and there are a lot of styles (the [p class]es) and plugin (pre-configured) integrated with the theme. These make it valuable to Wordpress newbies like me, to both to use it on the first day, and for later to learn how to make themes. Thank you very much for this perfect theme!
Thanks to everyone for the feedback you have provided so far. It’s much appreciated.
I was using K2 on my site and couldn’t come up with a colour scheme or layout i was happy with. While looking for a new theme I came across Redoable and the just found the layout and colour scheme ideal for what i wanted.
It is useful to have the plugin support built into the theme but at this moment i’m not really using many of the supported plugins.
I can’t say I’d want to lose any of the features currently offered in Redoable. The plugin support you’ve given the project has been fantastic, and aside from a couple bugs here and there, it’s one of the few themes I consider “complete”, considering the various “information” paragraph styles you’ve added, the plugins you’ve chosen to support, and the overall layout.
The color scheme you started with has grown on me, but making more dynamic styles available will only increase the user-base of the theme. It’s a great feature if you choose to continue working with it.
Overall, great work on Redoable! I hope you continue to support the theme for a long time to come! Thanks much for all the time you’ve invested in the theme and the community. :)
I’ve been following the developments of this theme since the day I found this great theme.
It emits coolness and all the features are just great.
I was looking for a new theme and my eye fell on this one immediately,….luckily it had a white version.
Looking forward to your next projects.
Dean,
It would be great if you ever had time to create a step-by-step blog post of how you actually created the Redoable theme. What files did you needed to modify or create and exactly what was done to each of them.
Dean: I’m in love with the layout. I intended to create my own theme as I’ve made a bunch already off the K2 base but the layout of redoable was/is so close to the creative design I envisioned. I can’t say that I don’t like the existing hooks you have in the theme to work with a ton of great plugins but I’d prefer if the theme wasn’t so blotted.
I would encourage you to do something minimalistic in regards to features and functionality. Only because it would benefit me the most, :D
Right now I’m working on redoable to make it my own, stripping out a lot of code that not needed like,
Livesearch
a ton of if statements
reducing the style sheet
I also want to thank you for using textmate and cssedit. Both programs I use which make my life a lot easier.
Scott: Check out my Search everything plugin
Thanks for the feedback everyone, its much appreciated.
Hi, Dean:
I like a lot the look of your theme. I will use it in my site very soon
after removing some things and adding others, mainly because i want to run a multiple author site with user profiles and lighter archives (like this, but using Reloaded).
I have been looking for a theme for my site for weeks. When i found Redoable 1.0 i fell in love inmediately :)
Thanks for such a great theme.
Ed.
I’ve investigated Redoable for my site primarily for the look. I was especially attracted by the attractiveness of the paragraph classes and the way they can be used to highlight important information.
So far the only thing that doesn’t work as I’d prefer is that the search doesn’t appear to search “pages”, only blog posts. I don’t know if that’s a Redoable issue or a WordPress issue or if there’s any way to change that. (The obvious workaround at my end is to find ways to present the content in my dated entries, which can then be searched.)
As for the plugins, they aren’t a big draw for my site (which is mainly intended to be an easily-updated web page as opposed to a true blog). And while my traffic is low, I don’t expect to use some of the plug-ins I really like the looks of (because a constant stream of single-digit page views doesn’t seem very attractive to me). But I can see using it for a true blog with more of the “flashiness”.
Thanks for such a great-looking theme.
I picked Redoable for a few reasons.
I loved the general color scheme and layout. i have never been a pink and yellow type of person and this matched my mindset perfectly.
Secondly, I love the plug-ins. I am always screwing up on template modifications so having a plug and play type template was amazing.
Wonderful work and keep it up.
While I’m still having issues with redoable (put I don’t give up ^^)
I wanted to tell you why I choosed this theme, aboce other, and above mine (I did 2 personal themes, quiet good, but … yours was just better)
I liked the community tools and the way you implemented it in your design (digg, and share this)
I liked the rating tool.
I liked the related posts option.
I liked the way you modify the sidebar.
The template was also nice. The fact you can have 3 different collumns on the homepage, and still be really lisible, is nice.
I liked a lot of things ;)
So what features would you look for in a ’simple’ theme: :>
For me you could, for a simple theme:
Remove Livesearch
A simpler version of the share this (too complicated maybe? )
Words and view counts is also less important
I hope it’s enough information for you :)