The other day I was taking a look at the various themes on the RevolutionTwo web site when my wife saw the demo of the Revolution Album theme and declared that she wanted it for TheFarlands.Net. She was never as happy with the WordPress.Fun theme as I was and wanted something a little more elegant. The Revolution Album theme fits the bill nicely and I didn’t have to do very much to “customize” it.

The first order of business was getting the majority of the existing posts up to snuff. The theme requires the use of custom fields and the ‘more’ function, so I had a lot of post editing to do before the theme would like right. The developers were kind enough to include blank logo images so adding your own logo is a snap. I made it a point to create a new master PSD file with all of the color schemes and a couple of font choices so that I can make changes fairly rapidly. Eventually, I’ll try my hand at creating some new schemes, but for now the blue suits us fine.

Hats off to Brian Gardner and the crew at RevolutionTwo for another fine theme.

I love the fact that people are asking me questions on how to do ‘x’ or fix ‘y’ with their site, but lately the questions have been highly focused on fixing little issues here and there with the Revolution Office theme. Normally, I’d think nothing of helping these people, but I just can’t do it.

With Brian and Jason’s recent change in direction on the cost and support model for Revolution themes, any support I provide on a Rev theme is money I’m taking out of their back pocket. It is in my best interest to see that Jason and Brian are successful in the recent endeavor so that I may profit from their hard work as well. Therefore, I offer my sincerest apologies to anyone I cannot help with their Revolution theme issues. I really do want to help, but to do so would be wrong.

Now, I am currently running the unsupported (free) version of the Revolution Office theme here and while I don’t really need support from Brian and Jason, I will probably sign-up for Pro Plus support after the holidays. I strongly recommend anyone running a rev theme do the same. I can think of three reasons why I should already be signed up and not a one as to why I shouldn’t.

• I’ve spent a good deal of time figuring out how to clean up some little things here and there with the theme. Support would most likely have saved me some time.
• I can only imagine what neat little tidbits of information and tips are in those forums, and dammit I want in.
• I truly appreciate what Jason and Brian are doing for this community and those with the means are best served by ensuring that these guys succeed.

I would be happy to help with any basic WordPress questions, but please don’t be offended if politely decline to assist you with you Rev-centric questions.

Anyone who follows the WordPress community should be familiar with the recent development that Brian and Jason have teamed up and started creating GPL’d themes. They’ve set up shop over at RevolutionTwo.com and they already have a stunning collection of WP themes available. For the new Red Haven web site, I decided a little “Out with the old, in with the new” might be in order and grabbed a copy of the Office theme.

I’ve made a number of minor modifications, mostly in the color scheme and stylesheet, but I also had to clean up a couple of bugs here and there. There wasn’t anything really serious, just a couple of width and height issues I needed to adjust. There was also a bit of a learning curve on getting images to look just right and figuring out a good taxonomy for categories. The navigation menu above the showcase is completely driven off of categories and that required I change the way I normally use categories some.

Overall, I’m very happy with the theme and eternally grateful to Brian and Jason for the fundamental change to their operating model for quality WordPress themes.

Merrimack PTA Kindergarten and Preschool is a private non-profit organization established in 1961 under the auspices of the Parent Teacher Association of the Merrimack School District.

The MerrimackPTA.com web site is powered by Brian Gardner’s groundbreaking Revolution theme for the WordPress publishing system. This project featured a fair amount of code modifications to the underlying theme, but retained the minimalistic and professional look of Brian’s original vision.