I am very honored to have been named the winner by the judges as the field contained many great designs this time around.
Well, actually to be honest I am a little surprised. There were designs in the competition that are aesthetically far more pleasing than Durable. I was sure that those designs would have the extra edge over the themes that concentrated on function over form. I guess that was where the multiple categories came into play, my personal favorite was Derek’s very beautiful Foliage Mod Theme which won “Most Creative Design”. Well done Derek.
That begs a question though, are people beginning to pick themes based not solely on the look and feel, but also the bundled functionality? I can’t help but think that people’s feelings towards what makes a good WordPress theme have changed quite a lot since the WordPress 1.5 competition. The boundaries of what theme authors can do with WordPress has been pushed since 1.5, simply because better documentation is now available, and we’ve had more time to fiddle around with the WordPress code.
Anyway, that was more of a brain dump than anything. It’s just great to see that judges really took time to look at the themes, judging functionality just as much as the look and feel.
Thanks to everyone who put in their free time to make this competition possible, your hard work is much appreciated.
Update: I have released a minor update to Durable. Version 0.2.1 is available for download and decreases page load times by 25%.
25 responses so far ↓
Derek Punsalan // May 17, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Congrats on the win. Durable was hands down the best overall package from the winners list. It would be a little more interesting if the entire list of submissions along with themes was made public for our own viewing. You know, if you already have one of them iPod’s, you could always send it my way
Don // May 17, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Congratulations, Andy.
snowcastle // May 18, 2006 at 7:00 am
0.2.1 is very slow….
in ie,have not rip effect.
Andy P // May 18, 2006 at 7:28 am
Hmm, my tests seemed to make it somewhat faster. It will be faster again in v0.3 as I have only made small tweaks in this version.
… Update: If you have IE7 installed on your computer, and use the IE6 standalone version to test, you will run into problems. This is because of the change in the use of IE specific filters. If you have IE6 installed normally, there is no problem with the tear effect from what I can see.
Don // May 18, 2006 at 11:34 am
It is indeed faster. Thanks Andy.
snowcastle // May 18, 2006 at 6:09 pm
In my company, the rip effect in ie is very good.
I think this is a fonts reason. I use the normal size fonts in my company and use the large size fonts in my home.
Thank u. Expect 0.3
April // May 18, 2006 at 8:15 pm
Congratulations!
snowcastle // May 18, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Testing.Spam increased.
Polybuzz // May 20, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Kudos Andy!
Azmi Hayaze' // May 20, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Nice theme, Love it. But is your cssdev default theme available here?
Thanks.
Fadzilah // May 20, 2006 at 7:59 pm
congratulations!!
nhk // May 22, 2006 at 1:13 am
hi, i like this themes CssDev, Pls help me tep by step custommize it!
Jorge Miente // May 22, 2006 at 5:30 am
Buen trabajo
Andy P // May 22, 2006 at 11:32 pm
Sorry guys, I’m not making the default CssDev theme available for download as it’s my own personal one
If I update the design in the near future I may decide to change my mind.
David Chin // May 25, 2006 at 8:31 am
Congrats, Andy! I’m in the camp that prefers a design that has more functions, the more the better. My Mediartor.com site uses the Sirius theme, which offers the ability to turn on or off certain components of the blog eg whether or not the sidebar should be shown when you’re on a WordPress page, whether you want to enable the footer or not (it even has a field for you to paste in stuff like tracking codes, etc). I’m raring to give your theme a go in a new blog I’m about to launch - thanks so much for sharing your theme with us.
Chrono Cr@cker // May 25, 2006 at 8:54 am
Good Lord, this theme is simply stunning and I think the most creative one that I’ve ever seen. It wins hand down, a work of genius. Great job Andy, how did you even think of such a theme?
Keep up the fab work!
Chrono Cr@cker // May 25, 2006 at 8:55 am
A Suggestion: AJAXified comments would go well with the theme.
K2’s no longer the best theme anymore. Hah!
Vishnu // May 26, 2006 at 11:23 am
yes finest it would have been .. only if it would have been cross browser compatible..
works fine in firefox here, but looks weird in both IE 6 and 7. Particularly categories in the footer and the placement of the posts on the home page.
I so wanted to use this theme .. hope u update it soon..
neteagle // May 28, 2006 at 6:24 am
It is awesome!
The current theme you used is also cool, can you share with us?
dragonet // May 30, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Congratulations, Andy. Your work is the best one I have ever seen.
duard - Carlos Aquino // May 31, 2006 at 7:01 am
Congratulations…but it continue slow !
Redhead Infidel // June 30, 2006 at 10:52 am
HI there - we’re looking at using this theme - love all that functionality! However, we’ve worked really hard on our site logo and would love to utilize the image in the header. Is it possible to use an image header, and still retain the ripped edges? Of course, visitors couldn’t change the colors in the header, but that’s a loss we’re willing to take in order to use our logo.
prototypeangel // July 10, 2006 at 5:18 am
Real nice theme, keep getting new stuff out.
MILE // July 30, 2006 at 5:18 am
Great theme…!!
Would be cool if someone would localize it to German maybe, but it’s cool anyway…
Just one question, even if it may sound dumb…the option setting is actually meant to be there all the time, right…?! So that means that each user can adjust color settings the way he likes…?! Or is that just a feature for the blogger…?!
Could I actually adjust all the colours the way I like them and then hide the option button, so that it stays as I want it even…?!
Chrono Tron >> World Wide Weblog // August 9, 2006 at 3:24 am
WP Themes & Power Cuts…
Remember the WP Theme contest conducted by ArenaWP that took the world wide web by storm. Yeah, the one which turned out to be a scam initially and then was restarted. Well the results are out and I think the judges have made a very good decision. Firs…
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