New Theme for WordPress - Bluebird
Published June 15th, 2007 in Wordpress Themes.
Today I am releasing my second theme for Wordpress called “Bluebird”. It’s a blue and brown, three column theme designed for at least 1024×768 resolution. My first theme, Round and Round, has almost 500 downloads, which is a respectable number I guess, but I’m hoping I can beat that with this latest theme. I know to get a really large number of downloads I need to design one that’s not quite so girly, so that will be my goal next time!
The demo will be here on my test site for a while if you want to take a look, and the zip file is here if you’d like to download it. It will be on the Wordpress theme viewer as soon as I can get it uploaded. They’ve had a bit of a problem over there, and have not allowed new theme designers to sign up easily to upload themes, so I’m again relying on the kindness of a friend to upload it for me. I’m interested in any comments you might have.
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78 Responses to “New Theme for WordPress - Bluebird”
- 1 Pingback on Jun 15th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
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Just gorgeous Randa. Congratulations on a great theme. You’re on a roll now.
Thanks Yvonne!! This time around the whole design process only took much less time- it was nice to have one under my belt to work from.
I love it. I am going to have to try making my own one day.
Very nice, Randa. I prefer this to your first one so I’m expecting FANTASTIC things from your next installment!
Great job.
Thanks- yes, I prefer this one too. Practice makes perfect. Well, okay, practice makes “better” at least.
I say, “practice makes better” too.
No-one’s perfect, except for Mr. Perfect, but I haven’t seen him around in years.
Hope you have a great weekend, Randa.
That’s fantastic, I feel inspired!
Well done
Jamie
I love the illustration. It’s so gentle (I don’t know why that word comes to mind but it’s the first thing I thought), and the gradient is a nice touch. Very pretty theme.
Very, very nice…
Similar colouring to my reboot theme too, although the two are a world apart in every other aspect! 
Well done!
Your reboot? Are you redesigning your site?
Yup. I have been for a few weeks actually - I guess I’m about 75% done now!
Cool! I can’t wait to see it.
very nice! did you have it loaded on your blog yesterday? I remember seeing it somewhere and I thought it was cute.
congrats and good luck with it!
I can’t wait to show it off!
Great work, Randa! This is some great design! Hope you get 500 more downloads!
That’s a great-looking theme, Randa. I love those colours. You have a great eye for colours.
I’m off to read your “make your own WP theme in minutes” post - my own theme is taking considerably longer!
hi again, I just remembered that it was a different site, just a similar graphic. Is that your own illustration? And if it’s a stock image, I was wondering how it works if you are using it for a free theme? I am working on my own, I am entering the sandbox theme contest, but I found a photo from flickr and got the photographer’s permission to use it on my theme. My problem is that I am not a graphic designer so I rely heavily on stock sites, but I have no idea if the license would allow me to use images on themes. Any insight would be much appreciate. thanks.
I did buy it from a stock site, and I bought the extended license which allows this use. Great question though.
I love it! I especially love the colors. Can’t wait to see what you come up with next!
Bev
Very nice and elegant theme! I toyed around with it on your test site and I like the way you’ve laid everything out. I bet it will be a very popular theme!
Don
I’ve been having a problem with the comments in the last week or so- after you leave a comment, the page doesn’t refresh correctly so you can’t tell if your comment went through without doing a manual refresh. I’m not sure what caused it, but I just installed the latest AJAX Edit Comments plugin, and am testing to see if it has improved! Anyone else have this problem?
magnific, terrific, if it had a 3th sidebar i put it directly on my own site !! but i don’t know how…snif
Randa, love this theme and am always to help out rockin’ designers like you!
Very nice Randa
Practice is indeed making better - looking forward to the next one.
This is adorable! In fact, I am taking my gimmesweeps.com site out of Joomla and switching it to WP and another host - today, I was hoping LOL
I downloaded this theme as it might work for the site, though I’d like a 4-column layout too. Still, it’s so cute, I can’t resist
Thanks - I really appreciate all the nice comments.
I think this is beautiful! And what’s wrong with being girly? You’re just cornering your niche!
Hey - me again. Just finished (well sort of) puting gimmesweeps.com back online and with your Bluebird theme! It looks great. Thanks for such a creative and cheery theme.
One question though: I have tried installing the All In One SEO plugin, but it will not show up in the plugins. Any ideas why?
I have used that plugin in my other 4 WP sites with no problems.
I visited your site - it looks great! Thanks for choosing my theme! If a plugin is not showing up in your list of plugins, it isn’t a problem with the theme, but rather a problem with either the place the plugin is saved, or I guess it could also be the plugin you’re trying to use is not compatible with the version of WP you’re using. I’m just guessing. I’m going to have to take a look at that plugin though - the title is certainly sounds useful!
Cool! The tree and the bird are fantastic!!
Very nice one. I love that blue colour and the bird too
Randa.. this is lovely - I like it. You are such a talent! Would love to use it for one of my blogs!
Ohhhh…I love this template! The bluebird is wonderful and I love the brown and blue…great job!
Thanks for a wonderful and beautiful blog design. I am actually using the theme and love it. It’s so easy with it being widget aware. After playing around with non widget aware themes and having a nightmarish time of it. I am so glad I found this and goes really well with my Eco-friendly blog.
I usually hate majorifty of the new themes but i’ve been debating on making this new site of mine and i saw it and said that is SO PERFECT for it.
now i jsut need $60 buxx for the fancy domain name
It’s so hard to find a 3 column theme that looks really good, but you’ve done it, congrats & thanks
i love your theme Randa! its beautiful and suits my website perfect!!!
(pajaritos means birdie in english, can you believe it?)
i just found your theme and love it too! using it for our new wwoof central portugal website. thanks!
Hi Randa,
I love your bluebird theme but I can’t get it to work! I am very new at this - I have wordpress 2.0 on my server and when I make bluebird into my current theme i just get a blank page. Any suggestions?
Thanks, Christine
Christine,
It’s really difficult to know what might be the problem. There must be something wrong behind the scenes somewhere, and as no one else has reported this particular issue and I know it works on my setup, it must be something that is not a problem with the theme itself. I’m sorry, I wish I had some ideas for you, but my best suggestion would be to check the WordPress support forum: http://wordpress.org/support/
I LOVE this theme (LOVE LOVE LOVE IT), but when I tried to use it, my page children disappeared. This is probably something really ovbious or easy to fix, but I’m a beginner. Any ideas?
Thanks!
Veronica - I don’t have this theme set up to show page children because the space available at the top right where the pages are listed is limited and could run into the sidebar depending on how many pages you have. What I do with my pages is put a link to the children in the page parent. If you look at my portfolio page for example, all those links are child pages. I hope that helps.
Hi Randa-
I love this theme and have actually changed my blog to use it. I do have one problem with the blogroll that I was hoping you may be able to help with. If you take a look at the page, the parent link categories are in a larger font size. Is there a way I can change this?
(?php get_links_list(1, ‘#’, ”, ”, 0, ‘_updated’, 0, 0, -1, 0) ?)
Beginning and ending changed to ( ) for readability.
BTW, I’m using WP 2.1.
Thanks!
@ Beth - I can’t seem to bring up the site you’re having the problem with. I just checked the Theme Viewer to be sure: http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/3-columns/3919/bluebird-10/ and I don’t see where the parent category is larger than the child. Let me know if you get a site up and running with this theme that I can look at.
Hi Randa, got the problem fixed myself…I was so excited to get that done. The site is Beth’s Random Life…Thanks for the great theme!!
That’s a pretty cute design, I love the simplicity and bird graphic you’ve used
Looks great Randa! I’m going to use this for a blog I’m making for a cousin of mine.
THANKS for this BEAUTIFUL template!! I am using it on my new blog now that I own my own domain and host my wordpress blog:) It looks great!
Such a nice, clean look… good job
Nice three column theme, It’s better than two column bluebird. I like it, download it quickly …
Love it! Used it for my son’s blog: http://www.henryleo.com/ .
Thank you!
This is one of my very favorite theme designs. That’s why I hope you’ve been paid by Twitter for their adaptation of your work in use on their home page. Of course you may not mind, but I think they should at least be giving you some link love.
@Cheryl - the illustration is actually one I purchased from a stock site. Looks like Twitter liked a similar one!
Hi,
Nice theme! Clean and pretty.
I’m now using it on one of my blogs
- William
Honestly? pretty much the nicest theme so far, simple and pro. Good job
I recently adopted this theme because we found out we’re having a boy! Very pretty and modern. I love it! Beautiful work!
Your Bluebird theme is great and I really like what you did with the picture of the bird and tree. It looks better on yours with the blue bird and white background than it does on Twitter with a white bird and blue background…two thumbs up!
Hi –
I’ve just downloaded Bluebird to be the template for my blog. But I need to add something in the “About” field (not the default language. And I need to add my webrings and feeds to the columns. How do I do that?
I looked at the sidebar, but I couldn’t figure out what to do.
Can someone please help? I really love this theme and want to convert to it.
Thanks heaps!
Hi there Janet. I recommend you use the Sidebar Widgets functionality that is built into the latest versions of WordPress. It allows you to easily customize your sidebar by just dragging and dropping things in. Look for “Widgets” under the Presentation menu. If you don’t see it there, it means you’re running an older version of WP, and it wouldn’t hurt to go ahead and upgrade. If you don’t want to upgrade, you can install the old sidebar widgets plugin: http://automattic.com/code/widgets/
Thanks for using my theme!
Hey! I was trying to get your awesome template on Wordpress but it is not on there now or something. Will it be back soon? I desperately want to use this theme. Is there a way I can put it on my wordpress blog without it being one of the chosen themes? I am new to wordpress and I just love this theme!
Randa, love this design and I plan on using it for a site I am working on. I like the simplicity and the large link a the top right. It makes it for easy navigation.
You mentioned that you used a stock site and I was hoping you’d let me know of the link that you used.
Again, a beautiful theme!
Just came by here to say that I saw the same illustration at the Twitter homepage, but reading the comments, I see how that happened. Gorgeous design — when I saw it I was immediately hooked.
This is a lovely clean crisp design. I lite it a LOT and will probably use this on a new blog i’m developing. Great work!
This looks great!
Thanks for sharing this one. I love toned down themes with neutral colors. Very easy on the eyes.
Hi, Randa,
I have a blog about Wellensitische
This theme fits very well ..
Thank you
Oh yes or a question, give the same subject in other languages?
It looks clean and great. I’ll try it in one of my new blogs.