Talking about Wordpress, what do you think an awesome high quality Wordpress themes should look like? Should they have vivid colors? Clear typography? Great content readability? Or perhaps something that conventional graphic design theories forget?

Well, we guess this is your time to decide. Express your insights by designing a theme concept for us. Show yourself off, gain some recognition, and not to mention, there is a total prize of US$ 3500 available for you, talented designers.

How to participate in the contest?

To participate in the contest, you must submit a theme concept to ColorLabs Project. It’s not a theme, it’s just a concept. Here are some technical requirements of the concept:

• The theme concept is intended for Wordpress. That’s rule number one. But the great news is: there is a broad possibility of amazing stuffs we can create with Wordpress.
• We believe that there are numerous ways to present a theme concept, but to participate in the contest, your theme concept must be created in Photoshop format.
• The theme concept must cater the 1024 X 768 user’s screen. Therefore, considering the margin and borders, the maximum width of the design is 980 pixels.
• To participate in the contest, you need to publish a blog post and tell a bit of your story about the contest. You should also give a linkback to this post.
• Designs must be submitted in JPG or PNG format to contest [at] colorlabsproject [dot] com. You also have to tell us the background story of the concept: what inspired you, how you designed, what the design is all about. Designs are not only about shapes, colors, or patterns. They should have insightful story that complete the whole as one. In the story, please also mention your full name and any URL you would like to be linked to if you win.
• If you use any stock/source images in the designs, please submit them as well and mention the URLs in the story above. Please make sure that those images have extended usage licenses that allow the distribution of the design.
• Designs must be submitted before 14th February 2009, midnight (GMT+7).

The competition is divided into two phases:

1. Qualification Round: January 10 – February 14, 2009.
   In this round, participants are only required to submit the front-page of the theme concept in PNG/JPG format. In the end, there will be 12 theme concepts that will be selected to compete in the final round.
2. Final Round: February 14, 2009 – February 21, 2009.
   In this round, finalists are required to submit the inner pages of the theme concept along with the source files (PSD files). Source files will be assessed to determine the core quality of the design.

The contest is divided into 3 (three) categories:

1. Category A: General Blog/Lifestream and Photo/Videoblog
   Theme concepts participating in this category should include general elements for standard personal/lifestream blogs or photo/videoblogs.
2. Category B: Business Blog/Portfolio
   Designs competing in this category should include several basic elements of business/portfolio blogs. They should be able to market products/services or function as a showcase site.
3. Category C: Newspaper/Magazine
   Theme concepts participating in this category should include main elements of an online newspaper/magazine, particularly: headline, featured posts, multiple post listings, and ad spots.

The winner from each category will receive US$ 1000 and additional US$ 500 will be awarded to the best of the three. So it’ll be US$ 1500 for the best of the best and US$ 1000 each for the rest two winners. All winners will be interviewed and featured in ColorLabsProject. One contestant may submit more than one design and he/she may win more than one category as well.

Designs are assessed by a special team from ColorLabs Project. Three main factors that we will put into considerations are (1) the background story of the concept, (2) how well the theme concept presents the site’s content to the viewer, and (3) how far it transforms Wordpress into something stunning yet well-functioning as a website.

We will then make the winning theme concepts available as official ColorLabs Project themes and we will credit the contestant for the design.

Terms and Conditions

• One contestant may submit more than one theme concept, he/she is also able to win more than one category.
• Theme concept has to be completely new, never been published anywhere, and never been used to compete in similar contests.
• Theme concept must be originally developed by you and it must be entirely your own work. If it contains any stock images, it must be certified that they have an extended usage.
• You understand that by participating in this contest, your theme concept is possibly used by ColorLabs Project and may be made available for purchase on our site. Winners will be awarded a cash prize for their work. Any other theme concept will only be made available for purchase after a once-off fee agreed by both parties. Sales generated off the theme will be kept by the company.

So, are you in?? Submit your theme concepts now! Go to http://colorlabsproject.com/blog/contest/ for further information.

I used to download the ZIP file from Wordpress.org, extract that file in my machine, then upload the whole contents through FTP. Even if you’re using DSL/broadband internet connection, this uploading process, which is about 5MB size, is apparently rather time-wasting. Upgrading one blog is all fine, you can do it while you’re checking your Facebook without even realizing that it’s done already. But how about upgrading 9 Wordpress blogs? And not to mention the unreliable internet connection in Indonesia which leads to errors in the uploading process.

The solution is to upgrade Wordpress from UNIX shell prompt. It won’t take more than 30 seconds of your valuable time. Please mind that this procedure is only intended for them who are familiar with UNIX/Linux interface and the shell commands. If you are totally new to these stuffs, please follow the FTP-way of upgrading Wordpress.

Step 1: Backup existing database!

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$ mkdir /backup/yourblogname
$ mysqldump -u user -p WP-DATABASENAME > /backup/yourblogname/blog.db.sql
$ tar -zcvf /backup/yourblogname.tar.gz /public_html/yourblogname

Step 2: Download the latest version of Wordpress

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$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
$ unzip latest.zip

Step 3: Overwrite all new files

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$ cd /public_html/yourblogname
$ cp -avr /tmp/wordpress/* .
$ rm -rf /tmp/wordpress /tmp/latest.zip

Step 4: Database upgrade

Open a browser and go to http://yourblogname.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php

You’re done and you can repeat this procedure to all WP blogs you have on your server.

PS. You need to replace path names and database name with actual values.
PPS. If something goes crazy, you can restore your old database and files from /backup/wp/yourblogname directory.
PPPS. Yes, 9 Wordpress blogs. You obviously need to feel the joy of hosting blogs and websites on an unlimited bandwidth/quota web hosting company.

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Platformate Theme has just been released and made avaiable for sale a day ago. The theme is designed for you who are willing to have unique blog design, a magazine look with personal touch. In one single purchase, you get the unlimited possibility to pick and decide the color scheme of the theme. Here is a very simple tutorial on how to colorize your theme.

There are basically 3 colors applied across the theme: the dark tone, the light tone, and the link hover cover. With these 3 user-definable options, you can get any color you want for your blog.

What should I do?

1. Log into your WP Dashboard.
2. Activate the Platformate Theme. (you should have done this already, I guess)
3. Go to Design >> Platfotmate Options
4. In the top-right section of the theme admin panel, you’ll find “Theme Color“.
5. Put the codes below to your admin panel, save the settings.
6. Visit your blog, refresh the page, and you’ll see your blog in a new color.

Note: The category spoilers colors in the right sidebar must be configured in “Category Color Assignment” in the bottom-left of the admin panel.

So, what are you waiting for? Colorize your Platformate now!

Tips on Custom Colors

You can use this references to get more color codes:

• http://www.hypergurl.com/colormatch.php
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors
• http://www.webmonkey.com/reference/Color_Charts
• http://www.computerhope.com/htmcolor.htm

To get the best and professional look, you can use some web color palette software like Adobe Kuler.

Platformate Theme is available at Colorlabs Project: Platformate.
Get it while it’s hot! Click here to purchase the theme!

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Platformate is a magazine-style theme that keeps your blog personal. Have you ever wished to have a unique, one-of-a-kind design for a personal Wordpress blog? A touch of magazine block elements showing popular posts in the front page while having other posts remain as usual blog date-ordered lists? Along with automatically generated fancy thumbnails that are displayed at a pretty sidebar to show your latest posts? There is Platformate for you, your blog’s total makeover.

Platformate Theme is available at ColorLabs Project: Platformate. More screen shots are available here. See the demo here.

Copyright Notice

1. TimThumb is an open source automatic image resizing script developed by Tim McDaniels and is distributed under the MIT License.
2. Feedburner “Feedsmith” plugin was originally developed by Steve Smith and is now available for download to all Feedburner.com users
3. Google Analytics is a web tracking and statistics tool from Google.com. Tracking codes are available to all Google Analytics user and can be downloaded from Google.
4. All sample images are courtesy of its respective authors. Details about sample images can be read here.
5. Wordpress template files and CSS stylesheets are originally developed by Michael Jubel Hutagalung.

Thank you.

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This list is updated and is waiting for you voluntary work to add a new language become available. If you want to join the localization team, simply send the translated .PO and .MO file to sales [at] colorlabsproject [dot] com, and get a 50% discount on Platformate.

So, what about localization? “Although WordPress displays in U.S. English by default, the software has the built-in capability to be used in any language. The WordPress community has already translated WordPress into many languages, and there are Themes, translation files, and support available in many other languages.” – Wordpress.org

WordPress in Your Language

To get Wordpress in your own language, read this post from Wordpress.org thoroughly and download any available localized Wordpress that you want. There are 58 languages available for you. After that, simply upload all the files and you will find everything in the Wordpress Dashboard panel is now in your own language.

If you still see English texts in your Wordpress Dashboard, do a double-check and analysis. Open your wp-config.php file in a text editor and search for:

define ('WPLANG', 'xx_YY');.

xx_YY is your language code, for example: de_DE for German, id_ID for Bahasa Indonesia, or fr_FR for French. If you did not find that command there, you probably downloaded the wrong file.

If you did and you don’t want spend your valuable time re-uploading the whole package, read this post regarding manually installation of wordpress language files. For me, uploading a total of 4MB files is somewhat time-consuming. Why? Because there are only 3 files that needed to do the whole translation. (Shouldn’t I tell you this in the first place?) Read that post and search for .PO and .MO file for your local language and do manual installation.

Arthemia Premium in Your Language

OK, you got Wordpress in you own language, what should you do now? Well, here’s what you need.

1. Arthemia Premium theme (of course). You can purchase the theme here.
2. A .PO and .MO editor, you can try POEdit. You can download POEdit here.

And here is the step-by-step procedure on how to translate Arthemia Premium without editing the template files.

1. Install and run POEdit. Go to the menu File >> Open and select the file id_ID.po, which is included in the purchase package. id_ID.po is a language file for Indonesian version of Arthemia Premium. This tutorial will enable you translate that language file to another language.



2. After that, your POEdit would look similar to this picture below. On the left is the original strings, which are in English, and on the right is the translated string, in this case is still in Bahasa Indonesia.



3. Edit every string and translate it into your own language. Simply type a new word in the edit box that is located at the bottom section. Beware of symbols (%), HTML tags (<p>, </p>, etc), and punctuations (dot, comma, semi-colons). Do not erase any of those.
4. When you’re done, save the file as a new language file. Eg. fr_FR.po for French. A complete list of naming convention can be read here.



5. Upload the file and put it in this folder: /wp-content/themes/arthemia-premium/
6. Refresh your Arthemia-Premium-powered blog and notice the difference. If you feel like something is grammatically incorrect, repeat the step above and re-upload the language file. Some pages you need to check are the front page, the PAGE page, the post page, the archive page, the search result page, and the author page.
7. You’re done.

Note: Texts in the sidebar and footer section of the theme are controlled from sidebar widgets. Go to Dashboard >> Design >> Widgets and edit those texts.

What languages are already available?

These are some language files that are already available for download. This list is updated and is waiting for you voluntary work to add a new language become available. (UPDATE: This post has been moved to http://colorlabsproject.com/knowledgebase-tutorials/arthemia-premium-and-wordpress-localization/).

Well, Wordpress and Arthemia Premium are now in your own language. Terima kasih. Thank you. Merci beaucoup. Muchas gracias. Danke. Dankie. Dêkuji. Sas efharisto. Arigato gozaimasu.

This post has been moved to http://colorlabsproject.com/knowledgebase-tutorials/arthemia-premium-and-wordpress-localization/. This post is now closed.

Frankly speaking, I have two version of Arthemia; the free version was released on May 2, 2008 while the premium version was released on August 18, 2008. If you want to get a glimpse of the theme, here is the demo page of Arthemia Free and this one is for Arthemia Premium. The most significant difference between the two versions is the theme administration panel, which is included in the premium version. Arthemia Free users would probably be familiar to experiencing the time-consuming installation and configuration as they have to deal with ‘invisible’ category ID in WP 2.5+ and the never-ending frustration caused by the Post Custom Field while trying to assign thumbnail for posts. Novice users would find everything even more difficult as they do not have enough skill and knowledge about PHP, (X)HTML, and CSS to do all the stuff. Then, the theme administration panel is the one-stop-solution to address all those issues.

And this is the side-by-side comparison of the themes:

	Arthemia Free	Arthemia Premium
Release Date	May 5, 08	Aug 18, 08
Template Files
Index Page	YES	YES
Post Page	YES	YES
Archive Page	YES	YES
Search Page	YES	YES
Author Page	NO	YES
Features
Thumbnail Generation	YES	YES
Thumbnail Assignment	Custom Field	Auto (First Image), Custom Field
Theme Admin Panel	NO	YES
Featured Posts (jcarousel)	NO	YES
Random Post Gallery	NO	YES
Video Feature (YouTube and Flash)	NO	YES
Colorful Category	NO	YES
Mini-Headline	NO	YES
Gravatar Author Photo	NO	YES
Google Analytics Integration	NO	YES
Feedburner Integration	NO	YES
Google Adsense Integration	NO	YES
Custom Ad Banner Management	NO	YES
Localization Support (PO and MO files)	NO	YES
Semantic HTML	NO	YES
SEO Optimized	NO	YES
After-Sales Support	NO	YES
Easy Upgrade and Free Updates	NO	YES
Price	Free	USD $70 (1-site)

Anyway, there is an ongoing development on Arthemia Premium localization. Several language files are about to be available in a week: English, French, Polish, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Czech, and Bahasa Indonesia. Full list of available languages can be read here.

Well, premium version, anyone? Check it out at http://colorlabsproject.com

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Photo credit page for images published at Arthemia Premium Theme demo site. These images are used as thumbnail examples in sample posts and are licensed under the Creative Commons for commercial work. Click the picture to get to the original author.

Please welcome the magnificent Candi Borobudur, the unique traditional house of Bataks, and the one-of-a-kind Kecak dance and sculptures from Bali. Feel the spirit of Monumen Nasional Jakarta, the beauty of Taman Laut Bunaken, and the 1883 gigantic explosion of Gunung Krakatau. Meet the tribal Papuan villagers and the beautiful Kalimantan dancers. Welcome the tasteful Indonesian fried rice, harmonic angklung instrument, stunning batik arts, Bandung city light, Bogor souvenirs, and last but not least, the former Bandoeng Technische Hoogeschool, Institut Teknologi Bandung.

And welcome to Indonesia, everyone.

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If you still have problems getting the thumbnail automatic generation working, please read this tutorial. I spent a lot of my time creating this tutorial, including screen shots for some significant steps, and adding narrative text to each image. Please consider reading the whole instruction again, again, and again because I found out that there is 90% possibility that you missed one spot and there are many occurrences one say that he/she did not missed anything but ended up saying “Ah, yeah, I forgot that one.”

The CHMOD 777

Upload and activate the Arthemia theme. Then, the first step is to make the scripts and cache folder writable. You can either try ‘777′ writable or ‘755′ writable. Some web hosting company prevent you making any folder ‘777′ writable due to some security reasons. But, I suggest you to try with ‘777′ writable first. I use FileZilla to do the FTP work because it is free and has a lot of features. To make the folders writable, simply right click the folder name and select ‘File Attributes’ and a dialog box will show up.

You can tick all the attributes there, consider it a finger exercise, or directly type 777 as the folder attribute. Do this to both scripts and cache folder.

You’re done with FTP work and may continue to the image uploading procedure.

Uploading an image

To upload image, you can use the built-in Add Image WP feature. In the post editing page, notice the Add media icons just below your post title and permalink. Click “Add Image” and an image uploading page will show up.

Upload any image that you like, preferably the properly sized one (for example: 300×300 pixel or bigger for Arthemia theme).

After the image is uploaded, you can see the image location from the ‘Link URL’ field. In this tutorial, it is: http://michaelhutagalung.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/1.jpg. Values may vary depending on your blog settings. One may have the time-structured folder while others may not. Copy that value but remember to get rid of your blog home page location. In my case, the final value will be wp-content/uploads/2008/08/1.jpg.

Then, close the image uploading page and you do not need to clik ‘Insert to Post’ button if you do not want to. When you’re back in the post editing page, scroll down until you find “Custom Fields”. Make a new Custom Field with “Image” as the key and the image location as the “Value”.

You’re done. Please feel free to comment or ask for support in the forum but only if you’re 100% sure that you did not miss anything.

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Arthemia Premium is magazine style theme for Wordpress. Arthemia is unleashing the power of Wordpress to become a simple-yet-powerful CMS (content management system) with the automatic thumbnail generation feature and theme administration panel. A fresh and awesome blend of a blog and a magazine, for you. Arthema Premium is available at ColorLabs Project. More screen shots are available here. See the demo here.

Copyright Notice

1. TimThumb is an open source automatic image resizing script developed by Tim McDaniels and is distributed under the MIT License.
2. Feedburner “Feedsmith” plugin was originally developed by Steve Smith and is now available for download to all Feedburner.com users
3. Google Analytics is a web tracking and statistics tool from Google.com. Tracking codes are available to all Google Analytics user and can be downloaded from Google.
4. All sample images are courtesy of its respective authors. Details about sample images can be read here.
5. Wordpress template files and CSS stylesheets are originally developed by Michael Jubel Hutagalung.

Thank you.

This post has been moved to http://colorlabsproject.com/blog/arthemia-premium-at-colorlabs-project/. This post is now closed.

The error codes show up in the right footer of the Arthemia theme, in which are used to show the 5 most viewed posts of your blog.

This error code shows up if you also have WP-Email installed.
Warning: cannot yet handle MBCS in html_entity_decode()! in /wp-content/plugins/wp-email/wp-email.php on line 338

If you deactivate WP-Email, another error code will show up.
Warning: cannot yet handle MBCS in html_entity_decode()! in /wp-content/plugins/wp-postviews/wp-postviews.php on line 260

It’s well known that the latest release of LesterChan’s plugin sports little issues when used within a Wordpress 2.51 setup in a PHP 4.x environment, since it’s meant to be used in a PHP 5.x environment. The most evident issue is the notorious behaviour of the sidebar widgets, which declares an impressive string of “MBCS” warnings able to totally spoil the look of your webpages. If your provider cannot upgrade your PHP to the 5.x release, please avoid the plugin upgrade.

The latest working version of the plugin for WP 2.5 is WP-PostView 1.20. If you accidentaly upgraded the plugin to the latest version, please download the file below and delete the new plugin. Only use this version of the plugin if you don’t have plan to upgrade your web hosting to PHP 5.x.

Download: WP-PostView 1.20.
This file has been downloaded times.

Please visit the forum should any questions arouse you. I am so glad that my web hosting company has been using PHP 5.x ever since.