New Look

With the release of WordPress 3.0 and all the new features that are on offer, I needed a new theme to be able to take full advantage of these features. So based of the new standard theme for WordPress 3.0 I give you Neo Green by Nothing Inc.

This theme is based loosely off my old theme Ecologist by Theme Museum in style but built from the new standard theme Twenty 10. The biggest thing you will notice is the header image which is a standard feature in this latest version. So I had to design image that would go with the style and theme of my blog.

The image was designed in 3 simple layers.

1. The original colour image – Cropped and positioned into the required size
2. Then an overlay copy of the image that was gray scaled and given the effect of lens blur.
3. The crosshair placed over the image and merging of the other 2 layers inside the crosshair to have the colour and detail come through.

The image is originally from Battlefield Bad Company 2, a game that I have made a few posts about since its release early in the year (both good and bad).

Some of the new feature highlights for WordPress 3.0:

• WordPress and WordPress MU have merged, allowing the management of multiple sites (called Multisite) from one WordPress installation.
• New default theme “Twenty Ten” takes full advantage of the current features of WordPress.
• New Custom Menu Management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.
• Custom Header and Custom Background APIs.
• Contextual help text accessed under the Help tab of every screen in the WordPress administration.
• Ability to set the admin username and password during installation.
• Bulk updating of themes with an automatic maintenance mode during the process.
• Support for Shortlinks.
• Improved Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies including hierarchical (category-style) support. (Try the Custom Post Type UI or GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools plugins to see the possibilities.)
• A lighter admin color scheme to increase accessibility and put the focus more squarely on your content.

So in all the new version seems good, I’ve still got some playing to go with all the new features and if you’re interesting in some more info about the new WordPress version check out the video below.