-Satish Gandham

As announced in my earlier post, I have to remove timthumb image resizing script from SWIFT theme to keep it up to the standards of WordPress.Org (Which change very often, and don’t seem to care about the users)

This will be the last version of the SWIFT supporting timthumb image resize script (There will be bug fixes for people who can not move to post thumbnails feature). I fixed the custom colors bug in this version and some other small bugs which you might have not noticed.

If you want to use the versions released after this, than you will have to goto each and every post and set the post thumbnail manually. Though moving to post thumbnails functionality of WordPress requires you to do lot of work, it has some advantages over timthumb.

• It uses less server resources. (You shouldn’t be concerned about this if you are using caching plugin)
• It will come in handy if you want to move to other themes.
• I’m sure that the situation will improve from what it now in future.

Cons of moving to post thumbnail functionality

• You will have to import thumbnails from custom fields manually, Can be a lot of work if you are having lot of posts.
• No zoom and crop, (can be addressed with CSS)
• The lack of a dynamic resize function in WordPress forces theme developers to register lots of image sizes for their themes to use. One of the problems with this approach is that the server becomes full of image files that will be never used.Another problem is that when someone changes their theme the image sizes simply doesn’t match, forcing people to use a plugin to regenerate all image files, and once again lots of those files will never be used.

One of the reviewer of the theme review team, Chipp Bennet, has a good solution to the last problem. He suggests that you upgrade your hosting.

I don’t see generation of all defined thumbnail sizes to be a significant problem. If that causes storage-quota issues, you probably need a better host – and if it causes storage-quota issues, I can almost guarantee that TimThumb? is going to cause server-load-quota issues on the same host.

-Chipp Bennet

You can find the complete discussion here

I’m free from my personal commitments for 2 weeks, I would like to spend these two weeks completely on improving SWIFT. It would be great if you can give me a helping hand.

Here is how you can help.

• If you have any suggestions or ideas , don’t keep them for yourself. Please post them in the comments.
• If you find a bug, please report it, however small it may be.
• Post links to sites with innovative designs and features.
• If you come across a theme with nice features, and want them to be included in swift, post the theme url in comments.

Finally don’t settle for less, just because SWIFT is a free theme. Ask for more.

Best ideas and suggestions will be listed in the release post of the next version, this is your chance to get a pr6 back link .

New slider in SWIFT

Here are some cool features of the new slider

• Keyboard Navigation
• Slider pauses on hover
• different transition effects

You can see the slider in action here, how do you like the new slider?
PS: Thanks to Gilbert Pellegrom @ dev7 studios for developing this beautiful slider.

Here are what I’m looking for

Logo

I want the logo to be simple, memorable,versatile and appropriate.

1. Any colour scheme of your choice, I will build the theme based on the logo
2. Soft colours with clean and simple look
3. Ideal aspect ratio 4:1
4. Easily describable, like the clock in the current logo represent the quick load time of SWIFT theme
5. It should be memorable
6. It should be effective in black and grey scale only
7. It should be scalable, so that it can be used any where

Here are some resources on how to design good logos.

• Vital Tips For Effective Logo Design
• 11 Steps of a Successful Logo Design Process

Some logos I liked (Source: logo pond)

Simple and Memorable, I'm not sure how it looks on a different background and in grayscale.

Though the aspect ratio doesnt match my requirements, we can position the text next to the circle.

Meets all the above said requirements.

Versatile, text can be positioned next to image.

Perfect aspect ratio for my requirements.

Perfect aspect ratio again and memorable.

Very simple and memorable.

Don't know what it means, I just like it.

See how the "a" looks like a fish

Eye catchy

Simple logo with image

Simple, Memorable text logo

Good logo except for the colour choice.

I liked the bubbles behind the text.

WOO Ninja

Mascot

I need a mascot representing Swiftlers. I don’t have clear idea of what exactly I need at the moment. May be we can have something like the woo ninja. If you have a good idea pleases post in comments.

If you are not a designer but have some good idea for the logo, please feel to share it.

Mail the logos to satish [at] gmail [dot] com

I will be looking forward for your submissions.
Thanks for your time.
Kind Regards
Satish Gandham

Suggest features to be added in SWIFT v4.0

I thought v3.0 would be the last major update for SWIFT, but for the love and popularity it gained this week I decided to release one more update with lot of new features.

Here are the features that are most likely to be added in v4.0. Please report bugs and suggestions as a comment.

• Drop down navigation for categories and pages.
• Option to disable rounded corners in the navigation area.
• Magazine and newspaper layout option for home page.
• Option to diable RSS link in top navigation area.
• Wide header option.
• Tooltip integration.
• Option to choose whats displayed in the tabs section.
• Custom styling for contact form 7
• Automatic Image resizing script, to make it easy for those who have large images in their earlier themes.
• Floating rss and twitter icons.
• 3 custom templates namely
  1. Wide template.
  2. Single slim sidebar.
  3. Left Sidebar-Content-RightSidebar. ( This will also be included in homepage layout options)
• Option to choose between 2 slider.
• Background colour for footer.
• Floating twitter and RSS icons.
• Option to enable WMD for comments, a simple lightweight HTML editor for blog comments.
• Font resize option for visitors.
• Jump to top link.
• Widgestised ADS.
• A small author info section at the bottom of the post with an option to disable it.
• Option to choose font style, size and various other font properties of various elements on the page like
  1. Main content area.
  2. Blog name and Tag
  3. Navigation area.
  4. SideBar and sidebar titles.
  5. Post title.

Awesome content slider in SWIFT wordpress theme

I’m currently working on SWIFT v3.0.0, you can check it in action at GeniusHackers.Com. I would like to have your valuable suggestions and feedback to make it the best. Let us together make premium quality themes available for free.

Whats new in version 3.0.0

Light weight tabbed interface

1. Cleaner code, customization will be more easy now.
2. Featured post slide show.
3. Tabed interface.
4. Better comment styling to match the overall look of the theme (Check the screenshot below)
5. Sexybook marks and related posts are most common plugins on wordpress powered blogs,  so I styled them to match SWIFT. Just install them and you have the fancy styling ready. (Check screenshot below)
6. Swift v.2.1.4 has post content width of 620 pixels, It’s too wide to for easy reading, so reduced it to 580 pixels in v.3.0.0. This also gives more room for sidebar.
7. Switches to minimal mode with a single click.
8. Option to add adsense ad at the end of post.
9. Widgetised banner ads, now you can choose where you want your banners to appear.
10. Option to choose font and other font properties. (3 built in configurations)
11. Integrated  page navigation.
    

    Page navigation integration in SWIFT.

Clean and fancy comment styling to match the overall scheme.

Clean styling of Sexy Bookmarks and YARPP plugins

One of the several BUG fixes in SWIFT

Features still under consideration..

• There is a handy post thumbnail plugin,  I’m trying to integrate it in SWIFT. Not sure if I can make it.

WordPress post thumbnail plugin

• May add tool tips feature.
  

  Tool Tips

Note: GH is not using the default colour scheme.