WPaddict.net tested 8 themes to find the fastest loading theme and confirmed that SWIFT is the fastest loading WordPress theme beating the popular premium themes.

http://wpaddict.net/is-the-swift-theme-really-swift/

An awesome customization of SWIFT I came across recently

http://www.jennyonthespot.com/

Screenshot of SWIFT version 5.67

I wanted a lite weight theme, which is fast, which doesn’t hammer the server, SEO optimized, AdSense ready, easy to customize,  and easy to carry forward the customizations when updating the theme.

I checked a lot of free and premium themes, none matched my requirements. That’s when I decided to build one myself.

I started development of SWIFT in August 2009. I slowly kept adding the features I wanted in a theme, and after 14 months of work, I have SWIFT v5.67. A theme which is

• Fast
• Standard compliant
• Easy to customize
• Easy to share your customizations
• Easy to update.
• Easy to build static sites.
• Easy to build squeeze pages.
• SEO optimized and
• AdSense ready

SWIFT-v5.67 is a theme that I always wanted, a theme that is every bloggers dream.

Whats new in SWIFT?

There are a lot of things, here are the major ones.

• Added a new home page layout.
• Added custom buttons to the WordPress editor so that you can easily insert tips,warnings,notes, questions and buttons into your posts to make your posts eye candy.
• SWIFT now uses CSS sprites. Using CSS Sprites I was able to reduce the page size by 35KB and the number of http requests by 13. SWIFT is now faster than before.
• Added custom post RoundUps, which makes posting roundups a breeze.
• Added more customization options for the fonts section.
• Added stylesheet to the WordPress editor, your post will now look exactly the same way as it looks in the editor.
• Added option to add ad’s to your RSS feed.
• SWIFT is now BuddyPress ready, if you install BuddyPress, it automatically loads the required theme files for BuddyPress. (I’m holding this back, for the premium version of SWIFT, due next month)

Wondering how to add the ticks and arrows to lists in your post?

Switch to HTML mode and add tick/arrow class to the the ul

<ul class=”tick”> for tick and

<ul class=”arrow”> for arrow.

Demo

Download SWIFT

Here is the list of people who helped me in the development of v5.67 of SWIFT with their valuable feedback. Thank you Swiftler’s

• Ashwin
• Zooper
• benwaynet
• Clint
• Matt
• Web Page Designer
• BemSul.com
• David Parsons
• Jay Castillo

PS: We are rolling back to vBulletin forum, as the BuddyPress version was not very user-friendly. If you havent registered on our vBulletin forum before, you have to register again.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Preview of SWIFT v5.67 (New Home page Layout)

Very useful custom buttons added wordpress editor in SWIFT v5.67

This how the buttons look when the post is published.

Demo of the custom buttons

SWIFT version 5.42 is here with some new options in AD management and some bug fixes reported on the forum.

Here is what’s new in this version of SWIFT

Get live help, SWIFT is the one and only theme with this feature.

• Added live chat option to the option to the options page, so that you can get immediate help in using the theme. SWIFT is the only WordPress theme to offer such a feature.
• Added an extra advertising position, “Between post content”. When this position is activated, ads will be shown on posts longer than 1200 characters, after 600 characters.
• Ad slot after posts title and after the post end will now be active on the pages also.
• Fixed the options not saving on WordPress MU sites bug.
• Different sizes for the site name on home page and inner pages bug.
• Background images bug.
• Made the layouts section on design options page more intuitive.

And finally the big news is SWIFT user guide is now officially complete, it is 3100 words long with 40+ screenshots. I covered everything possible to minute detail, and tried my best to be as clear as possible. I hope you find it useful.

{ SWIFT user guide } { Download  SWIFT v5.27 }

Note: Blog vs Magazine layout setting on the home page and archive pages will be lost with the update, you should goto the design options page and set them again.

I’m very happy to announce the new import / export options feature in SWIFT a feature unique to SWIFT in it’s class. Apart from the ease in carrying your customizations from development server to live server, this new feature opens new doors for SWIFT. Now you can easily share your customizations and color schemes with fellow Swifter’s, release them as child themes.

I haven’t yet styled the import/export options admin page, I will write a detailed post on how to share your customizations once I finish styling the new import/export page.

The new slider announced in my earlier post is included in this version of SWIFT

Download  SWIFT v5.27

PS: Please share the news on twitter and other social media.

Thanks

Satish Gandham

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.

How are you guys doing.It’s been quite a time since SWIFT was updated. Last 2 months have been very tough for me ( toughest in my life   ). But  now it’s time to get my controls back and do some serious coding. I have planned some nice additions for SWIFT, if you have any suggestions, want to request a new feature or report bugs now is the right time to do.

Here are the list of features to be added in SWIFT

• Twitter widget
• Option to display links to your social media profiles in the RSS subscription widget. I’m going to add the following sites,let me know if you want me to add any other sites.
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Digg
  • Stumbleupon
  • Linkedin
  • delicious
  • Flickr
  • Youtube
• Width of narrow sidebar in SWIFT is 160px, with 10px padding it doesn’t have enough room for the popular 160px wide banner/text/link ads. In the next version of SWIFT I’m going to add a special widget for these ads, this widget will have no paddings and border and fit perfectly in the space available.
• Option to specify the post ID for full length post on home page.
• Tabber widget and the slider needs some improvement, may be I will provide an option to choose between 2 sliders.
• Option to specify the font size of post content.
• Some default colour schemes.
• I will  try to make the theme translation ready.
• Write a support guide for the new version, 30% done. It’s a boring task , not sure how long it’s gonna take.
• Three column layout, most probably this will be released as a premium version to raise funds to buy a macbook and furnish my work space. ( I’m already using the three column version on this blog )

Thats all for now, I will update the post if I get any new ideas.

PS: 2 Million ( yeah 2 followed by 6 zeroes) pages are powered by SWIFT, thanks to everyone who is using SWIFT.

Check here

Some random post from my random blog “From my Lens“

Apart from WordPress MU support, Improvements in this version include

• Fixed the image resizing problem reported here
• All the options have been consolidated using arrays
• Added CSS styling for <del> and <ins>
• improved the inline documentation of the code

Download version 5.25 of SWIFT

SWIFT version 5.0 is out after a long wait.Lot of care was taken in designing and implementing every feature in the theme. I can proudly say that SWIFT is the best WordPress theme available.

Thank you all for your continuous support, v5.0 wouldn’t have been possible without your support.

Special thanks to

• Dawn of http://huffmasterfamily.com/ for answering the queries on forum while I was busy developing v5.0.
• Amandeep Singh of http://www.equitipz.com/ Saurabh of vlovers.Com for their feedback and suggestion.
• Karthikeyan of blogrPro for his help in coding.
• Dustin Dempsey for finding bugs in the theme.

Here are some of the best features of SWIFT, that make it a better choice than the premium themes.

1. Search Engine Optimization

SWIFT is highly optimized for search engines.For example

• It uses H1 tags for post title instead of blog name.
• Right Sidebar or Left Sidebar, your HTML always remains same and the post content comes first in the document flow. That means a better rankings for the keywords in the post.

2. Loads VERY FAST

SWIFT is highly optimized to reduce the loading time of your site. With Google announcing speed of the site as one of the criteria for search rankings, SWIFT gives you an extra edge over other blogs in your niche.

3. Easily Customizable

You can customize every element of the site from the options page to give your site a personalized look. Here are some of the customization options in SWIFT

• You can customize colors of almost any element of the theme.
• You can choose font face and size.
• Layout.

There are lot of other options, checkout the options page demo link for more detail.(Scroll down for the link and password)

4. Vertical Rhythm

Space in typography is like time in music. Just as regular use of time provides rhythm in music, so regular use of space provides rhythm in typography, and without rhythm the listener, or the reader, becomes disoriented and lost.

How is this vertical rhythm going to help you?

With vertical rhythm, it will be easy for your readers to read the posts. When the content is easily available for the readers they are going to stay on the site for a longer time and thus increasing your chance to convert them into a regular reader or customer of you are selling products on your blog.

BETA release of v5.0 was installed on GeniusHackers.Com on 2nd JAN, you can see the increase in number of page views after installing SWIFT.

GeniusHackers.Com traffic stats.

5. Banner AD’s and Adsense Integration

SWIFT has Adsense ad’s integrated into 4 killer positions

1. In Header.
2. Below The main navigation.
3. Below post title on single post page.
4. After post content on single post page.

In v5.0 banner ads are widgetised, that means you can place them in any location of the sidebar or footer.

Banner ADS widget in SWIFT

6. Three built-in Widgets

In v5.o RSS subscription box and the tab’s  are widgetised so that you can place them in any location of your choice. Apart form these 2 widgets we have the poplar posts widget and the banner ads widget.

Widgets Backend

Widgets in action

7. Social Bookmarks integration

Using a lot of plugins slows down the site considerably, so I integrated the social bookmarking feature into the theme so that you wont need a another plugin for the same. You can disable the feature if you don’t want to use it.

Social Bookmarks and author info

8. Author Templates and Author info

SWIFT has a specially designed authors template, showing authors info and the authors posts and author info as added at the end of post on single post template. Ideal for multi author blogs.

Author Template

9. Sexy Dropdown Navigation

SWIFT has a clean and elegant drop down navigation, this sleek navigation will help you in reducing the bounce rate.

Sleek and sexy dropdown navigation.

10. Automatic thumbnail generation and resizing of images

Built in image re-sizer script automatically scales your post images for pixel perfect display. Well, this is an option in most of the premium themes, the best thing about SWIFT is it supports images from other hosts which isn’t a feature available in premium themes.

SWIFT automatically re-sizes images that overflow from the content area. This comes in very handy if you are moving to SWIFT from theme which has wider content area.

11. Cross Browser Compatible

SWIFT is compatible with all the popular browser and the not so popular IE 6.

12. Custom Page Templates

Page Templates

SWIFT has three custom page templates apart from the default template, they are

1. Full Width template
2. Wide Content area with left sidebar and
3. Wide content area with right sidebar

13. jQuery Tool Tip integration

I have integrated a lite weight tooltip plugin into the theme so that your readers will can easily figure out whats in a link, without actually visiting it. Your readers will definitely love it.

Displaying post excerpts on mouse hover.

Other minor additions to SWIFT v5.0

Apart from the awesome features listed above here are some more

• Integration of  My Page Order and My Category Order plugins. Thanks to  Andrew Charlton for allowing us to use code from his plugins in SWIFT.
• Background images for header and page can now be added from the options page.
• Option to show full length posts along with excerpts on home page.
• Option to order and disable navigation menu.
• Option to append link to navigation menu.
• Option to disable RSS links and search box in navigation menu.
• Font face and size selection.

Please post a review of SWIFT on your blog if you like it, if you any suggestions feel free to post them in comments.

Demo: This blog uses v5.0

If you want to checkout the options page without installing, visit

http://swiftthemes.com/swiftTest/wp-admin/admin.php?page=swift-options

http://swiftthemes.com/swiftTest/wp-admin/admin.php?page=swift-color-cptions

UserName and password for the above options page.

Note: Color option don’t work in WordPress versions before 2.9

PS: I’m going to my home town tomorrow (Haven’t started packing yet ) and I wont be having internet for the next 2 days. I will post the installation and upgrade instructions on 13th.

SWIFT colour options page (Some options are cropped from the screenshot)

 <a href="http://www.geekyweekly.com/mypageorder" target="_blank">My Page Order</a> and <a href="http://geekyweekly.com/mycategoryorder" target="_blank">My Category Order</a> plugins by  <a href="http://www.geekyweekly.com/" target="_blank">Andrew Charlton</a>.

I selected the color pencils as default thumbnail image in a hurry, It’s time to have a better image which will be apt for all types of posts. v5.0 will be having an image selected Swiftler’s.

Post url’s to the images which can be used as the default thumbnails, once we have enough entries I will pick five from them and then have a poll to select one from them.

• You can suggest photographs taken by you.
• Your graphic work (You can create one exclusively for SWIFT if you have time) or
• Any image that you think will be suitable as default thumbnail for SWIFT.

Before you post, please make sure that they are not copyrighted and free.

Social Media Icons

Using a plugin for social bookmarking sites can make your site heavy. So I’m including that option in SWIFT, so that you don’t have to use a extra plugin.

Suggest a Icon set to be used for the built in social bookmarking option. I prefer hand drawn icons.
Please post the url to icon set of your choice in the comments.

Author info box

This is how the author info will be shown in v5.0, if you have any suggestions please post them in comments.

You will have option to disable each section if you don’t want to show related posts or author info or social bookmarking icons.

Author info and related posts in SWIFT v5.0

Comments template suggestions

If you have come across a blog with a better comments template than SWIFT, please share the url in comments.

download Swift-v4.0.1