Highly Optimized SwiftPremium beats Google in page speed score

*Page Speed is an open-source project started at Google to help developers optimize their web pages by applying web performance best practices. Its a measure of how well the site and the code is optimized.

PS: You can buy this highly optimized theme in a few hours, stay tuned.

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

version5.1.0 solves the above problem by moving the cache folder and the custom-style.css to uploads/swift_custom folder with appropriate permissions. From now there are no post installation steps, just upload the theme activate.

Other new additions and changes to SWIFT are

• Added an option to add your own search code in the navigation menu.
• Reduced the font size of blockquote and post title.

According to reviewer at theme directory on WordPress, themes are not allowed to modify core tables. They don’t have any proper reason for such a restriction, I can’t understand why a theme shouldn’t alter wp tables when a plugin can do so. They wont accept SWIFT until I remove those two features,I’m forced to remove them .

I integrated My Page Order and My Category Order into the theme. If any of the two plugins are installed pages /categories in navigation menu will be ordered accordingly.

[download id="1"]

In case if you are using version less than 2.1.4, or If you don’t want to lose the customization you did find this in <?php echo $_GET['s']; ?> search.php  and replace it with (There are 2 occurences)

[php]<?php the_search_query(); ?>[/php]

Even if you are not a swift user you should check your theme for the following vulnerability and fix it ASAP.
Search for something like this in your theme’s PHP files:

[php]Search results for "<?php echo $_GET['s']; ?>"[/php]

and replace with

[php]Search results for "<?php the_search_query(); ?>"[/php]

Note: This vulnerability is taken care in version 3.1.7, so you dont have to do any modifications.

Thanks to Rene Schmidt for reporting this vulnerability.

Wordpress Hacks

In this tutorial, I will show you the best method to add post thumbnail feature to your wordpress theme. This is what we are going to do.

1. We will check if there is any image set in custom fields, if yes we display that image.
2. Else we check if there is any image stored in the gallery associated with that post, if found we display that image.
3. Else we do a pattern match for image url’s over the post content and extract the images used in the post, with this method we will be able to pull out images that are not part of wordpress gallery.

How to create a custom field?

To do this, simply start making a New Post, and scroll down the page until you see “Advanced Options“.  Under this heading, you should see something like, Excerpt, Trackback, and Custom Fields.

Adding post thumbnails using wordpress custom fields

To add a Custom Field for a Thumbnail, just fill in the Key with “image”.  For the Value, post the full URL of the thumbnail you would like to use.

Click Add Custom Field, and it will apply to that post.

Adding thumbnail to our post

Add the following code before
the_content() / excerpt()

[php]
<?php
//Getting the image url from custom field
$img = get_post_meta($post->;ID, ‘image’, $single = true);
/*If the custom field url is empty, then we look for
images stored in galler associated with the post. If
there are no images associated with the gallery we
proceed further and do a pattern matching to identify
images in the post content.
*/
if(!$img){
//Get images attached to the post
$args = array(
‘post_type’ => ‘attachment’,
‘post_mime_type’ => ‘image’,
‘numberposts’ => -1,
‘order’ => ‘ASC’,
‘post_status’ => null,
‘post_parent’ => $post->ID);
$attachments = get_posts($args);
if ($attachments) {
foreach ($attachments as $attachment)
$img = wp_get_attachment_thumb_url( $attachment->ID );
}
else{
//Extracting the content of the post to do a pattern match
$content = $post->post_content;
//A simple regular expression to identify image urls.
$searchimages = ‘~http://[^>]*.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png)~’;
preg_match( $searchimages, $content, $pics );
$iNumberOfPics = count($pics[0]);
if ( $iNumberOfPics > 0 )
$img=$pics[0];
}
}
/*If we get a image url in any of the above steps, we echo the
following code to display the image. set the height or width
attribute so that image doesn’t break the layout and doesnt look
distorted.
*/
if($img){?><img src="<?php echo $img;$img=NULL; ?>"   height="150"/><?php }
?>
[/php]

Swift v3.0

I’m very happy to announce the official stable release of SWIFT-v3.0.

Apart from the features announced in my previous post there are lot more improvements in v3.0.

Every element of theme is dealt with special care, to provide you with a free premium quality theme.

Here are a few improvements in v3.0

1. SWIFT is now smart enough to check if there are any images used in the post and use it as thumbnail. It even detects images that are not stored on your server, this feature is unique to SWIFT and not found even in most premium themes.
2. Redesigned the options page to make it easier to use.
3. Care was taken to make sure you don’t hit the reset options button by mistake and loose all your settings.
4. Changed the font style of the blog name.
5. Special attention to margins and padding so that your blog doesn’t look crowded.
6. Option to disable rounded corners in side bar.
7. Changed the post title styling.
8. All the html elements are styled to match the theme.

You can download the lastest version from the official theme directory

Download SWIFT v3.0

I feel that there is lot of scope in improving the front end of SWIFT, if you have any suggestion to improve the design please drop in.

Did swift save you the cost of a premium theme?? How about a donation?

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.

This theme is mainly aimed at blogs running on low server resources and for those who like clean and simple designs. It’s always good have themes like SWIFT at your disposal so that you can easily switch to it if you are expecting a spike in traffic from social media sites.

Here are some of the best features of SWIFT which makes it stand out from crowd.

1. Loads very fast, minimum number of http requests. Your server will love it
2. Zero images used.
3. Clean typography.
4. SEO friendly, For example,this theme uses h1 tag for post titles, instead of the blog title.
5. Cross browser compatible (Works well on ie6 too , except for the curves )
6. Swift is smart enough to pull out the first image from your post and use it as thumbnail on home page (It even pulls out images that are not part of wordpress gallery).
7. Featured post slider.(Included in v3.0)
8. Tabbed interface.(Included in v3.0)
9. I have bundled lot of features in to the options page to make your SWIFT THEME unique
10. Popular posts are highlighted on the home page to give them more exposure, this will turn the first time visitors to your blog into regular readers.
11. Sidebar and footer with four widgetised sections (8 in total) .
12. Adsense integrated into killer locations .
13. RSS subscribe box in the best possible position to increase your subscribers.
14. Eight different color schemes to choose from(Will Be added very soon, working on them).
15. Ads integrated into theme options page.
16. Option to add thumbnails to home page
17. Easy colour picker to customize your copy of SWIFT (That makes it infinite colours to choose from )

I would like to have your valuable suggestions before I release the next version.Please drop in your suggestions here.

Upcoming Features

1. Better featured post section with slider.(Included in v3.0)
2. Integration with pagenavigation and related posts plugin. (Included in v3.0)
3. Adding some images using CSS sprites.
4. Fancy RSS subscribe box.(Added in v2.0.0)
5. Drop down navigation.
6. rounded corners in all browsers
7. Threaded comments and better comments template. (Included in v3.0)

***** SWIFT Change log *****

04.10.09 – Version 3.1.1
*Removed the unnecessary brace that crept into style.php in 3.0.5.
*Fixed the feed detection bug.
*Added option to pick the popular post title and background colour for author comment.
*Added option to add images through custom fields, check the following url for info on using custom fields
http://swiftthemes.com/2009/09/wordpress-themes/a-complete-guide-to-installing-and-customizing-swift/
*Added default favicon.
*Increased the font size of sidebar title.
*Changed content slider sliding style.
*Fixed the featured posts bug
*Updated the styles
*Comment luv wasnt detecting the rss feed, fixed this problem.
02.10.09 – Version 3.0.5
Forgot to save the changelog in v3.0.4
02.10.09 – Version 3.0.4
*Removed the padding and margin for smileys.
*Added margins to headings.
*Added padding to tags widget.
*Changed blockquote styling.

30.09.09 – Version 3.0.2

*Fixed the sidebar problem in ie6

30.09.09 – Version 3.0.0

*Added featured post slider and tabbed interface.

*Stylish options page.

*More colour options.

*New comment styling.

*Option to disable rounded corners in sidebar.

*Changed the font style of blog title and post title.

*All the paddings and margins are corrected.

*Default HTML elements are styled to match the theme.

02.09.09 – Version 2.1.3

* No serious updates except for few minor changes to meet wordpress theme directory requirements.

31.08.09 – Version 2.1.0

* Fixed the rss feed bug.

30.08.09 – Version 2.0.9

* Jquery file required for options page was deleted by mistake in v.2.08

* Reorganized the options page.

30.08.09 – Version 2.0.8

* Added rounded corner support to safari.

* Fixed all the CSS and HTML errors

29.08.09 – Version 2.0.7

* Fixed the bug in navigation area

* Added some default widgets.

* Some SEO tweaks

28.08.09 – Version 2.0.6

* Made the height of navigation area above and below logo fluid now you can have as many pages and categories as you want.

27.08.09 – Version 2.0.5

* Fixed the 125*125 banner ads bug

27.08.09 – Version 2.0.4

* Options page is more user friendly now.

* Added gravtar next to post title and gave it a whole new styling. You will love it.

* Separate comments and trackback.

* Added an option to add Adsense ad under the navigation area. I have been using Adsense for more than three years, trust me when I say that this position has highest CTR and could double your Adsense revenue when used with proper colour combinations.

* Fixed the email subscription link.

* Fixed some bugs in comments template.

26.08.09 – Version 2.0.3

Changed the post title style

Fixed some bugs with rss

made the search box little wider to accomodate the default text

23.08.09 – Version 2.0.2

Added threaded comments

23.08.09 – Version 2.0.1

*Fixed the links to feeds in footer

23.08.09 – Version 2.0.0

*Changed the layout from 16 grid system to 12 grid system (Swift uses 960.gs css framework)

*Added RSS subscribe box and changed the search box position

20.08.09 – Version 1.0.6

*Fixed some php tags

*Added colour picker to options page and made it more user friendly

19.08.09 – Version 1.0.5

* Added the option to disable popular posts on homepage, disabled by default.

* If no post is specified for the featured section, most recent post is taken as default.

*Fixed the issues with Internet explorer, that crept into version 1.0.4

Download SWIFT

SWIFT The fastest loading wordpress theme

SWIFT | The FlickR style

SWIFT | The WordPress style