I am pleased to announce the release of our first WordPress theme. Video Theme was designed for those who want to create a video blog. It is perfect for anyone who posts YouTube, Daily Motion or Vimeo clips on a regular basis. The theme has a black colour scheme though this can be easily changed via the stylesheet.

This theme was developed for WP Mods by Adnan Khan of Gut Shot Studios.

You can see the theme in action at www.wpmods.com/videotheme/.

Features:

  • Featured and popular section on the home page
  • Video archive to showcase older videos
  • Embed code for all videos
  • Integrated Social Media Links
  • RSS Feed and RSS email subscription form at the top of the site
  • Includes blogroll, archives and 404 templates
  • Fully compatible with WordPress 2.9+

WP Mods Video Theme

All of our themes are released free under the GNU General Public License.

This means:

  • You can use the theme on as many personal and commercial websites as you wish
  • You can modify the theme in any way you want
  • You can remove the credit link if you want

As noted above, there is a small credit link back to WP Mods in the footer. I would appreciate it if the link remained on your site as it helps promote the site and indirectly funds future theme development, but you are welcome to remove the link if you wish :)

See the Video Theme in action!

I’d love to see some examples of the theme being used on the web, particularly from those who have made some modifications.

Please leave a comment with a link to your website if you are using the theme. I will create a list of sites which are using the design here so that others can see what can be achieved with a few modifications :)

How to download the WP Mods Video Theme

Just download the file listed below and upload the theme folder in your wp-content/themes directory. Then simply activate the theme in your admin area.

Download: WP Mods Video Theme

Using the Theme

Just like all WordPress themes, to use it all you need to do is download the zip file, extract the files, upload the VideoTheme folder to your blogs wp-content/themes/ folder, and then activate the theme.

Enabling Email Subscription

The email subscription box uses Feedburner by default though it could be altered for other email subscription services.

To enable email subscription you first need to login to Feedburner, go to the publicize tab and then activate email subscriptions.

Then you need to alter the header.php for the VideoTheme, either online via your WordPress admin area or offline in a text editor (don’t forget to upload the file after changing it though!).

You then need to change the two instances of FEEDBURNER-ID with your own Feedburner ID reference.

For example, for WP Mods I would change http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=FEEDBURNER-ID to http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=WPMODS and value=”FEEDBURNER-ID” to value=”WPMods”.

Adding Videos

You write a blog post with the Video Theme just like any other theme. However, you enter the link to the video you want to display in the Excerpt field e.g. http://www.youtube.com/v/IIt5lGhFyE0&hl.

The description/overview of the video will be placed in the regular post area.

Featured Videos

The home page has a featured section which displays the last 5 videos from a chosen category. So the best way to use this is to assign a video to your featured category to promote it on the home page. When you want to remove it from the home page simply change the videos category to something else (i.e. not the featured category).

You don’t have to call your featured category featured. However, this is how the theme is setup by default.

To change the name of the featured category simply open your index.php template and find this piece of code.
<?php query_posts('order=desc&category_name=featured&showposts=5'); ?>

All you need to do is change category_name=featured to your chosen category. For example, category_name=news or category_name=bestvideos. You can also change the number of featured videos being displayed here by changing the value of showposts=x; and reverse the order of videos by changing desc to asc (i.e. ascending order).

Theme Support

I just don’t have the time to offer personal email support for this theme. However, I encourage you to post any problems or questions you have in the WP Mods Forum. I’ll do my best to help you and if I don’t, I’m sure someone else will.

Last but not least….

I hope you all love the video theme. If you have any suggestions about how the theme could be improved please let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Also, if you like the theme, please show your appreciation by spreading the word with a vote in one of the social media sites listed below in our share area :)

Thanks,
Kevin