WP Mods Video Theme

Written by on March 28, 2010 in WordPress Themes - 62 Comments

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

About

Kevin Muldoon is a Scottish webmaster and blogger who currently lives in Bogota, Colombia. He has an unhealthy obsession with trying out new WordPress themes and plugins and spends too much time in the WordPress Forums.

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Muhebe 5 pts

Hi Kevin. How are you? I hope fine

I love the theme, and I have tried to install. Thank you very much Kevin. But would be for adsense for content? because only about 150 words to post articles

Hi Kevin,

My website is finished now, so you can see your theme in action. What an awesome wordpress theme! Now I just have to add more content !!

Hey kevin, thanx for the quick response!

that makes sense, i've sent an email with the login details ..

recently WP updates have been changing alot

Hi kevin, i just installed your great video theme, love it!!
i only have 1 problem, it wont show my featured films
it seems like my wp isnt taking it up, i have included my link..

any help would be greatly appreceated!

The theme was released around 18 months ago and hasn't been updated since release. I haven't tested it on the latest version of WordPress so I'm not sure if the theme clashes with any new WP features.

If you can give me admin login details I can have a quick look just incase it's something straight forward.

is there any adsence place in this theme ?

Hi Kevin,

My website is finished now, so you can see your theme in action. What an awesome wordpress theme! Now I just have to add more content !!

Please give feedbacks, that would be great. ;)

Thanks for your very fast support. I will send you a link to my website as soon as it will be online, so you could tell me how it looks with this theme. :)

Hello,

I would like to download this beautiful worpdress theme but I see no link to the theme download page at the bottom of my feed in my newsreader. I use Google reader.

Thanks for reply.

I just logged into Google Reader myself. The link is in the footer. Can you please check again :)

Style sheet missing when installing.....

I just tested the download file. The stylesheet is included in the zip.

Really enjoying this theme, its awesome. I am able to get all my videos to play on their pages, but when I click on one "Timelapse" in the poplar section of the header, nothing comes up. Not sure why. Anyone have any thoughts?

Hi Jim,

Your site seems to be working ok for me. The home page videos etc play ok. Is this the section you were talking about?

kevin

Hey Kevin,

It seems every video works, but the last video in the popular section entitled timelapse doesnt want to come up in the player for me. Tried it in both safari and firefox and neither worked. The video plays fine on the posts page, but for some reason doesnt want to come up in the main player.

yeah I see what you mean now. That's strange. I haven't come across that before.

Can you check you have the correct url for the excerpt. I used http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8719372 and it is showing correctly for me at http://www.wpmods.com/videotheme/.

Yeah. But to be sure I copied and pasted your link and it still isn't coming up. Wonder if it has something to do with the fact that it is a time lapse, and the player doesn't like that. Has the same frame rate as all the other videos though.

Huh. I reposted it with a different published date, and it worked. Thanks for helping me through it. Great theme, it's awesome.

Glad you got it sorted Jim.

I'm still unsure what was wrong though haha.

Best of luck with the site :)

Kevin

Does anyone know how to control what videos show up in your video gallery?

Can you clarify what you mean by this?

Hey Kevin how are you? I have a question for you. Are there any special plug-ins that would allow people to view the videos on their blackberry devices that I post up on the site? any suggestions are greatly appreciated

Hi Chris,

There is a youtube for blackberry but it doesn't work as well as on android or the iphone. With a good youtube app it should default to the video on youtube so that it goes full screen.

kevin

Hey Kevin I see your message post but it seems to be missing part of what you wrote.

Sorry Chris. I forgot to parse the html. I've corrected my comment.

Kevin you're amazing LOL Thank you so much. I have a lot to learn with this website stuff. Thanks again!!!!

no problem. Best of luck with your new site :)

Thank you so much for clarifying this Kevin, Great theme. Keep them coming. I really appreciate your help

You're welcome. I'm hoping to release some more themes in the future. I want to wait a few months though so that designers can get a good understanding of the changes in WP 3.0.

Best of luck,
Kevin

:)

I will definitely be on the lookout for your new themes in the future. Quick question Kevin, How would I go about adding my icon to the tab of my website? I don't see a general settings area within WP admin for your theme. Thank you

Check out How to add a Favicon to your WordPress Powered Website :)

Hello Kevin no such luck I followed the instructions. I see the favicon.ico file in my video theme directory, then I copied the code and did not see the favicon...am I missing something here?

I would upload it to the root of your site rather than the theme folder.

Though you can upload it to the theme folder like you did as long as you link to it in the head area of the theme.

Ok got it... I'll try that. Thanks Kevin

cool. If you have any problems let me know :)

Hey Kevin it's me again lol...I can't get this to work. Is it two lines of code that go in the header?

Add something like this to the head area of your header.php file

&lt;link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/favicon.ico" /&gt;

If you placed it in your theme folder then use

&lt;link rel="shortcut icon" href="&lt;?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?&gt;/favicon.ico"/&gt;

Awesome theme I love it!!! When I create a new post in WP admin I only see an empty white box on the homepage. I followed all instructions above on how to post video. Please help any suggestions.

Glad you like the theme Chris. Can you email me temp admin access to your site and I'll have a look at it.

sure no problem Kevin, just emailed you the info.
Thanks again

Hi Chris,

You were linking to the pages which the videos were posted on rather than the video files themselves.

i.e. you linked to http://vimeo.com/9513977 instead of http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9513977

and you linked to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY8amUImEu0 instead of http://www.youtube.com/v/XY8amUImEu0&hl

Basically you want to be linking to the url in the embed code i.e. embed src="copy this code here"

Let me know if you have any other questions Chris :)

Kevin

Excellent stuff. Ok so basically I would have to delete all the extra mumbo jumbo within the embed code and just take what you showed me up above?

Yes. Essentially the Video Theme is linking directly to the video file itself.

So what to do is copy the embed code to a text editor (rather than copying the page URL) and then copy the location to the file URL.

Taking your youtube video for example

&lt;object width="640" height="385"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XY8amUImEu0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XY8amUImEu0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;

The embed src is http://www.youtube.com/v/XY8amUImEu0&hl=en_US&fs=1&

This is the location to the actual video i.e. the video file. You don't need any of the information after the first ampersand though i.e. you don't need &hl=en_US&fs=1&. This info usually determines other factors such as language etc

So you just need http://www.youtube.com/v/XY8amUImEu0

update: I have fixed the issue with IE8. It was being caused by the embed tab having a set height, plus the vertical padding was a little high. It's all good now :)

This theme looks. Great. I'd definitely be using it if I had a video blog. I'm going to sign up to the newsletter just cos the theme looks so good :) ps. I tried leaving a comment on another post put it failed

Can I put into your theme my own video?

Hi Ivan,

I'm not sure what you mean, Can you expand on this :)

Kevin

"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&amp;hl" But if I want to host my own video - http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/movie/film.mp4 nothing happen. I can't see my video at all. Which movie format have to be use - .mov., .avi,... Thank you

Mmmm. I assumed it would just work normally if the link to the video is correct.

The theme was designed for youtube, vimeo videos etc rather than personal videos, though if the video is uploaded correctly online it should still work.

Can you post a link to your uploaded video for me to test it out?