This guest post was written by Jean-Baptiste Jung, who maintains a blog (written in French) that covers WordPress. If you have webmaster or WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for Hack WordPress, please contact us.

Inspired by the well-known Mimbo theme by Darren Hoyt, OpenBook is a free Magazine style Wordpress theme, which doesn’t require you to manually edit a file.

I first realeased this theme in January, but at this time it was only available in French. So it is the very first English version.

Download OpenBook

Download OpenBook 2.2 Wordpress Theme: zip archive

If you’re looking for a live demo, check out my personnal blog which uses this theme.

OpenBook Features

Here’s what you can expect in OpenBook theme:

• Magazine-style homepage, including 2 columns and SmoothGallery for your featured posts.
• 100% Gravatar compatible.
• Custom fields to insert images on the homepage gallery, on homepage posts and in categories posts.
• Magazine-style dropdown-menu for your categories.
• Not manual editing required. After installing the theme, you’ll find an OpenBook tab under Design, where you can set up the options for the theme, including featured posts, featured category, blog logo, number of posts to display on the gallery, categories to display on the blog homepage…
• If you hate Internet Explorer 6 as I do, you’ll probably be happy: OpenBook have an option which litteraly crash IE6 if checked. If unchecked, IE6 will not crash and people who (still) use it will see your blog just as other users.
• Compatible with Firefox 2, Firefox 3 beta, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 6. (OpenBook is also probably compatible with other browsers like Konqueror, I just haven’t tested it myself)
• Widget-ready sidebar
• SEO-friendly titles
• Page templates for Links and Archives
• Compatible with Wordpress 2.3 to 2.5.1

Installing OpenBook

OpenBook install is like installing any Wordpress theme: Unzip the archive, and upload the openbook22-en directory into the wp-content/themes of your Wordpress install.

Then, go to your WP administration panel, Design » Theme and select OpenBook.

Now, you should go to Design » OpenBook and fill the various fields:

• Your blog logo url
• ID of your featured category
• Number of posts to display in SmoothGallery.
• IDs of categories to display on the homepage.
• If you want to make any IE6 crash, just check the related checkbox.
• Number of posts to display on the homepage, by category

Configuring SmoothGallery

SmoothGallery is a very pretty mootools script by Jonathan Schemoul which display posts along with big images. In order to configure it, you must create a new category (In this exemple, we’ll call it featured) and report its ID to Design » OpenBook.

When you want to show a particular post in the SmoothGallery, just edit the post and check the featured category. Of course, you can add the post to other categories as well.

Now, you should define an image that will display in SmoothGallery. Juste create a custom field, give it featuredimg as key and your image url as value. Once saved, the post will be displayed in SmoothGallery.

The ideal SmoothGallery image size is 600*250 pixels. You can use different size, but the image will be cropped or will not fill all the available space.

Using custom fields to display images in posts

As I said above, it is possible to assign one or more image(s) to a post. Theses images will be displayed on the homepage, or in categories pages, depending of the custom field used.

Here’s the custom fields keys, and the place where the images will be displayed.

• featuredimg » The image will be displayed in SmoothGallery (Only if the related post is in the featured category)
• Image » The image will be displayed along with its related post, on the homepage.
• catimage » The image will be displayed in category pages. Ideal size is 125*125 pixels.

Please note

The OpenBook theme is (and will stay) 100% free. I also try to always help people who use it as much as I can. The only thing that I’m asking, is that you leave my link on the theme footer. Thanks in advance

Edit on July 3, 2008: I just wrote a simple tutorial for modifying OpenBook color scheme. You can read it here.

It has been awhile since I’ve created one of our popular WordPress theme galleries, so I decided it was time to build a new one. In the past I’ve always taken the approach of trying to remove any personal bias and just display the WordPress themes and demo/download information in a manageable way so that the reader can choose their favorite themes that they’d like to use.

This time I decided to comb through the internet and pick out my personal favorite 50 free WordPress themes. Right now, they are broken down into the following categories: 2-Column Themes, 3-Column Themes, 4-Column Themes, and Magazine Themes. I’m pretty sure not everyone will agree with my choices, so if I missed one of your favorites, feel free to add a link to the theme in the comments below.

Best 2-Column Free WordPress Themes

PassionDuo Theme (3 Colors)

Green: Demo | Download, Red: Demo | Download, Blue: Demo | Download

Lemon Twist Theme

Source/Demo | Download

WP Freemium Theme

Source | Download

SimpleWP Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Evolution Theme

Source | Download | Demos: Blue, Green, Red

GlossyBlue Theme

Source | Download | Demo

StudioPress Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Several3 Theme

Source | Download | Demo [Continue Reading...]

One of my favorite things about premium WordPress themes is that they give theme authors the opportunity to truly show off their talents. Because the theme will be purchased rather than given free, they don’t hold anything back and truly create some incredible work.

Michael at Solostream is no exception. He has created a number of free themes in the past, but has since been concentrating on creating and selling a variety of premium WordPress themes for bloggers and businesses looking for a magazine-style theme.

His most recent premium theme WP-Magazine 1.0 is his best work to date (in my opinion). Here are some screen shots of a few pages:

Once purchased, you have access to five different home page layouts and four different category/archive page layouts. You can find more information about the layouts available here.

Other features include:

• Widget-Ready, User-Friendly, and Optimized for WordPress Versions 2.2 and Above
• Home Page Featured Article Glider Box
• Built-In Banner Ad Blocks
• Built-In Site Guide in Right Sidebar
• Customized Recent Comments in Sidebar With Gravatar Support
• Author Biography Information and Gravatar Included on Single Post Pages
• Alternating Color Comments With Gravatar Support
• XHTML Valid

In addition to these great features, this theme also supports several plugins “out of the box” including the following:

• Popularity Contest
• Most Commented
• WordPress 2.3 Related Posts

If you’d like to view this theme in action, check out the WP-Magazine Demo Site. You can also purchase the theme from that site.

The internet is a dynamic place where things are always changing and adapting. And just like the internet, the blogosphere is also changing rapidly and seems to be particularly susceptible to trends. One prominent blogger will create a theme and the whole blogosphere will rush to follow.

One of the most recent trends in the blogosphere is the rise in popularity of many magazine-style WordPress themes. Many of them are paid themes, but there are also several free magazine style WordPress themes as well for people to download.

Here are a few of my favorites:

OpenBook Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Options Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Hamasaki Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Structure Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Rebel Magazine Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Massive News Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Jello Wala Mello Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Visionary Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Mimbo Theme

Source | Download | Demo

WP Gold Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Morning After Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Zeke 1.0 Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Forte Theme

Source | Download | Demo

The Studio Theme

Source | Download | Demo

If you know of a good one that you’d like to see added to the list, please let me know in the comments below!