In some ways, we at Weborithm, have been using this setup to create all of our products so far.

Read it here.

What is ShowDown?

The plugin allows you to host “Battles” or “Hot or Not” contests on your WordPress powered blog or website. Installation is as simple as uploading it via the plugins upload function in your admin panel. Once activated, you can enter any number of “Competitors” via the dedicated custom post type, which is just like writing a normal Post/Page.

Each Competitor gets their own dashboard which shows their Win/Loss/Drawn record. Once you have added enough contestants simply embed the shortcode (via the handy generator) in any Post or Page. Your visitors can now vote for their favorite image or content piece.

The plugin comes with two modes, Battle and Hot or Not. The Battle mode allows you to compete images between each other. Here’s an example of how it looks:

Battle Mode

The Hot or Not script allows your visitor to vote on an image, or content piece, on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s a great way to engage your site visitors and hold contests. Here’s an example of how this mode looks.

Hot or Not Mode

The plugin also has the ability to link out images to any URL you like. So you could in effect use this to promote products and services with your affiliate link and make money as well! It’s a really amazing feature and you really need to try it to get an idea of what it can do for you.

Get ShowDown

View Plans and Pricing

]]> http://www.weborithm.com/showdown-wordpress-plugin/feed/ 1 http://www.weborithm.com/lens-for-photography-free-psd/ http://www.weborithm.com/lens-for-photography-free-psd/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:18:01 +0000 Hyder http://www.weborithm.com/?p=377 Lens exhibits a simple photography centric design. The main aim of this design are your photographs and nothing else, as is evident from the menu and text content being below the fold. The info box would be a popup when the “i” button would be clicked, showing further options to read more if the user so desires.

Usage

1. Free to use for personal projects only. Sorry, commercial projects (as in for clients) are not allowed for this one.

2. Please link to this page if you would like to blog about this download. Do not link directly to the file download.

Preview

Click for large preview

Download

Downloaded Here → Lens PSD
Size: 581.53 kB
Downloaded: 26 times

Get the WordPress Theme

Join our theme club ThemeSpace and get the Lens WordPress theme, among many others! Click here to find out more.

But how many options are actually necessary and what’s the tipping point? If you are a serious developer, your main aim would be to make your options page as intuitive and unobtrusive as possible. Using the right options can be the difference between a good theme and a great theme!

Ten Options Every WordPress Theme Should Have

10. Logo Upload – This is probably the first theme option you should include. Plain text headers are boring and users really should not have to edit a PHP file, or read documentation, to add their logo.

9. Link colors – Changing link colors is about as quick as it gets to providing a unique look to a template. Make sure you have an option for the static and hover state, at the very least. If you want to extend it further you can even add options to add borders and backgrounds. Be careful though, as these variations can grow really quickly. So K.I.S.S.

8. Background editing – While technically not a theme option, in the exact sense of the term, it is still an option/function that is added via the functions.php file. So yes, do include the add_custom_background(); function so that your users can easily add/change a background image and/or color. There’s no reason to design your own functionality for this as WordPress has it by default, so use it!

7. Layouts – Having a right, left or centered layout are probably the bare minimal choices you can provide to choose from. If you have a custom “home” Page Template you might want to offer On/Off switches for how content is displayed on that template as well.

6. Footer Widgets – are cool. Just like bow ties. You really should have footer widgets in your theme. Oh! and give your user the option to have either 1, 2, 3 or more. Of course, that depends on your design. But yeah, footer widgets are cool!

5. Thumbnails – The most immediate way a template can be adjusted from looking like everyone else’s blog/site is by adjusting the position/height/width of the thumbnail. Naturally choosing to show it would be the first iteration, but adding an option to use a wide, narrow or thumbnail size would be a welcome option to have.

4. Post Meta Tags – Sometimes users want to just show the date, or the category and the date, or just the tags on Tuesday. By the the time Friday comes around they decided that they’ll test the category display by itself for a week. I like to provide this option, that’s why I include it in my themes. Usually, its a choice of showing/not showing the date, tags, categories, comments and possibly author.

3. Font Selection – 2011 was the year that fonts really took off on the web. Thanks in part to amazing services like Typekit, Font Squirrel and Google Web Fonts. My themes generally contain the most compatible fonts, from the design point of view, available via Google Web Fonts. You may choose to add all of them as an option if you like. Generally, I feel a narrow choice provides your user with a clearer picture of what they would be happy with rather than getting frustrated with using your theme.

2. Credit Removal – Now that you’ve created your theme and signed it at the bottom please add an option for users to remove your credit link with a simple yes or no. It’s the polite thing to do. Forcing a user to edit a PHP file for this is just wrong (also, make sure and nofollow it if you do include it).

1. Documentation – What, you expected a magical theme option you’ve never heard of before? If your users have to come to you for help because they can’t figure out how to use your options page, you’re doing it wrong.

Do you have any specific option you provide, or would like to see? Please leave a comment below.

The most important luxuries in my life are time, friends, and time with friends. The thing I covet is impact. – Matt

Happy Birthday Matt and I hope you make the impact you wish for.

The PSD is fully layered and contains all the graphic details, so you can go ahead and use it for your personal projects as you wish.

Usage

1. Free to use for personal projects only. Sorry, commercial projects (as in for clients) are not allowed for this one.

2. Please link to this page if you would like to blog about this download. Do not link directly to the file download.

Preview

Click to view large preview

Download

Downloaded Here → Stylus PSD
Size: 6.65 MB
Downloaded: 48 times

Get the WordPress Theme

Join our theme club ThemeSpace and get the Stylus WordPress theme, among many others! Click here to find out more.

Introducing Weborithm Downloads

We’re going to be giving away a lot of free stuff, and only free stuff, via our download channel. From fully layered PSD’s, free WordPress themes, HTML templates, Landing Pages, Icons and much more! It’s something we’ve been planning on doing for quite a while now and with the recent launch of our re-designed website, the time is right.

So make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed to know when new items are available for download! You can also opt to sign up for email updates here.

Minimal Social Media Icons

Theme name suggestion: Eywa

First off, here’s the HTML for the navigation:

<div class="navigation">
<div class="alignleft"><!-- Previous Post Link --></div>
<div class="alignright"><!-- Next Post Link --></div>
</div>

The code we’ll need to show the Next and Previous post links is:

<?php previous_post_link(''); ?>
<?php next_post_link(''); ?>

Now, let’s customize the PHP to show our relevant Posts from that specific category only.

<?php previous_post_link('%link', 'Previous post', TRUE); ?>
<?php next_post_link('%link', 'Next post', TRUE); ?>

Here’s an explanation of the above code.

1. %link – This will show the link for the previously or recently published Post from the one being viewed.
2. Previous post/Next post – This will be the anchor text for the respective links.
3. TRUE – This will tell the code to only use the same category as the Post being viewed to show the relevant links.

Here’s the final code:

<div class="navigation">
<div class="alignleft"><?php previous_post_link('%link', 'Previous post', TRUE); ?></div>
<div class="alignright"><?php next_post_link('%link', 'Next post', TRUE); ?></div>
</div>

You can use the CSS classes to format the output however you like. You can see an example of this type of navigation at the very bottom of this post.

If you found this tutorial helpful please consider tweeting or liking it! Do add your comment below on how you’ve used it!