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Press Box is a simple, striking theme for wordpress we’re using in a few projects. It’s a modern theme with a lot of options, and we’ve been enjoying it for a while. The demo is (essentially) the page you are looking at now (our entire site). If you’d like to see the other options, this demo page will allow you to configure them.
Download Limited Version (license) | Purchase Premium Version | Current Version 1.3
There are two options for enjoying Press Box:
- Download the free limited version - You can download this version for free under a Creative Commons BY-ND License. This version is limited - it lacks some of the additional includes like the portfolio view, page templates and so on. It also has branding in the footer and sidebar - which we ask you not to remove.
- Purchase Premium Version - You can purchase the premium version, which includes everything (all views, page templates, etc.), no branding and future updates for $45.00. This version also guarantees support (the free version has no such guarantee, although support might still be provided on occasion). If you are unsure about what version you want, this is the preferred option.
Every purchase helps us fund some of our research and programs. If you are interested in more permissive commercial use (such as reselling or bundling the theme), please contact us directly. The premium version doesn’t necessarily entitle you to these uses. Similarly please contact us if you want the theme/experiment code/anonymized data for use and you are a student, academic or a nonprofit organization.
Theme Highlights
Premium Blog - not Premium Magazine
We consider this a ‘premium theme’, but it isn’t a magazine. It looks like a blog and (if it could) would walk and talk like one too. It does look a little different then a normal blog, and has a few more options, but it doesn’t forget about its past growing up in the blogosphere.
Strikingly Simple
Our goal here is not to create some fancy hand tooled look. For two reasons. One is that those designs become dated fast, the other is that it isn’t as easy to edit someone’s photoshop files. PressBox is strikingly simple, it includes few design elements, imagery or the like. Still, it somehow possesses a unique presence and pinash all its own. From its unique header - which actually looks nice, even without a header image - to its double sidebar - there is an amazing amount going on, even when it looks like there isn’t.
Lots of views
Out of the box, PressBox can be quite a few different things. We prefer to use it with short article previews highlighting some striking imagery. You can just as easily configure it to focus solely on the images (great for a portfolio site like collaborative leonardo’s leo.media site.) - or even make it look just like a normal blog (but a little better).
Options - Plenty of Em.
There are even more little options to customize the theme. PressBox comes with at least four - Simple, Constrasty, Dark, and Professional. They all have a little personality and represent a great starting point for customization.
Not Wordpress Agnostic
Wordpress has a lot of great options and features. Instead of pretending that they don’t exist, we try to take advantage of all of them. Things like: widgets, sidebars, categories (with descriptions!), authors (we’re multi-authors ourselves), tags, page templates (including archives and links - and even a few more), a simple options panel and some common
Side, Doubleside
PressBox makes use of two distinct sidebars. A main sidebar to display on your blog index and a mini bar that shows up everywhere else. The idea here is simple - you want to be more expressive with the kind of extra information you display on the home page. Everywhere else - keep things simple and focus on your content.
Screen, System and Browser Tested
The theme was designed to look great on modern screens and modern systems. We’ve tested everything in all the popular browsers. Things look great in Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer 7 (things look ok in IE6 too).
Flexible
Things scale well in modern browsers, so no worries about accessibility on that front. There’s even a stylesheet to keep things clean on the printed page.
Semantically Microformatty
Microformats are coming, and we love to play around with what works. There is out of the box support for author microformat (great for multiple author blogs) and we’d like to work more in as they come along. We try to do intelligent semantic things, however we do make things pretty generic. We refer to entries as ‘things’ - not posts. We have sections like ‘thing-meta’. These are semantically meaningful only in a very generic way. We hope you extend them to be more specifically semantic where appropriate.
Typographic Choices
We use Helvetica for most headers and for special emphasis. Georgia is used generally for reading text (like the text in a post). We use Verdana in a few offset regions of generally smaller type (the sidebars or the footer, for example). The Courier font is used for pre-formatted text, code and other monospaced entities. We use correct quotes, dashes and similar typographic elements where appropriate. The default font size is 14px, with a 1.4em linespacing.
Appropriately Messy
We aren’t professional theme makers. We make themes because we use them, and we think other people could too. At the same time, a lot of people like our themes. We don’t really think of PressBox as a product. Rather we think of it as the start of a conversation, or as a community. If there are any problems, please let us know - although we can only guarantee support to the people who buy the theme if it is a big bug we’re in the same boat as you (we’re running the theme).
Premium Support
We give three months of email support. Why only three months? Well if you don’t run into a problem in that time then the chances are that your problem is because you’ve updated to a new version of wordpress that is really different or installed some funky plugin. Please note that we aren’t cold and heartless. This doesn’t mean we won’t provide support for people who don’t pay, it just means that it is much more unlikely.
This thing has 43 Comments
Thanks for this theme! I’m really, really impressed with the limited version and will be using it for our brass band website. As a registered charity I doubt that our committee would want to upgrade to the premium version (or even really need to - the limited version seems to have everything we need) but if the theme meets with approval I’m sure that we’ll make a donation anyway.
Really good work fellas. I much appreciate it
On my installation of pressbox on WP 2.5, There is huge whitespace between the title of the second post and the actual content of that post. I cannot use this theme until this issue is fixed.
A beta version of Press Box 1.2 is available for premium subscribers under the premium download page. Press Box 1.2 includes additional page templates, a new magazine style view, support for custom categories, sample header images and more header customizability, better color control, and more!
I’ve been using Recycled Canvas and I’m keen to upgrade to Press Box, but I just upgraded to WP 2.5.1 and then tried out the limited version, but it didn’t work at all and I couldn’t even log in to the admin panel of WP. I’m not sure why it happened, but when I deleted the Press Box theme the site came back. Will the limited version of Press Box work with 2.5.1?
Press Box looks great and I think that it’s beautiful and elegant and I’m pretty sure it’s the next theme that I’ll be using (and loving).
Hi,
This is a great looking theme, I know there are a lot of mag/news type themes around at the moment but this one just has that feel where you can just sort of hang out on the site, and I think thats a good thing. Applied with the sense of humour that shows up too..its superb!.
Thats something I was wondering also, compatability with the new wp2.5.1 they seem to be flying out updates at the moment.
Also, I would like to have a section somehow where I have guest posts on my site and have a way to display a brief bio about the author of that post, is there an authors page included with the premium theme? or would it be possible to see a list of premium features.
(sorry for all the questions)
Many Thanks
Martin
Martin / bitdepth.
The theme should work fine with wp2.5 / wp2.5.1.
Martin - The theme supports multiauthors, with little bios about them on the post pages (just like here at creativesynthesis).
Bitdepth - There are some issues with upgrading from recycled canvas that can cause a lot of problems. Unfortunately these vary a lot depending on what version of recycled canvas you were using, some other issues, and it is hard to diagnose. The best bet is to remove recycled canvas completely before installing.
Hope that helps!
Thanks Matthew. I turned off the Recycled Data plugin and the Recycled Canvas theme and then chose PressBox as the theme and it works like a charm.
Thanks Matthew,
Its great that you chose to implement that feature. I think its good for folk to see more about who the author is and what they’re about etc, makes it seem friendlier and more welcoming I think..
Cheers!
M
Matthew, I must say I was stunned at the first glance of such a beautiful theme for wordpress. However, every time I try to install it on my wordpress blog, it fails to run properly. There are always many lines of codes before I can see my blog site’s title. I don’t know what is goin’ on here and to be more informative, I did not install any version of the Recycled Data plugin and the Recycled Canvas theme. Actually, I have deleted all other themes in content directory and disable all plugins in admin panel, but still it doesn’t work.
Take a look at the picture here since I cannot find a way to upload any in comment.
http://vfjeqg.blu.livefilestore.com/y1pfAsy-qapABEmVkT2t_u-knWksgTud9s3MXLOc8lGnllwvMlPYC8qwIzh56jK9ldaqPL7EJ5q-zDOTEniXKcSMw/Snap1.jpg
http://vfjeqg.blu.livefilestore.com/y1pfAsy-qapABHFY97nsL75uZYA8FZbYOnlFlWK-SEHDT-9qwMw6I4bJLKthds-hfo8496FMuP56WRojBr1SXbCig/Snap2.jpg
betaalpha - what version of wordpress are you using. These errors don’t appear to be normal theme errors. I’d wager something is wrong with the version of wordpress or the php setup on the server, so let us know what you can about both.
First, thank you for sharing such a beautiful theme for free
It seems there are IE 7 compatibility issues with the theme. In IE 7 there is a huge space between thembnails and the post summery. In firefox it works perfect :)
would be great if you resolve this small isue
cheers…sagar
I love this theme. I’ve implemented on my blog about Internet Security and Computer Safety Best Practices found here: http://www.psishield.com.
You can see some of the MODs I have made with the style and colors on the free theme. This theme is definitely one of the best minimalist/article/simple themes out there. I’ve probably spent hours scouring sites for great simple themes and this is definitely one of the best.
There is definitely an issue with PressBox and Firefox 3. In F3, there’s a giant space after
the second headline, as long as the sidebar - looks like a rendering issue to me. This doesn’t
happen in Firefox 2 or Safari.
I like this theme. I installed this on WP 2.5. It’s nice. thank you
Loved the theme when I saw the previews, but I’m really disappointed now that I have it up at http://www.pattayaghost.com
** Fonts are too big on IE7 and changes to the stylesheet don’t get reflected on that browser (they do on Firefox).
** Spacing is definately whacked out on IE7. Obvious even on your home page.
** WORST of all, the Tags and Categories links are broken. Do nothing at all. No results posted. When I change to other themes they work fine. Reuploaded everything. Changed back to PB and still don’t work.
** Very odd how images are handled. Even on your blog it looks lame to see a large photo cut off halfway.
Due to images and fonts and especially Categories/Tags problem, I can’t use your theme. Let me know when you’ve upgraded it, though.
Adam / pattaya.ghost - The issues you are describing have (for the most part) already been fixed in the current beta available to premium users. As soon as it is out of beta these bug fixes will be rolled in to the free version (which is hopefully soon).
pattaya.ghost, the two other issues you are describing are more of a preference thing and can be changed in stylesheets. For IE 7 make sure the iehacks.css file doesn’t overide any font sizing preferences you are changing. For the images - yes, not every image is displayed in an ideal way. There are essentially two meaningful options here. We could either display the full image or limit its height (the width is scaled correctly). It sounds like you would prefer the image be scaled and displayed fully (not cropped). This is reasonable, but it creates a lot of whitespace if there isn’t as much / more text in the preview.
If you want to change this - it is pretty easy. You can change the length of the highlighted post excerpt and remove the height cropping that is performed to images.
Thanks. Not being nasty, just was disappointed. I really like the look.
Is there any documentation on what to change and where? I’m definately not a PHP programmer.
No Problem pattaya.ghost. It’s definitely something we’ve gone back and forth about and we still aren’t 100% happy with it. The problem is that, while there are programmatic ways to address this most of them tend to be rather heavy - and that’s something we’d like to avoid.
Right now we really only offer detailed support for our premium subscribers (who we work with to address any issues that might exist). If you’re interested feel free to email pressbox@creativesynthesis.net
Understand that. I can’t see paying out $45 at this point on a product I’m unappy with. If I got it working with the free version to my satisfaction, then I coudl see wanting the extra templates, pages, views, etc. But unitl the basics are solid, I’m going to stick with the free version.
I would like to thank you for this great theme that I have switched to recently, it cleaned up my cluttered site.
but I would like to know before purchasing the premium version which i am certain i need, if i can adjust a couple things,
can i show an entire post in the featured post on the front page
can I adjust the image preview size of the older posts?
I would like to be able to change the fonts and side bar widths etc, i guess I need the missing css files.
thanks again for a great theme..
Aaron at MyTriniPhone.com
Hi Aaron,
We strongly encourage users to edit the stylesheets. In both the free and premium most of the relevant styles are included in the styles/wordpress.css file. Unfortunately the wordpress editor doesn’t support folders, so if you aren’t seeing these you’ll need to open them in a separate editor. This will allow you to edit things like the font sizes (even the image sizes, these are set in css).
For the featured post, we include the excerpt reloaded to provide better excerpt functionality. To show a full post you just have to change the function call to this function in the relevant include file (depending on what view you’re using). See: http://guff.szub.net/2005/02/26/the_excerpt-reloaded/
Newbie question, but where does the excerpt get shown? They’re not on my main blog page…
Sorry, what I’m trying to say is that I’ve entered text into the WP admin tool’s excerpt field for every story but the home page, the categories and search show the first X number of words of the full text, not the excerpt.
I thought perhaps I needed to download and install The Excerpt Reloaded plugin, but when I tried to activate it, I got a “Fatal Error” saying the function could not be redeclared.
I opened the pressbox theme source and see “reloaded” is called and I can (and did) change the number of words shown, but it’s still NOT my exceprt text.
How do I get the excerpts, and not the first X words of the post to show?
Hey guys, version 1.2 rocks!
There’s a problem with the compressed file, however. Throws up all sorts of errors. I was eventually able to pick it apart and get the files, but there’s also sorts of “file not found” things and ghost markers to other files. And the readme is missing.
Quick question: Where do I change the number of posts on the home page?
@pattaya.ghost: I change the number of posts on the page through the WordPress settings. It’s under the Settings > Reading tab and it’s where it says, “Blog pages show at most __ posts”. There may be a more sophisticated way to do it, but that’s what’s working for me. The only thing that isn’t great is that all the pages with multiple posts show that number of posts, so the search results or tag pages only show that number.
Pattaya.ghost - Just to confirm that you downloaded from: http://www.creativesynthesis.net/dist/pressbox-limited-1.2.zip - what kind of system are you on? The file looks good to me and a corrupt file is no good!
And yeah, we use the wordpress “show number of posts” option. We used to have more (separate) configuration, but it was ultimately too confusing. Most people are used to setting the number of posts that way.
Used two different XP machines, Winzip, WinRar and windows itself. Got the following errors, even using the link in your comment:
! C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\pressbox-limited-1.2.zip: Cannot create pressbox-limited\*readme.html
The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
! C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\pressbox-limited-1.2.zip: Attempting to correct the invalid file name
! C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\pressbox-limited-1.2.zip: Cannot create __MACOSX\pressbox-limited\._*readme.html
The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
! C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\pressbox-limited-1.2.zip: Attempting to correct the invalid file name
Ah, * is an invalid character in windows. On the mac it gets pushed to the top of a file listing, should have just used 0 instead. That’s the problem. I’ll have someone fix it for tomorrow, thanks!
Just to let you know, PressBox 1.2 Limited seems to have exchanged one rendering problem
(on Firefox 3 Mac) for another. When before it would run the first post full-width, and then
have a sidebar-sized gap after the second headline, now it moves the sidebar up to the top,
and the gap is right after the first headline.
Adam, can you share with me exactly where you see this, and under what circumstances (like what view in press box). Looking at Firefox 3 (RC2) everything looks fine at the demo site (http://www.creativesynthesis.net/recycling/boxtest/) do you have a site or a screenshot where you see this problem occurring?
Weirdly, the problem seems to be gone now. I guess it’s like the thing where when you finally
go to the dentist, and your toothache is gone. Sorry for the alarm. This is a great theme.
I’m new to WordPress. Can someone tell me how I can add a
X comments | Add comment
sort of line to the posts in Press Box? I think having to click on the post title in order to post a comment is making my readers less likely to comment.
Hi guys.
Well, it’s been a few weeks with PressBox and I can tell you I’m very happy and feel like I’m already outgrowing the basic version. I need some info though before plunking down the $45.
First, I cannot find anywhere a complete listing / examples of the templates available in the paid version. I did log into the demo, but couldn’t seem to see anything more than the home page. Can you send me some details on the extras?
Second, can you send me a number of links of others using pressbox free or paid? I need to see how others are integrating advertising and other things.
Finally, is there, or are there plans for, a 3-column home page or a liquid design? I want to add more stuff, but my home page is already quite long and if there was a third column available, I could put some gadgets in there.
Thanks!
Pattaya Ghost -
The list of features in the premium version (from the readme) are:
Views: Press Box Standard, Normal Blog Style, Magazine Style, Press Box Portfolio
Themes: Simple and Clean, High Contrast, Dark and dim, Professionally Painted, Extra simple, Wood paneled, Nicely framed
Page Templates & Other Extras: Archive, Links, Summary, Full Page, Extra Widgets
Even more: Sample custom header images, Extra highlight colors and custom category support
=> three columns. The magazine view shows three columns on the index, the post column and two side columns. As to a liquid layout, not really. The layout does ’scale’ if you change the font size (it’s command-plus for me in firefox or safari), unfortunately images can’t really scale this way (because they are really so many pixels in size), so it is limited.
As to links to sites using it, we don’t really keep track of user sites for this theme (like we did for recycled canvas), someone would have to manually hunt around.
Do you guys have a forum for pressbox?
Hi,
I purchased the premium theme a few days ago. I’m having trouble getting rid of the default sidebar widgets. I went to widget in the wordpress cpanel but there is nothing to remove there. How do I fix this?
Hi, just started using the recycled canvas theme just to test it out when I also noticed your press-box theme. Now I would like to buy the premium version of the theme just to support, but the thing I like most on the recycled theme is the “box view” layout which seems to be missing on press-box. Any chance on getting that view inside the press-box theme ? And also (because I’m not really a css wizard) having the 1 style.css on the recycled theme makes adjusting the theme easy… how does that word on the press-box theme ? there seem to be 4 style sheets, do I need a separate editor to view and modify them ? Thanks ! Richard
Great theme! Thanks! I’ve tested hundreds and might even buy the premium version.
As another one here in the thread, I wonder if I can change the preview images and how to do so. It seems that only a smart part of the image inside the post is displayed. Is it possible to have an automatically generated thumbnail displayed? I know that some themes have this feature
An addition: I see that the thumbnail-thing works on your blog. Is this a special (premium) view?
Hi, I see there’s now a version 1.3. What are the changes from 1.2?
Hi Guys, Thanks for theme. I used it for my new blog and it works.
The license states that I can’t alter the limited version. Does that mean that mean you’re not allowed to use the userstyle.css that comes with it?
Furthermore, in case I’d decide to buy the premium version, will this allow me to change/customise parts of the theme like removing the background of title-front for instance?
Is it possible and/or allowed to integrate my own styles for personal use?
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