Wordpress theme: 3some

Published May 1st, 2006 in wordpress Tags: 3some, wordpress, wordpress themes.

I’ve created another theme for wordpress: 3some. 3some is a unique column-based theme with a very simple and clean design, and it is very customizable. The content is displayed in equally-sized columns in the front page. There are no sidebars in this design.

Here’s a screenshot of the 3some theme: (click on image to enlarge)

In the theme options page, there are several new options that lets you customize the theme: (click to enlarge)

If you enable the headerbox, you will get another section right below the top header which you can use to display ads or whatever else you need. Similarly, if you enable the footerbox, you will get a section above the footer for extra content. Also, you can choose to enable the ‘controlbox’, which is another section below the header, which by default contains the search box and current date. All these are controllable from the 3some options page, so it is very easy to modify the design and see what suits you best.

Also, there’s an option to modify the ‘column ordering model’. By default 3some theme will display the posts in the following order, assuming that 9 is the latest post, and 1 was the first:
9 8 7
6 5 4
3 2 1

If you check the box and change the alternate column ordering model, the ordering will be:
9 6 3
8 5 2
7 4 1

Note that, here in this site, you can scroll down all the way to the bottom and use the theme switcher to check how the site would look like with different themes.

Download the 3some theme by clicking this link

Also, check out my other themes, 3K2 and 3c-black-letterhead

40 Responses to “Wordpress theme: 3some”

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1 Ryan D'Oily May 5th, 2006 at 3:01 am

Looks neat. I’m loving the k2 three column themes.

Question: Is there a way in wordpress to make the columns more independent of each other? Like, is it possible to set things up so that posting in, for instance, column 1 will not affect any of the posts in column 2?

I don’t use asides much on my page because my main posts will eventually push my asides off the page. I’m also working on setting up a multiple-author weblog/magazine, and would like to have one column for daily posts, and then another column for weekly features (and a third for misc. meta stuff), but I’d like for those columns to be wholly independent of one another. I see it done on MT sites (http://themorningnews.org — http://yankeepotroast.org - etc.) but I’m not sure how possible it is in wordpress without a lot of juggling.

Thanks.
Ryan.
2 hakan May 5th, 2006 at 3:17 am

Ryan:

Yes that is definitely doable with a bit of additional programming and a bit of effort when you create new posts.

With wordpress, you can add a ‘custom field’ to every post while you’re creating your post via the web interface. So for example, you can tag your posts with ‘col1′, ‘col2′, ‘col3′ etc. Then in the wordpress loop php code you can look for the corresponding tag in each column and only display the post when the tag matches the current column that wordpress is processing. Hope this helps.

Hakan
3 David Chartier May 7th, 2006 at 9:11 pm

Absolutely beatufiul and unique theme. I’m tinkering around with it and I’m wondering: how wide, exactly, are the columns? How wide can they be? Will they stretch for content?

Thanks for your time.
4 hakan May 8th, 2006 at 2:15 am

David,

Thanks, I’m glad you like it. The columns are 280 pixels wide and they won’t stretch for content; actually the content will shrink down to the columns. Columns can be of any width, although you have to play with the page properties also. Currently, the columns are 280 pixels and with all the spaces between columns and margins, total page width is 900 pixels. These widths are all defined in style.css, so that should be the only file you need to edit.
5 hqnoise May 10th, 2006 at 9:08 pm

Awesome theme and idea, but can you make the posts work more like how I got it set up here, in not just columns but rows as well?
6 hakan May 10th, 2006 at 9:33 pm

Hqnoise:

Thanks. I guess I didn’t quite understand what you mean by ‘not just columns but rows as well’. Do you mean that each post in each column should be aligned with corresponding posts in other columns? I checked the site that you pointed out but couldn’t really figure out what you mean.

Thanks,
7 hqnoise May 10th, 2006 at 10:52 pm

I think you get it, but to be shure I’ll explain it better.

In 3some the space between the comment link at the bottom of a post and the title of the next post are always the same. In mine that distance differs so the titles of the different post line up. Thats how I want it to look like.

Thanks for responding so quickly.
8 Daniel Jun 4th, 2006 at 4:45 pm

hey mate, top theme!!
just playing with it now, i have everything set out correct in Firefox but when i load my site in IE the right hand side column drops down to the bottom of the page, now i dunno why it would do this ,so im wondering if you might have any ideas or can help me out? the website is http://www.geeksglobe.com

Regards
Daniel
9 everysandwich Jun 15th, 2006 at 7:06 pm

I get a 404 error after trying any theme option. Maybe I should try a reinstall?
10 ShavenRobotMonkey Jun 22nd, 2006 at 6:51 pm

Hi, fantastic theme.
I want to add to Ryan D’Oily’s post regarding keeping columns separate because I too am interested in setting up a multiple-author weblog/magazine.
I’d like to be able have one column assigned to each author and not have anothers postings displaced if one author is more prolific than another.
So, my request is; since I do not possess the technical know-how, although I’m not afraid of a little work; can you offer a more detailed description of exactly I would have to do to ensure this type of functionality in your theme?
I would be greatly thankful.
Lorne
11 Blogger Jun 23rd, 2006 at 9:27 pm

I have a blog at

http://speakupforgood.com/Blogs/Blog/

It’s a WordPress blog. I couldn’t figure out how to customize a theme or make a new one. The information at WordPress’s web site is too technical.

Is there any step by step instruction for Non-Technical people? I use Dreamweaver.

When I open the files (I don’t even know what files I’m suppose to open to edit the design), I don’t see any thing on the design section, there are html and php codes at the code section.

You can see the main website at

http://www.speakupforgood.com/

For the blog go to:

http://speakupforgood.com/Blogs/Blog/
12 Rihanna Jul 24th, 2006 at 4:24 pm

This looks pretty nice.
13 glen Aug 4th, 2006 at 6:01 am

Very nice theme,I have installed it.
Thanks
14 Brian Oct 3rd, 2006 at 9:26 pm

I need some help fixing this theme so it displays correctly under IE.
15 Matt Nov 10th, 2006 at 7:49 am

I love the layout…
16 Donny Pauling Nov 16th, 2006 at 5:02 am

I like this theme because it’s perfect for one version of our dealership website. I do have two questions, however. I’d like to show the categories at the top. I post all vehicles into multiple categories. How do I show those?

Also, instead of saying “Blog” on the top left tab, I’d like it to say “Home”. How do I do that?
17 Donny Pauling Nov 16th, 2006 at 5:09 am

Also, I’d like to know how to add a search box up there at the top somewhere. And do you have any idea why the spots at the top that say “older” and “newer” are constantly indicating that they’re loading in the middle column and far right column?
18 desh Dec 6th, 2006 at 3:06 pm

The theme doesnt seem to work on IE.. can you please help?
19 tobto Dec 13th, 2006 at 3:46 pm

nice theme… I like header and background
20 Nic Dec 20th, 2006 at 12:41 am

can i use thise theme? tnk
21 scrapbidule Dec 26th, 2006 at 2:14 pm

This theme look very nice ! i like it .. thanks to you aydin
22 Spetke Jan 16th, 2007 at 7:37 pm

Thanks for the nice theme. This really looks the perfect solution for our website. I am building a blog with multiple authors and numerous categories and I want to keep the newest entries of certain categories always at the same postiton in the layout… For example The Latest News would always be on the top of the 1st column and so on… I understood that it requires some work with custom fields and theloop.php, am I right? I already have custom field called Position, which I would give a value that indicates the position in the layout. Since I am not a skilled programmer I don’t how I can do this. Could you give me a little help?
23 Antibush Feb 12th, 2007 at 5:56 pm

Bush goes ballistic about other countries being evil and dangerous, because they have weapons of mass destruction. But, he insists on building up even a more deadly supply of nuclear arms right here in the US. What do you think? Why has bush turned our country from a country of hope and prosperity to a country of belligerence and fear.
What happened to us, people? When did we become such lemmings?
The more people that the government puts in jails, the safer we are told to think we are. The real terrorists are wherever they are, but they aren’t living in a country with bars on the windows. We are.
24 ram Mar 7th, 2007 at 11:48 pm

hi thanks for the great theme.
I would like to display sidebar in the third column and posts on 2 other columns. I looked at the loop.php code but not sure of what to change to get the posts in only 2 columns. can you help me in this.
thanks
25 Tahir Dinç Apr 25th, 2007 at 4:13 am

Hakan arkadaşım güzel sitelerde imzanızı görüyorum. başarılar dilerim.
26 hakan May 19th, 2007 at 7:53 pm

Tahir: Tesekkur ederim. Iyi calismalar
27 latest news Aug 1st, 2007 at 3:23 pm

nice and very coool look hope for more new theme
28 Mike Aug 16th, 2007 at 4:32 pm

It’s very beautifully.
29 Blogtantra.com Aug 23rd, 2007 at 10:42 am

its great but would be better if the spaces should be more wider.
30 raj Dec 13th, 2007 at 8:13 pm

Thanx for visiting, n for replying to querry also! But had 1 more Q, since earlier[abonded instantly after opening style.css for 3some lol] 3some is brilliant theme also, especially for me, suits my style, except only prefer, dark style more, n in hopes tht it’d be just a matter of changing background color hexcodes, downloaded it, but u have mashed the code in it unlike in BL 3c where u explain sections under headings , the pop opinion on this is that it’s not fair to all us new bloggers wen the theme makers do this, if it’s just for speeding up the loadtime, ne chance u got a unscrambled style.css lying around, if no, i’ll just forget 3some, anytime, i get creative urges, i’d run into too many probs and will have to run here wid questions,