Live Demo
Mimbo is a fresh new magazine-style WordPress theme that will really put a luster on your blog. It’s a free theme with all the ingredients to make it a success. If you’re not already aware, magazine-styled blog templates are the latest fashion and are popping up all over the place.
Most of the high-quality ones like Adii’s Premium News Theme and the Revolution Magazine Theme charge you to download their premium WordPress themes and for good reason. They are really great quality and worth it if it’s in your budget. If cash is on the low side and you’d rather go the free route then Mimbo is one of the top free magazine-style themes I’ve seen out there.
We’ve got our own gallery of Premium WordPress themes that you might be interested in checking out as well.
You can check out a live working demo of Mimbo and let us know what you think.
Keep in mind that most magazine themes like this take some extra care and effort to setup. I advise you to take a look at the instruction below before asking either the author for help.
Installation
- Download and unzip the file
- Dump the theme into your “/wp-content/themes/” folder
- Log in into your WordPress control panel
- Click the Presentation tab
- Select the “Mimbo” screenshot
Support and Discussion
Getting things configured
- Mimbo is built to support the current version of WordPress (2.3). If you get fatal errors related to tags (”Call to undefined function: is_tag”), please upgrade.
- In the “index.php” and “sidebar.php” templates, you will find a series of query_posts functions which refer to specific category ID numbers from my database. Example:
<?php query_posts('showposts=1&cat=4'); ?>You will need to change them to reflect the ID numbers in your own database. They can be found in your control panel under Manage->Categories. Read more about this process.
- Images on the homepage are displayed using Custom Fields. Read more about this process.
- For the layout to work, some image dimensions must be exact. The “Feature” images are 255×88 pixels while the various category thumbnails are 51×51 pixels each.
- For the author bio photo to work, you must upload a photo with the author’s first name (ex: “Darren.jpg”). Read more about this process.
- If you are upgrading from a previous version of Mimbo, please view details in the Changelog to see what’s new. Most importantly: if you are having trouble displaying the homepage, please note that this configuration step is no longer necessary! The latest version of Mimbo works like any other theme - it uses index.php as its homepage template.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much do you charge for customizations?
Sorry, I am not available for freelance jobs currently. - How do I add images to the homepage?
As mentioned before, the images are pulled in using Custom Fields. For this to work, images must be stored in the /images/ folder of your theme. You can either upload them there via FTP, or go to Options->Miscellaneous in your control panel, set the correct path, and upload them through the Upload panel below your Write->Posts editor. - Why does the formatting of my excerpts look strange?
By default, the_excerpt function uses the first 55 words of the post, including the original formatting. This can make things look strange on your homepage. If you’d like to write a separate excerpt for your posts, use the Optional Excerpt field. - How do I add my own logo to the masthead?
First make sure your logo image is no wider than 625px. After it’s been uploaded, open the style.css document and make this change to the H1 properties:h1 {text-indent:-9999px;
background: url(images/logo.gif) no-repeat;
width: whatever; height: whatever; } - How do I add photos and formatting to the body of my posts?
There are two CSS classes, .picleft and .picright, as well as styling provided for blockquotes and lists. See this post for examples. - Why do I see errors saying, “Call to undefined function: is_tag”?
The Mimbo templates contain references to tags because tags are now a WordPress feature. I’m currently trying to make Mimbo backwards-compatible but in the meantime, you’ll need to upgrade to version 2.3.