> Download Vie Parisienne WordPress theme <


''I'm sorry to write this blog post in english, but I must. I will explain later. And sorry for my crappy English! :) '' I'm presenting you today my new WordPress theme (and soon DotClear theme), Vie Parisienne. It's in fact the evolution of my "Vie Urbaine", for my Blog de Paris, where you can see a demo of it (personalized, the actual theme don't have the Eiffel Tower). So it's a city scape featured design, as you can see in the header, quite simple. It was designed for a 3 columns blog style : 2 columns for content, plus the sidebar. This fluid design has to be in three columns because of this fluid feature : in the content, I reserved one column for pictures, and the other one for text. This was the only solution I found to have many pictures in a fluid design, without the posts beeing ugly.

To use this extra column for images, just wrap them in <div class="postimgs">. The stylesheet have the extra class which formats this div reserved for images. Yeah I know, I'm getting technical.  Just put your pics between this code : <div class="postimgs"> and this one : </div>, in HTML mode in WordPress when you are writing your blog post.

I optimized this template design for Adsense and Ads in general, but without being aggressive for our dear readers : ads should complement the content, not be THE content. I also internationalized (i18n) the theme, no more French words in an English WordPress theme, or vice versa. Just put your .po file corresponding to the language you want, and voila! You have a nice theme for WordPress in any possible language. .po files can be found at WordPress website.

Why I can't find "Vie Parisienne" theme (formerly "Vie Urbaine") in the themes directory of WordPress?

That's a good question. When they released the 2.7 version of WordPress (which is very good), they suspended all of my themes. They weren't up to date. Ok, no prob. But they also changed completely their politics in regard of sponsored themes. No more themes with sponsored links in the footer. That's a really questionable decision. But what's really a sponsored link, and what isn't?
I sent to Wordpress guys an email with those questions, explaining my point of view on the subject : the free open web should not be afraid of sponsors, it's a good thing. Even Leonardo and all of the Renaissance artists had maecenas, that's why they could create such beautiful things. I had no response. They must argue that a lot of webdesigners out there do freely the themes for WordPress. I must say here that they are mostly students or webdesigners seeking for a job and recognition. Maybe some amateurs, who decided to give away an old design for their personal blog. I know, I was one of them : a webdesigner student looking for a job, and giving away the design of my blog, LiquidCard, seeking for a bit of recognition.

But I would understand anyway that they just don't want sponsored links in themes displayed in theme directory, ok. No reward. Ok. Not direct money reward. Ok. Why?

What I don't understand, it's the criteria. I submitted some days ago this new theme of mine. I think it's not an ugly theme, and it is not sponsored. Or at least, I would not consider that the link in the footer pointing to my Blog de Paris it's a sponsored link. If so, everyone else is in that case at the theme directory. So why my theme is not on the directory? Ask them. I saw themes accepted after my submission to WordPress, some of them quite ugly. I saw themes with blatant sponsored link in it ("this theme was brought to you by ~ insert company ~").

On a side note, I asked to the DotClear community if I could let in my DotClear themes a link to my sponsor. I must precise that all of my themes are GPL licensed, and everyone can, if he want, remove the link if they want. The response of DotClear community was clear : no problem, since it's GPL.

Vive DotClear!