Revolution News: WordPress Theme Increases Visitor Duration
Ed and I spent the better part of the weekend before last making updates and revisions to get Roamsters.com, our travel blog, prepared for the holiday rush.
The biggest change that I made was to install a new WordPress theme, called Revolution News, by Brian Gardner (no relation).
I’ve used Brian’s themes on a couple of blogs now and I love them – primarily because his designs are fresh and fabulous and better yet, they encourage visitors to poke around the site longer. Average visitor duration at Roamsters.com has increased from 302 seconds to 356 seconds since I installed the theme. The number of newsletter and feed subscribers has also increased by result.
Unlike typical themes, Brian’s themes come with uniquely-styled homepages, archives, section and post pages. I particularly like the ‘newspaper’ look and feel of the Revolution News homepage, on which you can display recent posts from categories of your choice, in any order you like, which is infinitely preferable to the endless 10-post homepage scroll on most blogs. The primary and secondary top navigation bars allow you to highlight pages and categories that you particularly want your visitors to see and visit.
A Feedburner subscription button and an email form are already built-in, you just have to supply your own code. Site search is prominently located above the top navigation bar.
Brian’s themes are also perfectly functional out of the box — unlike some of the free themes I’ve found on the WordPress codex which I’ve installed and later uninstalled. Yes, Brian charges for his themes – $59.95 for Revolution and $99.95 for Revolution News theme. More if you want a multiple-use package. Brian has also recently added a sports theme to the collection.
Brian adds value and service by making himself available by email (he responds to queries very quickly) and providing clearly-written instructions that show you how to easily amend his themes to you liking.
Tutorials include:
- How to Create an Archives Page
- Using a Full Width Header Image
- Creating a Dynamic Home Page
- How to Use the Blog Link
- Using a Background Image
- How to Use the Single Page 2 Layout
- Creating Multiple Featured Pages
- Adding a Padded Color Border to Images
- Customizing the News Page
- How to Remove the Double Border
I still have tweaking to do at Roamsters, not least of which is to make a header graphic for the site. Otherwise, we’re just dashing madly to get travel gift links up there in time for the Christmas shopping rush. Then again, Ed could that… while I change NPT over to the Revolution News theme.
Sssshhhhh… don’t tell him. 
[tags]Revolution News, wordpress, theme, Brian Gardner[/tags]
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Posted / Revised on October 11, 2007 under Build Your Site  |
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I love Brian’s Revolution theme. I discovered it a few weeks ago and installed it on my own blog and love it. It’s very clean and professional.
Rosalind
I really like this information about Revolution News. I checked out the Revolution News website and it is a fantastic theme.
I will be purchasing myself soon.
Cheers for pointing it out.
That’s a nice looking theme. Does it include plugins and everything or is it purely a theme? I use the Semiologic Pro package on some of my sites and I’m wondering whether this would integrate with it.
Also, I was poking around on your Roamsters site a bit and it looks like the places you’ve visited and your travel wishlist links on the about us page are broken.
Thanks for the tip…
John
Love, love, love the theme. But how does AdSense fit in the picture?
Robert
This theme is not genius, it just looks a bit more “professional” than others, anyway it’s worth 100 bucks
It is a great theme. I bought two of his themes and love working with them. And he is a very sweet and helpful guy. So much you can do with the themes. They just fit! Good luck getting yours tweaked!
John, the theme is just a WP theme and does not come with any additional plugins, which is nice because then you can add your own and most WP plugins are free.
Robert, You can add Adsense where you wish if you are familiar with customizing php templates (not too hard to do) or you can use the Adsense plugin for WordPress, which will make it simpler.
I’ve been watching Brian Gardner’s work for some time now. There are so damned many really bad, tacky, derivative designs out there, that when someone (like Brian) comes up with something interesting and tasteful, it raises the bar just a little bit for the rest of us.
This is what’s called a good thing.
Cheers,
Karl A. Shalek
The theme fits perfectly.
I love it
Hi
I really like this theme – is it still available?
Tom