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Introducing Anaximander: New WordPress theme to be released in the near future

It’s been a long time coming, but Design is Philosophy finally has a new look and better functionality. The new theme which I activated over the weekend is called “Anaximander” and sports everything a modern WordPress theme should have: Semantic valid HTML5 throughout, responsive layout through CSS3 media queries, carefully enqueued javascripts where necessary and index pages running Masonry for ease of use.

The name “Anaximander” comes from my new theme naming standard. Inspired by the WordPress release naming standard I have chosen to name my themes after famous philosophers starting with Thales and movin up through the ages. The philosophy geeks out there will already know this, but Anaximander is the 2nd classical philosopher on that list. If you are curious you should go check out the Wikipedia page about Anaximander (the philosopher, not the theme).

Anaximander is a work in progress and I launched it here on Design is Philosophy to put it through its paces. That means more functionality will be added in the near future (AJAXified infinite scroll on index pages is first on the list) and I will be expanding theme options and customizability. Why you ask? Because Anaximander was built to be shared.

Anaximander: The Free WordPress Theme – coming to your WordPress site in due time

Yep, as with my previous non-client themes Anaximander will be released to the masses at some point in the not too distant future. But not in the normal way: Though I can’t really say anything about what’s in store for Anaximander, it will be released as part of a bigger plan. Unfortunately I can’t be any more specific than that. But stay tuned and you’ll find out.

Browse, play, and report back

Anaximander (and by extension Design is Philosophy) has a lot of tricks up its sleeve – from Masonry to responsive layouts to other stuff. I would love it if you took it for a spin, opened it on your different devices, left a comment and reported back if something didn’t behave the way you expected. I want to build this theme out to make it as user friendly as possible and that means the front end must be flawless. Your input and suggestions are welcome.

By Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Morten Rand-Hendriksen is a staff author at LinkedIn Learning and lynda.com specializing in WordPress and web design and development and an instructor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. He is a popular speaker and educator on all things design, web standards and open source. As the owner and Web Head at Pink & Yellow Media, a boutique style digital media company in Burnaby, BC, Canada, he has created WordPress-based web solutions for multi-national companies, political parties, banks, and small businesses and bloggers alike. He also contributes to the local WordPress community by organizing Meetups and WordCamps.

19 replies on “Introducing Anaximander: New WordPress theme to be released in the near future”

Looking forward to seeing this released, it’s looking great on my android. The only thing I noticed which I doubt is a theme issue is some of your code snippets in posts are cut off.

This new free theme of yours will be as good as premium themes, right? Thank you for the video courses, Morten! And hellow to your from Russia 😉

The theme is extensive and has a lot of features. “As good as premium themes” depends on what premium themes you are talking about. Some premium themes are great, some are terrible. All I’ll say is this theme will be a very good theme.

“Some premium themes are great, some are terrible”

Could you please teach a newbie how to distinguish great premium theme from not a good one, and how to make a good choice?

I don’t know html, css, javascript, php and so forth, to make good child themes (this skills are required, right?).

So I can hope only to find a good, flexible, multifunctional theme and adjust it to my needs

I’m an avid subscriber of Lynda.com. My client and I cannot wait for this theme to be finished. I have followed your courses on Lynda and have dabbled in a child theme for twenty eleven theme, but would rather use this beautiful looking theme. Please make it available soon.

i got the theme from lynda(Anaximander-static). but this is not looks like yours and is not responsive like yours. when you are going to release this awesome theme?

@Mithun
I’m also a subscriber on Lynda. Did you even watch the videos at all? You start out with a static theme and you go through the tutorials to build and make it a response theme.

I’m following the Lynda tuts and there is a problem. When I download what ships from Lynda and install the theme in WP the static theme is not styled like yours in the video. The sidebar is not on the right of the posts but instead sits on the bottom.

Is this an error in the Lynda download? I could style it myself to float right etc. but I want to follow the video exactly.

Please check into this and let me know ASAP. Thank you – Michael

@Michael: There is nothing wrong with the tutorial or the files. The appearance of the static version of the theme depends on how you have your site configured. The reason you are seeing the sidebar at the bottom is because you have the front page widgets activated. As you move through the tutorial you’ll see the widgets on the front page stack nicely where they are supposed to be. If you want to match my screen exactly, just go to Appearances -> Widgets and remove the widgets in the front page widgetized areas.

Hi – I following this course now. Do I make all the changes in the course to the main theme and then create a child theme for future changes OR do I create the child theme first and put all the course changes into that? Please advise best practice for future updates.
Thank you.

The course was built with the intent that you make the changes in the main theme. Once you’re done with the course you should make any subsequent changes in a child theme so that if/when I release any updates to Anaximander they will roll in nicely.

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