The content of this article is outdated. Meanwhile I´m the owner of the branfordmagazine.com domain. This article remains just for information.

It takes a while to make me angry. Normally I´m a straight guy who keeps cool blood. But I am getting angry if someone with obviously very little knowledge of web development first takes my work for her own benefit and then starts trying to damage my reputation such as Aisling D´Art tries to do with her website she formerly called “The UN-Official BranfordMagazine Website”.

Facts and Fictions

Some years ago when I released the first version of BranfordMagazine Mrs. D´Art was a big fan of it and started to write and sell an ebook that was kind of a “how-to” for my theme. That was OK and I promoted her book on my website as an affiliate partner. But I didn´t stopp my continuous development and released new and better versions.

Then came the day when Mrs. D´Art didn´t want to continue updating her ebook anymore. She started to provide old versions of my theme on her website which was ok with me as well (although she never asked or at least informed me). But she also started to run a campaign against me telling people only the old versions of my themes are stable ones and the newer ones are buggy and cause errors. This is obviously driven by missing knowledge and a lack of information because it´s simply not true.

In one of her articles she tells people why she wouldn´t buy a PRO version of my theme. She claims it uses faulty code but she…

• Never tried a PRO theme (so how can she judge?)
• Compares an older (non PRO) version again (4.x)
• Gets error messages that are based on her own mistakes when installing the theme

Since a few days her site quit using the old BranfordMagazine version since it doesn´t seem to be compatible with WordPress 3.0. This is also not true. I tested several versions from 2.0 to 2.6 (the latest version Mrs. D´Art reccommends) and they all work without any issues. In fact she really reccommends not to upgrade to WordPress 3.0!

[...] ignore the “Update to WordPress 3.0 now” messages. Unless WordPress comes out with a patch for the problem affecting Branford and several other themes, updating means breaking your theme.

In this article she really blames WordPress for not working with some (potentially old) themes and expects a “patch for the problem”. I just can´t believe this. How can she dare to claim the issue is up to WordPress? Come on Mrs. D´Art…times are changing and the web is not a static place. It continues developing and sometimes old stuff needs to be deprecated. You don´t use an Internet Explorer 5 or Netscape Navigator 4 anymore, don´t you? And if, at least you don´t complaint about it does not support CSS3.

Final Thoughts

Well to me it´s an incredibly cheeky and unreasonable attitude if somone never has developed something on her own, benefits from the work of others and then starts to trash them. When I first released BranfordMagazine I took “Mimbo” by Darren Hoyt as a coding basis. I also took elements from the former “Revolution” Theme by Brian Gardner and combined them to one new theme. I never made a secret out of it. I also mentioned that always in the themes footer and credited Darren and Brian. That´s the least I can do. And the least I expect if someone who benefits from the work of another.

The fact that she seems to have issues with the old themes versions and the new WordPress (and potentially some of her users as well although the themes did not cause issues on my testsite) is another good example why you should always check out the original source of a theme or plugin to avoid trouble. Only at the original authors website you can be sure to get the original stuff and professional support. Even if it might cost some money, at the end it´s less expensive then dealing with issues and unexperienced supporters.

And as I already mentioned in a comment on Mrs. D´Arts Site: “You do your job and I do mine”. But please Mrs. D´Art, stopp telling things that are based on ignorance and a huge lack of knowledge…and are simply not true!

Further reading

• Downloading a Premium Theme from the Wrong Site can be Expensive

WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” was released yesterday providing tons of great new features. Since many of those features became part of my Themes I updated the downloads to the latest versions of Branfordmagazine 5.1 and WyntonMagazine 2.1.

If you already purchased a theme you can go to the support forum and download the new version in the “download” subforum of the BranfordMagazine or WyntonMagazine support-forum. This area is only available to theme buyers who have registered to the forum and where upgraded by me. If you don´t have access to the forum but previously purchased a theme, let me know.

The new themes versions come with a long list of new features mainly based on new WordPress 3.0 functions such as:

• Completely new rebuild and fancy options-page
• Custom headers
• Custom backgrounds
• Custom menus
• Image dimensions of the thumbnails editable from the options-page
• Additional and optional widgetized footer area
• Auto prettyPhoto (lighbox-clone) integration
• 960 grid system
• and more…

Purchase Themes

Don´t waste time and save your copy of PRiNZ Pro themes today.

BranfordMagazine PRO

The theme is ready for localization. Its default language is English but it comes with a German language file included in the /branfordmagazine-pro/languages folder.

[btn text="Demo" color="green" size="big" url="http://wp-themes.der-prinz.com/branfordmagazine/" p="false"] [btn text="More Info" color="green" size="big" url="http://www.der-prinz.com/branfordmagazine-wordpress-magazine-style-theme-63" p="false"]

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WyntonMagazine PRO

The theme is ready for localization. Its default language is English but it comes with a German language file included in the /wyntonmagazine-pro/languages folder.

[btn text="Demo" color="green" size="big" url="http://wp-themes.der-prinz.com/wyntonmagazine/" p="false"] [btn text="More Info" color="green" size="big" url="http://www.der-prinz.com/wyntonmagazine-magazine-style-theme-for-wordpress-106" p="false"]

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Video: More about WordPress 3.0

New features

Here is a list of all new features that will be included in the upcoming version 5.1 of BranfordMagazine and version 2.1 of WyntonMagazine. Both versions will be released as soon as WordPress 3.0 is out.

• New and fancy jQuery powered optionspanel (you will love it)
• Automatic integration of the prettyPhoto image script (a beautifull Lightbox clone)
• Alternative (or better optional) widgetized footer area (4 additional widget areas). Can be switched on and off via the optionspanel
• Support for new WordPress custom menus – Create your own navigation with pages, categories or external links and use them together with the default navigation or without it.
• Support for custom backgrounds – Color or Image, fixed or scrollable, it´s up to you
• Support for custom header image – Change the logo in seconds without touching code

The new theme versions require WordPress 3.0 and are not compatible with older versions. So update your WordPress as soon as possible.

Custom Excerpts with “more” Links

The functions.php file now has not only an area to define custom excerpt lenghts but also an area where you can define the appearance of the default WordPress excerpt “more” string [...] as well as it is now really clickable (which it is not by WordPress default). A tutorial will follow soon.

100% W3C valid

One of the features that was missing in all previous versions is that BranfordMagazine now is 100% W3C valid. All errors have been erased. You will not really see this modification because the theme used to work without issues anyway but it is another improvement in terms of clean coding.

Here´s a list of the new stuff:

• Optionspanel with additional settings for Google AdSense and google Analytics
• Default settings of the options panel that work for most default WP installations
• Custom excerpts with clickable “more” links
• 100% W3C valid

If you want to update

If you want to update from version 4.1 to the new version 4.2 you need to replace the following files:

• functions.php
• index.php
• header.php
• sidebar.php
• /incudes/ui.tabs.php
• style.css

The Future

There´s more to come in future releases. I´m also planning to release a “Pro” version of BranfordMagazine with a whole bunch of new features and an optimised design. So stay tuned for updates.