Gravy is the codename for a new project I’m releasing today. It’s a design and theming system I’ve evolved over the years to help build a ton of my own WordPress-driven client sites.
This project isn’t a framework in the sense of great projects like Hybrid or Thematic which are geared toward coders with child themes, action hooks and upgrading in mind.
Instead, Gravy is geared toward front-end designers who want more speed and consistency while converting client mockups into WordPress themes. It’s also a great tool for beginners to bridge the connection between design, markup and template code.
Follow me on Twitter
1:02 am
Hi Darren,
This is some stuff that you are sharing with the community. I will most definitely give this a spin, because I’ve been looking for a good agile development workflow from Photoshop to WordPress.
Thank you very much for sharing this.
Cheers from the Netherlands,
Patrick
12:15 pm
No problem, let me know what you think Patrick.
1:37 am
Dear Darrem:
I am having a problem, and I believe that you are the person that can help.
Based upon what I read you could have possible on how to fix a problem that I as having with Mimbo 2.0.
The problem being that of putting Photo on the main page of the site.
I purchased the site about 9 months ago. And was trying to update information when I started taking down photos.
I have gone into the area know as Custom fields and tried to fix photos
I have viewed Zoopmedia
How to Add a Custom Field…Followed the inst. to the letter,,,…but did not help… This is the clears indication of what should be done.
I do not find any instruction about the theme that I am using.
Can you help???
Thanking you in advance
JP
4:25 am
I’m so ashamed that I haven’t had the chance to go through Gravy properly, but from what I have seen, it’s a fantastic product. I can see it coming in handy on so many occasions.
12:48 pm
Thanks Elliot, it’s definitely come in handy to me over the years and seems handy to users so far. I appreciate your checking it out!
5:35 am
Hey Darren – theme looks great. Hope it does well for you :)
12:51 pm
Thanks Ben.
10:18 am
Hi Darren –
Thanks, once again, for making things so much easier for the struggling ones out here (me!). I have been trying to put together my own mini WP framework but haven’t been able to get it done the way I want and this is soooo much better.
You are my WP King!
12:51 pm
Let me know what you think once you’ve implemented it or if you have questions – hope all’s good with you Lisa!
9:21 am
HA! I will do my best to figure things out on my own and will hope the forum gets good questions since I tend to lurk. I am hoping you are too busy to answer any of my inane questions anyway. Promise to show you what I do with it when I actually do! :)
3:12 pm
Looking forward to trying this. Thanks for putting this out at a reasonable price, Darren! I have always admired your design work.
9:59 am
Would love to see a screencast of how you use this to develop a custom template. Would that perhaps be something you would be willing to put together?
2:07 pm
Hi Darren – my programmer who loves WordPress (and so do I) sent my a link to Gravy. Can you explain how I would use this to implement design concepts and then hand off to programmers? Am I basically working within the grid framework and applying my visual style? Thanks
2:50 pm
Hi Winston. Yes, it’s basically a way to help bridge the way you build your PSD file with the way you build your WP theme. The PSD layers are named, nested and positioned in a way that mirrors the CSS exactly. This means the programmers should be able to look at the PSD file and understand exactly how it’s supposed to be sliced up and built.
4:22 am
15$ is a great price :) awesome work, I’m tempted but I need to see more demos, can you please consider to make one Screencast for show the easy process of made a WordPress theme with Gravy? ;) thanks
4:53 am
Love your blog, and posts like this really illustrate why. Thanks for sharing, and keep up the good work!
9:58 pm
it’s a great software,i checked it out and like it ,thanks for sharing,Darren
6:35 pm
I just checked it out and looks great. Nice job!
12:21 am
Great concept and aid to theme development and design. This should come in handy in speeding up the site development process.
6:33 pm
Hi Darren!
Really like your site.
How have you made this website?
Love and kisses,
Linda :)
11:12 am
cooooooooool….
6:09 pm
Hello Darren.
You truly are a great source of inspiration for the web designing community. Your site looks fantastic, great typography, layout and just tastefullness.
I cant wait to try Gravy, I´ve been struggling a bit with Wordpress lately and hope it can make development easier.
1:16 pm
That means a lot – I appreciate the kind words. Definitely let me know if you’ve got questions about Gravy.
8:45 am
I have a question :)
I´m using the framework for two sites I´m working on right now, and I let me tell you I almost cant believe how much time this saves.
I have one small issue. Where do I change the blog page from showing the full article to summary?
6:25 pm
Hello,
I bought your theme I have this error message:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: body_class() in /homez.65/actethea/www/site/wp-content/themes/gravy/header.php on line 28
Can you help me? I’m work with wordpress 2.7.1
Thanks
11:21 pm
body_class is a function from WP 2.8. You should go ahead and upgrade. If for some reason you can’t, take that function out of the body in header.php.
Also, if you have technical questions, be sure to use the forum.
3:49 am
Thanks !
7:46 pm
Very usable… extra white space made this layout nice
9:11 pm
Hey Darren, I stumbled on your site today and happened to see your dev tool. I’m new to Wordpress but have some knowledge of css and html. Do you think your product would put me on the right track to understanding how the front end functions? Great work by the way.
9:56 pm
I would recommend getting your hands dirty and building a few WordPress sites on your own so you can get a feel for what your needs are. WP is versatile enough, everyone uses it for different reasons. And Gravy is deliberately open-ended enough that it can hopefully be used as a baseline for nearly any project.
10:18 pm
I was playing around with Gravy and is really impressive, I just love it and is really easy to customize :) I just have one question: Do you have plans to include a very basic admin panel? That would be great.
10:31 pm
It hasn’t really been on my list because Gravy is used for so many different things, I would have a hard time including control-panel features that everyone would need. They would have to be very general and generic. Are there any in particular you would find useful for your projects?
10:35 pm
Yes Darren, Tracking Code, RSS Feeds, Text, Checkboxes, Textareas, etc some generic theme options, they’re easy to implement with get_option($shortname_my_option) and the end-user can easily add more options :)
Thanks for your consideration.