An über-strict, ultra-clean, super-cool magazine-style WordPress theme for the blogging élite or aspiring blogger. See the full screenshot <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/eston/295180653/" title="Gridlock 1.4 on Flickr">on Flickr</a>.

Gridlock 1.4

WordPress 2.3 Warning If you are currently running WordPress 2.3, Gridlock will not work. Fixes for this (along with a bunch of other v1.5 features) are currently in Subversion and will be released shortly. An untested-in-IE version of Gridlock 1.5 is available here. No support is offered for nightlies and they are bound to be unstable.

I know, I know. Way back in August 2006 I promised that I’d have this theme released to the public within weeks; however, it took until 12 November 2006 to actually get around to releasing this. With my apologies, I present to you Gridlock, the theme that ran hyalineskies 6.0 and was admitted into numerous CSS galleries, from the venerable CSS-MANIA to DesignShack. It’s a very functional, sleek work of art.

Magazine-style blogging

Back when Gridlock was first released, very few blogs were running themselves as magazine-style, where different posts were displayed on the main page in an order other than a chronological list. Now, a webzine-style hierarchy is the trend. Gridlock offers a primary category and a secondary category setup for your posts; with this type of setup, you can give your readers their favourite content and have space left over for your personal things, all on the same page. Of course, you can always run Gridlock in standard mode with a traditional chronological order. If you want tradition, though, there are plenty of other WordPress themes out there.

State-of-the-art design

I’m all about social media; there’s no reason why my themes shouldn’t be. Gridlock offers quick access to RSS, integrated del.icio.us functionality, plus a place to link to Flickr or another photo system. Gridlock has Mike Davidson’s sIFR Rich Typography system built directly into the theme as well, offering a powerful Flash-based typography tool for typophiles and other design-types alike. Plus, all of this integration makes it easier on you: with Gridlock, no plugins are necessary. It’s all there.

Painless configuration

Gridlock has been built to integrate its advanced features directly into the WordPress administration panel, so absolutely no editing of the Gridlock source code is required. While on the original hyalineskies version of Gridlock all categories, the sidebar about section, and the upper navigation bar were hard-coded into the theme, Gridlock 1.4 features an administration panel that allows you to customise everything right within a familiar interface, from what post is placed where to the integrated del.icio.us linkroll. You can also disable various formatting options (such as sIFR) without ever having to actually make a change in Gridlock’s code. Of course, all hacks of Gridlock are fully permitted — that’s the fun of an open-source project.

Heavily rewritten

The wait for Gridlock is definitely worthwhile. To be honest, my design skills have come a long way since September 2005 when I originally wrote this theme, and some of the theme was less than perfect. I’ve done my best to clean up the existing codebase and make it as efficient as possible, both in size and PHP calls. Much of the CSS has been cleaned up, and the JavaScript running sIFR has been entirely rewritten.

From the aesthetic end, the primary typeface for sIFR has been changed to clean up the theme, standard RSS feed icons are now used, and the interaction flow has been simplified to make common blogging tasks easier.

For those in Eastern Europe or Russia, Gridlock is also compatible with the Cyrillic alphabet; Cyrillic-based sIFR typefaces come bundled with the project to help Gridlock play nice with our Eurasian friends.

An open project

Gridlock is also an open project, licenced under a Creative Commons licence. If you are a WordPress hacker or developer and make a change to Gridlock, please e-mail me and tell me about your changes. If they’re beneficial, I’ll roll them into the original Gridlock codebase and give you credit for the changes. This isn’t only for bug fixes — change the CSS, edit the functionality, or rewrite parts of the code altogether, and if it fits the original Gridlock vision, it’ll be rolled into the next release with your name on it. It’s that simple.