A Responsive WordPress Theme Redesign

Thad Allender

October 14, 2011

“Change is inevitable. Adapt.”

I honestly can’t remember where I originally heard this, but it’s stuck with me for years. This phrase is one of our guiding principles here at Graph Paper Press and it helps to explain the reasoning behind our most recent site redesign.

Becoming Responsive

More and more people access our site from different devices with different screen sizes (iPad, iPhone, etc.). iPads already account for almost 3% of our site traffic, which is more than users visiting our site using IE 6 & 7 combined. That is significant and will only continue to grow.

“Responsive web design” was a term coined by Ethan Marcotte in mid 2010. In a nutshell, responsive web design is a design philosophy that suggests that web sites should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. For example: When I visit our new site on my 15″ laptop, it displays at 1015 pixels wide with a left-hand sidebar. When I visit it on my iPad, we lose the sidebar and move the navigation to the top, beneath the logo. When I visit it on my iPhone, we lose the horizontal columns and some icons and make the site a fluid width. Resize your browser window to see how responsive web design works.

What Responsive Web Design Means to You

Technology evolves at a rapid pace and the number of new devices and screen sizes grows exponentially each year. You have a choice: You can build an iPhone-specific website, an iPad specific website and so on OR build one website that responds and adapts to the device that is loading it, making your content more accessible to your readers. Thankfully, we’re about to do all of this for you.

Making Our WordPress Themes Responsive

We’ve secretly been hard at work revamping our Base theme framework and its child themes to become responsive WordPress themes. Like the new Graph Paper Press redesign, these themes will also all support HTML5 and more advanced CSS3 techniques.

Checkout this video of our Base theme responding to changing screen sizes (being responsive):

It goes without saying that all our new themes will all be responsive. These new responsive themes will drop within the next month.

A Responsive Coupon Code

In anticipation of our upcoming responsive WordPress theme releases, we have 100 coupons for 30% off our Annual and Developer subscriptions. Use this code on the sign up page: RESPONSIVE

While our new responsive themes have yet to be released, why not take advantage of the discount today and be one of the first to download the new themes once they arrive.

Responsive Web Design Resources

Enjoy!

15 responses to “A Responsive WordPress Theme Redesign”

Bryan Dorsey

October 15, 2011

Super nice work guys (and gals). Really smart, clean and simple.

Reply
1. Graph Paper Press
  
  October 15, 2011
  
  Thanks Bryan, glad you dig it.
  
  Reply
Vincent Rosenblatt

October 16, 2011

Great evolution….! I was wondering what were you preparing during these last weeks of “silence”…

Do you plan also an update in this direction for your classic Modularity (that we use for http://www.agenciaolhares.com) ? Or it will be only for the Base family themes ?
Thanks !

Reply
1. Graph Paper Press
  
  October 16, 2011
  
  Glad you like it Vincent. We don’t plan on updating Modularity to be responsive, but, we are releasing a child theme for Base that will look very similar to Modularity (and it will be responsive)
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous
    
    October 17, 2011
    
    The Thumbnail & Post sliders from Modularity are so great… And the color settings in the theme options (that are so complete in Modularity) would be great as well for the Base Themes…. Can’t wait to see your new creations…
    Best regards from Rio de Janeiro.
    
    Reply
Anonymous

October 24, 2011

Hey, dear GPP team, when will be the big release of new responsive themes & base responsive ??

Reply
1. Graph Paper Press
  
  October 25, 2011
  
  Responsive Base is completed (just not released yet). We’re working on making the child themes responsive over the next few weeks.
  
  Reply
Harj Manhas

October 25, 2011

Can’t wait!

Reply
cfimages

October 27, 2011

I’m planning to do my 2012 redesign over the next few weeks with the aim to launch it late November. If I begin with Base and one of it’s child themes now, will I easily be able to swap my customizations over to the new responsive themes or am I better off waiting until all the new ones drop?

Reply
1. Graph Paper Press
  
  October 28, 2011
  
  Some CSS classes are changing in the responsive Base. We’re removing all fixed width grids/pixels and replacing them with percentages. As long as your customizations pertain to colors, borders, fonts, you should be able to port your changes relatively easily.
  
  Reply
  1. cfimages
    
    October 28, 2011
    
    Thanks.
    
    Reply
Harlan

November 2, 2011

Great! This is why I went with GPP over the other photographer centric theme providers. I tried many of them and GPP seems to be the most focused on improvements.
Now if only photoshelter would offer theme matching on sidewinder!

Reply
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November 4, 2011

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