I am proud to announce that I finally finished a WordPress theme that I can release as a freebie. The Clam Shell is a very traditional two-column theme with as little complicated feature as possible. What I mean is sometimes – you just want a theme to function as bare bones as it can. I mean, I’ve built themes that are: widgetized, plug-in dependent, uses custom fields and special loop queries – that users feel compelled to pick up a “Worpress for Dummies” book in order to use. That is not what I’m trying to do with the Clam Shell.

View the Demo

This functions like the straight out of the box default theme by Kubrick. Well – except for the widgets. I purposely disabled widgets because I feel that if you are to add something to the theme – it’s best to write it in the templates themselves. In other words, the Clam Shell is for bloggers, who have some theme coding and Photoshop abilities.

Why Clams?

I really don’t know. In my mock up – I needed something for the logo section, typed C-L-A-M by accident, and just went through with it. It was one of those moments that I was in a “design” roll that I was afraid to pause – so the name carried on. Why the clam shells all over? See, my original plan was to make the theme look good, but kind of splatter shells all over – that you would need the .psd file to customize. That’s when a light bulb switched in my head “I’ll give the theme for free…but sell the PSD!“. But Themeforest.net rejected my entry – because it wasn’t “high quality” enough – so there goes that plan. Note that I am giving the .psd files away as well – but only when you leave a comment. This is because it’s too large that I don’t want it eating my bandwidth.

Some Features

I started out with the 960.gs CSS framework but stopped halfway through. The reason is – the mockup may have been 960 pixels, but the columns in span irregularly. So its a perfect 960 pixels, but columns within are not based on the grid. I added large twitter, rss and contact icons in the header – which I think is a little different. Static content in the sidebar – with icons from the Practika collection by Smashing Magazine. Stock photos are from the amazing stock.xchng , while fonts are traditional Arial and Georgia all around.

clam shell details Free WP Theme The Clam Shell

I hand coded the sociable buttons in the single post template. I feel that this is best since no plug in is required for it to run. The icons are from Best Free Icons – the Aquaticus set.

clam shell social Free WP Theme The Clam Shell

Time for a Demo?

That’s right – I even set up a demo website. You can try out The Clam Shell from this link. Download the theme from here. All I ask in return is to follow me in Twitter. As mentioned – I will provide the original photoshop files so you can take those nasty clams out of there. If you need additional customization hints – contact me.

Update – Download the PSD files from here!

Get Yourself a Treat!

Check below for some really cool (and mostly Free) web templates. This includes original WP Themes and Photoshop templates. Browse through the complete list in the Downloads or Freebies pages.