Everyone loves free themes, right? We’ve got a great one for you today. My team at Untame has created its first free WordPress and BuddyPress theme based on Twitter Bootstrap. There’s a story behind this theme that I should fill you in on.
Two weeks ago, we adopted a beautiful baby dog, an Italian Greyhound that we named Luca Brasi. He is a vivacious puppy, happy and outgoing, and very fast. We fell in love with him the first time we saw him; his previous family needed to re-home him and we were only too happy to adopt our first puppy. Last weekend, however, he was running and playing when he jumped off the couch and came down hard. He started crying, so we scooped him up and took him to the emergency pet clinic, where the doctors told us he had broken his leg in two places. As a 14-week-old puppy, he needs surgery to repair his broken bones with a steel plate so that he doesn’t become permanently lame as an adult.
Unfortunately, the surgery that he requires is very expensive and we are having a hard time trying to give him the care that he needs, so we have decided to release this responsive Wordpress and BuddyPress theme absolutely free of charge, in honor of Luca. Download this theme, use it as you like and, if you can, please consider a small donation to help pay for fixing the little guy’s leg. The doctors have told us that the total expense for getting him healthy with surgery and hospitalization is $3,000, so we are setting that as our goal. If this theme somehow achieves more than our goal we will dedicate any remaining funds to our local Italian Greyhound Rescue Group, Hazeljane’s Blessings.
Luca’s Theme features a spacious responsive layout, feature slider, and styles for BuddyPress and bbPress. The best part is that you can take advantage of all the goodness that Twitter Bootstrap has to offer.
Luca’s Theme Features:
- Responsive layout for WordPress, BuddyPress and bbPress
- Built-in Custom Post Type Nivo Slider
- Custom Author Byline Implementation
- Modern CSS3 Style Techniques
- Custom Homepage Template
- Custom Full Width Template
- Left Sidebar Template (Your sidebar, your choice!)
- Custom 404 Page Including Popular Posts
- Future Updates and Features
- It’s absolutely free!!!!
View a live demo to see the theme in action.
The Luca Theme is loosely based on a theme we recently created for ThePinkLeague.com, a BuddyPress community dedicated to helping girls win in fantasy football as well as the fight against breast cancer. We’ve modified Luca’s Theme to be suitable for a regular WordPress blog and/or a BuddyPress community.
Of course this theme is not perfect. We’ve only just begun work on it. If you’d like to conduct a peer review on the theme, we’d greatly appreciate it. If you find any bugs or a better way to do something in the theme, please share!
You can download Luca’s Theme for free from the demo site. If you enjoy using this theme, please consider sending a small donation. Help us get little Luca back on his feet. We are only too happy to devote this theme to his cause and invite you to join with us to make sure this adopted pup gets the surgery he needs to live a long and happy life. Thank you!
That’s a really nice and simple theme!!!
Hey Sarah,
Got a PayPal account us Canucks can donate through.
I don’t have credit cards anymore, and the Rally system doesn’t accept north-of-the-border account numbers for e-checks (8-digits up thisaway).
payment@untame.net Thank you Patrick! Very kind of you!
Done.
A runner needs his legs!
True
Simple yet amazing :)One must download it before it converts to a paid download.
Please do not forget to gift a cup of coffee to Luca’s fund.
Hi Just setting up this great free theme, do you have any doccumentation?
I would like to set up the homepage slider and blog roll like your demo site?
Many thanks
Mark
Hey Mark, setting up the slider is easy. In your Dashboard, look under Posts and click on “Slides”. Add your slides from there. :)
By the way,
1. How do we specify Image Height & Width? “Place your image here. Please make sure it is \”X\” width by \”X\” height”
2. The “Upload Image” button doesnt work, will a URL work?
Slider is not working, needs documentation.
WordPress newbie- how do I change the header to my own image rather than the Luca’s theme image?
Hey @Patrick, I haven’t found an obvious option to do this in the wp-admin menus so I created a child theme and re-wrote the css like this:
.logo a {
background-image: url(‘path/to-image.png’);
}
I only recommend doing this if you are familiar with HTML/CSS as you may need to tweak the CSS a bit to get the image to display how you’d like. This method ensures the header image doesn’t revert to the original if there’s an update to Luca’s theme.
Wow…still no followup comments to these inquiries on documentation?
Hey Sarah, thanks for this theme. It’s a real beauty! I may be missing something, but are there any additional steps I must take when creating a BuddyPress compatible child theme?
I can’t figure out why BuddyPress isn’t recognizing the child theme.. it just says to activate Luca or install the BP Default theme.
Yes this is puzzling me too , Child theme not recognised by budypress ,i tryed installing Bootstrap as per the link at the top of the page thinking this would let me use luca as a child theme but it says …..
‘The package could not be installed. The theme is missing the style.css stylesheet.Theme install failed.’
So i am stumped i love the theme so much its a pity .
You don’t use the Luca theme as a child theme. That would be the parent theme and then you would create a child theme just as you normally would for WordPress.