WP Paintbrush is a Theme Creator and Front End Editor for WordPress built by Ryan Hellyer and Dan Milward of WP eCommerce Fame. The public beta launched today it is definitely worth taking a look. I’ve been playing around with it all morning and it really is easy to use and fun. In the past I’ve found drag and drop theme frameworks to a bit of a drag (haha) but this one is much more intuitive and easy to use. There’s less of the drag and drop and more of the buttons, sliders, and settings.
WP Paintbrush is installed like any other theme. Activate it and then go to the front of your site. You’ll see the WordPress Coraline Theme is the default and an editing panel appears which lets you change the settings:
I think Coraline is a good choice for the default as it’s got a standard, clean layout which is a great starting point for your own design.
The settings are extensive, from simply changing fonts to using the layout editor to change the layout:
At the minute, WP Paintbrush is in public beta so I would not recommend using it on a production site, but it’s fun to have a play around with. And if you are doing so be sure to report any bugs!
Features
- Drag and drop movement of theme sections.
- Fixed or flexible width layout with min/max width
- 0 – 2 sidebars
- Cross-browser compatible (including IE6)
- import/export designs
- Color and image pickers
- Font selectors
- More to come!
What do you think? Will WP Paintbrush change your WordPress life?
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Fingers crossed it dies a horrible death or I know allot of people who will be out of work. :(
I used to think this, but in the end I come to the conclusion that it will just increase the quality of work required by developers/designers. There still needs to be a human utilizing the tools of the trade and the best human’s will always produce the best work regardless of what the tools may be at the time.
I would say that it function same as a framework.
Just downloaded it, and definitely will give it a try
It think so too. will giv a try.
If a screen painter can put a designer out of work there probably was not much value there any way.
they’re just tools, useful ones though!
Awesome! Thank you for the kind words about our new theme Siobhan :)
And thanks for pointing the bug reporting too. I’m trying to hammer out a couple of major ones that have popped up since yesterday (including one that you reported yourself – thanks for that!). Bug reports are imperative to helping improve the theme and are EXTREMELY appreciated.
I look forward to giving this a try!
Ohhhh… a new “toy” for WP… I gotta play with this… thanx for the info Siobhan! =}
Anyone try it on WP MultiSite yet?
I haven’t had a chance but if you test it out in a test environment you could let us know the results :)
This is EXACTLY what I was looking for!
Let’s just hope it works in multisite. If it does it’ll make life easier for users wanting theme editing that’s a little more liked blogspot.
Will go install it on my new multisite and see what I come up with!
It looks fantastic, just what I was looking for. But I keep gettting an error saying “Sorry, the server is having difficulties connecting to the CSS generator. Please try again.” I can’t save my theme. Anyone else having this problem?
cool just like what i search for…
thanks for sharing..
Does it support page template creation ??
or anything like theme over-riding ,, I might require it for creating CTA, Landing pages etc, which can be different from basic wp theme
Prior to WordPress 3.0, WordPress supported one blog per installation, although multiple concurrent copies may be run from different directories if configured to use separate database tables. WordPress users may install and switch between themes
WordPress theme generator
Themes allow users to change the look and functionality of a WordPress website or installation without altering the information content or structure. Themes may be installed using the WordPress “Appearance” administration tool or theme folders may be uploaded via FTP.
WordPress theme generator