Category Archives: News

Sep 10 2012
0

Untame Releases Free Responsive WordPress and BuddyPress Theme Based on Twitter Boostrap

Posted by | BuddyPress, News, Twitter Bootstrap, WordPress | No Comments

Untame is pleased to announce the release of Luca’s Theme, a free responsive theme for WordPress and BuddyPress.

Luca Brasi is the newest addition to our family. He is a 15-week-old Italian Greyhound that we adopted from a family who couldn’t care for him anymore. Italian Greyhounds are just like regular Greyhounds, only much smaller. They usually grow to be no more than 15 pounds but can still run as fast as 30 miles per hour!

Luca is a fearless and friendly puppy who likes everybody and loves sleeping in laps, playing fetch and wrestling his stuffed bear. Unfortunately, he doesn’t yet know his limitations and on the Saturday before Labor Day, he jumped onto the sofa and leaped off as high as he could. When he fell, he snapped his front leg and started screaming and rolling around.

Sarah and I scooped him up and drove to the pet hospital, one of only two places open on the holiday weekend. We soon learned that he had broken his leg in two places and would require surgery to install a plate in his leg to allow it to heal properly.

When we learned how expensive it would be to give this little guy a chance at growing up healthy and strong, we were a bit shocked but determined to try to raise the necessary funds by releasing Luca’s Theme as a free product.

Download it and use it or modify it however you like. Some of the theme features include:

  • Responsive theme for WordPress and BuddyPress
  • 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!!!!

We truly hope you enjoy this theme and if you decide to download and use it, please consider donating to Luca’s Fund. Our goal is the $3,000 that his initial treatment and surgery required. If we should raise anything in addition to this goal, we will donate the remaining proceeds to Hazeljane’s Blessings, our local Italian Greyhound rescue group..

For a live demo of the theme, to read more about Luca, to download or to donate, please visit luca.untame.net and be sure to share it with your friends as well. Thanks in advance for any help you can give Luca! We just want him to get healthy so that he can get back to being a happy, active puppy.

Jul 16 2012
0

Weekly RoundUp: 10 Great Web Design Learning Resources

Posted by | News, Tutorial | No Comments

So… You want to learn how to design your own websites on the internet, but don’t know exactly where to start? Let me tell you, I was in the same position that you are in years ago, and I know how important it is to get started with learning the right things in a good order. So that is what we are going to do today. Below you will find a few of the great resources to get you off and going in the right direction.

What You Need To Learn:

Don’t Panic! The world wide web is vast to say the very least. Before you know it you might come across blog posts, forum threads and entire books pointing you in one direction or another. However, the best way to get into this pool is to simply dip your toe in ever so gently. Let’s talk bottom line, the goal is to be able to put a page with some text and who knows, maybe even a few pictures on the internet. In order to do that you really only need to know a few things…

Put It On The Page: Basic HTML

HTML is the base of all web efforts. HTML tells the browser what content it should display on any given page.  Remember: HTML Controls the Content.

“HyperText Markup language: a set of standards, a variety of SGML, used to tag the elements of a hypertext document. It is the standard protocol for formatting and displaying documents on the World Wide Web.”

30 Days to Learn HTML & CSS (Free)

Perhaps one of the best and most comprehensive video series on the subject. I only wish that I had something like this to follow along with while I was first learning web design

W3 Schools HTML Tutorial (Free)

A still relevant standby. The W3 schools, while not always the subject of praise from the web development community can always be counted on for quality “best practice” information.

HTML & CSS – The VERY Basics (Free)

Chris Coyier is in many ways an “OG” as it pertains to web design and development tutorials and this one is no different. Follow along with Chris as he leads you step by step in understanding the basics.

 

Make It Pretty: CSS

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets allow for a designer to alter the appearance of the HTML placed on a given site. A CSS document will usually be called something like “Style.css” and linked to at some point at the top of an HTML document.

Remember: CSS is for colors, layout and more. However CSS does not control content.

30 Days to Learn HTML & CSS (Free)

As stated above, this tutorial is simply one of the best out there, and the CSS tips are no different!

W3 Schools: CSS Tutorial (Free)

Need help learning CSS? W3 Schools have your back. Also you may want to bookmark their page as it will be an instrumental reference for everyday questions about web design.

CSS From Noob To Ninja (Premium)

The first premium tutorial on our list, and for good reason. Noob to Ninja covers just about every nook and cranny there is in basic CSS. Once through this course you will be ready to jump into just about any CSS environment.

Give it A Place To Stay:

You have done it, if you have followed the tutorials found above then you have likely created a basic web page, styled it and are ready to put it on the web. The only thing you need now is a place to put it and a way to upload your content.

Software:

FileZilla (Free & Awesome)

It is an industry standard for a reason. FileZilla is absolutely free and incredible. Chances are, FileZilla is installed on nearly every single web designer or developers computer right now.

Transmit by Panic (Premium + MAC Only)

You need to transfer files. Maybe to an FTP or SFTP server. You need Transmit, the #1 Mac OS X

Hosting:

A Place to Call Home:

Hostdime

HostDime provides quality and reliable managed web hosting, reseller hosting, dedicated servers, and shared hosting for clients around the Globe.

Site5:

Site5 offers speedy hosting at incredible rates. Simply upload your shiny new documents and you will be up and running in no time!

Jul 13 2012
0

Twitter Bootstrap Part 1: What is Bootstrap Anyway?

Posted by | News, Tutorial, Uncategorized | No Comments

Here at Untame we love to build websites for incredible clients, moreover we love to build those sites using cutting edge tools that provide functionality that help our clients stand out from the herd. Behind the scenes we have been working with a fantastic front end web framework called Twitter Bootstrap. Like you would think from the title, it was made by an incredible group of developers and designers employed by Twitter (you may have heard of em… little social network sort of site, may catch on one of these days).

Bootstrap was created by Mark Otto (@mdo) and Jacob Thornton (@fat) and handed over to a thankful world in August of 2011. Their goal was simple: to empower front-end developers to kickstart projects more efficiently and effectively.

Consider this the beginning of a larger investigation of the power of Bootstrap and how we use it (you can too) to create awesome web apps.

What is it anyway?

If you are reading this article (thank you by the way) you are likely a very attractive and powerful web designer or developer looking to spruce up your workflow. Well you are in luck. Using Bootstrap, you can create dynamic and fully featured websites quickly. Why? Because Bootstrap is a front-end framework in it’s truest form. Twitter Bootstrap delivers immediately useable simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and Javascript for popular user interface components and interactions.

Built on HTML5

Ahh the future of the web. While it may be the future, HTML5 is great because it simply allows us to write more semantic, readable code. Bootstrap is packed with HTML5 best practices to help make sure that you are creating future-proof projects for your clients.

 

CSS3 Integrated

If you would like to get started with CSS tricks like box-shadow and gradients Bootstrap is a great place to get started. Better yet, they have taken the time to provide excellent fallback support for older browsers.

 

Bootstrap is Open Source

Would you like to shell out some cash to get your hands on Bootstrap? Too bad! It is completely open source. In fact there are already some great projects built upon forked versions of Bootstrap that integrate even more awesome features.

What Does Bootstrap Do Exactly?

The Grid

If you are familiar with using grids in your design process Bootstrap will be a great place way to improve your workflow substantially. Making use of a twelve column system, layout is as simple as declaring a row of content and them simply adding appropriately sized columns until you reach twelve… rinse and repeat. Best of all, Twitter Bootstrap offers several different kinds of grids that may prove useful with a wide range of projects. Including a fluid twelve column grid as well as a centered “more traditional” grid. Both however have been designed to maintain responsiveness, view-able on a wide range of devices.

Helpful CSS

“On top of the scaffolding, basic HTML elements are styled and enhanced with extensible classes to provide a fresh, consistent look and feel.”

Bootstrap bundles in a host of pre-styled elements perfect for immediate integration in a project. Best of all, the creators chose to build Bootstrap upon the lesscss.org preprocessing engine (a personal favorite of mine) making global changes to base styles as easy as editing a single line of code at a time! Ranging from immaculately styled Typography, tables, forms, buttons and built in icons, Bootstrap integrates enough style to fit just about any project. Not finding the right fit? That’s alright, Bootstrap is wildly extensible and scale-able to keep up with your needs.

Built in jQuery Plugins

Javascript is what makes much of Bootstrap so unique and useable. Many plugins that I use in my projects every single day are baked right into the framework from the beginning.

Each plugin combines to provide a consistant user experience throughout any project. However, it is understandable if you find yourself looking through this list of plugins and saying “Hey, my project will never use that plugin”. That’s okay, you may download your own customized copy of Bootstrap including only the files that you require for your next project using their Bootstrap Builder.

What’s Next?

Now that we have an understanding for what Twitter Bootstrap is, we can begin to take it to the next level and use it in a practical application. In upcoming posts we will review how to create a beautiful website using the power that Bootstrap offers. I hope you have enjoyed this first post in our series on Bootstrap. Is there something specific that you would like to learn about? There is still time to let us know and we might just cover it specifically in a later post.

Jul 06 2012
0

5 Great Premium WordPress Plugins

Posted by | News, WordPress | No Comments

WordPress is an awesome Content Management System. In fact, for most of our projects here at Untame it is our CMS of choice. However, often we require functionality that moves beyond the core WordPress offering. This is where plugins come in. The “Premium” WordPress community has grown in leaps and bounds for the last several years allowing top WP contributors to make a living developing for the platform that they are so passionate about.

This post is no kind of definitive list of the absolute best plugins on this fine planet of ours. Instead, we want to showcase five plugins we have used in the trenches of development that have made a significant difference for us.

Fancy Gallery

“Create unlimited of galleries and each gallery can hold unlimited of albums. You can add different types of media – Images, Video, Websites to the albums.”

One of the most requested features of our sites is an ability to host an image gallery on a particular site. Fancy Gallery provides for a highly customizable way to not only adjust the look of your gallery but also manage the order of the pictures within it. If your site is photo heavy (I’m looking at you wedding photographers) then fancy gallery could be a great solution for your site.

Easy Custom Content Types for WordPress

Easy Content Types provides an extremely easy-to-use and intuitive interface for creating custom post types, taxonomies, and meta boxes.

WordPress is full of incredible functionality. However, some functions are less intuitive than others, even for developers. Easy Content Types allows developers to create and manage their own post types, taxonomies and metaboxes within minutes.

Visual Form Builder Pro

“Visual Form Builder Pro is an affordable WordPress plugin that helps you build beautiful, fully functional forms in only a few minutes without writing PHP, CSS, or HTML.”

Forms stink! From coding them to working with databases to ensure that the correct information is delivered to the client on time, forms can definitely be a hassle. However, it would serve you well to take the $10 plunge into Visual Form Builder Pro. Sure, the free version that we have already covered is fantastic. But seriously, $10 is not too much to ask for such a versatile plugin that makes managing forms almost (dare I say) fun.

RoyalSlider – Touch Content Slider for WordPress

RoyalSlider for WordPress is a cross-device jQuery content slider with touch-based navigation and responsive layout. It has a user-friendly admin area where you can manage slides, change slider settings, customize your interface and add blocks-captions using custom WYSIWIG editor.

IT is one of the most popular files on CodeCanyon, and for a good reason. Image slideshows are one of the best ways to deliver a message of show off your work on a site. RoyalSlider makes integrating one or multiple slideshows a breeze. With an easy-to-use administration area, RoyalSlider can integrate into a page or post within minutes. What’s better, RoyalSlider packs in all of this power while remaining responsive. Yep, that means that RoyalSlider would look equally at home on an iPhone as on a giant desktop screen.

Visual Composer for WordPress

“Visual Composer for WordPress will save you tons of time working on the site content. Now you’ll be able to create complex layouts within minutes! It’s built on top of the Twitter Bootstrap and jQuery UI framework”

We love to set our clients up for success. Sometimes that means giving them the ability to create their own layouts without a bit of coding knowledge. Enter Visual Composer. Using Visual Composer could not be easier. Simply tell the plugin how wide your site is, set a few custom colors and you are off to the races.

We encourage you to experiment with WordPress plugins of all sorts. Plugins help make a site stand out, adding key functionality in places that WordPress just does not cover on its own. Do you have a favorite plugin that we have not covered yet? Let us know by leaving a comment or using our handy contact form.

Apr 10 2012
0

Fresh Coat of Paint: Check Out Untame’s Redesign

Posted by | News | No Comments

We’re excited to launch a redesign of our website today. Last year we updated our logo and rebranded the business. So far 2012 has been a whirlwind of activity and changes. We’re setting up new offices in The Wild West of Tulsa, Oklahoma and decided that the website needed a refresher to better describe our products and services.

Here are a few technical details:
We use WordPress as a CMS for this site and will be adding bbPress forums in the near future. The new Untame design is based on the excellent Skeleton WordPress theme, which is responsive, meaning that it will adapt to various desktop screen sizes as well as mobile devices. You can resize your browser to see how it works.

We’re expanding right now looking forward to launching some new products this year. If you’re a skilled WordPress developer, please check out our ad and get in touch if you’d like to work with us.

Start planning your project today. Get Started