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Disclaimer: This is a long post, but we guarantee you it’s worth the read. This is a big theme release!
Today sees the release of a theme that us at WooHQ are hugely excited about – partly because we have a few musicians within the team who are passionate about creating something they’d personally want to use, and partly because of the innovative modules and thinking that has gone into it’s development. We present to you “Unsigned”.
Unsigned was initially designed by our friend Ryan Downie, given the brief to design a modern version of one of our older, popular themes Backstage, all the while keeping it hugely versatile in it’s usage, for individual artists/musicians, as well as bands – spanning all genres of music. A rather difficult brief, but one that we feel Ryan mastered.
Matt was tasked with it’s development, whilst Mike given the design to slice, dice and convert into a WooFramework powered theme. As a musician and former band manager and promoter, Matt approached Unsigned from that angle- what would a musician, band manager or promoter want out of the theme?
The Unsigned homepage, as customized on our demo. And boy can you customize it, thanks to complete widget and theme option control!
One of the major advantages of Unsigned is that the artist has full control over the technical nature of their exposure. Whether aware of it or not. The functionality has been developed to anticipate the needs of the artist without them needing to add any extra code. This same approach is working hand in hand with our modular coding approach, making the code both smooth for the customer and swiftly maintained by us. The Unsigned homepage is almost completely controlled by widgets and a comfortable amount of theme options, making it hugely flexible (something a couple users expressed interest for yesterday).
A run down of the various Unsigned modules
Let’s jump straight into the various theme modules as there is a lot to cover.
Custom post types power Unsigned, and the Events module has a particularly clever one.
Events Module
Woo – Events caters for the management and listing of events (gigs, festivals, etc). Events can be grouped into categories (club, concert, gig, festival, etc) and tours. These are both custom taxonomies.
An event’s status (upcoming, right now, past) is determined by it’s start and end date/time. It’s also possible to select one of these types for display in the Woo – Events admin, making it easier to view snapshots of your events calendar.
The events module and the widget that controls it. Simple.
Woo – Events comprises 3 widgets as well as a custom “Tours” page template. The widgets are for listing events, tours and tour dates for a specific tour. The events widget has options to display all events, upcoming events, past events, events happening right now, events happening this weekend and events taking place in the current week. The “Tours” page template serves as an archive for listing tours listed on the website. These link to tour detail pages where the events for that tour are listed.
Venue listing, as well as links to online ticket sales and an optional price display are available per event.
Discography Module
Woo – Discography is where the artist manages their album releases. Albums can be sorted into categories and comprise a cover image, unique catalog ID and a release date.
Each album has an audio player facility, which uses tracks that are uploaded directly when adding or editing an album. The tracks can be re-ordered and managed using native WordPress lightbox windows.
The album widget placed on the homepage, and it's controls.
If WooCommerce is installed, each album displays an option to link the album to a product. If there is a link made, an “Add to cart” button for that product will be displayed alongside the album on it’s detail screen, as well as in the Woo – Albums widget. View the shop page here.
An album page with WooCommerce enabled allowing you to sell your albums.
Woo – Discography contains two widgets: the Woo – Albums widget, to list either all albums or albums in a specific category, and the Woo – Album Player widget, to list and play tracks from a specific album using an HTML5 audio player.
Photos Module
Woo – Photos is where the artist manages their photo galleries. Galleries can be sorted into categories and comprise a cover image and photo management section.
The photo management section is a clear and easy to use box in the admin that allows for the quick uploading, management (re-ordering, etc) and inclusion of images in the gallery. This is then applied on both the gallery detail screen and the Woo – Photos widget.
Woo – Photos comprises two widgets: Woo – Photos and Woo – Galleries. Woo – Photos displays either all photos with a limit count, or X number of photos from a specific gallery. Woo – Galleries displays a list of the photo galleries available, either in a specific category or across all categories.
Videos Module
Woo – Videos is where the artist manages their embedded videos from YouTube, Vimeo, etc. Videos can be sorted into categories and comprise an optional posterframe and an embed code field.
Woo – Videos consists of a single Woo – Embed widget which, similarly to our standard widget, displays videos from a specific video category or all videos, allowing for the quick switching between videos.
Band Module
Woo – Band Members is where the artist manages their band member profiles. This section consists of a “mugshot” image and a “role” field, for the band member’s role in the band (eg: guitarist).
Woo – Band Members also consists of a single “Band Members” page template, which lists the band members in the order they are set to display in. This can be re-arranged via the “order” field when adding/editing a band member.
Their band biography is added via the content area. View the biography page here.
Homepage slider
As has become a favourite within our themes, Unsigned includes Woo – Slides. This module displays a large background image on the homepage, as well as a slider content area above the content on the homepage. When navigating through the slider, the background image fades to the appropriate image.
These images are added using the slider image field.
Soundcloud integration
Woo – SoundCloud is a bridge between Unsigned and SoundCloud. When a username is specified, the system connects to SoundCloud and retrieves the user’s tracks and playlists.
These two content types are outputted via a Woo – SoundCloud – Playlist widget for specific playlists and a Woo – SoundCloud Tracks widget to display individual players for specific tracks.
This data is cached for a month to avoid speed issues and high load. It is possible to force-refresh this data via a “Refresh SoundCloud Data” button, made available under the “SoundCloud” tab in “Theme Options”.
Changing to a light style is as simple as flicking a switch. As is changing the logo. Transforming the look.
Adding a different background image, and using some different homepage widgets further demonstrates the theme's flexibility. All done in 5 minutes...
Spend another 5 minutes with the theme and can you imagine the possibilities? You have to view the theme listing for more information on all the functionality packed into this theme. Trust us!
Let us know what you think! Any feedback is welcome in the comments below.
P.S. Thanks to Captain Stu for letting us feature them and their awesome music in our demo.
Grab Unsigned with a 12% discount coupon, valid until 2 February 2012. Just use UNSIGNED12 as your coupon code on checkout.
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