Swiss for WordPress

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Introducing a minimalist, image-free, grid-based theme for WordPress in three tasty flavours.

So if Digitalmash didn't look the way it does, it may have turned out a little bit like this WordPress template. It's probably best suited to text-heavy blogs rather than ones with mainly images for content, but I'm sure if you kept all your images 460px wide, it could still look nice.

You can probably tell where the inspiration for this theme has come from. For those who don't, do yourself a favour.

I bashed this out kind of quickly, so if there are any major flaws or glaring omissions, please let me know and I'll fix them right up.

Also, keep in mind I haven't gone all out on making sure this thing looks right with every plugin or sidebar widget. I'll leave that up to you guys. But hopefully if you've got some blog that can survive without the bells and whistles, this may be the theme for you.

View Demo (Orange version)

Details

  • Should be good to go on WordPress 2.6+ (probably fine on earlier versions, but haven't tested)
  • Uses no images at all
  • I've set the word limit for the handcrafted excerpt in the sidebar to 25 words (it can handle more, but will only show 25).
  • The download includes all three flavours: orange, day and night.

NOTE: Please keep the Swiss link in the footer so others can find this theme too.

Download Swiss 1.0  ZIP 116KB

swiss_01
swiss_02

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36 Comments

  1. Hi Rob.
    Will a demo be available for this theme in the future..?

    1 Philanthropy FamilyReply
    February 24th, 2009 at 02:49 AM

  2. @Philanthropy: Good idea. I’ll see what I can do. As I said, I bashed this one out pretty quickly so it’s minus some of the bells and whistles.

    2 Rob MorrisReply
    February 24th, 2009 at 03:30 AM

  3. Great. Thanks Rob.
    It’s more work for you (sorry), but it does give everyone else a real, working version to test without needing to download, install & activate Swiss for WordPress.

    3 Philanthropy FamilyReply
    February 24th, 2009 at 05:10 AM

  4. @Philanthropy: I’ve added a link to the demo to the post.

    4 Rob MorrisReply
    February 24th, 2009 at 07:19 AM

  5. Hey Rob!
    Looks realy great! Very minimalisty but great! The only thing I’ve to criticize is that the red is too red for me ;) !

    5 mmentReply
    February 24th, 2009 at 09:30 AM

  6. @mment: Yeah, I have a feeling the orange could be a little too orange for a lot of people. But it comes in black-on-white and white-on-black too for this very reason :)

    6 Rob MorrisReply
    February 24th, 2009 at 09:54 AM

  7. Wow, I think I just go slightly sunburnt, still, black and white themes look great!

    7 DavidReply
    February 24th, 2009 at 03:29 PM

  8. Nice that you call you’re theme after Switzerland. But shouldnt there be white font color instead of black? (in the big image above) It would be kind of more Swiss ;-)

    8 Philipp KüngReply
    February 24th, 2009 at 07:33 PM

  9. Nice template. Reminds me of Khoi Vinh’s site subtraction. Nice to see you inspiration out in the open -  I can smell the hot metal. I remember being slightly taken aback by how yer man was so possessive of his design.
    But you have gone too far with the Red One though - gawd help any unsuspecting blogger with that eye-bleeder! It’s as if you need to prove that not everything that falls off your keyboard is perfect!
    Best regards!

    9 Gabriel de KadtReply
    February 25th, 2009 at 10:25 AM

  10. @mment: Gotta agree with mment. Fantastic theme, but a wee bit too red for me too. Nice work though - good thing it comes in other color variations :)

    10 PintoReply
    February 27th, 2009 at 02:43 PM

  11. I had to order that book for school, pretty sweet book though and the theme is EVEN sweeter. Awesome!

    11 Patricia AnnReply
    February 28th, 2009 at 01:02 AM

  12. @Patricia: Blasphemy!

    12 Rob MorrisReply
    February 28th, 2009 at 01:22 AM

  13. @Rob:
    I know!

    13 Patricia AnnReply
    February 28th, 2009 at 02:47 AM

  14. Hey Rob,
    Do you have a CMS for this blog or are you going on a manual basis( with a fair amount of PHP i assume)?

    14 Kevin John GomezReply
    March 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 PM

  15. @Kevin: It’s funny you ask that, I’m running it on WordPress but am considering switching across to Expression Engine. I’m pushing things a little in WP with some of the layouts I’ve got going. It would be cool to have the flexibility EE does.

    15 Rob MorrisReply
    March 4th, 2009 at 01:27 AM

  16. Don’t do it Rob!
    You (heart) WP.

    And WP (hearts) you.
    You’re a great addition to the WP family. But I’m sure we’ll all respect your decision should you stray, and we’ll all still be here to welcome you back after you’ve trialled Expression Engine. (laughing).

    16 Philanthropy FamilyReply
    March 4th, 2009 at 01:38 AM

  17. @Philanthropy: I’ve used Expression Engine before. But I’ve never really given it a good enough go. It’s actually super amazing stuff. If you’ve just got a blog, then sure, WP will more than suffice. But to be able to make an even clearer separation between content and form for clients’ CMS purposes is where EE seems to really excel.

    17 Rob MorrisReply
    March 4th, 2009 at 01:50 AM

  18. Hey
    Is it possible to have a sneakpeak on the wp stuff you made for this site?

    18 JohnReply
    March 4th, 2009 at 10:12 PM

  19. @John: What do you want to know?

    19 Rob MorrisReply
    March 5th, 2009 at 01:56 AM

  20. @Rob: Yeh, I can imagine you are stretching the capabilities of wordpress. If you do switch to EE make sure you let us know!

    20 Kevin John GomezReply
    March 6th, 2009 at 02:46 AM

  21. Hey Rob, love the theme! I haven’t been commenting much as I’ve just gone back to freelancing, I’ll be creating a blog soon so I think I’ll look into using this theme until I get time to design my own :)

    21 Ryan RobertsReply
    March 16th, 2009 at 08:07 AM

  22. Dude your design and programming skills are totally rocking.
    You EE’ld the site in no time, I’ve been on the sidelines forever.
    Thanks for the link to the Josef Muller-Brockmann book on Amazon, looks like the textbook for Grid Designers :)
    http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestaltung/dp/3721201450/

    22 Ty (tzmedia)Reply
    March 20th, 2009 at 06:03 AM

  23. Hi Rob,

    I noticed that this theme does not have a “older post”, “next post” or “last post” button when we are reviewing posts. Can you make this real? Thank you!

    23 Silu MaReply
    March 21st, 2009 at 10:38 AM

  24. Hey there, nice minimal template…

    Cheers from Switzerland,
    Mathias

    24 MathiasReply
    March 22nd, 2009 at 05:39 AM

  25. Don’t say WP is just for blogs! :)

    http://wordpress.org/showcase/

    25 MattReply
    April 14th, 2009 at 10:24 AM

  26. @Matt: Fair call. WordPress can be whatever you want it to be– not just a tool for blogging. I know because I’ve rolled it out (and continue to) for many clients’ sites.

    Matt, I think I owe you a beer (probably half the Internet does).

    26 Rob MorrisReply
    April 14th, 2009 at 10:53 AM

  27. Amazing WP theme. A perfect Muller-Brockmann replica for the modern age. Well done.

    27 Craig HooperReply
    May 4th, 2009 at 10:12 AM

  28. This is the real Kevin John Gomez. Who was using my name? lol

    28 Kevin John GomezReply
    May 19th, 2009 at 07:59 AM

  29. Yo, great theme. Keeping it fresh and clean like Outkast.

    Any problems with this and WP 2.8? Seems since the update our site has reverted to styles-sheets from ‘96. If you had any time to check it out that would be very much appreciated.

    Cheers!

    29 Claudio LilloReply
    June 16th, 2009 at 04:40 AM

  30. Ahhh that make cry my eyes

    30 MikeReply
    July 24th, 2009 at 06:34 PM

  31. The Layout is sharp and intuitive, but red and black and knockout just don’t work when delivering a website that involves articles.  The eyes can’t take the contrast.

    31 Brian CarrReply
    July 28th, 2009 at 02:18 AM

  32. Ouch, the red hurts the eye.  Maybe you should use the white version for the Demo?

    32 KalaReply
    October 28th, 2009 at 03:26 PM

  33. This is a fantastic theme design but I would change one tiny thing.

    Give Helvetica priority over Arial in the CSS.

    Sadly I have both fonts and seeing Arial used in this ‘Swiss’ design just seems wrong. I suppose I could delete Arial.

    33 Chris MarshallReply
    December 7th, 2009 at 09:09 PM

  34. @Chris: Mate, you’re right. I actually can’t remember my reasoning for doing it that way (seems I’d need a good one given the theme’s title). Perhaps it’s because Helvetica tends to be rendered strangely at smaller font sizes in certain browsers and I was going for a robust theme. All you need to do to remedy this is to open the reset.css and switch the order of Arial and Helvetica. Cheers.

    34 Rob MorrisReply
    December 7th, 2009 at 09:47 PM

  35. @Rob: Thanks for the reply. Looks like you’d have to make that change in the typography.css file too.

    I was not aware of the Helvetica rendering problem. That is something I’ll have to research. Thanks again.

    35 Chris MarshallReply
    December 7th, 2009 at 10:03 PM

  36. Fantastic theme. Quite sure I’ll be applying it. Thanks.

    36 JustinReply
    January 28th, 2010 at 04:59 AM

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