I'm super excited to announce the availability of the Buildr theme.

This template has been a long time in the making - the first seed was sown after christmas at the end of last year. And while I had hoped to have this release in time for March, March came and went but I think the final product will be all the better for the delay.

This is a pre-announcement for the official release on Monday but I couldn't wait to share the template with you and also update our members on a few things.

But first ... everyone gets an extra month

On the blog last month I spoke about missing February's template release and that everyone received an extra month. Well since Buildr didn't make it here for March, I have added another month to everyone's subscription.

Zen Grid Framework v5

While it hasn't been ideal to miss the release of a template two months in a row, Buildr is actually much more than two templates. Buildr is the first theme to be built on Zen Grid Framework 5 which features a redesigned interface and architecture making it possible to create an incredible array of designs and layouts from within the interface.

The big news is that module positions are now drag and drop so you can move modules within rows to create new and unique layouts. Users are no longer restricted by the hard coded layouts, and can easily move positions around the layout. So as an example it's super easy to move the logo and menu onto a single line or move the search position to sit next to the logo or add it to the menu bar.

Oh so much control ...

Buildr works on the idea that we should be able to control most of the visual display from within the interface and so the themes you see on the demo are all just variations of template settings. There is no extra css required to shift the design from the bare bones Responsive to the more elaborate Backgrounder theme.

12 Pre-built themes

One of the appeals of Joomlabamboo catalogue over the years has been the availability of minimal and uncluttered designs. In fact some of our most popular themes have been the simplest designs, designs that tended to not speak too much for your content or limit the types of sites that a specific design could be built on.

To show the flexibility of Build.r I decided to create a Build.r style for our more popular starter themes including Responsive, Xero, Base4, Koan, Revision, Standard, as well as creating some new base themes.

All of the following are created by simply adjusting the theme settings and no extra css has been added.

One Page

Background

Xero

Koan

Standard

Rows

Backgrounder

Writer

Revision

Base4

Next week

I will be working on the documentation now over the weekend and will hopefully have that finished for you by Monday. For those willing to dive in you can download the template and quickstart package now. I'll post the official news on the blog regarding all of the new features included in the framework and give some idea of the deadline we have for a Wordpress version of the Build.r theme.

But for now ... ENJOY!

Build.r Demo

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