What's so great about Hybrid News?

1. 

   Jan Egbert (Member)
   Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

   I've been wondering about that. If you take a look at the tag cloud on this support forum, it shows that Hybrid News even beats Hybrid. I don't like the theme that much, but I'm very interested in learning why this theme is so popular. Any ideas?

2. 

   scottopolis (Member)
   Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

   I've used a modified version of Hybrid News for a couple of sites, I mostly like the formatting and typography. It is a great starting point for custom development.

   Hybrid News is better than 99% of the free themes I have seen out there IMO.

3. 

   Justin Tadlock (Administrator)
   Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

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4. 

   Zoli Erdos (Member)
   Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

   Justin, don't underestimate the usefulness of your own baby :-)

   I think it's great for any blog that has several posts per day - the excerpt view with a standardized thumbnail is much better than the traditional full post blog view. It's just easier to scan with this layout.

5. 

   slipn (Member)
   Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

   I also use Hybrid-News for a regular blog. (not even using the front page slider).

   I love the menu, header and widget area placements on it

6. 

   Patrick Daly (Member)
   Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

   I've been making a new news theme for Hybrid, but I've been stuck for weeks. So far its basically just Hybrid News with a new skin and couple new features. I don't really want to release it until it has something a bit more unique. Here 'tis: http://malleable.developdaly.com/

   What could make a news theme better?

7. 

   slipn (Member)
   Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

   Wow that looks great Patrick

8. 

   Justin Tadlock (Administrator)
   Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

   You must be a logged-in exclusive member to view this reply.

9. 

   designOdyssey (Member)
   Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

   I use Old School for my personal site because I wanted the Feature item. I chose News for my hobby site because of the cycle plugin.

   I'm basing the development of my commercial site on News because of it's implementation of the cycle. That was before I learned some JQuery and feel comfortable doing it myself. Still it's nice to have the integration with the backend. I am almost a minimalist, but I believe in "showing a little leg" so I will use Jquery to improve user experience without unduly sacrificing performance. Since it's loaded for the menu system, a few more lines won't add much overhead.

   My commerical implementation is more of a CMS so I have custom post types (locations - the hackish Flutter way), Yelp and Google Mapping integration. Google custom search by my industry, location favoriting, etc. News is more of a platform for a child theme. Because of Justin's good separation of form over function, numerous hooks, most child themes are good bases especially from a typography/css standpoint.

10. 

    davek (Member)
    Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

    Patrick, are you anywhere close to releasing this theme?
    http://malleable.developdaly.com/
    I have a site I would love to use it on now

11. 

    Patrick Daly (Member)
    Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

    @davek Not really.

    Like I said above, I still want to add some more to the theme. Maybe you have some specific ideas? Once the theme is a bit more separate from Hybrid News I'll be ready to release it.

12. 

    byerk (Member)
    Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

    Patrick...

    I really like your news theme as well. I would either combine the Nav menus or separate them out like in Hybrid News. I would also like to see a header that you can put a logo in either in the same spot you have it our similar to Hybrid News where it separates the 2 Nav bars. I like the Featured Slider at the top and I like the 2 columns underneath for the Excerpts...you can fit more excerpts there than in Hybrid News but it still looks clean. I like the boxes in the third section but I would add bullet points to help separate out each article.

    Also, when looking at a category, the option to make the layout 2 columns like on the front page would be nice.

    Obviously, these are optional but these are some of the changes I would make for my site if I used your theme.

    Either way...it looks great! :-) I'm am anxious to see what the end product looks like.

    I'm happy with what I have, but I'm not sure if the articles get lost in the shuffle as we add more content. I'd like to start doing daily news or something but all the actual meat of the site would end up disappearing...unless I did it all in the slider. Sorry...thinking out loud now! :-)

    My site is http://www.marriedwithvideogames.com.

13. 

    davek (Member)
    Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

    Patrick,
    really hope you don't mind, but I love the look of your theme so borrowed the CSS and images,
    a few small tweaks made & more needing to be done, but put it live on http://american-idol-updates.com

    Really want to use this on another couple of sites, let me know if that is OK with you.

14. 

    Patrick Daly (Member)
    Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

    Looks good davek. Let me know if you find any problems. Go ahead and use it as you like.

15. 

    StealthA00 (Member)
    Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

    Patrick,

    I like your site as well.
    I know you're asking for suggestions to your theme, but really .. I have none. I can tell you what specifically I like, though :P

    - I really like what you've done with the Slider (taking the margins out and having it be 100%)
    - I like the Page & Category Navigation
    - I like what you've done with the front page Excerpts

    I built this website using News;
    http://carbonracing.org
    but have not been able to figure out what to do with the three areas I mentioned above.

    Anyway
    end ramble

16. 

    davek (Member)
    Posted 7 months ago | Permalink

    Excellent, Thanks Patrick.
    I had a look at the buddypress 1.2beta today & integrated it nicely.
    Just on a test site at the moment but if anyone wants to try it out, it's up on
    http://xfactor-blogs.com/
    feel free to create accounts & test it.

    needs some fixes & css work but getting there.

17. 

    Patrick Daly (Member)
    Posted 6 months ago | Permalink

    I decided to go ahead and release it, so go get it!

    http://developdaly.com/themes/malleable/

18. 

    Elio (Member)
    Posted 6 months ago | Permalink

    I think News is more popular than Hybrid itself due to the fact that it already has some styling applied and the additional widget areas. It's not as bare bones as Hybrid. I've used News for this simple photolog because I liked the fact that thumbnails were already solved and the footer had already the widgetizing going on. IMHO it's just that News is a better starting point for a site than Hybrid itself.

19. 

    Momof9Blessings (Member)
    Posted 5 months ago | Permalink

    I really like news because I am trying to simplify my life by combining all of my blogs - yet I can have them all separated onto one page. I don't like the idea of combining all my blog posts on different subjects into one area. I want people to be able to see at a glance the area they are interested in.... yet they can see the other things I do....

    and I can always add more areas later...

20. 

    SupplementUpdates (Member)
    Posted 3 months ago | Permalink

    I've wasted more time than I care to admit looking and trying out various themes. :)

    If anyone can point me in the direction of a "premium theme" that does a better job than Hybrid News at handling issues of thumbnails, thumbnail sizes, and resizing of images for the front page slider, not to mention 'get the image', then I'll buy it lol.

    Seriously, Hybrid News does an incredible job at managing these issues. Most themes require you to upload images of a certain width (600 px for example) to display properly on the front page slider. As well, most themes with thumbnails require you to use the regenerate thumbnails plugin if you make changes to thumbnail sizes.

    I haven't tried Thesis or Headway. From what I can tell, Thesis integrates some features that you can get from free plugins like Go Codes, or SEO Ultimate, along with some limited options to adjust the appearance without editing CSS/PHP.

    I guess that's probably the main difference between Hybrid and some of the expensive premium theme frameworks. They're designed with more back end options to configure.

    I did manage to find a copy of the old options theme by Justin, it looks like he was headed in that direction, then changed his mind.

    I can manage basic CSS changes, but don't really have a clue about PHP, so I wouldn't mind some of the old layout options.

    Other than that, Hybrid News has all the features like bread crumb navigation, a customizable front page, slider, thumbnails, page templates, and pretty much everything that you need.

21. 

    Justin Tadlock (Administrator)
    Posted 3 months ago | Permalink

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