Write me a postcard

Written by Mark Forrester on January 28, 2010 Product News.

So you are about to head off on an adventure around the world, or perhaps just an extended road trip up the east coast? You’ve promised postcards to friends and families, but what a mission, post offices are so last century! 🙂

See you’ve decided to buy a domain, install WordPress and this really cool theme from WooThemes instead. Friends all around the world can track your progress, see exactly where you’ve been and the photos you’ve taken. They’ll share the experience with you, leaving you comments and advice of where and what you should be doing.

Postcard by WooThemes is our first dedicated travel blogging theme. It’s packed full of features and some pretty unique Google Maps integration that allows you to geo-tag your posts with a location. You’ll then be able to show your site visitors a map in the blog post showing exactly where you are, plotted on a map or snapped from outta space!

Postcard Custom Map Panel
The custom map panel you’ll find under your blog post editor once you’ve activated the theme.

Two custom widgets then allow you to show a Google map on your home page with your blog posts plotted on the map. “My Journey” widget can plot posts tagged with a specific tag, e.g. “america”, and then plot the posts written in America and the journey you took demonstrated by a polyline, starting from the oldest tagged post to the newest tagged post. The “Overview Map” widget shows all your posts that have been geo-tagged across the world, without the polyline.

Postcard also comes with a great AJAX based category image gallery developed by our code wizard Jeffikus. It is viewable here and documented in the video below.

A quick video overview

Here’s a little video introduction to Postcard that will help explain things better and give you an overview of more awesome functionality like the image gallery template and the Flickr and Twitter widgets.

A real life example

As mentioned in the video, the Postcard installation has already been implemented by some friends who are traveling from London to Cape Town in a Toyota Landcruiser. The theme works perfectly for their needs and serves as a great practical demonstration of what you can achieve with it very simply.

http://www.thevuvuzeladiaries.com/

Think out of the box

Postcard offers 9 alternate styles, ranging from a a minimally styled blank canvas, to an airmail envelope style. The potential with this theme can be seen when looking at the demo. Think out of the box, this theme can serve far more purposes than just as a travel blogging theme. It could be a corporate theme, showcasing a business’s various satellite offices dotted around the world.

The ‘airmail’ alternate style

Excited about the possibilities? Ready to make it your own? View the demo here. If you are a club member download it right away! Or if you are new to WooThemes make the purchase now. Of course it includes our great new custom navigation plugin that we launched yesterday.

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38 Responses

  1. Chris R
    January 28, 2010 at 6:58 am #

    Great job, when you’d been showing teasers this was probably the most impressive I thought. Really is a great option for anyone waiting to blog about travelling.

  2. premiumthemeclub
    January 28, 2010 at 6:58 am #

    sometime I wonder how you woo guys get this type of creative design ideas

  3. Pedro
    January 28, 2010 at 7:10 am #

    nice page again.
    Could you enable the Google maps widget in other themes too?

    • Mark Forrester
      January 28, 2010 at 8:20 am #

      We have plans for some upcoming themes with the Google Maps integration. With regard to past themes we don’t plan on it immediately, but if enough requests for a specific theme we’d contemplate it.

      • Pedro
        January 28, 2010 at 8:29 am #

        I guess this is a nice feature for Businesspages, as some companys got different shops on different places.

        But also on private pages.
        If you have been on an event, nice location (Restaurant, Bar…)to post where it is.
        A view users would maybe like to use a different styled theme but love this function.
        Can´t I just copy this function in some other themes?

        • Mark Forrester
          January 28, 2010 at 8:33 am #

          Sure thing. You welcome to copy the code into another theme with your club membership.

          Regarding the City Guide type functionality, watch this space, we working on a theme which you’ll love.

      • Adrien Crivellaro
        January 29, 2010 at 4:41 pm #

        Hello. For the magazine templates, it should be VERY usefull with giving proximity impression from editors to the readers… I’d be very fan of this.

  4. Max Stanworth
    January 28, 2010 at 7:11 am #

    Thats great, it really shows the flexibility of wordpress, and the way you guys are making your themes more advanced.

  5. Mohak
    January 28, 2010 at 7:13 am #

    Very frequent releases! January is a kick ass month! 🙂

  6. Ahmed
    January 28, 2010 at 7:18 am #

    Awesome design specially the variations

  7. Dave
    January 28, 2010 at 7:38 am #

    WOW!

    Been waiting for this one… Think it may be a first buy 🙂
    Excellent work guys!!

  8. MJ Stapleford
    January 28, 2010 at 8:11 am #

    I really like the image gallery the way that you have different tags for different areas of the gallery. I am thinking as using the theme as a design portfolio where the gallery could be a portfolio and the tags could be used for different areas of work like web design, design for print, etc.

    Nice theme, great work.

    • Mark Forrester
      January 28, 2010 at 8:19 am #

      Yes that is certainly most possible. Just remember the image gallery is category based not tag based.

  9. Mattias
    January 28, 2010 at 9:15 am #

    Is there any possibility to change the height of the “google map” Or maybe toss it up to the feature-side?

    Anyhow, looks awesome!

    • Mark Forrester
      January 28, 2010 at 9:48 am #

      You can set the height of the Google Maps within the theme option’s panel.

  10. wp themes
    January 28, 2010 at 9:35 am #

    I was thinking the other day when this theme was coming out. Nicely done, looks great.

  11. Brian
    January 28, 2010 at 11:33 am #

    Really awesome work guys. Geotagging posts / Google map widgets are true innovations. Can’t wait to see what’s next!

  12. Neil
    January 28, 2010 at 11:52 am #

    Hi all, I’m something of an internet novice but this theme has allowed us to have a website for our trip which far surpasses anything we could have hoped for. Very easy to use as well. We’ve had plenty of compliments on it already and its only been up a few days! Thanks Mark and Woo! So stoked.

    • Dave
      January 29, 2010 at 11:09 am #

      Neil – good luck on your trip.

      The reason I am so satisfied with Woo themes is that they make excellent blog design accessible to everyone!

  13. Suite J
    January 28, 2010 at 3:03 pm #

    This is awesome guys. GREAT JOB!

    PLEASE tell me there’s a video player/widget for the sidebar!?

    Jay

    • Mark Forrester
      January 28, 2010 at 3:18 pm #

      Not at the moment, but it might be a good idea for the more video savvy travellers. I’ll have a look into it tomorrow.

      • Suite J
        January 28, 2010 at 3:29 pm #

        Please, Please…add one 😉

        Not just for travelers, This theme is awesome for anything. 🙂

      • Scott Donaldson
        February 1, 2010 at 12:06 am #

        I take video wherever I travel… this would be very helpful!

  14. Jessica
    January 28, 2010 at 6:14 pm #

    I love love love it!

    It makes me want to travel

  15. Brad Potter
    January 29, 2010 at 4:50 am #

    Beautiful work and I love the different styles. Can’t wait to see the city theme. 🙂

  16. downsouth
    January 29, 2010 at 7:45 am #

    The navigation bar seems almost hidden, and I would have liked to have seen one slider version where it was all one panel instead of divided.

    But the map integration and the category picture gallery functionality is wonderful 🙂 Would like to see that picture gallery idea used again and expanded on.

    • Mark
      January 29, 2010 at 9:06 am #

      Not sure how the navigation is hidden, when it is right at the top of the page and completely customizable due to the custom nav plugin? You could easily change its color or font sizing in the css though.

      Regarding the slider panel, you could also easily combine the 2 panels tweaking the css.

      The image gallery is viewable on the demo here with more images – http://woo.com/demo/postcard/?page_id=549 – I’m sure there will be some great mods in the showcase soon though.

      • downsouth
        January 29, 2010 at 5:28 pm #

        In usability terms I think that navigation above the header is far harder to notice. Many people assume the site header is the top and don’t immediately take in smaller text above it.

        But hey, I’m a fan. Nice theme ! I’m easy to please 😉

        • downsouth
          January 30, 2010 at 12:16 am #

          By the way you’ve left off the little “hand symbol” rollover code on the submit comment button again. You really need to adjust your starter code 😉

          • Magnus
            January 30, 2010 at 5:44 am #

            Our starter code is fixed, but Mark started this theme before we amended it 🙂 Will add it now, Thanks!

  17. Dave
    January 29, 2010 at 11:08 am #

    Integrating the geo-tagging that ties posts to map points is HUGE for us travel bloggers. I had a hard time of it when I was on my trip around the world, looking up latitudes and longitudes for the first WP plugin I used.

    You’ve got another winner on your hands, and I may have to use Postcard for the redesign of http://MedellinLiving.com this year.

    Thanks Woo!

  18. Leslie Nicole
    January 31, 2010 at 3:45 am #

    I love, love, love this theme. It’s revolutionized my thoughts for my blog as well. I have started a blog that’s not me voyaging exactly, but glimpses into life in the Loire Valley, France. I suppose you can say it’s my voyages in The Loire Valley as an Insider. I think this theme will be a more intimate sharing with followers and I’m now inspired to revamp the blog. Another hit run, you guys!

  19. downsouth
    January 31, 2010 at 3:54 am #

    Liking this theme more and more. It just struck me that this could also be a great theme for a real estate website . . .

    • Adii Rockstar
      February 1, 2010 at 1:12 am #

      We’ve got both a “City theme” and a Real Estate theme in the works; both of which will be featuring the Google Maps integration. 🙂

      • Leslie Nicole
        February 1, 2010 at 3:13 am #

        Sounds like you guys are having some very constructive brain-storming. Excellent ideas.

      • Chris
        February 5, 2010 at 5:30 am #

        The real estate theme will be good if it has a good search facility and be able to add endless search options.

  20. Leslie Nicole
    January 31, 2010 at 4:05 am #

    Hmm. Just one little observations as far as trying to use this as a tourist business type site – which is admittedly stretching it’s intention – it seems like not much widget space left for ads? (3 widgets as opposed to 9 on Busy Bee.) Am I misunderstanding – maybe the sidebars can be more customized for ads?

    Again – fantastic travel theme, trying to see if I can bend it a little to serve my purpose. 🙂

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