No more wrestling with content management systems.

Through my years of creating and running web sites, I’ve run the gamut of content management systems. From hacking up Greymatter to adopting WordPress in its earlier stages (version 1.5) to coding my own from scratch, I have spent a lot of time working with these types of systems. After a while, you really start to identify the weaknesses and long for certain functionality to make creating a site easier and your everyday publishing workflow stronger. Then, you throw in this monkey wrench: How do I integrate my site with a forum (or bulletin board) system? That is not so easy. Today, there are many sites out on the net that use a forum system in conjunction with their content; however, in most cases, it feels disconnected. We needed a solution. Here’s where OnePress Community comes in. We, at PushButton Labs, have been building the solution to the aforementioned issues of establishing professional presentation, enhancing publishing workflow, and providing community integration.

Built on top of WordPress.

Let’s face it, WordPress sits as the king of the self-publishing platforms available to site owners. The system serves as a great starting point to building your site, but we wanted to take it further. With OnePress, we have harnessed the expansive capabilities of WordPress by building an easy to use, easy to customize theme framework. This framework sits on top of WordPress and provides numerous improvements and added functionality. Think of it not just as a theme or plug-in, but instead as an uber add-on for WordPress that opens up the platform’s potential as a content management system and beyond.

What OnePress can do for you.

OnePress has a large number of features that, together, make up the framework’s power. With features such as a fully widgetized layout, impressive featured posts widgets, a drag and drop layout selector, sidebar widget copying and pasting, and login/presentation integration with the phpBB forum system, it’s now easier than ever to build a professional community site with a workflow that makes sense! It takes advantage of new functionality in WordPress version 2.7, intended for child theme inheritance, allowing you to easily create themes that draw from OnePress. In building this framework, we solved many common WordPress complaints and made it easy for you to customize your site and publish your content the way you want.

Our goal was focused–enable the average blogger to create a professional site containing the functionality of the web’s most powerful content sites (such as ESPN.com or The Wall Street Journal) and provide the ability for a forum system to be integrated into that site.

Read the official introduction of the OnePress Theme Framework and download for free from the official site, onepresscommunity.com.

OnePress Community is a free theme framework for WordPress licensed under GPL.

The building features all kinds of green conscious decisions such as maximizing natural light and using the tower as a giant air filter. One of the coolest (no pun intended) technologies I thought were the manner in which they designed minimizing the amount of air conditioning that is used by actually producing ice during off hours and transitioning that energy to help cool the building.

As the building was being constructed, I couldn’t help but feel a little vertigo from watching the iron-workers construct the 250 foot tall spire while a crane had the pieces suspended over 1000 feet above ground. That’s one profession that amazes me—iron-working. How do those guys do it!?