K2

What is K2?

K2 is an advanced template for the blogging engine WordPress developed by Michael Heilemann, Chris J Davis, Zeo, Steve Lam, Ben Sherratt and Eric Marden.
Think of it this way: Where WordPress is everything that goes on behind the scenes, K2 is what your readers see.
WordPress itself takes care of authenticating users, fetching and sending data to and from the database and provides you with the back-end administration interface.
K2 on the other hand is the facade of WordPress. It’s main concern is displaying the data fetches through WordPress in the right way at the right time. Furthermore, where more basic themes like Kubrick have little situational awareness, K2 cares about you and is always trying to make sure you are presented with exactly the tools and data you need.

So K2 is Kubrick 2?

In essence, yes. K2 was started by Michael Heilemann, who also wrote Kubrick, and it builds on those experiences. But where Kubrick is a little naive in terms of knowing what its readers want, K2 goes out of its way to cater not only to the readers, but also the admins of the blog.

What does it do?!

K2 takes care of business for you. It comes prepackaged with support for a range of some of the most widely used plug-ins, so all you have to do is upload and activate the plug-in and you’re up and running.

Everybody wants their blog to be unique. Because of that K2 allows for a kind of sub-theme called ’styles’. Simply put a style is a stylesheet file, optionally with any needed images, which can be selected in the K2 options panel.
You can distribute your own styles for other K2 users of course, and K2 will automagically show the relevant info about your style—giving you credit—in the footer of the blog using it.

So it’s a bit of a framework really?

Yeah, you could say that.
But more than that. K2 for instance also has an options panel, from which you can select custom styles, upload header images, configure the sidebar to infinitesimal levels, turn our AJAX features on and off and much more.

AJAX

AJAX is a way for your browser to talk with the server without having to reload the page you’re viewing. It makes web applications much faster and nicer to work with.
K2 has the following AJAX-powered features:

• Live Commenting lets readers leave a comment without having to reload the page.

• Livesearch lets you type your search query and instantly have the results at hand. Better yet, it integrates directly with…

• Rolling Archives is a navigation system designed specifically for K2, which allows you to navigate through archives and search results without having to reload the page.

We use the jQuery library, which also ships with WordPress, which in turn makes our code less likely to break across browsers and also hides the more complex mechanics behind–somewhat–readable code.
Furthermore, both Livesearch and Rolling Archives have been written in such a way as to make it easy for you to customize or even bring them over into your own template if you want to. Take it! It’s yours!

Localization

K2 has of course been prepared for localization, and is already available in a handful of languages.

K2 Styles

(Styles Require The Above K2 Theme Installed – Styles Are Placed in Styles Folder and Provide Only a CSS File and Relevant Images, then are activated from the K2 Control Panel)

Blue K2 Style


Source | Download

Blackboard Style

Source | Download

Jolie Style

Source | Download

Digivation Style


Source | Download

 

K2 Mods

(Does NOT Require K2 Theme Installed – Stand Alone Standard Themes)
AdAdvantage Theme

Source | Download

Stormy Horizon Style


Source | Download

Redoable Theme

Source | Download

3 Column K2 Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Scattered4 Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Unwakeable Theme

Source | Download

TechnoBlue Theme

Source | Download

Triple K2 Theme

Source | Download

K2 Styles for the Technoblue and 3K2 Themes

(Requires either of the Technoblue or 3K2 themes displayed above to be installed)
3C Fractal Style for Technoblue


Source | Download | Demo
This is one of many available styles for these themes.

You can check out this list for a full compilation of styles for the popular Technoblue and 3K2 themes.

Links

Try some of the following stuff:

• Download Stable K2
• Download K2 Nightly Build
• K2 Subversion Repository
• Documentation Wiki
• Support Forum
• Developer Blog
• Subversion Changelog
• Bug Tracker
• K2 Mods and Styles