Projects

WordPress Plugins and Themes from Geek With Laptop

Between 2007 and 2010 this site's original author released a plugin and two themes for WordPress that were used on thousands of blogs. They are retired. These pages record what they were and what to use instead.

The Clean Archives plugin and the Desk Mess theme were the most widely linked things ever published on this domain. The plugin was listed in the official directory and recommended in countless plugin round-ups; the theme appeared in the best free themes lists that every design blog published in 2009, and its live demo link was clicked from around the world. More than a decade later, hundreds of sites still link to these project pages. Rather than let those links land on an error, this section keeps an honest record.

Each project page explains what the software did and how, why people adopted it, why it should not be installed on a current site, and how to get the same result with maintained tools. The Clean Archives page shows how to build a compact month-by-month archive with the block editor or a short template. The Desk Mess page documents the desk-styled theme and its mirrored descendant and explains how to reproduce the look on a modern block theme. The Autumn Forest page covers the seasonal theme genre and how style variations replaced theme swapping.

A note on ownership: Geek With Laptop relaunched under new editorial ownership in 2026. This site does not distribute the plugin or themes, is not affiliated with their original author or with later derivatives, and makes no claim of continuity beyond keeping the record accurate for the people who arrive here from old links.

If you maintain a WordPress site and are looking for the modern equivalent of any of these, start with the Clean Archives page; the recipe there covers the most common need in under half an hour.