For the past three days, I’ve been working (hard) on a new WordPress theme, one that could power a CSS or web design gallery site. I’m very happy to say that it’s almost here and can’t wait to release it. However, there are some minor stuff here and there to clean up. Additionally, I have to write some guidelines to show you how to full take advantage of all the features of this theme. Therefore, I can’t actually release it today.
But, that doesn’t mean you can’t take a sneak peak. The following screenshots are from a live demo that I’ve installed on my computer. I can’t import the locally installed demo online yet because, like I mentioned, I still need to clean up some stuff here and there.
Here are the screenshots:
Default – This is the default look that you’ll get, out of the box. It has three columns. The first two columns are for the website screenshots and the third column is for the sidebar.
Default 3 Columns Gallery – With a simple CSS tweak (CSS comment removal), you can dedicate all three columns to showcasing the website screenshots and move the sidebar to the bottom. Notice, the sidebar is now split into three columns also.
Featured – This is a layout variation that can be done simply by changing one letter in the index.php file. You can combine it with Lester Chan’s WP-Sticky plugin to feature a certain site that you want more attention for.
Featured 3 Columns Gallery – Just like the default layout, you can stretch the website screenshots to all three columns while using the Featured Layout variation.
4 Columns – What if you wanted smaller thumbnails? I got you covered. This variation is also very simple to do. Go in the style.css file and change three numbers.
Hover Menu – When you move the cursor over each thumbnail, it will give you a hover menu. This is a pretty neat feature that you won’t be able to fully appreciate until you actually get to play with it.
Post Ratings – I integrated Lester Chan’s WP-PostRatings plugin with the hover menu. To display and allow users to rate the sites of your gallery, simply install the WP-PostRatings plugin. And, here’s the post-ratings variation screenshot.
Single – This is a screenshot of the single post view page, which you’ll be taken to after clicking one of the links of the hover menu.
Page With Comments – This is a regular page with some comments to show the comments template.
As you can see, there are quite a few things you can do with this theme. Sometimes, it’s as easy as changing one letter. But, you still haven’t seen everything yet. And after the release, I’ll continue to add more features.
So far, I haven’t failed myself. I was able to keep this theme flexible while not having to sacrifice any feature that I wanted include. This is my first step into creating paid themes so I’m trying to do everything I can to prevent it from becoming a total failure. Wish me luck 🙂
For the rest of today, I’ll work on cleaning up the details, creating color scheme variations, and typing up a guideline. Also, when WordPress officially releases WordPress 2.3, I will update this theme to include tags.