Showcase: WordPress CSS Gallery Theme

This is the official release of the Showcase theme that I’ve been working on for the past several days.

Showcase is a premium (paid) WordPress theme created to power a CSS or web design gallery, which is also ideal for managing online portfolios and photo blogs. If you want to use WordPress as a web design gallery, Showcase is the solution you’ve been looking for. Beyond its core features, it comes with 5 different color schemes and 8 layout variations.

Features of Showcase WordPress Theme

• Custom Layout / Design to Display Gallery Images – This is a very clean, simple layout made to allow lots of flexing room so you can modify and modify until your heart’s content.
• Hover Menu On Mouse Over – This is sort of a little toy that I added for fun, but it turned out to be very useful. You can style it the way you want to. You can re-position it to make it appear where you want it to. Not to mention, this useful little toy will be put your gallery above many CSS or web design galleries out there that are not taking advantage of hover menus.
• Pre-styled Sidebar Button Banners – If your gallery isn’t a personal photo album, more than likely, you’ll monetize it. So I thought, why not help you do that? I designed a block in the sidebar to display pre-styled button banner ads. You can read the readme.html on how to add it to your sidebar.
• Integrated Plugins: WP-PostRatings and WP-PageNavi – WP-PageNavi improves usability by allowing users to browse the gallery using page numbers instead of the default Next and Previous page links for every page. WP-PostRatings is another neat little toy, integrated just in case you want to allow users to rate each entry of your gallery.
• 5 Different Color Schemes – Along with the default white and light gray color scheme, Showcase comes bundled with four different skins that you can use to change the color scheme. As you can see, you can make drastic changes through simple modifications. Those four skins are only the beginning of what you can do with Showcase.
• 8 Easy to Rotate Layout Variations – Sure, color changes are cool, but that might not be enough. I understand it’s important to be unique. That’s why I made it very easy for you to use different layout variations. This is how you can separate your gallery from the rest of the galleries using Showcase.
• Valid XHTML and CSS – All core templates and CSS styles are valid. Of course, did you expect less from me?
• Widget Ready Sidebars – The right sidebar column is actually made up of 3 separate widget ready sidebars.
• Easy Single Right Sidebar Column to Three Bottom Sidebar Columns Conversion – Through only one easy CSS change, you can go from having one right sidebar to having three bottom sidebars.
• Search Engine Optimized Sidebar Titles

Not available yet.

Design notes

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. Featured 4 Columns Gallery 6 Columns Featured 6 Columns Gallery 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.

It’s been days since I updated you on my the CSS gallery theme project. Welp, here comes the preview. The image to the right is a screenshot of just one of the color schemes for this theme. As you can see, other than the fact that I’m still stuck in the minimalist phase, this theme puts content first. It doesn’t distract you from the sites being featured, unlike some galleries out there. At the top is a simple, but straightforward horizontal menu. Under the content is pagination style navigation. You browse the site by selecting the page number that you want to visit. In the sidebar, there’s room for four 125 by 125-pixel banners (change to 6 or 8 banners if you like). Following the ads is the usual stuff like listing of categories. Although the screenshot shows an example of DOMTab behind the list of categories, DOMTab will not get bundled with the default package. However, there will be guides and easy templates for you to copy and paste in order to add DOMTab to your CSS gallery theme. There are other bells and whistles that you can’t preview through a design screenshot. Hopefully, I will have a demo up and running for you soon. What’s more important for this theme is how it functions not how it looks. At the beginning of this project, I just wanted to build a WordPress theme that could power a CSS gallery site. That’s it, no fancy-smancy elaborate designs. And, I think that’s what I ended up with. Personally, I love the clean and simple look, but I’d understand if you think that it looks a bit plain. Other Color Schemes: Cherry Cheesecake Dark Neutral Neutral Blue If you have suggestions for me, please post them in the comments. Thanks in advance and I’ll probably finish up within a few days, just in time to release it at the beginning of September. Note: unlike previous themes, this will be released as a paid theme.

WordPress can be much more than a blogging platform. Thanks to its easy to modify template system and wide range of plugins, you can use it to power almost any type of site, a CSS gallery site for example. The next big WordPress theme I’ll be working on is a theme built to power a CSS or web design gallery site. I spent last night browsing the top CSS galleries on the web and took notes of some features that I like. Here they are: Pagination – Top and bottom navigation by page number Large screenshot thumbnails Larger screenshots for full view Color scheme information of featured sites For each feature site, list related feature sites with similar styles, colors, and structures Prominent comment form on single post view Random site feature on front page Register only contact / site suggestion or submission form No extra information like date and name of site Simple layout, to not anything away from the sites being featured Flashy hover effects when you move the cursor over a thumbnail A page dedicated to CSS and web design resources Lots of spacing in between thumbnail rows At this point, I’m only brainstorming. I can’t guarantee that all those features will be included in my CSS gallery theme. Also, this theme will be my first paid / premium theme.

2.0.0 — Rebuilt as a modern block theme with accessible templates, responsive layout controls, and current WordPress and PHP compatibility.

We will keep the theme compatible with supported WordPress and PHP releases, refine accessibility, and publish focused improvements based on real user feedback.