Download View Demo

Click on any of the sections below to get additional information:

• Features

• Installation

• Theme Support

Here’s a full view of the theme’s home page in Grid View, including the Featured Post Slider:

The initial intention for this theme was to be the second iteration of Cover WP which was 3 years old and already past its time. However, after consulting with existing users of the theme we have decided it shifted too much from the original and deserved to have its own place as a stand-alone theme. As a consequence to this the theme Cover WP will be discontinued and no longer updated with Esplanade continuing its development cycle. Security updates may still be offered for Cover WP. If you are an existing user of Cover WP and thinking about upgrading to the new theme, see below what new features Esplanade has to offer. You may see some things like the Featured and Popular section are gone and replaced by the Featured Post Slider and the magazine-style home page has been replaced with a grid view. The home page has also been rethought to offer a more natural flow to the list of articles. Read more below to see what this theme has to offer:

Features

This theme comes feature-packed with things you usually see in premium themes, so don’t get shocked. Here’s a list of everything it has to offer:

• Blog View & Grid View
• Responsive Layout
• Post Thumbnails
• Post Formats
• Audio & Video playback
• One-click enabling and disabling of website sections
• Multiple layout options and custom page templates
• Drag-and-drop editing of layout dimensions
• Choose from multiple color schemes
• Custom fonts and advanced typography options
• SEO-ready and options that give you control over code semantics
• Clean, organized and documented code

We hope this feature pack is enough to satisfy most bloggers’ and small website owners’ needs. Let’s get into some descriptions and see how each feature could benefit you:

Blog View and Grid View

This feature is still experimental and currently available only for the home page. Basically, blog view follows the traditional flow of posts while the grid view uses a powerful grid to display the content, offering the ability to showcase almost every type of content from simple text to rich photo galleries, podcasts and videos. In the future we plan to improve this view mode and make it flexible enough to fit the entire structure of the theme.

Responsive Layout

The Layout of this theme automatically adapts to fit all devices that can browse the internet like tablets and smartphones. The design will automatically shrink to the width of the device and content blocks will automatically stack, making all content visible and accessible without any zooming or horizontal scrolling. Similar to a mobile version only that it naturally adapts to screen dimensions without the interference of third-party scripts thus maximizing compatibility. Here’s a screenshot of the theme on an iPhone, click on the image to see a live demo of the theme on various mobile resolutions:

Audio & Video playback

The theme features native HTML5 audio & video playback. Simply attach a video or audio file to a post, set it the video or audio post format and a browser-native player will start playing the file. If html5 is not supported by the browser it will fall back to a flash player.

One-click enabling and disabling of website sections

Sections that are not essential for the website, like breadcrumbs or the post slider can be disabled with one click from the options page. They will simply disappear and the design will automatically adapt to fit the changes.

Multiple Layout Options and Custom Page Templates

The theme comes with built-in with templates for the most popular page layouts, like sidebars on the left or on the right or splitting content with 2 sidebars. They can be individually chosen for pages and globally integrate with the entire layout. The default website layout can be changed in the theme options page.

Drag-and-drop editing of Layout Dimensions

The dimensions of the sidebars and content areas can be modified from the options page with a tool that allows dragging and dropping of the content separator. The dimensions are given in percentages to comply with the responsive layout. Here’s a screenshot of the layout editing utility:

Choose from multiple Color Schemes

The theme comes with 4 color schemes you can choose from: Neutral, Sand, Nature and Earth. You can change them in theme options. The difference between them is subtle but offers a shade of personality to color-lovers. Here’s a screenshot of the option highlighting the 4 color schemes:

Custom fonts and advanced typography options

The themes offers the ability to choose which fonts you would like to use and integrates itself with the Google Web Fonts Directory to allow even more fonts to be used. For the moment only some fonts are supported. The theme also offers the option to change font properties like font size, line height and color. If you’re not familiar with CSS color codes a point-and-click tool can help you choose your preferred color.

Instructions

Featured Post Slider

The slider handles sticky posts as featured. If the slider option is enabled
sticky posts will be displayed in the slider and the main loop will ignore them.
If the option is disabled the loop will display normally, with sticky posts on top.

Grid and Blog View

The theme comes with 2 view modes: Grid and Blog.
The Grid mode is similar to a web magazine and shown only on the front page.
Secondary pages display in blog view.
You can override this behavior in theme options.

Post Thumbnail Functionality

Post Thumbnails appear only in post lists, not on single posts.
They can be set by choosing “Set as Featured Image” when uploading an image.

Image Post Format

Posts with the image format will display the last attached image in a caption.
If a post thumbnail is set, this one will appear instead.

Gallery Post Format

Posts with the gallery format will display the first 6 attached images, on 3 columns,
and also offers a lightbox for full screen preview.
On single pages images from the gallery shortcode display in a lightbox.

Audio & Video Post Formats

Posts with the audio & video post format will display the attached media files
in a HTML5

Other Post Formats

Posts with the aside, status & quote post formats will displayed with no title;
the status post format will display the user’s avatar, in a mannersimilar to Twitter;
the quote post format will only display the post’s first <blockquote> tag.
Posts with the link post format will link out to the first tag in the post.

Widgets Areas

The Theme has 4 customizable sidebars, a widget area in the footer and one on the 404 page.
You can use these area to customize the content of your website.
If no content is be added to the sidebars these will not display.

Support

For any support questions please use the dedicated section at the forum.

The theme is released under GPL. Feel free and encouraged to use, modify and redistribute it however you like.

That’s it from our part and we’d love to hear your feedback! Use the comment section below to share us your thoughts and if you like this theme let your friends know about it by sharing it with the services below. Happy blogging!

The theme comes with two view modes: a gallery view for photoblogging and the classical blog view. Supports post thumbnails, the all-new WordPress 3.1 post formats and takes them a step further by offering audio & video playback. You can download the theme below, view a demo or read further about the theme’s features.

Download View Demo

Click on any of the sections below to get additional information:

• Features

• Installation

• Theme Support

Here’s a full view of the theme in Gallery View:

And in blog view:

Features

Here’s a list of the features this theme comes with. More information about each feature is presented below:

• Gallery & Blog View
• Post Thumbnails
• Post Formats
• Audio & Video playback
• Clean, organized & documented code (yes, it’s a feature )

How let’s get down to the details:

Gallery and Blog view

The theme is intended to be used for photoblogging, travel blogs, professional photography portfolios but also podcasting and conventional blogging. That’s why this theme came up with 2 views and the ability to change them. You can select which section is viewed in which mode and if you would like the default category view to be gallery, you can select one category to be styled as blog.

Post Thumbnails

The theme uses the theme post thumbnail feature to turn each post into a photography showcase. The gallery slider uses post thumbnails to display the image galleries and a featured image can be set for each post. This is useful even if you are not a photographer and have for example a travel blog.

Post Formats

The Theme Supports the WordPress 3.1 post formats image, gallery, audio, video, aside & link. Posts with these formats automatically detect attached media and present it to the viewer in a special format. You can read more about how post formats are handled in the instructions.

Audio & Video Playback

Introducing HTML5 audio and video playback! Taking advantage of the newest emerging web technology, this theme presents you with native audio and video playback and a fallback option for Flash Player if the browser does not support the HTML5 audio and video tags.

Additional Features

We have taken special care when creating this theme to follow all WordPress quality and security guidelines but without cutting on innovation and creativity, to give you a state of the art product. The theme’s code is clean and documented and the theme is designed in such manner that child themes can be easily built upon it. All theme functions are pluggable and can be overriden by child themes and the theme takes advantage of filters and hooks to ensure great flexibility.

Instructions

Post Thumbnail Functionality

By default, Post Thumbnails will appear when posts are being viewed in gallery mode, in blog mode and also in single posts. Post Thumbnails will not work for pages

Image Post Format

Posts with the image format will display the last attached image on top of the post. The last attached image should not appear in the post content to avoid duplicate display.

Gallery Post Format

Posts with the gallery format will display a gallery of attached images, on 3 columns, and also offers a lightbox for full screen preview. Posts with the gallery format should not use the [ gallery ] shortcode to avoid duplicate display.

Audio & Video Post Formats

Posts with the audio & video post format will display the attached media files in a HTML5 <audio> tag with flash fallback. If more than one media file is attached to the post, then these will be used as fallback sources.

Aside & Link Post Formats

Posts with the aside & link post formats will be displayed as normal posts, but can be shown in the Ephemera widget in the sidebar.

Widgets

The Theme includes a custom Widget, Ephemera, that can be used to display a list of the aside & link posts. The widget was copied from the Duster Theme.

Support

For any support questions please use the dedicated section at the forum.

That’s it, happy blogging!

The theme is released under GPL. Feel free and encouraged to use, modify and redistribute it however you like.

Download View Demo

Click on any of the sections below to get additional information:

• Features

• Installation

• Theme Support

Here’s a full view of the theme:

Features

Here’s a list of the features this theme comes with. More information about each feature is presented below:

• Custom Menus
• Custom Background
• Custom Header
• Post Thumbnails
• Featured & Popular Posts
• Author Highlighting
• Social Bookmarking
• Widget-ready Sidebar and Footer
• Threaded Comments
• Drop-down Menus
• Localized for English, German and Romanian

And now let’s see what all this means for you:

Custom Menus

The all-new WordPress 3.0 Menu system. A way to add any links you want to the main menu of your website. This means you are no longer stuck with only showing a page list or a category list and hack into the code to add and exclude pages. Just log-in to the admin section and add any links you want, including external links. If you choose not to use custom menus the navigation section will fall back to the old plain list of pages.

Custom Background

This is such an easy one I don’t get it why it isn’t included by default and a theme must support it. However, this allows you to change the main background of the website to whatever you want. Just upload an image from your computer and set it as your website’s background. Do me a favor with this one: Please, don’t take the web back to Geocities.

Custom Header

Set your own header image. This may help you to add a logo to the page or just add a bit of your own color. Although this was available for some time now, in WordPress 3.0 it has been further improved in that it allows you now to choose from a predefined set of backgrounds, so now you have a gallery of header images to choose from. Currently the theme comes with an alternative header image besides the default one, that shows a WordPress logo in the header, to show ‘em some love. More to come in the near future.

Post Thumbnails

A nice featured image to display right next to the posts on the home page. This adds a bit of elegance to the website, as you may show only the excerpt of the post to give the page a consistent look and still show an image to represent it and catch more of the readers’ interest. The new WordPress thumbnail system is supported and if you use a version prior to 2.9 there still is a way to show a thumbnail with the timthumb script. If no thumbnail is declared the first image in the post will be scaled to size and shown as a thumbnail.

Featured & Popular Posts

This is what gives the theme the magazine-style look. Sometimes some old quality posts just get lost in the archive and you may want to show them on the front page somehow. For this create a category called Featured and add these posts to it. The first 3 will be shown on the front page. Of course, your 3 most debated posts will also show on the front page under the Popular section.

Author Highlighting

If you want to show some information about yourself or have guest authors writing for you and want to give them credit, just add some biographical info to the profile and it will appear at the and of every post written by him. Can also show a link to the author’s website and Twitter account.

Social Bookmarking

Sharing your work with your friends or posting to social bookmarking websites is made easier. Buttons allowing you to share your content through the most popular social media and bookmarking websites are displayed at the end of every post. Sharing your content with the world is just one click away.

Widget-ready Sidebar and Footer

The right sidebar brings you 4 widgetable areas of different widths, allowing you to easily organize links, display additional information and advertisments. The footer also allows you to display widgets instead of the default content and a 468×60 widget can also be displayed in the header section.

Localized and Translation-ready

If you want to display content on your website in a different language, the default statements in English can be translated by using the translation catalog that comes with the theme. For the moment the theme comes already translated in German and Romanian.

How to get this up and running

Basically, if you activate the theme it should work from the beginning without additional tweaks. If you want to take advantage of the built-in features, read below:

• To add a thumbnail to a post, in the editor click on the “Add Featured Image” link in the lower right-hand corner under the post tags.
• To show featured posts, create a category called Featured and add posts to that category. The first 3 will appear under the Featured section.
• If you want to bring modifications to the theme’s stylesheet but still want to keep it updated, create a file called mystyle.css in the theme’s directory, any style declared in that file will override the default ones.
• To avoid a long front page, set the posts per page setting between 4 and 6.
• If you don’t like the magazine-styled layout and prefer the classic posts-list view, delete the file home.php from the installation directory.

Theme Support

For any support questions please use the dedicated section at the forum. Make sure to read the FAQ first and search for an existing request to your problem to see if it hasn’t already been resolved. If your problem is new, you can create a new topic where you can describe it and I or another user will get back to you as soon as possible. User registration is required to create a now topic or post on the forum. Please do not use the comment section on this page for support questions. The comment section is only for feedback on the theme or this article. You will see that the forum is a much better experience.

That should about wrap it up. You’re ready to go, happy blogging!

The theme is released under GPL. Feel free to use, modify and redistribute it however you like.