I think that it’s fair to say that despite it’s general awesomeness a few of you found some usability issues with Grace. So to resolve these, I’ve changed a few things and released version 1.2 of Grace.

Live Demo

We all like to try before we buy – even when things are totally free. So why not take a look at the live demo of Theme:

Demo

Download

Download the Grace Photoblog Theme

What’s New in 1.2

Cosmetically, nothing’s changed – Grace is still a stylish, minimalistic photoblog theme for WordPress and it’s still completely FREE!

Here’s what’s new in Grace Version 1.2:

• Easier way to display images – no more “copy into the Extract field”.
• The required Custom Fields are pre-installed with the theme – no more “create a Custom Field called ‘Thumbnail’” etc.
• Automatic thumbnail resizing – no more “Create a thumbnail that’s…”
• An option’s page that let’s you control the speed of the rotating gallery on the home page.

Ace.

Despite these changes, to get the most out of the theme you still have to change a few settings on your WordPress blog - but Grace will work “out of the box” so why not Download It Now!

Configuring Grace

As I mentioned above if you want to get the most out of the Grace WordPress Photoblog Theme there are a couple of set up steps that you have to go through. But don’t worry, they’re all really straight forward and they can all be done through your blog’s Admin area.

The set up steps are:

• Create a “Featured” category.
• Create “Home” & “Gallery” Pages.
• Adding Widgets.
• Set your theme options.

I strongly recommend that you’ve activated the Grace theme in the usual WordPress theme way before you complete these step.

Create a “Featured” Category

The rotating gallery on the Grace homepage displays only the images that have been assigned to a category called “Featured”. But, rather obviously, before it can do that you need to create the “Featured” category.

To do this:

1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
2. Click Post to expand the Post Menu then click the Categories link.
3. Enter Featured into the Category Name field. It’s not necessary to complete the other fields on the Add Category page but you can if you want.
4. Click the Add Category button.

That’s it! Now whenever you assign a photo to the Featured category it will automatically be displayed in the rotating gallery on the home page.

Create “Home” & “Gallery” Pages

The “home” page on the Grace demo uses a Custom Page Template and WordPress’ static front page option to make it look a little differently from the usual chronological list of posts that you find on most blogs. After all, how many blogs have a rotating gallery on their home page? But by creating a custom home page you then need to tell WordPress where to display the chronological list of posts which – because this is a photoblog – I’ve called the Gallery page.

Note - For the Home and Gallery pages to work properly you must have Permalinks setup.

To create “Home” and “Gallery” pages:

1. Click the Pages menu option. This expands the Pages menu item.
2. Click the Add New link. This displays the Add New Page page.
3. Enter the text HomePage in the Page Title field. Don’t add any content of any custom fields.
4. Select Home Page from the Template drop-down list in the Attributes panel.
5. Click the Publish button.
6. Click the Add New link in the Pages menu item again.
7. Enter the text Gallery in the Page Title field. Don’t add any content of any custom fields.
8. Click the Publish button.
9. Click the Settings menu option. This expands the Settings menu item.
10. Click the Reading link. This displays the Reading Settings page.
11. Click the A static page (select below) radio button then select HomePage from the Front page drop-down list and Gallery from the Post page drop-down list.
12. Click the Save Changes button.

And with the click of the “Save Changes” button you’ve set up your Grace photoblog to work with the custom home page!

Adding Widgets

There are 2 widgetized areas in the theme – one the home page and on the archive sections.

To add a widget:

1. Click the Appearance menu option. This expands the Appearance menu item.
2. Click the Widgets link. This displays the Widgets page.
3. Select either Home Page – to add widgets to the home page – or Sidebar – to add widgets to the archives sections – from the Current Widgets drop-down list.
4. Drag the widgets across from the left to the right that you to display.
5. Click the Save Changes button.

Adding Photos to the Gallery

To add a photo to the gallery:

1. Resize your photo so that they’re a maximum of 900px wide.
2. If you’ve turned off the “auto thumbnails”, create a thumbnail that’s 280px wide by 140px high.
3. Upload both images to your WordPress Media Library.
4. Copy the file URL of the main image then paste it into the Main Photo Custom Field.
5. Again, only if you’ve turned off the “auto-thumbnails”, copy the file URL of the thumbnail into the Thumbnail Custom Field.
6. Enter a description of the photo into the Post Editing Area using the visual text editor.
7. If you want to the photo to appear in the rotating gallery on the home page assign the post to the Featured category.

Setting Your Grace Options

The new version of Grace comes with its own options page. This let’s you switch off the auto-generation of thumbnails and set the speed of the rotating gallery.

Note: By default thumbnail auto-generation is switched on and the gallery speed is set to “Normal”.

To set your theme options:

1. Expand the Appearance sub-menu panel.
2. Click the Grace Options link. This displays the Grace Theme Options page.
3. Change your settings as required.
4. Click the Update Options button.

Note: If you turn off the Automatic Thumbnails you’ll need to create then upload them yourself.

Grace Version 1.2 has now been released – go check it out!

It’s been quite a while since I released my last (and, confusing, my first) WordPress theme – ThreeColumnsBlue – so here’s my next effort – Grace.

Grace is a stylish, minimalistic photoblog theme for WordPress and it’s completely FREE!

Grace’s muted colour scheme and big frame puts your photos right at the centre of the blog making colours seem even more vibrant and beautifully complementing those in black and white.

To get the most out of the theme you have to change a few settings on your WordPress blog – all of which I describe below – but Grace will also work out of the box so why not Download It Now!

Live Demo

Why not take a look at the live demo of Theme:

Demo

Download

Grace Version 1.2 has now been released – go check it out!

Download the Grace Photoblog Theme

Theme Features

Home page features:

• A lightweight jQuery powered rotating banner of featured photos (you select which photos you want to appear here just by adding them to the Featured category)
• A “widgetised” left hand column giving you the freedom to modify the text that appears on the home page.
• A mini-gallery of your 6 most recently added photos.

The individual photo pages features:

• A 900px wide main content area to really show off your photos.
• A wide frame to make your photos stand out.
• Optional description text controlled by a Custom Field.
• Threaded comments.

As I mentioned above if you want to get the most out of the Grace WordPress Photoblog Theme there are a couple of set up steps that you have to go through. But don’t worry, they’re all really straight forward and they can all be done through your blog’s Admin area.

The set up steps are:

• Create a “Featured” category.
• Create “Home” & “Gallery” Pages.
• Adding Widgets.

I strong recommend that you’ve activated the Grace Theme in the usual way before you complete these step.

Create a “Featured” Category

The rotating gallery on the Grace homepage displays only the images that have been assigned to a category called “Featured”. But, rather obviously, before it can do that you need to create the “Featured” category.

To do this:

1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
2. Click Post to expand the Post Menu then click the Categories link.
3. Enter Featured into the Category Name field. It’s not necessary to complete the other fields on the Add Category page but you can if you want.
4. Click the Add Category button.

That’s it! Now whenever you assign a photo to the Featured category it will automatically be displayed in the rotating gallery on the home page.

Create “Home” & “Gallery” Pages

The “home” page on the Grace demo uses a Custom Page Template and WordPress’ static front page option to make it look a little differently from the usual chronological list of posts that you find on most blogs. After all, how many blogs have a rotating gallery on their home page? But by creating a custom home page you then need to tell WordPress where to display the chronological list of posts which – because this is a photoblog – I’ve called the Gallery page.

Note - For the Home and Gallery pages to work properly you must have Permalinks setup.

To create “Home” and “Gallery” pages:

1. Click the Pages menu option. This expands the Pages menu item.
2. Click the Add New link. This displays the Add New Page page.
3. Enter the text HomePage in the Page Title field. Don’t add any content of any custom fields.
4. Select Home Page from the Template drop-down list in the Attributes panel.
5. Click the Publish button.
6. Click the Add New link in the Pages menu item again.
7. Enter the text Gallery in the Page Title field. Don’t add any content of any custom fields.
8. Click the Publish button.
9. Click the Settings menu option. This expands the Settings menu item.
10. Click the Reading link. This displays the Reading Settings page.
11. Click the A static page (select below) radio button then select HomePage from the Front page drop-down list and Gallery from the Post page drop-down list.
12. Click the Save Changes button.

And with the click of the “Save Changes” button you’ve set up your Grace photoblog to work with the custom home page!

Adding Widgets

There are 2 widgetized areas in the theme – one the home page and on the archive sections.

To add a widget:

1. Click the Appearance menu option. This expands the Appearance menu item.
2. Click the Widgets link. This displays the Widgets page.
3. Select either Home Page – to add widgets to the home page – or Sidebar – to add widgets to the archives sections – from the Current Widgets drop-down list.
4. Drag the widgets across from the left to the right that you to display.
5. Click the Save Changes button.

Adding Photos to the Gallery

To add a photo to the gallery:

1. Resize your photo so that they’re a maximum of 900px wide.
2. Create a thumbnail that’s 280px wide by 140px high.
3. Upload both images to your WordPress Media Library.
4. Insert the main image into the content field.
5. If you want the picture to appear in the rotating gallery on the front page, copy the html code for the image (e.g. <img src=”http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/example.jpg” ) into the Excerpt field.
6. Create a Custom Field called Thumbnail then copy the html code for the thumbnail image into the field.
7. Create another Custom Field called Description then enter any descriptive text you want to appear on the single page for the photo.
8. If you want to the photo to appear in the rotating gallery on the home page assign the post to the Featured category.

It’s based on the custom WordPress Theme I designed for the Dad: About the Boy blog and will give any blog a clean, stylish and very readable look.

The 3 column design in cool blue comes configured ready to use Rob Marshes’ excellent Recent Posts and Recent Comments plugins (both of which need the Post Plugin Library as well) to really help show off your content. And if you haven’t installed Rob’s plugins the Theme degrades gracefully so you’d never know anything was missing.

Live Demo

Why not take a look at the live demo of Theme:

Demo 

Download

If you liked what you saw in the demo click the link below to download the Theme:

Download The ThreeColumnsBlue Theme!

If you do use the theme, please drop a link in the comments below, I’d love to see it in action!