Categories
CMS Food Magazine Multi Media Photo Portfolio Technology Themes

Rich Photo (or Recipe, Sweet Shop, Clothing Site)

rich-photo-thumbRich WP have released the aptly named ‘Rich Photo‘ photo gallery wordpress theme. As you can see from the demo above this is a minimal and hassle free photo template which allows your visitors to navigate visually straight from the home page.

This Rich Photo is obviously aimed at photographers however we feel that it maybe missing its true calling, and thats a wordpress recipe theme. Consciously or not, the theme designers seem to agree with us, using mostly food related imagery for their demo (or they were just really hungry!) However it is not this which makes us believe that this site would be better adapted to the culinary arts! Those of you who have navigated through the demo already will have noticed the final details page (or post) which is very reminiscent of the recipe pages on many of the more modern cookery and chiefs websites.

Simple navigation rules the day on this Recipe (sorry Photo) Theme from Rich WP
Simple navigation rules the day on this Recipe (sorry Photo) Theme from Rich WP

Creating content for this site could not be easier, simply decide what categories you want to display on the home page, create them and then publish articles (posts) in that category. Thats it, easy? Well its been made even easier than that, upload a photo or image and it is automatically assigned and resized to fit the home, category and details page in one go, no more resizing in photoshop.

For those of you who were wondering you can also easily install Paypal or any other payment option to turn Rich Photo into a shop / ecommerce website.

When your visitors click on an article, you can see from the image above they are presented with easy previous and next photo options (button wording easily changed) so that they can simply flick through the rest of the posts in that category or section.

Visual navigation makes us hungry
Visual navigation makes us hungry

How many different applications are there for a theme / website like this? Well quite a few, put it this way, your imagination is the limit with this one, whether it be a sweet shop, clothing label, art, photography  or one of a million other uses, this site will never cause you a headache to run, or leave your visitors hunting aimlessly for what they need. It is clear, concise and with the right content, stunning.

Features:

  • Two color schemes – Bright and Dark
  • Automatic Image Size Generation. All photo sizes needed across the theme will be assigned and generated automatically.
  • Easy installation and setup with included documentation.
  • Threaded comments support
  • Gravatar support for comments
  • Free updates!
  • Fully SEO compliant

Rich WP offer free updates and support for this theme and according to their customers are very friendly and quick to respond. How many companies do you know that offer up their personal Msn and Skype addresses for ease of contact? The theme / website comes with full and very detailed instructions, and unless you are completely new to wordpress you will not need them, its that simple to use.

Obviously this website is not going to be suitable for everyone, for instance we carn’t imagine this as a corporate or informational site. But if you need a minimal, beautiful and easy way of displaying your work, products or ideas to the world then Rich Photo is it.

If you are not familiar with wordpress and want to get this website up and running, do not worry here’s the ‘The Famous 5-Minute Installation‘ guide for wordpress. Or simply click the install button above or below this review.

Categories
CMS Gadgets Multi Media Photo Portfolio Themes

Charlotte WordPress Theme

The Charlotte WP Theme has been released by Ignacio a Spanish designer & developer. His themes are showcased at wp.paragraphe.org and we recommend having a good look through his work.

Charlotte is free and has been designed for use as portfolio theme. The home page keeps its emphasis strongly on your work. Using a showcase style Charlotte keeps its looks as far away from the typical ‘WordPress blog’ as possible, displaying everything in a clean, easy to navigate style.

You posts / work are displayed in nice round cornered boxes on the home page in two columns, anyone familiar with wp portfolio themes or sites such as Notcot.org will know how successful this style of layout can be. Each posts main feature is the photo or image of your work, followed by the posts title, author, tags and the first paragraph of text (the excerpt) from the posts main page. We really like the way the tags have been implemented here. Portfolio themes are not always easy to navigate but by using this method of tagging the user can always find other similar posts easily and quickly. Ignacio has also used a similar navigation method for the categories which display in much smaller text at the top of each posts box, giving the visitor a more general search option for other similar items.

Charlotte-WordPress-Theme1
Charlotte WordPress Theme: Clean, functional and beautiful

Features:

  • Free theme under the GPL license.
  • Valid Code as HTML 4.01 Strict.
  • Using the Blueprint CSS Framework.
  • 5 Photoshopped Colorful Headers to choose from.
  • Rounded Corners all around.
  • Widgetized Sidebar, Footer & Header.

As you can see from the demo (link at the top of the page) each posts individual page is styled just as beautifully and Ignacio has built in a separate wigitized sidebar system which with a bit of thought could be used for anything from exif data if you are a photographer to sales links for your work / adverts if you run a gadget blog or similar.

Charlotte comes with five photoshopped headers to choose from but obviously you can restyle this theme very easily to suit your brand or personal style.

Overall we are very impressed with Ignacio’s work and we think that Charlotte WordPress Theme is a shining example of what he is capable of. Definitely one to bookmark and keep an eye on in the future!