Melany WordPress Theme 1.0 is out!
This new major release introduces a revamped design along with a bouch of new features. Let’s see them.
Design
Melany’s design is now based on Twitter Bootstrap 3.0, which has a flatter and cleaner design compared with the previous 2.3.2 release. Colors hurt much less the user’s eyes, improving readability. Mobile access has improved too: Bootstrap 3.0 itself is mobile-first and I focused on this kind of devices while building Melany. On mobile devices, the navbar has two buttons: one for the menu and the other for the search bar. The search bar is collapsed on larger screens too, giving more space for the menu, and shows by default only on large desktops (>1200px).
There are some negative aspects though: the navigation bar supports only 2-levels deep menus, that is the main menu and single-level dropdowns. This is a limit set by Bootstrap, maybe I’ll introduce support for deeper menus later.
Features
Melany 1.0 is more complete, as it includes a large number of presentation features. Have a look at the Theme Customizer (Appearance > Customize), in each section you see something that has to do with this theme.
Site Title & Tagline
Along with the core Site Title and Tagline fields, you have other options here:
Title Length: limits site title length in the navbar, default 20 characters.
Credits: adds custom credit text in the footer, between copy and “powered by”.
Logo and Favicon
You can add an image to use as logo, which will be displayed in the box on the right, above the sidebar. There is the option to add a favicon too (the icon which shows up in the browser tab).
Colors
Here we have Header Text Color and Background Color that are WordPress core features, but Melany adds other fields:
Homepage Background Color: pick a color to use as static homepage background.
Homepage Text Color: pick a color to use as static homepage text color.
Navbar color scheme: select the color scheme to use in navbar and footer. 3 available: Light, Dark and Green.
Background Image, Navigation, Static Front Page
These are WordPress core features. The thing to note here is that Melany 1.0 supports Static Front Page, which is highly customizable through the Colors section.
Custom Header Image
An useful core feature now supported by Melany is Custom Header Image: upload an image (900x200px) and it will be displayed below the navbar.
Author box
Want to display author informations below posts? Melany does it for you, without the need to install any plugin. Simply fill in the Bio info in your WordPress profile and they’ll be displayed in a box below your posts.
Download & Install
Now go and download Melany 1.0 form the WordPress.org Theme Directory, extract the melany directory and place it into /wp-content/themes/ or simply search Melany in WordPress Admin and install it.
Remember that you have to activate it in both cases.
And if you like it, please donate to support the development of this free theme. You know, we are simply machines that turn coffee into code.
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