The Aperture Home Page
I’m a keen photographer (all the images I’ve used in this theme design mock up are my own) and I realise a lot of our WooThemes users are too, I’ve thus created a theme that hopefully caters for a group of users that WooThemes currently doesn’t have much too offer.
Aperture will let your photography do the talking in a clean, usable interface. Posts will most likely be called Albums, as that’s what they are to a photographer. Agree? Disagree?
A featured scroller on the home page will display your “x” number of featured albums, as specified in your theme option’s panel. Below that will be a gallery of your photo categories. Each category will display an image from the latest album in that category, keeping the home page dynamic and fresh.
Aperture Category Archive Template
The category archives will display your photo albums as neat little clickable boxes taking you too a dedicated page for that album.
The footer space will consist of 3 (or 4) widgetized modules for “Latest Albums”, “Popular Albums” (based on number of comments) and a blog section for general news from the blog author that falls out of the photography categories.
The design has a BusyBee influence and will be available in 10 different colors.
As already mentioned this is a work in progress and much could change. That’s why I’m asking for your feedback to make this a kick ass photoblogging theme.
Looks fantastic. This will be very popular. When do you think a beta will be available? Perhaps we could test it out for you before it is released to the general pulic?
Would love to test for you before release!
Love the look of this theme and can think of some great ways to use it.
Could you include a setting in the theme options panel that would allow global replacement for the word “album”?
I think it would be very powerful to be able to change that word to “product”, “project”, “gallery”, “portfolio”, “channel”, “section”, etc. as it would make the theme even more flexible for people who want to showcase non-photography stuff.
Oh… forgot to mention that the same would need to apply for the “View Photos” search button and any other global labels like that. :-)
@Jeroen Great suggestion about the link to external site. Frequently have business that need that. Would love to see it displayed the way the categories are.
@Robb The global changes would be fantastic – I wouldn’t be using this for photography at all.
@Mark – if you can incorporate all these ideas we have proposed, would be a world class premium theme and wildly popular.
thx
Thanks for the continued feedback guys and the great feature requests.
@Jeroen: I’m going to keep the single photo page and further mock ups under cover till the theme is launched. This is only a teaser ;) I like your requests though and will take into consideration.
@Walter: The amount of albums/posts and photos the site can handle is reliant on wordpress and your host not the theme, so there should be no problems there. Posts will be organised in category, tag and date archives.
@Alasdair: We don’t usually do betas with Woo, but once we have something they’ll certainly be some tweets flying around pointing to the demo and perhaps asking for some feedback.
@Robb: Great idea with the global names and should be pretty simply achieved.
@Mark – Gushing.
I’d still include some traditional blog elements in the footer like recent posts and some links to RSS, Twitter etc. Photographers are still social ;-). Fantastic work. Can’t wait to see this.
Can you create some columns — optional templates — around the picture zones for people interested in dropping adsense / ads around their pics? That would be awesome!
Love the theme lay-out and would certainly like to acquire it.
Any chance the album images could be linked directly to Picasa web-albums, without the need for additional widgets?
Also, are you preparing your theme for some video-content as well?
Thanks for that Mark.
I suppose I’m just wondering if there will be a page that shows every single album that has been uploaded with a thumbnail image – rather than just a text list of categories.
Also I’m wondering how the drop down menu of categories will deal with lots and lots!
Cool theme, I would like to suggest that a category overview, would be available as a thumbnail view, so it is easy to browse a complete archive (category) with all images (posts) in that area.
cheers
Hey Everyone! VOTE for the theme at Woothemes! it’s third now.. needs to be first! :-)
This is an amazing theme. I have been looking for a theme like this forever! I have a friend who is a fashion designer and wants to build a online portfolio. This is perfect! What is the estimated release date. I can’t wait to get this one!
Any updates Mark?
Hey guys,
Can’t answer all the questions I’m afraid but I can report the build is well underway and looking good. There’s some neat javascript usage and I’ve finally decided on a single page template too.
I still can’t give a launch date, but I can state its in the next few weeks…
Wow, this theme looks amazing! Superb work! Great stuff…
This is the theme I’m waiting (patiently) for…
Bring it on ……. ! This has been a long time coming Mr F !
Wowww this theme realy great for magazine blogs.Thanks for share.
Wonderful! I hope the individual photo post has space for text, and also comments.
This theme doesn’t load albums on homepage ?
Isn’t it supposed to load latest blog from each category and place it as a category image ?
Any way to utilize the home page slider and javascript hover effects on subpages? I am not using this for a photograph site, however need option for multiple scrolling photos on subpages. BTW….love the Theme. Thanks.
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