Monochrome is a magazine-style theme for WordPress packaged with an AJAX post slideshow, a custom theme admin page to easily manage and customize Monochrome, author archives, two page templates, multi-tier drop down menus, utilizes custom fields options and a CSS framework to aid in customization. Now that’s a mouth-full.

With Monochrome, you get:

• AJAX-enabled post slideshow on the homepage
• Multiple entry points to your posts on the homepage
• Auto or manual thumbnail control
• Two widgetized sidebars, one for homepage content, one for single page views
• A widgetized bottombar which includes three widgetized areas
• A custom administration panel
• Authors archives
• Two page templates: One with sidebars and another without
• S.E.O. optimized
• Valid HTML and CSS

INSTALLATION

1. Unzip the downloaded file
2. Upload the entire “Monochrome″ folder to your “/wp-content/themes/” folder
3. Log in into your WordPress control panel
4. Click the Presentation tab
5. Select the “Monochrome” screenshot

CONFIGURATION

1. GETTING STARTED: Monochrome creates a new administration page in the Presentation tab of your WordPress admin panel to easily manage an update the categories that you want to display on the homepage. View the theme options page. Type in the category id’s and you’re ready to go!
2. PHOTOS & CUSTOM FIELDS: This theme uses custom fields to manage all photos and thumbnail photos. In your WordPress settings, you can change the dimensions on both thumbnail and medium sized photos. Change the thumbnail width to 128 px wide by 128px tall. Change the medium photo size to 575 px wide. Save the settings. WordPress will resize every photo uploaded to the dimensions described above. After uploading the photo into WordPress using the media uploader, Monochrome Pro automatically generates your thumbnail and slideshow images for your homepage (version 1.1 only). Don’t like the thumbnail WordPress generated for you? Override it, by copying the link to this thumbnail photo and pasting it into the custom field value, with a key called “thumbnail.” Similarly, you can copy the link to the medium photo (575 pixels wide maximum) and paste it into the custom field value, with a key called “photo.” Here is a screenshot of all properly filled out fields.
3. YOUR AUTHORS PAGE: Monochrome comes packaged with an author archive (authors.php), which will display some author specific info pulled from the Users page in your WordPress installation. In order for the author’s image to show up, you’ll need to place a jpg of the author titled by the author’s last name in the wp-content/themes/monochrome_lite/images/authors/ folder. For instance, mine is Allender.jpg, sized at 75px X 75px. Here is an example author page.
4. STYLES.CSS: Unlike most WordPress themes which plug all the css in one file called styles.css, Monochrome utilizes the Blueprint CSS framework to help separate positioning, typography, forms and what I’ll refer to as custom or Monochrome specific styles. To edit all custom Monochrome specific styles, you’ll need to edit the file style.css in your wp/wp-content/themes/monochrome/ directory.

ABOUT BLUEPRINT

This theme utilizes a CSS framework called Blueprint. Who is credited for the ideas behind Blueprint? Some of the best designers on the web. They include Jeff Croft, designer for Blue Flavor, Khoi Vinh, design director for NYTimes.com, Nathan Borror, Christian Metts, Eric Meyer, Wilson Minor, Angus Turnbull, Olav Bjorkoy and a few others. Most major websites use some form of css framework to allow for rapid, consistent development and design. Take the Blueprint 101 course to learn about all the possibilities.