Beautiful work, so clean and strong. Thanks, too, for explaining why you hid comments by default. You’ve always been an inspiration in showing us how community works on the web (and a leader in starting wonderfully content-rich communities).

Posted by zeldman on 17 September 2008 @ 2am

Very Nice.

Posted by susan on 17 September 2008 @ 6am

Hallelujah (or is that, -yah?)…I was looking for this when I started MidLifeBloggers.com. I’m up for changing my template but is there a capability to do my own masthead?

Posted by ByJane on 17 September 2008 @ 11am

Hi Derek,

Been using your theme at wordpress.com for a few days. However, the 3 columns does not come out. Instead I have one long, long column. Ugh.

Is there a setting that I missed? I like your ‘vanity fair’ inspired layout and wrote a short post here: http://tinyurl.com/4vxa4w

Anyway, appreciate if you could assist. At your post, or my email is fine, as I read your blog often.

regards
mike

Posted by mike on 17 September 2008 @ 11am

Oops, me again.

I have just figured it out. It is ineed the changed setting. To get 3 columns, you have to do this:

Settings > Reading > Front page displays, choose ‘Your latest posts’.

Cannot use ‘A static page (select below)’ option.

Wonder if there’s a workaround? As I have a landing page (which was ‘Our Table?). Thanks anyway.

Posted by mike on 17 September 2008 @ 11am

I just have to say that I spent about 15 minutes over the weekend Googling for a spot to download this theme after I saw it was on WordPress.com.

It seems to accomplish most everything I’d like my themes to, and without breaking a sweat. Great work.

Posted by david on 17 September 2008 @ 12pm

Derek. This is sweet.

Posted by Richard Moross on 17 September 2008 @ 12pm

this is beautiful - simple and intuitive - i’m gonna try it out, methinks.

Posted by dori on 17 September 2008 @ 12pm

Nice work Derek.
It may just replace my old favourite ‘Cutline’ theme :)

Paul

Posted by Paul on 17 September 2008 @ 1pm

I likey…but what about us folks who have our own domain?!? Will it be available at themes.wordpress.org?

Posted by ro on 17 September 2008 @ 1pm

@mike - this theme is not really suited for a static frontpage. Maybe what you want is sticky posts at wordpress.com?

@ro It’s already available via subversion, but will be packaged up soon enough and placed on themes.wordpress.org:
http://svn.automattic.com/wpcom-themes/depo-masthead/

Derek, this theme is really beautiful and I’m glad to have been able to work with you on it.

Posted by Noel Jackson on 17 September 2008 @ 2pm

Wonderful job. Your design, its layout and choice of typography is an inspiration.

Posted by Dennis Deacon on 17 September 2008 @ 5pm

I’ve been using depo-masthead for a few days now, and I like its elegance. Will be exploring ways of maximizing the appearance of my site in the next few days (e.g., rearranging widgets, activating the “more tag,” etc.).

Thank you for sharing this with us.

Posted by feyoh on 17 September 2008 @ 10pm

Thanks, it looks great, i already adopted it!

One thing could be improved imo: the tag-line and the date-of-post-line is continuous, so sometimes the break gets a little weird. couldn’t it be better to to a fixed break, means a seperate line for each the tag-line and the date line?

anyway, great work!

cheers!

Posted by Müller on 18 September 2008 @ 3am

i love! i love! this is great (and needed!). thanks derek.

Posted by emdot on 18 September 2008 @ 6am

I was really excited about this theme until I realized, at the end of this post, that I could not download the theme. :(

Posted by Scott Johnson on 18 September 2008 @ 7am

Derek, this is a very cool design. The only con I find is that my blog is in Spanish and it is not woking the way I am used in other sites, namely my (older) sister blog http://donlucho.com where all hints to users (tags, comments… appear in Spanish. What can I do to help you with the translation?

Posted by Luis Delboy on 18 September 2008 @ 7am

Wow - this is beautiful, Derek - as per usual!

Posted by Kris Kendrick on 18 September 2008 @ 7am

Hi Noel,

Yup. Also tried that. Reverted to the intended 3 column. It’s great. Appreciate your work.

One last question: If the posts are not of similiar length, I tend to have ‘empty sides’ when reading the longest post. Is there a way to overcome this?

rgds
mike

Posted by mike on 18 September 2008 @ 10am

Mike: Position the “More tag” where you want each post to cut off.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Customizing_the_Read_More

Posted by Derek Powazek on 18 September 2008 @ 4pm

Derek,

Ok, got it. Thanks again. Your theme is much appreciated.

rgds
mike

Posted by mike on 18 September 2008 @ 9pm

I want to use the more tag, but the more link doesn’t show up to let them know there’s more. It just cuts it off with no indication there’s more to read. Is there a way to get the more link to show up? Otherwise, I love the theme.

Posted by Tom Ortega on 19 September 2008 @ 4am

NM my last comment. I didn’t realize that the comment link turned into “Read more and Comment”. Great job and lame on me for not spotting it! :)

Posted by Tom Ortega on 19 September 2008 @ 4am

My only complaint (take a peek at my site) is that the Archives footer stretches so much further than the other pods. A flag to turn off the Archive footer section for the homepage would be nice and shrink the percepted size dramatically for my home page.

Posted by Tom Ortega on 19 September 2008 @ 4am

Hi Derek. Sweet theme. I love the new design of the Depo Masthead at Wordpress.com Truly amazing design you did. I tried using the theme on a self hosted blog of mine but doesn’t show properly. It only shows the header and nothing else. I know that

Mtdewvirus said, “The theme is using some functions that aren’t available in WP 2.6.2 yet, but will be available in WP 2.7.”

on wordpress.com over here >>> http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/depo-masthead-theme-launch?replies=20

I would love to use the theme on my current 2.6.2 version blogs. Any help would be awesome. What would I add, modify, or hide in the code for it to be compatible with Wordpress 2.6.2? I also posted this question at http://wordpress.org/support/topic/205154?replies=1#post-857463 to help others once I have an answer.

Thanks

Best regards,

Matt G.

Posted by Matt on 19 September 2008 @ 12pm

i’m using the depo clean theme on my site and i’m lovin’ it. thank you! :)

Posted by kim on 21 September 2008 @ 10am

Is there any way to select which column a given widget goes in?

Posted by Curt on 21 September 2008 @ 10am

Derek, this is awesome!
I should wait until it gets packaged, but just I don’t want to keep my mouth shut in case anyone else out there may run into the same trouble with the SVN-version.

The post_class function has to be added manually to functions.php up to know, otherwise it produces a fatal error.
I replaced its occurance in home.php with

but unless I make the actual function available columns won’t work.

Posted by Caspar Hübinger on 21 September 2008 @ 11pm

Ok, code-tags don’t work here. Wrapped in php-tags it was if(function_exists(post-class)) : post_class(); endif

Posted by Caspar Hübinger on 21 September 2008 @ 11pm

Yeah, think first…
It had to be :
if (function_exists(post_class)):
post_class();
else :
echo ‘class=”post”‘;
endif;

Sorry.

Posted by Caspar Hübinger on 21 September 2008 @ 11pm

Brilliant work, Thanks

Posted by Chirag Chamoli on 22 September 2008 @ 12am

Caspar Hübinger, exactly what code do I put in what file and where to make Depo Masthead work on wordpress 2.6.2?

Posted by Matt on 22 September 2008 @ 1pm

Derek,

This is a great template, and I will be using it for a new blog to be launched in a few days (check out how cool it looks at http://2020science.org, User: 2020guest, Password: justvisiting)

A question and a possible bug through:

The possible bug: On the archive pages, the list of posts is truncated (i.e. earlier posts are not listed for each year shown) - how easy would this be to fix, either by showin all posts, or adding further pages?

The question: How easy would it be to add an option to display the blog tagline under the title. From mockups, dding the tagline in a medium to small, grey typeface really complements the layout!

Cheers,

Andrew

Posted by Andrew Maynard on 23 September 2008 @ 6am

I’m sorry but I cannot offer support for the theme. If you need support for DePo Masthead on your WordPress.com blog, please go here. If you need support for DePo Masthead on your WP install, go here.

Posted by Derek Powazek on 23 September 2008 @ 5pm