DePo Masthead
A few months ago, Matt asked me if I’d be interested in whipping up a blog template design for WordPress. I was swamped at the time, as I pretty much always am, so I filed it away in the back of my head, but the opportunity kept nagging at me.
What I really wanted was an elegant, magazine-like design. So, meet DePo Masthead, the newest theme available on WordPress.com. Special thanks to the supremely talented Noel Jackson for turning my PSDs into reality.
The inspiration for this design came from classic magazines like Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. The main page features three posts (be sure to use the more tag to keep the excerpt short).
One thing I especially like about the design is that the comments on posts are hidden by default. This is to address a couple common blog design problems. First, moving the comments one click away takes away the spotlight a bit and should help decrease bozo comments. Second, I hate how, on a blog post with a lot of comments, you can’t glance at the browser’s scrollbar to see how much reading you’re in for. Some of the page is the author’s post (important) and some is commentary (less so).
My solution is to default the post to not show the comments. If the reader gets the the bottom of the post and wants commentary, it’s just one click away (and there’s no page refresh). The division between author and commentary is reinforced.
If you’ve got a WordPress.com blog, you can give it a spin with a single click (look in the 3-column designs). If you run a WP install on your site, stay tuned. I hope they’ll offer it up as a download.
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Please Note: 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.
See my other WP themes: DePo Clean and DePo Skinny.