When ModernThemes launched its site with a dozen free WordPress themes last year, founders Robbie Grabowski and Mike Driscoll committed to getting all of their themes listed on WordPress.org following positive feedback from the community. At that time many of their themes had issues that would preclude them from being hosted in the official directory.
The team has been hard at work bringing their themes up to snuff and now have two that have passed the WordPress Theme Review Team’s guidelines. Gridsby, a theme for photographers, is ModernTheme’s latest release.
The theme takes your photographs and arranges them in a mobile-friendly Masonry.js-powered grid on the homepage, followed by optional widget areas and a blog section. Site navigation is hidden behind a slide-out panel.
Gridsby was created to be flexible and easy for users to personalize. The theme includes a impressive array of customization options available in the native customizer, including:
- Upload a logo to replace the default site name and description in the header
- Upload your site favicon and Apple Icons
- Add social media links and customize icon color and hover color
- Hide gallery and/or blog section on the homepage
- Display your posts in ascending or descending order
- Customize View More button text and gallery button URL
- Show/hide homepage widgets, set number of columns and customize widgets background and button text
- Add footer contact info
- Customize typography with a selection of Google fonts
- Customize colors for text, links, blockquotes, accents, navigation, etc.
- Set blog excerpt length and Read More text
- Add a background image
Due to its unusually long list of customization options, Gridsby authors created documentation, including tutorial videos for setting up its various features. The documentation is easily accessible from the WordPress admin under the Appearance menu:
Gridsby works nicely as a theme for displaying photographs but could easily be tailored to work as a portfolio or similar visual showcase. I would not advise using this theme unless you are committed to procuring large images for the galleries and blog post featured images. Check out a live demo to see the theme in action, and you’ll get an idea of how reliant it is on large images in posts.
If you’re looking for a new way to showcase your work, Gridsby is an excellent option that also allows you to maintain a blog alongside your images. Download it for free from WordPress.org.