Elegant Photography WordPress Theme
Published in WordPress ThemesThis free theme allows photographers to create a beautiful portfolio/blog. The theme design is stylish without overpowering your photos, which deserve to have the visitor’s attention.
Theme features include:
- 3 color schemes (white, gray, dark gray)
- Customizable jQuery slideshow on the homepage
- Portfolio page template
- Wide column page template
- Customizable photo galleries
- Upload your own logo, or just display the site title in text
- Widget-ready sidebar
If you are looking for a free WordPress theme that allows you to showcase your photos and blog posts, this is a great option. The homepage includes a customizable slider. You can easily add or remove photos in the slider, link photos to any page of your choice, and set the transition effect between slides. The lower area of the homepage showcases 4 recent blog posts, including a featured image thumbnail from each post.
On blog posts you can enter a featured image that will be displayed at the top of the page. Those featured images are used to automatically create the thumbnails for the homepage. Pages, in addition to posts, can also have featured images. A custom page template is also included for pages that you want to be one-column (wide with no sidebar).
You can create as many custom galleries as you want for showing off your photos. The galleries show thumbnails of the photos and a lightbox effect is used when images are clicked.
WordPress’s custom navigation menu is used, so you have full control over the links that are included in your main navigation menu (which also supports drop downs). The sidebar is widget-ready so you’ll also have control over the sidebar contents.
This theme was designed by Vandelay Design and coded by our friends at PSD to HTML Experts. If you need PSD to HTML coding or PSD to WordPress coding, check out what they have to offer.
Scroll down to see the alternate color schemes.
Documentation for the theme is available here.
View the theme demo | Download for free
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Screenshots:
Portfolio page
Blog post
Gray color scheme
Dark color scheme
202 Responses
Really loved this until I installed it and realised its not responsive. Such a shame as looks great and its perfect for my photography site, stevedurrphotography.com
Hi Steve,
It’s possible that we will release some free responsive themes in the future and/or convert existing themes like this one to be responsive. We just recently started distributing free themes to the masses. Prior to that all of our work with WordPress themes has been designing and developing custom themes for specific clients or for our own websites. Releasing themes to be used by a larger audience when you have to be prepared for them to be used in a lot of different scenarios and different hosting situations adds a lot of new wrinkles as compared to developing themes when you know the specific environment in which it will be used. We wanted to get comfortable creating themes for distribution and work our way up to responsive themes, since the responsive themes will involve more time effort and expense on our part. Personally, I’d rather approach it that way than rush into it and have our initial themes with a lot of bugs and issues.
Clean and simple theme. I like it! Great job!
set up theme on my install of wordpress on localhost ..followed pdf on setting up slides for homepage slideshow i am not getting slideshow ….is there a short code or something to that affect that would work…i am all out of ideas
Thank you for your time
figured prob out …did not have my home page template to home
Hi Steven,
I really like the theme and the the simplicity of use with the pdf. instructions, great work. I have just started a digital publishing course (so this is all new to me) and I’m am having some problems getting the galleries to be visible once i have added them to the menu according to the instructions. I uploaded an image, then i created the gallery and added the image to the gallery, then I added the gallery to the header menu. But when i click on the gallery in the menu I get the “404Not Found” error. Do you have any idea how i can resolve this issue? Like I said I am new to all this so it is possibly something i have done wrong but i can’t figure out what. Thans in advance,
Ashton
Ashton,
I’m sending you an email about the issue but I think it may be related to permalink settings. Hopefully we can get it straightened out.
Steven,
issue is resolved now. It was indeed a problem in permalink settings, had to change it from “post name” to “month and name”. Seems to be working now.
Thanks, Ashton
I love the theme, everything seems to work well except one thing. I am trying to allow comments (discussion) to be available on a page, I have activated ‘discussion’ in the dashboard for that page but it does not show on the page, is it something your theme disables from showing on pages? Or am I doing something wrong on wordpress?
Thanks
Rachel
Rachel,
I don’t think the theme is coded to allow comments on pages. I can look into that.
Rachel,
I’m sending you an email with instructions for doing this.
Hi, thanks for the wonderful theme and I really love the simplicity of the blog design.
awesome work.
I have a question, regards to the blog post.
As per your instruction, for new post, I can set a featured image and it should be displayed at 940px on the post header. IT will be also a thumbnail on the home page where the slideshow will be.
I didn’t get the featured image displayed in the blog post but I do have the thumbnail in the home page. Can I ask is there some error in code for my case?
thanks for the help to getting this work.
appreciate it.
Hi Marilyn,
Yes, the featured images should be showing at the top of blog posts. If you send me your WordPress login info (to info@vandelaydesign.com) I will login and take a look at it.
Hi Steven, I’ve emailed to you. Thanks.
Hi Marilyn,
Thanks for sending the login info. I believe the problem is being caused by the fact that your version of WordPress (3.0) is 2 years old. I’d recommend upgrading WordPress to the most recent version (currently 3.4.1) and I think the featured image issue will be resolved.
This is such a nice theme. Thank you for creating it. I do need some help concerning the galleries. I got to the part where we create the Header menu. For some reason, it never shows me the galleries after adding the pages (even though they were created as instructed in the PDF). Would also like to know how to allow comment as mentioned above by Rachel.
Christina,
If I am understanding your issue correctly, you are not seeing the option to add your created galleries to the navigation menu, correct? From the page where you are setting up your menu, look to the top right of the screen and click on “screen options”. Check the box for “gallery” and then scroll down and you should see your galleries listed so you can add them to the menu.
For the comments on pages you’ll need to add the comments code to the page.php file. You’ll need to go to Appearances > Editor and select page.php. Find the code
and on the next line enter the code
and the pages will be able to have comments as well. You can then control whether you want to pages to have comments or not through the editor by turning comments on or off per page.
Thank you so much! Everything is working great!
Hi, I found small problem and I do not know how to fix it. I have photo in the gallery, but when I click on it It does not increase to a large size. Only runs loading. Could you please help how fix that?
Softa,
I looked at your site and it looks like you only have one photo uploaded so far. Can you try a few others and see if it happens with all of them or just this one? You may also want to delete the existing photo and try uploading it again. Another thing you could try is reducing the size of the original photo before uploading. I’m not sure how large your file is, but it’s possible that the size is causing a problem with not being able to load.
Brilliant design, and even more brilliant tutorial in the PDF-file! I have been looking for a simple, easy to understand, template for wordpress that doesnt require any knowledge of code, programming etc. This is it folks! If I can configure it the way I want it, so can anyone!
Thank you verk much!
And make sure you check out my photographer page at http://www.davidkennberg.com!
Cheers!
David
Thanks David! I’m glad to hear the documentation was helpful.
Hi StevenI tried upload 3 more photos, but unfortunately the same result. Photos have a resolution of 1024×682 px and around 200kB. For my blog I use NextGen Gallery with JW Image Rotator Version 3.17. From created galleries I link photos to individual galleries like Sport . This combination can cause a problem? I tried to upload individual photos directly via the Add New Photograph, but my photo is not displayed.
Love the theme and am working on it on my local host. However, when I add a photo the the slide, it first appears resized and looks good but within a second it change to the large full size version instead. What am i doing wrong? Thanks,
Lindsey
Hi Lindsey,
I haven’t seen the issue that you are having. Since your site is not online I can’t login and take a look at it, so I’m not sure how to help. Do you have a site online where you could test it? No other users have reported this issue, and it hasn’t showed up in our own testing, so I am wondering if it is some issue that the local host is having with the script.
Steven, thanks for your response. I’ll be working on getting it online soon so you can take a look (or maybe so that the problem will go away). Also, where might I go to edit the hover colors for the links (to change it from red)? I editted the main spots I would have expected to work within the stylesheet but to no avail.
Hi Lindsey,
If you go to the style.css file and do a find (ctrl + f in the browser) for “a:hover” you’ll find all of the places in the stylesheet that provide styling for links on hover. The first one is for the navigation menu. Also, the red color that is used is #e22d2d, so if you do a find for that you can replace it with another color every place that you find #e22d2d used in the stylesheet.
are these themes convertible into tumblr? I have a photo blog type that runs using tumblr and I’m wondering if I can use some of the themes listed here.
Sam,
No, they are just WordPress themes.
Hi Steve, would you mind taking a look at the site i’m working on? I have editted the hover color links, or any style with the hex code e22d2d in the style sheet, yet I am still coming up with red link and hover links. Let me know what you think the problem might be! thanks, Lindsey
Lindsey,
Sorry, in my previous comment I forgot that this theme has multiple color schemes. So you’ll need to edit the CSS file for the light color scheme. Within the theme folder you’ll see a “styles” folder. Open light.css and this is where you will see #E22D2D.
I searched through a LOT of themes and decided this one offered overall the things for which I wanted. Simple, clean, the ability to create galleries for my various images. However, I’m flying blind and am totally lost here. Maybe it’s because I’m so tired I;m not thinking straight, but I cannot find the PDF instructions of which other comments speak. Thus I’m just poking around not knowing what the hell I’m doing and making a mess. I feel like deleting and starting from scratch. :/ Tomorrow.
But thank you for the free theme. I’m sure it’s very good.
Jim,
The instructions were moved from PDF format to a regular page. The link is right above the download link where it says “Documentation for the theme is available here.”
Steve. Thank you for the information. Now that I’m more rested, I will give it another shot.
Hello. I have a question, but I think it may have more to do with my version than this theme; regardless, I am confused.
So when I migrated from my .com to a .org, none of my photos migrated into my blog posts; however, they were retained in my media gallery.
When I attach the photos to a blog post, they now get posted as thumbnails, and not just scaled down full-size pictures, as they were posted before on my .com.
They all seem to do this, except for my very first blog post. When I attached the photos, they attached as full-size, not thumbs (like they used to be).
Is this something you can help me with? I am not sure what version I was using before, but I now have the latest. Also, I made a thread at wp.org, but have gotten no answers.
Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks,
Nick
BTW, the theme is gorgeous and I can’t wait to utilize its potential.
Hi Nick,
I’m sorry but I don’t have any answers for you. I’m not sure exactly what the problem or solution would be. When you enter a photo into a post/page you can choose which size to display it, but I’m not sure what would cause full size photos to be shown as thumbnails when the site is moved.
Hi Steven
I’ve just downloaded your Elegant theme and can’t wait to get started. I think there’s a step I’ve missed as I can’t make the slideshow come up on the home page?
I’ve added in several images which are published, is there another step to this?
Thanks
Miranda
Sorted,
cheers
Miranda
Hi Miranda,
Sounds like you got the issue fixed but I am going to respond just in case someone else has the same issue and is reading through the comments. You need to create a page called “Home” (actually you can call it something else if you prefer) and set it to use the “Home” template. Instructions for doing that are found in the theme documentation. Then you also need to set it to show your home page as the front page. Instructions for that are also in the documentation.
Hi Steve,
My website is up and running now and I am pleased. I do have a couple of questions however. On my gallery “thumbnails” the images are large and often show just the middle of the image instead of the whole thing which might turn off a viewer from clicking on it to see the light box full size version. I noticed this on one of the above mentioned websites in a comment (http://www.davidkennberg.com). Is there a way to show the whole image in the “thumbnails” only smaller and yet retain the larger image in the light box mode?
Also I notice images, in the portrait orientation, will sometime have overlap in the title and the numbering i.e. 1 of “Title.” Seems to be an issue of the lesser amount of space in the portrait orientation and the length of the title, but I was wondering if there was a fix for that other than shortening the title?
Any insight would be appreciated.
Jim
Hi, Seven:
Thanks for writing back anyhow. Somebody answered my question inadvertently on wp.org. So, for anyone struggling with having their photos only showing as a thumb even if they choose “full size,” here is the remedy:
Go into your media library (you can do it within the media on a specific post,too), click edit on one of the images, click “edit image”, click and drag your cursor over the image to make a selection & drag the corners to make the selection as big as the image, under “apply changes to:” select ‘thumbnail’, click the crop button, then update media.
Jim,
The script that generates the thumbnails takes the middle portion of the images, as you have noted. The thumbnails are all equal size and form a grid on the gallery pages, which means that the thumnbnails can’t show the full image since it would cause distortion or mis-alignment (such as portrait next to landscape). WordPress does have a basic image editor, but the thumbnails here are generated by a script that is not related to the WordPress thumbnail function. So my answer is, at this point I don’t think there is anything that can be done from the WP dashboard to change the thumbnails that are auto generated. We can look into the possibility for a future theme update, but I don’t know if it will happen or not.
Regarding the photo title issue, yes, the fix is to use a shorter title on those photos.
Steven,
That’s what I figured, but thought I’d ask. Thank you for the response.
Hi, Steven:
As I pointed out, I figured out a way to get full images out of my thumbnails. I think Jim should check out my post regarding how.
I do have another question for you though.
i changed the script in the singlepost.php file from:
to:
because i was having that issue with my photos only showing up as cropped thumbs in my posts (i now know i have to go and edit each one so the “thumb” can be the entire photo).
even after i changed ithe code back, it threw off the “set featured image” header photo. the photo now drops way below the header into my content (and i am using the theme’s recommended res and it was working fine before). Plus, now if i attach a new photo to an existing blog, it’s full-res and is unbearable to view in the post (they’re not even that large).
even if i go into the post’s media gallery to change to small, the image is still large.
I am considering a re-install at this point.
is the default code for your theme on singlepost.php, correct? I have not altered an other code anywhere else.
Thanks, Steven, and the theme is awesome.
from: the_post_thumbnail(‘post-thumbnail’)
to:
the_post_thumbnail(‘large’)
Nick,
Jim is not asking about the same issue (unless I am misunderstanding either you or him). He is trying to alter the thumbnails, not have images show up in full size instead of the thumbnail.
The WordPress comments section strips code, so I can’t see the code samples that you pasted in. You can email me at info@vandelaydesign.com with the code samples if you like.
You shouldn’t be having an issue with all photos entered in posts showing up as thumbnails. I’m not sure how you are entering them so I can’t really say what the issue is, but the theme should not be forcing you to go through that process every time you enter a photo.
The single post code should be fine. It is working on our demo, on all of our test cases, and no other users have reported the issue that you are having with the featured images. I think it has to do with the changes that you made, since you mentioned that it was working fine before the change.
Hi Steven thanks for the awesome theme, works well and easy. I have 2 questions however.
1.) On the home page how do I remove the tribal pattern next to the slideshow??
2.) When opening a created gallery there is always the word ‘photographs’ after the gallery name. How would I remove the ‘photographs’??
Thanks in advance.
Hi Alex,
It’s more of a swirl than a tribal pattern, but you would have to edit the CSS to remove it.
To remove the word “photographs” you will also have to edit one of the theme files. You can go to Appearance > Editor from the WP dashboard to edit the theme files. I don’t have the theme files in front of me at the moment, but I think you want to make the edit to the taxonomy.php file. You should find some code in an h2 tag with ‘Photographs’. If you remove that ‘Photographs’ it should remove the text from your gallery pages.
Thanks for the reply. I will take a look. Any idea what the ‘swirl’ line would be called, or the title of the ‘image’??
Thanks!
Hello, Its a great theme, really i like it and very much interested to use it, can i know one thing is this theme in under GPL licence or not, if yes can i change it accordingly what i want.
Thanks in advance.
Krish
Krish,
Yes, it is GPL licensed. If you download the theme and check the CSS file you can see the license.
Alex,
The swirl graphic is coded in the stylesheet of each color scheme. So if you are using the light color scheme the file that you’ll need to edit is styles/light.css. The graphic is light/bg_showcase.png.
Thanks it worked perfectly!!
Thanks Steve!
Finally found the right theme for me, simple and elegant, lets the photos do the talking.
I do have a question though,
is there a way to add social media icons to the footer rather then just some text?
Thanks for the great theme Steven.
Mrk,
You can edit the footer.php file to include icons if you’d prefer.
Thanks Steven. I’ll have a go.
Steven,
That’s worked a treat, and was very easy to do.
Hi Steven,
I love your theme, thanks for all the hard work. I’ve installed it and it’s all working fine. I was just wondering though, is there a way to display the caption in uploaded photos? There are fields for caption and description, but these are not displayed with the images in the slideshow or the lightbox.
Is there any easy way to get it to do this?
Hi JD,
You would have to edit the theme files to make that happen. The lightbox is powered by the Colorbox script. The slider on this theme is powered by Nivo. You’ll see folders for both of those within the js folder inside the theme’s main folder.
Hei Steven,
wonderful template. One of the best ever. really.
I’d like to show full size images instead of thumb into the “gallery”.
Is there any way to do it. If not possible may i set the thumb to be the same size of my homepage photo (“full size”).
That would be perfect.
Thanks a lot in advance.
Matt.
Hi Matt,
There is no easy way to do that without editing some code. However, what you may want to consider is just inserting photos into pages instead of using the gallery functionality. The main purpose of the galleries is to show multiple thumbnails and have full images open up when they are clicked. If you’re showing larger images it’s not that ideal. So instead of creating a gallery called “landscapes” and adding different photos to that gallery, you could create a page called “landscapes”, select the full-width page template and your page will have no sidebar and you’ll be able to enter images that are the full width of the page. You could then insert multiple photos on the page and they would be displayed vertically. Actually, you could first create a “portfolio” page and then create these other pages as sub-pages. And of course, with the WordPress menu you would just link to the pages instead of the galleries.
I’m not sure if that would work with what you have in mind, but from based on your question I think that may be the best solution.
Thanks Steven, I’ll try what you suggest, even If I’d prefer to edit same code (with some guidelines) and get galleries to work as I said.
Finally, I’ve an “easy one”. I can’t fine the line in the edit theme option, where to change to red link color of the navigation menu. it’s not navigation li, I just want to menu link to be grey as title (#999) instead of red.
Can you help me?
Thanks a lot again Steven.
Matt
Hi Matt,
I think you’ll want to change the CSS in the style folder. There are a few different color schemes and each one has it’s own CSS file. The theme has a folder called “styles” and inside that folder is a CSS file for each color scheme. Find the one for the color scheme that you are using and edit the code for the nav menu links on hover.
Hi Steven,
I really like your theme. Only one question: Is there any possibility to change resolution of the slider from default 940×580 to 940×627? Because I don´t want to crop my pictures.
Thank You very much for answer. Sorry for my English.
Hi Robert,
You would have to edit the code of the theme for the slider and CSS.
Hi Steven,
First – thank you so much for a wonderful theme! I love the layout of it. My questions are the following:
1. I have tried changing the hover color to AEAEAE over and over, however it still shows up at the original red. I went to Dashboard > Appearance > Editor > Style.css and edited it there as that was the only option I saw for Style. Am I missing something? In the same regard if I want to remove the side swirly decoration around the slideshow images, how do I do that? I cannot find it in the Style.css location.
2. I followed step-by-step the process for adding slides for the homepage slideshow, however only the last slide I upload shows. They do not all show up. I have tried repeating this process a few times, but the same thing happens each time- only the last image uploaded shows on the home page. Lastly, how do I center the images? They’re pulling left.
Thank you so much!
Hi June,
Inside the theme folder you will see a folder called “styles”. Each color schemes has it’s own stylesheet so you will need to change the link hover styling in the CSS file for the color scheme that you are using. The swirl graphic may also be in that stylesheet, I’m not sure off the top of my head and at the moment I don’t have access to the theme files. There are only a few images that are used in the CSS, so you should be able to find it by looking at all of the images in the main stylesheet or in the stylesheet of the particular color scheme.
The images aren’t really pulling left, the one you are uploading is not large enough to fill the space. The dimensions for the slider are listed in the theme documentation. I’m not sure about your issue with slides not showing up, I would have to look at the backend of the site. If you email your WordPress username and password to info@vandelaydesign.com I will login and take a look at it.
I just installed elegant photography theme and would like to use it strictly as an artist’s portfolio. I added a few photographs and two galleries. When I try to add the galleries to the menu, galleries do not show up on the menu page. Any idea why?
(I also noticed that my version allows only one menu, but you documentation shows two.)
thanks.
I figured out the problem above re: galleries not displaying, but now have another. The theme appends the word “photographs” to each of my gallery titles – “Drawings Photographs” “Paintings Photographs”. Since I am displaying artwork, is there any way to remove the word “Photographs”?
thanks
Julie,
You’ll need to edit one of the theme files. Go to Appearance > Editor and select the taxonomies.php file. Find this code:
and change it to:
You’re just removing the ‘Photographs’. Click “update file” and it will now just show the name of the gallery without “Photographs”.
Thanks so much for the quick response. Theme now works great for artist’s portfolio!
Hi, Steven:
I am currently using the Easy Rotator plugin (as I want a more blog-style photo site because of the amount of images I have) and have recently tried to use NexGen, but have an issue where my galleries won’t load to be inserted into a post.
Are you currently aware of anyone running WP 3.4.2 and NexGen 1.9.6 successfully?
Thanks,
Nick
Hi, Steven:
Please disregard my latest question.
The answer was changing code within “/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/admin/tinymce/window.php” due to my home url being different from site url.
Hi Steven,
I asked you one time for help with change of resolution of the slider from 940×580 to 940×627. I changed resolution in style.css(it changed frame around the picture). The other file I can’t find. Would you tell me please where exactly I have to make all changes? Thank You.
Robert,
The files for the slider are within the JS folder, and the Slider folder that is inside the JS folder.
Thank you for such a wonderful theme with absolutely incredible documentation! It made setting up and learning to use and take advantage of all this theme has to offer a lot easier. I was able to get the whole site up and running in no time at all because of it. Thank you a thousand times over for the incredible work you’ve put into this and offered to all of us to use.
I am having one minor issue and I’ve looked around in the code and different options in WordPress itself but haven’t been able to figure it out. On the main page of the site with the slider, the dates on the blog posts are showing up incorrect. Clicking on the link and viewing the actual blog post shows the correct date but the homepage is off. As far as I can tell, the incorrect dates might be coming from the upload date of the cover image or the metadata date of the cover image but I’m not even sure of that. It doesn’t seem like a common issue with this or any other theme but its got me stumped. Any idea on where that display date is coming from or how to go about fixing it?
Andrea,
Can you email me at info@vandelaydesign.com with the WordPress username and password? That way I can login and take a look.
What a joke; even a nuclear physic couldn’t make this thing work…because too many things don’t work to start with.
Where do I start?
1) Slides are useless because, no matter what you, you cannot integrate them;
2) Same goes for galleries;
3) In addition, even if you load an image, your index page will never look like show in the screenshot, because slideshow doesn’t work.
I spent more than 2 hours on this, before giving up and deleting it to go back to my basic theme.
I have a problem,which I couldn’t solve.Is it possible to change the appearance of “Recent Blog Posts”? I mean,can i make this vertically? as it is before switching on the slider.
and one more question : How can i put a little picture to the post,which could appear in the category pages too,before entering “Read the full post”
Hi Sasha,
I’m not sure what you mean that you cannot “integrate” the slider or galleries. The theme documentation (link is right above the download link) goes through the process of setting up the theme, including the galleries and slideshow. Actually there are a lot of people using the theme. If you can be more specific about the issues that you’re having I can try to help, although it sounds like you’ve given up on the theme.
Majesty,
In order to change anything with the layout of the recent posts section of the homepage you would need to customize the theme. Same thing with the question about category pages, you would need to customize the theme.
Dear Steven,
First of all, Thank you soooo much for giving this theme. It’s neat, effective and very nice to showcase one’s work.
Next thing which is amazing is that you take time out to respond to users’ queries and comments.
Hats off to you.
Your documentation is more than enough to set up a site properly, given that it is read completely.
Thanks for the nice documentation and attention to detail.
I have only one query, which I have not been able to figure out yet. In the footer, if I want to give a link (e.g. to “Terms and Conditions” or “Privacy” etc), how do I put the link there?
I will create those pages, but how do I insert the link to them in the footer? Can you please help with it?
Regards,
Sukkantha
Hi Sukkantha,
Thanks for your feedback! Probably the best way to use links in the footer is to edit the footer.php file. You can remove this code:
And then enter your own code for the text and links that you want to use.
I’m having the same problem as Ashton. When I follow directions to upload a photograph I can’t see it, I just get a 404. I also get the 404 error when trying to use a gallery after following the instructions perfectly. Please help!
Hi Kami,
From looking at your site I think it may be caused by the permalink settings. Can you go to Settings > Permalinks and set it to “post name” and see if that works? If that doesn’t work you can email me (info@vandelaydesign.com) your WordPress username and password and I’ll login and take a look at it.
That fixed it! Thanks so much! By the way, awesome themes and I love the easy to follow step-by-step instructions.
Thanks Kami.
Where PDF?
Buyan,
The theme documentation used to be in PDF format, but it’s now on a page of the website. It’s linked above the download link, and you can access it here.
Thanks Steven.
I have been very pleased with this template! The documentation has been clear, and many of the additional questions I had were answered in the above posts. I am really pleased with the progress I have made in just a couple of hours. So THANK YOU!
I do have a couple of picky questions though…
1. Is there a way to remove “Recent Blog Posts” from the home page? Would love it to just be the slideshow with the menu bar above.
2. Is there a way to keep a page’s title in the menu bar, but not list it on the page itself? For example… my “About” page. I want the word “About” to stay in the menu bar, but would like for the text on the actual page to start with just my narrative.
Thanks in advance,
Kate
Hi Kate,
To remove the recent blog posts from the homepage you would need to edit the home page template file and delete the code that shows everything in the recent blog posts section.
For your second question, here is the easiest solution. Take the page.php file and create a new page template (WordPress allows you to create unlimited page templates). This template would need to include the code at the top of the page needed for page templates. The code of the actual page would be the same as the page.php template, but remove the code for the page title, I think it is in H2 tags.
The ode for the top of the page template is:
/*
Template Name: My Template
*/
?>
Hi Steven. Thank you for this wonderful Template. The problem I am having is that I am trying to set the background slider to homepage only, but when I go to make a default “home” page, there is no home template. How do i fix this? Thanks!
nevermind, got it working. I should have spent more time reading the documentation!
Hi, this is a great theme.. And I like those two stripe kind design placed beside slide show. My question is is there any way to add those two things to another pages as well as gallery pages. Please reply quickly.
vishwaje,
You would have to make customizations to the theme code in order to do that.
How to add custom background to gallery pages?
Vishwaje,
You would have to customize the theme. We try to provide support for issues related to setting up the theme, but we can’t provide support for customizations.
Hi Steven,
I tried to resolve this on my own, but couldn’t, and hence writing.
While setting up my site ( dasphotolook.com ), in Site Tagline I gave a text “Abode for Awesome Photos”. Then I setup my home page and blog page to start with, following the documentation.
The issue is, when someone visits the home page of the site, the tiles shows only as “Das Photo Look | “, which is incomplete. The tagline doesn’t show.
However when I go to the blog, it shows fine.
How can I show the Tagline in the “home page” also? Google has already indexed the pages, and the incomplete title is not looking good at the moment.
I searched through all the index.php pages, but couldn’t find anything which would rectify this.
Could you please help?
Regards,
Sukkantha
Hi Sukkantha,
You would have to customize the theme if you want the tagline to show up on the actual page as it is not included anywhere by default with this theme. For the title tag of the page you could either use an SEO plugin that allows you control over title tags, or you could edit the theme header file.
Thanks Steve. Which one is the theme header file?
Sukkantha,
header.php
Best theme ever.
Thank you very much.
Thanks Sunil!
Hi Steven,
Such a great theme, and right on time.
I worked everything out, but only 1 or 3 slides is showing, any idea as to why this is happening?
Very Best,
Jenell,
Can you email your WordPress username and password to info@vandelaydesign.com so I can login and take a look?
For a photographer the aesthetic look of a theme is everything. But unless you are strictly a landscape style photographer this theme is extremely limited. Because of the auto generated thumbnail script almost every portrait picture the heads of the models are cut off. I definitely can’t complain as this is a free theme but for me this limitation makes this theme completely unusable.
Hi Steven,
This is a great theme which I am using for my first wordpress site. At the moment I’m experimenting using Microsoft Webmatrix on my laptop and everything is fine. The only problem I am finding with this theme is that I would like to rearrange my photos within my galleries as you would traditionally be able to if you were to use the WordPress Gallery method.
Is there any way to rearrange photos within the galleries after uploading the photos rather than the pictures being shown in order of upload date.
Thanks once again
Is there a way to turn off the featured image displayed in posts?
Many thanks
Emma,
You could just not enter a featured image, but the featured image is used on the homepage for the display of recent blog posts, so you would need to customize the theme otherwise the lower section of the homepage would look pretty awkward without those featured image thumbnails.
Hi Hassan,
The way to re-arrange photos would be to change the date of publication to change the order.
Hello, Steven,
I have two problems using your theme, please be kind and try to help me.
I am an architect and I am using your theme to my portofolio site.
I want to put gallery as post under my categories. I don’t like that under every post i’ve made, appears Leave a comment and all the fields. How can I to remove it. I’ve try to remove from show options under the posts, doesn’t work i think is from the theme.
Another problem is how to remove the word “Posts tagged as…” and “Read full post” word and link is a little annoying for me. Cand you help me to remove them?
By the way your work is great, thanks a lot for sharing everything with us!
Best regards, and i am waiting your answer!
Hello Steven, i’ve sent you some questions and i asked nicely to help me.
Apparently they didn’t reach to you because i can see my post here.
I want to remove comments from under the posts and the text Posts tagged as “……” and the text “Read the full post”.
Thank you for your help!
BlueWhisp,
Yes, you did ask for help and I did receive your comment. However, you left your first comment on a Sunday evening and it is now 9:30 AM (my time) Monday morning. So there has only been 1.5 business hours since your original comment. I do try to support our free themes as much as possible, but even if you were dealing with a premium theme that you purchased from some theme shop you would likely have to wait about 24 hours for a support response. In this case you are dealing with a free theme and you are also asking for help with a customization of the theme rather than a basic issue of the theme not working as it should. The support that I can provide for theme customizations is very limited because it’s simply not possible to help everyone customize the theme however they want, especially considering that we are not charging anything for the theme.
If you want to remove the info about comments from the posts you can edit the single.php file of the theme. You would need to remove this code:
For your other question I am assuming you are asking about the category template. Those changes could be made to the archive.php file. You would remove the code that you don’t want.
Hello! I would like to change the red highlighting color. I already “Ctrl Found” all the red font and changed it to the color I want but the blog post title and the menu still hover red. I searched through the script to find any more red font but there is none. Help please?
Thank you very much Steven. I appreciate your work and help!
I am sorry if I was to insistent.
About the words that i want to remove they appear above the post and under the post. (eg Posts tagged as “Interior Design” and under the post is a link with the text “Read the full post”). If you can be a little more specific what to remove from Archive.php I would be grateful. Just tell me where to search.
That about all.
Keep on the good work!
I resolved the problem.
Is everything OK.
I managed to find what to remove.
Thanks a lot.
Only the best for you!
And again sorry if i was to insisitent and annoying!
Hi Kayla,
Did you make the changes in the style.css file? Since the theme has multiple color schemes there is also another style sheet for each color scheme, so you may need to make changes in that file. You can find it in the “styles” folder within the theme.
Thanks for the reply! Yes I just made the changes through style.css. I don’t have any more red html coding anywhere in the script so I’m confused now.
Hi Kayla,
The theme will be using 2 CSS files, depending on which color scheme is active. The will be one CSS file for the specific color scheme (in the styles folder) and the main CSS file, style.css, will always be active. So any changes/customizations to styling that need to be made will be in one of those two files.
I’m sorry Steven, I don’t have any thing in the styles folder. I can’t see what you are telling me to change.
Ok got it!! I deleted the theme, edited the zip file (on my computer) and reinstalled it again. Sorry for being so much trouble. I’ve never done anything like this before.
Hi Steven , loving this theme but I can not for the life of me change that red text! I have looked at the css stele sheets and deleted all the red and added #333 instead but it just wont change. any ideas? I can’t find any option to select different style sheets and have change the theme colour to see if that would change it but cant do it. Please help
Thankyou
Kerry
Hi Kerry,
You have to make a change to the stylesheet of the specific color scheme that you are using. Inside the theme you’ll find a “styles” folder that contains those CSS files. You’ll need to edit them outside of the WP dashboard editor because it won’t let you open other folders. So you can edit it in any code editor and upload the file by FTP.
Hi,
Somehow my thumbnails seem to have different sizes which messes up the theme (example: http://kvanaalten.nl/gallery/dieren/ ), how can I fix this?
Hi Kimberly,
If you send your WordPress username and password to info@vandelaydesign.com I will login and take a look.
Hi Steven,
I’m trying to edit a couple of things within the template. You’ve provided instructions above, and they make sense to me…. except that I can’t find the folder to start with!
How do I get to the styles folder to where I can see light.css? It must be simple, but I’m missing something!
I’ve been going in under Appearance, Editor, and then Stylesheet at the bottom.
Grateful for your help!
kate
Kate,
You can access it by FTP or from cPanel.
Guys! Terrific job with this theme, it was exactly what I needed for a fashion design site I’m working on! Thank you very much!
I do have a question tho, around the comments someone asked how do you remove the “recent blog posts” on the homepage and you said that it may be edited in the template file but I can’t seem to locate the exact text, can you be more specific about it?
Thanx in advance!
Pipé,
It’s in the home template file. If you run a “find” for the words “recent blog posts” you’ll find that line of code.
Hi Steven,
Is the home page slide show limited to a maximum of nine images? I have loaded thirteen and the first four do not show.
Hi Roger,
I don’t believe there is a limit on the number of slides. I’ve never added that many slides in testing, and I wouldn’t recommend using that many because it will take up a lot of resources and could slow down the page load time, but I have seen some users that have added more than 10 slides and it shows them all.
Hi,
I downloaded a widget to to place some social icons to the footer. I added this code to the footer.php:
I would like to align the social icons so they are on the same row as the footer text and on the right hand side of the footer.
Would you be able to help me on this?
Thanks
Hi Pat,
I’m sorry, our support is limited to getting the theme up and working as it is.
Hi Steven,
First off thank you for your hard work and time in this theme. Just a quick question. I wasn’t sure if it was addressed earlier. But I’d like to show a page underneath the slideshow on the home page, instead of recent posts. Is there an easy fix to this?
I’ve looked through the php but just got confused.
-Nic
Hi Nic,
You would have to customize the theme to do this, there is no easy fix from within the WP dashboard.
Hi Steven,
Great theme and excellent support, especially for a free theme! I’m having same problem as Lindsey. When the slideshow first starts the images are sized correctly but quickly revert to full size.
Cheers,
Rab
Hi Steven,
Quick Update…I’ve added more slides to see if I can find a pattern and I can’t. Some slides are original size, not resized for slideshow. Some slides are resized and some slides have disappeared (they showed up originally but as I added slides they have since disappeared).
Looks like 9 slides max.
Hi Steven,
I have a custom menu item which links to a “shopping cart”. There is no option in the menu settings to open the link in a new tab or window. Can you point me to which file I need to edit?
Thanks. Roger.
Hi Roger,
The code for the navigation menu is in the header.php file.
Hi Rob,
I’m looking at your site and I don’t see any slides that are full size and not being re-sized for the slider. I do see a few photos that are too small and not filling up the slider. The dimensions needed are listed in the documentation. I recommend re-sizing and cropping your photos to those exact dimensions before uploading.
Hi,
I love love this theme. Previously I had one that i bought, and for last month it gave me huge headaches, and this one is so simple and looks great.
I have couple questions:
What exactly I should delete to get rid of swirls? I tried different variations, and it doesn’t work.
And how i can make photos appear in blog roll? Now when i go to blog, it’s only text, i would like to see an image there too. And when i go to certain blogpost, it doesn’t go full width, and featured image has weird empty white space on right.
Thank you
Hi Jurgita,
To get rid of the swirls you would need to edit the CSS file. To have photos show up on your blog index page you can use WordPress’s custom excerpt feature. You would cut and paste the code that you want to use for the excerpt, and if that code includes the code for an image it will show up.
Blog posts aren’t intended to be full-width. The header and featured image will be full width, but below that is the post content on the left and sidebar on the right. If your featured image is not full width it is because the image uploaded for the featured image is not large enough. Please see the documentation, it lists the minimum width that should be used for featured images.
The slider can not work , can you help me? Thanks
Javi,
If you need help with the slider you can email me at info@vandelaydesign.com. Please send the URL of your site, WordPress username, and WordPress password.
Hi,
I really like this theme, however, on my gallery page it will only allow me to have 6 photos per page. I would like to not have more then one page per gallery. How do i change this? Please respond ASAP
Kate,
In the WP dashboard go to Settings > Reading and change the number for “blog pages show at most”. It should be a multiple of 3 since the photos are shown in 3 columns.
Hi,
Is there a way to make the photograph itself within the gallery larger when you click on it then it currently is? I would like it to fill up more of the screen when I click on a photo in a gallery and am scrolling from picture to picture.
Hi Kate,
You would have to customize the theme to do that.
How would I do that?
Where is the PDF instruction file? I cannot find it anywhere. Thanks!
Hi Jen,
Some of the old comments reference a PDF documentation file, but that was moved to a regular page on our site. You can access the documentation from the link on this page right above the download link (here).
Hey Steven.
Another question arises. I’m trying to change the dropdown menu, instead of a vertical list, is it possible to put it horizontal?
For instance instead of (on the drop down items)
aaaaaaa
bbbbbbb
cccccccc
should display this:
aaaaaaa bbbbbbb ccccccc
As always thanks for your amazing work!
Hi Pipe,
That would require customizing the CSS of the theme.
Hi Steven,
I uploaded a blog post and put in a gallery within the post (through the ‘Add Media’ function in wordpress). I have two issues:
i. The gallery thumbnails show up fine, however they are aligned under the side bar (with Recent Posts…etc). I’ve tried changing it from 3 columns to 2 and I still have the same problem.
ii. When I click on the thumbnail, the lightbox comes up, though it shows in a window and also shows the ‘Recent Posts’ sidebar as well as a comment box – How do I make these go away so that its just the picture?
Thanks for the support!
Hi Jennifer,
The theme has it’s own gallery system and as a result it is not designed to use the basic WordPress gallery functionality. I don’t believe those items have been styled, which is why they are not showing up correctly.
Hi Steven,
First of all thanks for the geat template, it’s really something!
I’m currently trying to link the 4 bottom thumbnails on the homepage to particular pages, instead of recent posts. So I can use them simply as banners, linked to pages (not posts). I’m a noob and I have no idea where to even start. Could you help me with that, please?
Thanx in advance!
Hi Fleg,
I order to do that you would have to make significant changes to the code of the home page template. Our support is limited to helping people get the theme set up and working as it is intended to be used, and unfortunately we’re not able to help with customizations like this.
Hi Steven,
Thank you so much for this amazing template. One question, though. I can’t seem to get more than 6 images on the galleries page. Even when I edit the Reading settings to 9 or 12. Also, there is no Page 1, 2, 3…. at the bottom of the page for me to see following pages. Help? Thanks!
Lisa
I think I fixed it. If I have more than 9 images it will work. If I have under 9 it will only show 6.
Hello!
Is it possible to remove blog posts from bottom of home page but still have a separate blog page? So that home page just has the slide show and nothing else?
Thanks!!
Lisa,
It is possible by editing the code of the homepage template.
Thanks Steven,
Do I just remove everything below ?
Thanks,
Lisa
Whoops, that was supposed to say “Do I remove everything below the – post thumbnail tag.”
Thanks.
Steve. Thank you for the information. Now that I’m more rested, I will give it another shot.
Hello Steve,
First off I want to say what an excellent theme you have, and your documentation just blew me out of the water with how detailed and how much support you gave to us “noobs”. Thank you very much, it was a level of dedication that most wp theme designers/coders never do, and it is very much appreciated.
In fact, it seems to me that the theme that permeates from all the individuals who do not like your wp theme is that they did not read the documentation.
Anyway, the reason I am writing is because I am trying to determine how to show the full post in the blog roll instead of just the summary. I read through the documentation and couldn’t find anything (although I could have missed it). I figure I have to change something in the code, but don’t know what. If you could help me out I would really appreciate it
Thanks, and thank you for making such an awesome wp theme.
Sheilah,
Thanks! You’ll need to change a line of code in the index.php file. Find this code:
And change it to:
Lisa,
I don’t have the theme files in front of me at the moment, but you’ll want to find the code that calls the blog posts and remove that code. If you’re not familiar with WordPress theme coding or PHP I’d recommend that you get someone to do it for you, or at least create backups of the files before you make any changes.
Thanks Steven! I really appreciate your help and I agree with Sheilah, your documentation on setting up the theme is amazing. Much more than I’ve seen with any other theme. Thank you!!
Hey Steve,
Been using this them for a while now, love it and it’s perfect for my needs however I notice a small issue, When I create a blog post and it appears in the recent blog post section the date doesn’t correspond with the publish date. my latest post was today the 28th yet on the recent posts section it say 4th. The same applies to all the other recent posts, the date isn’t the same as the actual post date.
Best regards.
Mark.
Hi Mark,
Sounds like there is an issue with the PHP of the date code on the home template. From the WP dashboard go to Appearances > Editor and open the homepage template. Near the bottom of the file you should find this code:
If you see anything different (it may have an “N” instead of the “j”), change it to match the code above and save it.
Thanks Steven, it was as you suggested, there was an ‘n’ rather then a ‘j’ in the time function.
Hi Mark,
You may have downloaded an older version of the theme (I’m assuming you downloaded it a while ago). That issue was pointed out by another user and fixed a while ago on the current download. Anyway, glad that it fixed your issue.
Hi Steven,
Setup my online portfolio/blog with your theme a few months ago, thanks for making it available! I got all my gallerys up and running, 3 images to a line and theyve been that way for some months. Then in about the last week, theyre suddenly appearing with only 2 images to a line, which puts them off centre on the page. I havent changed anything in this time, was wondering if you had any ideas as to what might be causing this?
Chloe,
I am seeing them 3 in a line.
My mistake, browser, nothing to do with theme. Sorry about that.
Thanks for taking time to check it out. Sorted.
Hi there,
I have a photography website in which I am trying to embed an audio file to the home page so there is music playing while my images are scrolling. I have found several audio players that I know work, but I am unable to get them to play or even appear on the home page. PLEASE HELP! If there is any way to do this, I would really appreciate the instructions.
Thanks so much!
Hi Christine,
Our theme support is limited to helping users get the theme setup and working as it is intended. We can’t really help with customizations. Most likely you’ll need to add the code for the audio player to the home page template (the PHP file, not the Home page through the WP dashboard page editor).
Hi
Good theme and thank you. Im trying to verify my site with Google webmaster tools using the google analytics tracking code I pasted into the appropriate box in the theme options (and then save, wait for a period of time etc) however google does not appear to be able to find it when I do.
Whilst there are other ways to verify the site, I would still like analytics on it as well.
Can you help?
Hi Terry,
I can see that the Google Analytics code has been added to your site (by checking the source code in the browser), so the theme seems to be functioning properly. Obviously, I don’t have access to your Analytics account so I can’t verify that the code is correct, but there is Analytics code showing up on your site.
Hi Steven,
Thanks for your reply. I would love to give that a shot, but I know NOTHING about coding. If you could provide me with a snippet of exactly where that shortcode should be placed in the PHP file and how it should look, It would be so very much appreciated! I am not even sure which PHP file to put it in! lol…
Thanks Again!
Christine
Hi Steven,
Problem solved! I found some code elsewhere to implement the music player.
On a side note, I read through all of the comments as not to waste your time and re-ask something already asked, but I am trying to remove the swirls from the home page and put a custom image. However, I quite like them, and would like to save them in case I want to put them back in. In short:
1) How can I remove the swirls and save them for later?
2) What is the size of the swirls bg image so that I can make my own
3) Do I need to upload my custom bg image somewhere first, or just replace it with the swirls image directly in the themes folder?
Thanks so much for all your help. You are amazing for addressing the needs of the masses! It must get exhausting, but know it is so very much appreciated!
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Christine
Hi Christine,
To remove the swirls you just need to remove the CSS code that calls for that background image. I don’t know the size offhand, you would just need to open the file and check the size. If you are replacing the image with your own it may or may not work properly depending on the details of your image and it’s dimensions. If it is a background that will be applied around the slider like the swirls it may work just to save over the swirls image.
Hello,
Is there a way to reorder my slides so that they appear in a specific order?
Thanks in advance!
Jessica
Jessica,
They appear in order according to date/time of publication, so if you edit the date/time of publication you can change the order.
Hi Steven,
I just did that, but it did not change the order. The change I made is reflected in the “date published” column of the slides list, but the slideshow is still in the order it was before. Any other suggestions?
Jessica,
If you email your URL, WP username and password to info@vandelaydesign.com I will login and take a look at it.
Hi Steven,
Thanks for the response. I’ve been so busy and haven’t worked on my site for over a week but I’m getting back to it now.
Maybe I appeared to know more than I actually do about website design and css…lol. I’m learning as I go. In order to change the swirls to my own custom image. Where exactly would I go to do that, and do I need to use ftp to do that or do I change it directly into the theme? Hope that makes sense.
Thanks!
Also, I was wondering if you could tell me how to add social media icons somewhere on the home page. I’ll probably be making my own, but if you could let me know where in the theme I can place them to say……show in, above, or below the button bar. That would be great!
Christine
Hi Steven,
Christine again here. So I managed to figure out how and where to change the swirls bg, but for some reason when I upload my own bg, it doesn’t show up. It’s exactly the same size and everything, just a different design…saved as png, etc. Is there something I’m missing? Do I need to change something elsewhere as well?
Thanks
All worked out, however still can’t figure out how to get rid of the page titles on each page. A previous comment was made where you suggested to delete something in an tag regarding “photographs” in the taxonomy.php file, however there is nothing like that in the file. please help.
Thanks
I just uploaded all elegant themes to share services.
You can download here:
4shared.com/folder/4zkfCfvl/_online.html
mediafire.com/folder/b1v1qr7uiugkx/ElegantThemes
ge.tt/3FKCtRi
hotfile.com/dl/225615464/0ab1c67/All_Elegant_Themes.rar.html
Hi Steve,
Is there a way to widen the margins of my blog page so that the sidebar (with Categories, Meta, etc) doesn’t overlap my photos? I’d prefer not to resize the photos smaller, as I think they look awkward any smaller in my blog posts. Thanks in advance!
Jessica
Is there a possibility that i can have more then 9 thumbnails per gallery page ?
regards
Is there a possibility that i can have more then 9 thumbnails per gallery page ?
regards
so no answer ???
Hi , the theme works great , i have only one thing i want to modify and didn’t find it
Where can i resize the homepage slideshow so that it keeps the same width but half the height.
is there any way to make the homepage slider smaller in height ? and keep the same width
Hi Steven i like theme your share. good