MonoShade Premium Multi-Color Wordpress Theme

Latest Version 1.1.7
Price From $15

MonoShade is my first premium (paid) wordpress theme. It is a wordpress theme with advanced features and jQuery effects. It has 4 types of blog index styles, 5 types of fonts, 5 types of animation styles for featured gallery, auto thumbnail generation, 5 ready-made adsense positions and more. All can be controlled via the powerful theme options page.

Also, it can have unlimited colour schemes (it has 8 colour schemes currently). As soon as I make the colour schemes avaiable for download, you can install them easily by copy and paste the files.

Discussions

For pre-sale questions, you can ask it at pre-sale forum.
You can discuss about this theme (not theme support) at the wordpress discussion forum or the blog.

Theme Support

If you have problem while using the theme, free support is available at the MonoShade Support Forum.

Add Feature / Tweak

If you need some tweaking or want to add features, you can contact me.
*Depending on the matter, you might need to buy me a cup of coffee or 3. Also, I do not guarantee I will take the job.

Extra Notes

• You need to install flickrRSS plugin to show your flickr photos at footer.

Key Features

• 4 types of blog index styles to be choosen from (see screenshots)
• 5 types of fonts and 2 font sizes to be choosen from
• Easy Colour Scheme Installation (just download files and paste them into theme folder)
• Beautifies your blog using Post Thumbnail and Post Image
• Automatic thumbnail generation
• Fully widgetized sidebar (all items can be arranged at widgets page).
• Animated Featured Gallery (5 types of animation styles, controllable time to switch image, etc)
• 5 ready-made google ads positions (you can choose to use built-in ads codes or you enter custom banner codes)
• Auto generate a nice "subscribe by email" form for feedburner users
• Animated drop-down menu for categories and pages navigation
• "More posts" & "Random posts" at blog index (for internal link building)
• Elegant & smooth effects powered by jQuery

All Features

• Easy Colour Scheme Installation (download the scheme files and paste into theme folder)
• xHTML valid
• Fixed-width
• Powerful Theme Options Page at Admin Panel
• Localisation / Translation-ready using po/mo files
• 5 types of fonts and 2 font sizes to be choosen from
• 4 types of blog index styles to be choosen from
• Beautify your blog using Post Thumbnail and Post Image
• Smooth mouseover effect using jQuery on Post Thumbnail & Post Images
• 2 methods to fit Post Thumbnails and Post Images : Resize to Fit & Zoom/crop to Fit
• Automatic thumbnail generation
• Animated Featured Gallery with 5 types of animation styles to be choosen from
• Totally controllable featured gallery : time to switch image and auto-run/manual-run.
• Toggle post with animation and uses cookie to remember the state (visible or invisible)
• "More Posts" & "Random Posts" at blog index (for internal link building)
• Animated drop-down menu for categories and pages navigation
• Category and page navigation bar can be disabled now
• You can hide all comment count and comment related area if your site doesn't need comment.
• Allow users to link to their own custom css file so that the customisation won't lost after upgrading to newer version
• Threaded comments with pagination (without plugin)
• Fully widgetized sidebar (all items can be arranged at widgets page).
• Tabbed Menu available at sidebar to show Category, Recent Posts and Comments
• About Us widget at sidebar
• Featured Youtube Video widget at sidebar
• Ready for Google Analytics, Adsense and Webmaster Tools
• Twitter Integration, display latest tweets at footer
• Flickr Integration at footer, share photos easily (needs flickrRSS plugin)
• Feedburner Integration (including showing off your feedcount and subscription form)
• 5 ready-made google ads positions (you can choose to use built-in ads codes or you enter custom banner codes)
• 3 widgetized section at sidebar to suit your needs (smaller list item looks better in smaller sidebar)
• Built-in plugins such as page navigation and related posts.
• Built-in social bookmark buttons to let your reader share your post easily
• Auto determine and display popular posts at footer
• Controllable number of 125x125 advertisement slots in sidebar (see screenshot)
• Built-in version checker (it notifies you when new version is released, can be disabled)
• Commented CSS files for easy editing
• You can choose to make all external links open in a new window (to keep visitors in your site)

Extra Features for Buyers

• Free updates to all future versions
• Free theme support at support forum
• You can request more social bookmark buttons for free at forum
• Include PSD file for header logo with instructions
• Extra Downloads section available for side downloads such as localisation files, colour schemes, etc.

Features in All ZENVERSE themes

• Widget-ready and gravatar-ready
• Tested and working properly in FireFox, IE6, Opera, Safari.
• Tested and working properly up to Wordpress 2.8.4

At the moment, we have 8 colour schemes for this theme, including the default colour scheme.
Click on the image for live full page view.

Showing 7 additional colour schemes

• Manual Excerpt for Magazine Style

  • If you are using magazine style, you need to include a manual excerpt for every post so that your blog looks better. You can add excerpt to your post while editing or adding new post. You can, however, leave your excerpt empty and wordpress will automatically make an excerpt for you, but all HTML tags would be auto removed.

• Customising the theme's css manually

  • If you want to customise the css, do not edit any css files directly. Instead, you should make all changes you need in a custom css file and link to it at the theme option page > Main Settings section > Custom User CSS
  • The custom css file will be loaded after everything, so your css can override the default css.
  • This is to save your time while doing manual upgrade.

• Colour Schemes

  • Since version 1.1.4, you can easily install colour scheme by copy and paste the colour scheme files into monoshade theme folder. After you paste the files, it will be available to choose at the theme options page. More colour scheme can be downloaded at the "Download" section as time goes by.
  • Not all colour schemes are included in the theme by default because it would take up a lot of space. You can check out the colour schemes available at Colour Schemes tab and download the colour scheme you want.

• Widgetized Sidebar

  • Since version 1.1.6, you can arrange every single thing in the sidebar including about us menu, subscribe to updates menu, adsense and more.
  • Therefore, after installation, please visit the widgets page, add them to the Big Sidebar and arrange them.
  • Please note that all theme widgets (widgets with name that ends with the word "monoshade") are only optimized for Big Sidebars only, not for Small Sidebars.
  • What is Big Sidebar and Small Sidebar?

• Post Image & Thumbnails

  • Post Thumbnail is a square image of size 125 x 125 pixels, shown at blog index, related posts and search (if enabled).
  • Post Thumbnail 2 is a rectangle image of size 290 x 100 pixels, shown at blog index (only if you choose "two-column magazine with rectangle thumbnail" at theme options page).
  • To beautify your blog, try to include a post thumbnail for every post.
  • Post Image is an image of size 550 x 190 pixels, shown at single post and page, below the post title.
  • Post Thumbnail 2 has same ratio as the Post Image so you can use the same image for both.
  • Post Thumbnail and Post Thumbnail 2 can be auto generated if you enabled "auto thumbnail generation" and left the input empty. (learn more at "All about Auto Thumbnail Generation" below.

• Adding Post Image & Thumbnails To Your Posts

  • When you create/edit a blog post, scroll down to the container called "MonoShade Post Thumbnail & Post Image".
  • Upload your image and paste the direct URL into the input.
  • You don't have to create a custom field yourself because this theme has a built-in area for you to enter the image URL.

• All about Auto Thumbnail Generation

  • Thumbnails can be auto generated for Post Thumbnail and Post Thumbnail 2.
  • By default, you need to manually enter the direct URL to image in the field while editing/creating posts.
  • If the field is left empty, and you enabled auto thumbnail, the first image in your blog post will be cropped and used as thumbnail. If your post does not have an image, it displays a default thumbnail.
  • If the field is left empty, and you did not enable auto thumbnail, it displays a default thumbnail.
  • Of course, the default thumbnail can be changed at theme option page.
  • NOTE: By default, for the auto thumbnail generation to work, your first image must be hosted in your own website. This is to prevent others from using your server bandwidth.

• "Your first image must be hosted in your own website"? Why and What does that mean?

  • If the thumbnail generator script can access images from another website, it means anyone can use your server resource to create thumbnails for themselves. To prevent that, the default thumbnail generator script disallow loading image from another website.
  • However, if you don't care about that, you can download the TimThumb (edited) at the "Extra Download" section so that you can then generate thumbnail using images hosted on another website.
  • It means that if your site is http://mysite.com, the images URL must start with "http://mysite.com/".
  • For example, this is valid : http://mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/thumb.jpg
  • This is invalid : http://othersite.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/thumb.jpg

• Fitting Thumbnail

  • Since version 1.1.4, you can choose a method to fit the thumbnail. You can either Resize to Fit or Zoom/Crop to Fit
  • This illustration explains the two method.
  • Resize to Fit uses CSS to stretch the image to the desired size.
  • Zoom/Crop to Fit uses TimThumb (thumbnail generator script) to zoom/crop to the desired size.
  • Therefore, if you choose Zoom/Crop to Fit, make sure that your thumbnail image is hosted in your website.
  • Zoom/Crop to Fit is recommended if your thumbnail ratio differs too much from the default thumbnail ratio.
  • NOTE: This setting does not apply to auto thumbnail generation since the thumbnail is always zoomed/cropped in the process of generation.
  • NOTE: This setting does not apply to Post Image.

• Featured Category

  • Generally, not all your featured posts are in the same category. Therefore, you can create a new category (In my case, I called it "Featured")
  • Visit the theme option page, select it as the "Featured Category".
  • Next, assign all featured posts to the "Featured" category.
  • Take a look at the Step-by-step guide to activate Featured Gallery.

• WP-PageNavi Plugin Conflict

  • Some users reported that WP-PageNavi plugin causes the sidebar and footer to be missing. If you have WP-PageNavi plugin installed, you should deactivate your WP-PageNavi plugin.

• Change Tabbed Menu's Animation Style and Speed

  • To change the animation settings, open monoshade/js/zentabs.js follow the instructions. I don't include this in the theme options page because I think it is not neccessary to cause extra load to your server.

• Google Ads Settings at Theme Options Page

  • Since version 1.1.2, you can choose to use built-in ads codes or your custom codes for all 5 positions.
  • If you ticked the checkbox, built-in ads codes will be used and anything in the textarea will be ignored.
  • If you did not tick the checkbox and the textarea is not empty, the codes in the textarea will be used.
  • If you did not tick the checkbox and the textarea is empty, nothing will be display.

• Category Navigation Bar

  • By default, at most 9 categories were loaded into the navigation bar. This is to avoid overflow if you have too many categories.
  • If you need to display more than 9 categories or control which category to show, you can choose at the theme options page by ticking them.

• Localisation

  • A POT template file is included with the theme inside /languages/ folder. With softwares like PoEdit, you can open the POT file and translate the theme into your language. When you're done with the translation, save the mo/po files inside /languages/ folder.
  • All po/mo filenames must begin with the word monoshade, followed by a dash, the language code, an underscore and the country code. Eg: monoshade-en_GB.po
  • Other resources you might need : Installing WordPress in your language, List of language codes, List of country codes.

Version 1.1.7

• You can now disable thumbnails in related post area regardless of thumbnail settings
• Now allows swapping the position of category and page navigation menu
• You can now choose to resize or zoom/crop to fit POST IMAGES (like post thumbnails)
• Files Changes: 4 files (download the changeset at "Download" section - 5 mins upgrade)

Version 1.1.6

• Fully widgetized sidebar (please re-arrange your widgets upon install or upgrade to this version)
• Smileys now have transparent background
• No. of popular posts can be controlled now
• 4th widgetized section : "Big Sidebar 2" has been added to the most bottom of sidebar
• Comment area can be disabled now
• Comment rss link can be hide/disabled now
• Fixed a bug in the rss link at footer
• Files Changes: 6 files (download the changeset at "Download" section - 5 mins upgrade)

Version 1.1.5

• Thumbnail generator now works even PECL FileInfo is not supported by your server
• Colour schemes now have their own version and changelog.txt (if newer version is introduced)
• Number of related posts can be controlled now
• Added css codes for table in post content
• Category and page navigation bar can be disabled now
• Added facebook button to sidebar and footer
• Now allow users to link to their own custom css file so that the changes/customisation won't lost after upgrading to newer version
• Files Changes: 5 files (download the changeset at "Download" section - 10 mins upgrade)
• If you are upgrading from version 1.1.4 and you edited blue or red colour scheme's css, you have to redo the changes manually on the latest version 1.0.1 of the colour scheme (which you can download at the "download" tab)
• 3 new images added for both blue and red colour schemes. If you follow the changeset, it should cover that.

Version 1.1.4

• Added Easy Colour Scheme Installation feature (download the scheme files and paste into colourschemes/ folder)
• 2 colour schemes added (blue and red)
• xHTML valid
• Added Featured Youtube Video sidebar widget (controllable at theme option)
• You can now add more sidebar 125x125 advertisement blocks easily. (see screenshot)
• Added two method to fit the thumbnails (see screenshot)
• You can now choose type of ads (text or image) for all 5 google ads positions
• You can now change the header google ads to show the latest tweet by entering "tweet" as the custom value
• Updated auto thumbnail generator file : timthumb.php
• For better view, you can now toggle the block of options at theme options page.
• At theme options page, a submit button is added at the bottom of each block of options.
• Style.css Changes: download the changeset at "Download" section
• Files Changes: 13 files (download the changeset at "Download" section)

Version 1.1.3

• More words ready for localisation (missed some in previous version)
• Auto thumbnail (original version) now displays a default image if your first image is hosted on other sites.
• Search page and category page can have their own style now. (choose from the 4 styles similar to blog index styles)
• You can now hide post image (if any) in their own page/post by creating a custom field of name "hidepostimage" and give it a value of "1".
• Fixed "new version notification" problem due to the famous cross-site ajax problem. Changed the method to determine new version.
• Better page title in terms of SEO
• Style.css changes : none
• Changed Files : Download the changed files at "Download" section

Version 1.1.2

• Added version checker at theme options page (it notifies you when new version is released). You can hide the notification at theme option page.
• Auto thumbnail generation with caching to save bandwidth
• Toggle Posts button can be disabled now, and only shown when javascript is enabled
• Now we uses cookie to remember the state of Toggle Posts (visible or invisible)
• Whole new jQuery gallery with 5 animation styles, you can control time to switch image and disable auto run.
• You can now hide all comment count (enable this at theme option page)
• Extra css files for different fonts and font size now combined and controlled by 1 single file
• "Random Posts" and "More Posts" menu will not be shown if there is no post
• You can now choose to use built-in ads codes or custom codes (your banner codes) in all 5 google ads positions.
• A minor display bug fixed.
• Now support threaded comments with pagination (without plugin)
• Category and Search page now follow your "Blog Index Style" setting.
• Changed Files : Almost all files due to localisation.
• Style.css Changes : Not much, you can download the list of changes at "Download" section.

Version 1.1.1

• Fixed some HTML tags
• Added link to theme support at theme option page
• Added jQuery.noConflict() so that your site works even if you use other libraries such as mootools

Version 1.1

• Added 1 new blog index style : two column magazine with rectangle thumbnail
• Added "More posts" & "Random posts" at blog index (for internal link building)
• Animated category and page dropdown menu
• Animated Toggle Post View
• Added Text-shadows to some titles
• Fixed some minor bugs

Version 1.0

• First Version of MonoShade

For normal purchase, this theme costs only $15.
You are allowed to remove the "designed by zenverse" by paying an extra $5.

NOTE : You are not allowed to resell the theme at anywhere.

Purchase Now via PayPal

To purchase this theme, fill in the form with your forum username before pressing the buy button. Please register at the forum if you do not have an account. As soon as I am online, I will add the theme to your account so that you can download it at this page. You can send me an email to double confirm.

I am sorry that this process is not instant. I will do some research and make the process automatic in the future.