Spent a few hours over my holiday break to work on a free WordPress theme for 2013 to go along side Min I wanted to take a break from building larger sites and themes and see what I could get away with NOT doing. Therefore Less only uses the index.php, style.css and a function.php file (to import the style and add a custom menu). Update I did add a /js folder with fitvids.js to give a better experience with video embeds.
I also wanted to sharpen my LESS CSS skills and try a few new things If you have used LESS for compiling your CSS you will find a /dev folder that you can play around with. I actually created a few variables to adjust the look of the theme without digging in to deep. This was not necessary.. and probably not worth my time… but it was either that or another game of Hero Academy.
Features
- single column layout
- large text (since we all know our mom’s are the only ones reading this)
- Images are full width.. always, so don’t try getting them to float.. and don’t try to upload itty bitty ones.
- pulls in the sites admin gravatar picture in the header
- no widget
- one custom menu in the header
- great for LoLcats
- Mobile ready
- Fast
Beautiful. Thank you! This might be just what I need as a basis for a new, minimal project.
You got it
Already downloaded and tested. Just going to tweak the fonts, menu and footer, and find it a home…
Download and tested, as well. I already used Min for my personal blog, and it probably works better for me than Less, but I will keep it here, just in case.
Thanx for sharing, Jared.
I’ll be using this. Wondering about RSS tho?
what do you mean? by using your sites’s url you will have a proper validated feed. you can see from the demo it validates fine
I plan to get this going on one of my blogs tomorrow!
For now though… Clash of Clans is a great iOS game
Hi Jared. Nice work. Thank you for this wonderful theme.
I’m using it after some minor tweaks and it works fine: light and fast.
I have a question: how to insert post tags on the category line, preserving the same design?
I’m sure that must be simple… you know…
Thanx, my wishes of a wonderful 2013 for you and everyone reading.
Hey Cjt!
thanks for checking it out, your site is looking great! i just added tags in the meta area of the post. Since, you already customized yours you can check out the code i added in and duplicate that to your site.
you can check out the commit here. specifically in the index.php on line 87-90 and 145-148. you will also have to add a few styles
Thanx Jared! My site looks great only because of your work…
This is it!
I was looking for the correct place on css to do it… Should I add them under ‘article-meta’, as ‘post-tags’, or do you think it will work only with the html under ‘meta clearfix’?
Sorry, I’m a pain, I know…
Thanks again!
yup! your on the right track, specifically lines 577-588 in the style.css file
Great! I’m going to use the code.
Thanx for everything.
Maybe one of these days I’ll make a child theme. If I do it, I’ll notify you.
Hasta!
of course! just fyi it’s always easier to do any customizations as a child theme, that way you can update the base theme and not loose any customizations
For some reason it’s not pulling my gravatar…
http://www.robertwilliamsdesign.com/blog/
I already ended up switching it out anyway, looks great btw – thanks for the awesome theme.
Thanks Jared, you’ve released this beauty at the exact time when I decided to jump into WP development. Kudos for the lovely minimalism that you’ve incorporated in it.
what about multisites? work fine?
yup, the demo is on a multisite install
Downright gorgeous.
Any chance of you offering the them mod you use of Standard Theme on this site, as a child theme any time soon, as you’ve mentioned previously? Would love that!
I love your theme! The problem with most minimal WordPress themes I’ve tried is that they are minimal, but also bland. Your theme has a perfect mix of minimalism, thoughtful design and just enough punch to stand out and not be forgettable. A bit of inspiration from Svtble perhaps?
My new blog will be up soon, and I’m pretty sure I’ll stick to your theme. Arial will have to go tough, it looks hideous at 18pt on low-dpi Windows machines.
P.S. Maybe you could add some sort of search? Without a widget-enabled area to add archive links, and no search bar whatsoever, it can be kinda hard for visitors to find and access older posts.
Thanks Topuz, love to see if you stick it out with it.
that’s funny about Arial, because thats 3 levels later in the font stack (“Helvetica Neue”, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif)…
you can easily add an archive to any of your categories in the menu
i’ll think about putting a search in there somewhere.
I really like your theme! I’ve set it up on a blog part of my site where I tire peoples’ eyes with my words about photography.
I am sure there’s an obvious answer, but I couldn’t find a 404 function or page.
All that happens is a page without content.
This will be a facepalm if I’m missing something obvious but if not, how may I do this?
Thanks Anothony! looks great btw.
looks like i didnt test the 404 functionality, it is built into the index.php after the else { } statement. let me check that out and push an update. Thanks for the feedback!
Love this theme, and I’m now using it on my poetry site. All I need to do is adjust the fonts a bit to set a more literary tone. Not being a designer, I’m open to suggestions : ) Thanks again.
your site looks great man
Thanks, Jared. Still loving the design after four months. During that period, I reverted to your default font styles. Seems obvious, I guess, but they seem like an integral part of your design. Curious, any plans for updates in the future?
Jared, how to I include my avatar pic into the less theme? I understand that I need to include me email address. Does it work with Gmail only? Thanks.
You need to link that email address with your gravatar account. If you don’t have one, get one
I love this!
Is there anyway to replace the gravatar pic with a custom one. It’s a nice feature, but not what I’m looking for.
Thanks.
thanks Nathan,
if you look in the index.php look for the
Great thanks!
on hover there opacity effect instead of underline, just curious why you designed like that.
never been a fan of underlined links
I think I could totally get into a discussion about underlined links. Dare I….
Bring it
http://branch.com/b/underlined-links/invite_link/EIR_xW9pa2p7_Q
Hi and thank you for sharing “Less”.
I was wondering what was the easiest way to add a date field near the post title.
Thank you.
Hi! thanks for a nice theme. I would love to use the css.less to cutomize my site. but when i change things in css.less nothing changes on my site. what is wrong? do i need to set it as primary css instead of style.css?
How to create a page with the archive?
you create a custom menu and use the category you want as the menu item. there is no archive page currently.. but feel free to make one and submit it to github
Hi Jared, I’m trying to get 404 page functionality, but struggling to get it working. Not used to working with Less css, and the simplicity of this theme is foxing me. Any tips would be most welcome. The usual WordPress method to add 404 page is failing me. Thanks!
I’m also looking to add an archive page, and wondering if I’m going to hit further stumbling blocks. I’m loving the simplicity of this theme, but finding it’s different format confusing, I’m so used to standard WordPress formats. Any pointers most welcome.
i’ll try to look into this when i have time. but all you need to do is use conditional statements in the index.php file http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags
Thanks Jared, I’ll look into it. I’ve not worked with Conditional Tags before, it’s always good to learn new stuff…
Jared, thanks for sharing the Less theme. I would like to use it for a photography-themed blog I am currently creating. Can you give advise which image size (width) I should use for optimal quality? Tnx.
hey Martin! yeah the max width as is would be 720px wide.. i would optimize it at that.
Hi Jared -
I did format one test picture now to 720 pix with and saved it with 100% quality. But once uploaded, it still looks blurry: http://vierhundert.org/?cat=8
Am I missing a setting within WP that I have to change?
I’ve come up for a loss which is frustrating because I remember modifying the labels for the contact form.
I recently installed Jetpack. Would that have anything to do with why I can’t find how to edit this and make some clever labels for the contact form?
I’ve dug around other files like wp-comments-post.php and a couple possibly related files in the wp-includes folder.
Ideally though I like your form here. It is much more compact.
Thanks if you have some guidance!
looks like you are using WordPress’s default comment form, if you like what I have on here try enabling the Jetpack comment feature.. you won’t have much control over it’s look but it is a bit more streamlined.
Thanks for the quick reply!
Yeah I’d love to use the Jetpack form.
However I found this article and it wants comment_form().
However I couldn’t find it in the templates for Less.
Hey Jared, did you figure anything out about this?
I love your theme. Thanks for sharing, it is exactly the perfect mix of typographic approach and content centric view that I was looking for.
hey jared, very nice theme. in chrome and firefox it looks amazing, but whats the problem with internet explorer?
i’m not sure.. it was more of an experiment so I didnt bother to test it in IE
Hey Jared, love the theme – looks great and has sped up my WP site no end!
Having trouble getting the admin photo to show though – any idea why?
http://benrmatthews.com/
Thanks in advance
looks great man! do you have a gravatar.com account that your admin email address is linked with?
Thanks for the quick reply!
Yes, have a gravatar – shows up in the admin dashboard, so should be there…
strange man looks like gravatar is not finding the image… double check that it’s your Admin email address that’s in your settings section
Yep, double checked. Resent confirmation email just to check. Refreshed caches to see if that made a difference. Still no success
Thanks for trying to help…
Thank you thank you! I searched to no end for an efficient, clean, minimal single column theme but I’m so glad to have found this. I modified the theme somewhat but I’ve left you a credit/link in my about page. Cheers!
Awesome theme, Jared! I installed it on my blog, it’s simply awesome.
I have a few suggestions for you, things that I’d like (and probably) will change myself, but maybe could be useful for everyone.
Actually, there are three things I’d like do improve/modify. First, the way fonts render on Windows. On Android and iOS, typography is sharp, gorgeous, but on Windows it feels quite ugly, I don’t know why.
Other thing is how the theme deals with images when scaled down. It’s responsive, indeed, but images don’t follow window/screen resizing, which leads us to having horizontal scrollbars. I’m not that into web development, but I guess there’s some library or js that scales down images as well.
Finally, the footer on posts. I think info like category and tags shouldn’t appear on home, only in permalinks. And I miss a lot having a date somewhere.
Anyway, congrats and thanks for Less. It’s an astonishing theme.
[]‘s!
Thanks Rodrigo!
unforutunily I can’t help windows setup’s not look bad… but that’s why I have this up on Github love for any submissions to be included
I’m using Segoe UI right now for the theme on Windows. Not good as on Android/iOS, but better than Arial.
About image sizes, I noticed that images with captions break the responsive design. Searching for a solution, I found with this post on WordPress forums. Marco Chiesi (the last guy) has the solution, it worked like a charm.
[]‘s!
Hi there, an easier solution:
1) Change media “medium” or “large” size of the thumbnails to 720 width x 0 height.
2) Reupload your images or install “Regenerate Thumbnails” plugin and do it automatically!
Excelente theme!
Cheers!
Any chance anyone would add a foldable side bar like medium.com and big image on top of site and article?
Would easily pay for it.
Not for this one.. but maybe for a different theme
Hi, I love this theme and use for my portfolio. The thing is my portfolio is in swedish and I would like to change all text to swedish. But I cant find where to change the comment text (Name, email, etc). Help is very much appreciated!
Keep up the good work!
hey Magnus! honored to be in Sweden
I’m just pulling in WordPress’s default form. you would have to create a custom form if you need to change that.. kinda surprised it is not easier. you can check it out here – http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/wordpress/comment-form-customization/
Thanks for the quick respond. I guess i’ll have to learn more code
! Anyway, thanks and like I said before, lovely theme!
Good morning! It is possible to build a gallery in Less? I’ve tried a few different things and was wondering if you had a trick. I’d be grateful for any help or advise.
are you wanting to use the native WordPress galleries?
Yeah – I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible.
Would a lightbox plug in work with the theme?
it really depends, there are some good lightbox plugins and some bad ones. i have not tested with any, but let me know if it works or not!
Hi Jared,
Love the “Less” theme but is there any way I can replace the site title with an image instead of text? Also take the dash out of there?
Would you ever consider adding an infinite scroll?
Thanks!
Hey james, you will have to look at the “header” section in the index.php delete where it says
sorry can’t read what you wrote after “delete where it says…”
can you re-type it?
Thanks.