Virginia Breeze

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I have tried a lot of different themes on my three Wordpress.org blogs. And I always seem to return to Sadish and his fine themes. They don’t cause me problems and they do some pretty cool things. Virginia Breeze uses his Nigarila theme and as you can see it allows me to show a slideshow in the all important upper right area of the front page. I can also put 1-4 posts up there and give them great visibility. There is also a page of options with this theme and a great deal of versatility in the admin/design area.

I am not sure exactly what you would call the photo presentation. Maybe it is an overlay? I went looking for some clues about this and found this article. The title is The Lightbox Clones Matrix and as you can see there are a lot of different options and descriptions in this area.

http://planetozh.com/projects/lightbox-clones/

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I was very happy to see his Wordpress.com theme Misty Look come to the Wordpress.org side of the street. I am not sure when that happened but I can remember asking Sadish to do something like this when I purchased Nigarila. I was using Sky Blue at the time for my third theme on the news/politics/humor blog NewsLink Briefs. And really wanted the “light box” for PhotoLink Love. The photos there clearly benefit from this presentation.

And so now he has done it. And Misty Look is free! Sky Blue is also free although it was around twenty dollars when I bought it. Nigarila was also about that much. He is always giving great themes away or charging very nominal prices for his work.

And he has many more themes. But these stand out in my mind as the best of his work.

One more thing I should not forget to mention is the ability to import a photo into the header of all these blogs. When I get restless and start thinking about making a change I find this is a very good way to avoid making too much of a change and getting into trouble. My recent experience with the photoblog plugin is a good example of what can happen in that regard. I have many 404 messages now because of it and have learned a valuable lesson.

There is only one wish left on my list of things I would like to see Sadish create. And it is something that I have not ever seen out there in the land of themes. He does not like to repeat himself so maybe he will do it sometime.

Take something like the striking header and font from Sky Blue. Add the author’s box from Nigarila. Use something a little like the side bar in Misty Look. Allow photos up to 650 pixels wide like those in the Sky Blue theme. And add the photo treatment found in Misty Look and Nigarila.

I can imagine one of those large photos overlaying a beautiful page and it would be stunning. It would be unique! It would be so fabulous he might even want to charge twenty five dollars for it!

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http://wprocks.com/free-themes/

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http://wprocks.com/

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http://wpthemeshop.com/

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Update:  I am trying out a new theme by Sadish at NewsLink Briefs in case you go looking there for Sky Blue.

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Who is behind all this?

Sadish Balasubramanian is the one who created the themes and this website for selling them.
He is an Indian guy, currently living in the USA along with his wife and daughter. He has created many popular themes like MistyLook, TerraFirma, SpotLight etc.

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In my last post I alluded to the fact that I spent much time on Sunday wistfully exploring the blogs of various designers looking for a new template. And it’s always a problem because I enjoy these large photos. Perhaps I am mostly alone in this because I have never read a post by anyone complaining about it. There are photoblog templates after all and probably at least two or three designed for Wordpress.

So when I saw this new effort by Sadish I thought there is no way a three column template will be able to accommodate large photos. And there was no way I would have even tried it out except that the price was so unbelievably affordable. Nineteen dollars for a custom template! And it is so much nicer than anything I have used before this. Here are some of the things I love about it:

You can put your favorite posts in the sidebar. I only saw this in one other template that cost about 75 dollars.

You can put up your own photos in the header. It’s very easy and you can change the font color in a second.

All of the photos in the posts have these little frames around them that make them look so much better. And none of the photos tries to bust out and obscure the stuff in the sidebars. Some of the 800 pixel across ones look like the have been squeezed into place but they don’t look too bad and I can fix them at my leisure. Or I am thinking of just leaving them like this. Because when you click on the post titles the photos expand and one sidebar goes away. Pretty cool.

You can hide some or all of the Navigation links and highlight your comments.

You can put a little introductory text top/right where it will be seen right away.

The dashbar is up top along with some other functions so you don’t have to go hunting for the Meta widget.

There is a 404 page and a contact page template.

Did I mention all of this was only 19 dollars? This is a fantastic buy and finding it has been one of the happiest things that has happened to me since I started blogging five months ago. Sadish is a talented and relaxed guy who is doing some great work.