New Theme: Lyretail
Lyretail is a stunning visual treat for your personal site.
Happy Theme Thursday, all! Let’s dive right into a new free theme:
Lyretail
Designed by Mel Choyce, Lyretail is a stunning visual treat for your personal site. The theme puts your social presence front and center, displaying social links prominently below the site’s title and logo, so readers can easily find you on your favorite social networks.
Secondary information, like a Custom Menu or Widgets, are tucked behind a convenient slide-down menu, while bold featured images grace the header, putting your photographs front and center.
Read more about Lyretail on the Theme Showcase, or activate it on your site from Appearance → Themes!
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- February 26, 2015
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Looks like an interesting theme. Just out of interest, why did you choose the name Lyretail?
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You might notice Lyretail looks a bit like another theme, Minnow. It’s a variation on a theme, pun intentional. 😉
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Hope to see more magazine style themes like Expound, in the free category, which has its distinct Featured Image setting (it does not duplicate Featured Image on the index page, unlike many other themes WP has released since then).
Lately there has been an influx of mobile oriented themes, even though the world has not abandoned desktop monitors just yet. Beyond the lay bloggers and businesses, hoping that you would also pay attention to, and find themes for, the non-profit and volunteered publications.
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Thanks for your feedback! There are plenty of new themes in different styles coming. Stay tuned. 😉
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Never-mind the personal site, this just might work as a business site.
Taking it for a test drive. Will let you know.
I don’t see my featured images, even though the theme supports them.
Plus, I have to re-activate all of my widgets.
So give me a while, will get back to you 😉
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It’s a nice theme, but I prefer permanently visible main nav menus and sidebars.
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I have to agree with Michael.
As much as I like the promise the theme showed in the preview, hidden widget areas are not a great idea when you are 1.) dealing with non-tech-savvy people or 2.) really need people to see certain widgets.
I don’t think that a widget header area is a great idea. The theme would do much better with a sidebar widget area. Lots of dead white space on the side.
The alignment of the featured images (some display and some don’t now) appears shoddy, as well as their captioning.
Using the header image area to show the featured images distorts them. Very few featured images will have the right proportions, which means that this theme will be exceptionally high maintenance.
I don’t know why you chose to release a theme that looks so much like an unfinished work-in-progress?
With a few extra touches, it could be such a great theme. The links just below the titles and the type-setting is so promising.
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Thanks for your feedback! There are more themes on the way, so maybe something new will better suit your tastes. Cheers!
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I took some screen shots, before I changed themes. So, if there is a bug reporting forum for the theme, I would gladly upload them for you. They are all small things individually that make a big difference.
When you mentioned Minnow, I actually decided to try it out. It works really beautifully.
If you are going to make another variation of Minnow, I would leave it exactly the same (it has slightly better readability than Lyretail due to the font size and the capital letters, I have them open next to one another), but with permanently visible custom menu at the top (many of us have a more “bulky” custom menu) and either a permanent sidebar, or alternatively a theme option for a permanent sidebar. If necessary, you could move the links from the left to below the titles, like with Lyretail.
Few themes would be able to contend with that!
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> So, if there is a bug reporting forum for the theme, I would gladly upload them for you.
Yes indeed! https://wordpress.com/forums/forum/themes
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I like it because it makes my blog look more personal.
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Is there a way to make the header image larger? When I tried testing out a custom header and cropped it to my desired size, it only showed me a fraction of the image. Thanks!
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Hi! The header image is a background image that displays at different sizes depending on a user’s screen size, so it will probably always be cropped in some way. You might consider adding your image as a Site Logo instead, or cropping your header image beforehand to show the portion of the image you’re looking for. I hope this helps. 🙂
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Thanks so much! That worked like a charm. I feel silly for not having realized that before 🙂
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It looks simple yet lovely.
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I think with it accomodating the social media links, I am going to like it. Thanks. And do not lose the passion for dynamism.
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I like the look of this. I’ve been wanting a theme that allows me to embed pictures within the text of the post, without any unsightly borders. I also would like to have have a header photo. This seems to have it all.
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Hi Caroline. Noticed the slide down menu button scrolls with the page, so it’s not available to click once the reader starts scrolling down (without scrolling back up). I see that on a lot of themes, which is why I haven’t left ‘Celsius’ yet.
Is there a way to keep the sliding menu button permanently visible, similar to Celsius? Will any new themes have this option?
Thanks.
P.S. This theme reminded me a lot of Celsius, the tag placement and clean look. Also nice is the placement of all the other info: Date, comment numbers, post type, in the same area of the above the post. Very clean and simple. Curious, would sharing links appear in this area too (Twitter/Reddit/Facebook buttons)?
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Hi! Really glad you like Lyretail. 🙂
The menu toggle button stays put when you scroll, but you could change that with Custom CSS if you have the Business Upgrade. That said, we’ll probably have more themes with fixed-position toggle buttons in the future; it’s a popular design pattern right now!
The sharing links will only appear below your post content, which is probably good, since I think they’d clutter up the neat, tidy look of the other post info.
I hope this helps! 🙂
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it does! i don’t have any upgrades since Celsius has kept me pretty happy so i’ll keep my eye out for those themes with fixed position toggle buttons. appreciate the thorough reply, now i know the term, “fixed position toggle button” 🙂
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I’m giving it a try right now. I just wish the widgets in the header could be spaced out more rather than stacking on top of each other. I tried to move other widgets in the Widgets 2 or 3 area, but it still stacks under Widget 1’s area.
Now all I need is a logo.
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I feel silly now. It only appeared to look like it was stacking, when it really wasn’t. Never mind! Nice theme!
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Thank you! Glad you’re enjoying it. 🙂
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Cute theme, so simple and nice!
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I love this theme. But why..?
Do I like the lush Azure photo? Or the design? Time to find out.
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Why most of the new themes don’t show in which category a post is published? And don’t show blog description/tagline? And don’t support all post formats?
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Hi Emil! All themes are a bit different in what features they support, since they all have different use cases. Hopefully we’ll release something that fits with your ideal use case soon. 🙂
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Hi, I think that categories and blog tagline are very important. A visitor must know what kind of blog visits. Usually a blog name tells nothing.
After Twenty Eleven theme I personally don’t like the followed themes – they all lack important functions – tagline, header and so on…
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Wow!
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I really like this theme! 🙂
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Hey will this work with for a wordy blog? The content on my blog is mixed. The theme looks striking! Tempted to give this a try.
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Only way to know for sure is to try it out! Let us know what you think. 🙂
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Why are all themes in the style of a previous theme?
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They’re not! Lyretail just happens to be. 🙂
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I think WordPress makes websites faster and more easy to update and the blog-posting module is very simple.
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New to WordPress.com, and I will definitely take a closer look at Lyretail!
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Thank you Caroline Moore for you New Theme Lyretail it appears will be quite interesting
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Nice theme
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Do you have to purchase it?
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No purchase necessary — Lyretail is a free theme.
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Very nice picture, makes me want to be right there…
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