New Theme: Photos
We designed our brand-new theme with photographers and photobloggers in mind.
Today we’re happy to introduce Photos, an image-centric theme with a clean layout and a design that showcases your favorite snapshots.
When we designed Photos, we put extra care into making it look and feel great on mobile devices. But that’s only one of the theme’s highlights — here are a few others.
Photos first: Photos features a familiar three-column grid to display your photos on your blog’s homepage, archive pages, and search results. The full-width grid appears on smartphones and tablets. It scales up to a fixed-width grid on desktop and laptop displays.
Mobile navigation: When visitors view your site on a mobile device, the menu button is fixed at the bottom of the page, closer to your thumbs. The menu then slides up from the bottom, keeping your site-navigation items within easy reach.
Standard fonts: Photos uses system fonts — fonts that are already available on mobile devices and computers — rather than loading its own custom fonts. This reduces page-load time, and benefits people browsing your site on mobile devices or slower internet connections. Like in any other WordPress.com theme, you can always change the font using the Customizer.
No sidebar: For a more consistent experience between desktop and mobile screens, Photos has a single-column, no-sidebar layout. This helps sites retain the same look and feel regardless of the device your visitors use to view it.
You can learn more about Photos by checking out the Showcase page or the theme’s demo site!
- September 28, 2018
- Themes
WordPress.com News 
Can I create a second page that utilizes the photos theme?
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Simple and nice 🙂
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Awesome theme. We’re just beginning to get listings for photographers in our directory, and one in Kansas of which we know personally could use a great theme for his portfolio. We’ll be sure to mention this to him.
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A couple of things. Photographers don’t shoot snapshots. We make pictures. Why do you speak down to us?
More importantly, contemporary website design is not about a bunch of little bitty pictures. It’s about one dominate picture laid out in a very cleanly designed page. As I’ve read on various help sites, WordPress is designed for writers. Writers who use a few marginal pictures that they scooped up for free from some of those freebie picture sites. By recommending that, WordPress only hurts good photography.
Why does WordPress continue to give such short shrift to real live professional working photographers?
I don’t really want to leave WordPress because I’ve got a reasonable following, but after investigating Squarespace, it seems that I may have to if I want a photographer friendly site.
Please respond.
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Isn’t this just a template though? Can’t you set up your site exactly the way you want with WordPress? Don’t think this is intended for pros….
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No. I pay for mine. If I were a coder I could do whatever I want. We are beta testing a new piece of software from WordPress that is intended to let those of us who don’t code, design our sites the way we’d like.
That said, if you ever look at their highest level users. WordPress is the base platform for clients like UPS, FEDEX, The New York Times, Time Magazine and on and on. Unlike all the website-in-a-box providers like WIX or Squarespace, they don’t lease mass storage from Amazon and they are rock solid.
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Howdy Ray! Thanks for the feedback. It wasn’t our intention to talk down to anyone when we wrote this blog post (or the theme showcase page). With Photos, we tried to make a theme that was a little more fun and modern, which might appeal more to mobile phone photographers. I understand that it’s not for everyone, but that doesn’t mean we’re not considering professional working photographers. In fact, we’ve got another photography theme in the works that you might like; it focuses on a single large image for each post. Stay tuned!
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Wow, thanks for your reply. Being an ASMP 70 year old international photographer’s trade group regional president, I do tend to get a little sensitive to that. 🤦♂️ For the record, if you see any kind of semi-nature picture on my blog, it’s smartphone produced on dog walks.
That said, I am excited to see what you’ve got coming. For most working photographers we need a page that converts to a website, with our blogs embedded. I see that you developed a new no-coding system which also excites me because I don’t code. I’d rather stay with WP, than move on. I’ve been here over seven years and I’ve actually built something.
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WORDPRESS is for each and all of us………bloggers.
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Not at this level. It’s mostly designed for writers.
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You captured nice pictures.
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Thank you.
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Photos is a nice and clean theme. How can I make use of it without loosing my blog? I am thinking about creating a subsite to host and showcase my best pictures. What other applications for this theme can you think about?
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Creating a second site to show your photos with Photos sounds like the best option. This theme is really meant to showcase images of any kind, as long as you don’t mind them being cropped into a square.
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For me the theme Photos has a similar user experience as I know it for example from Instagram: square on the front page and displaying the full size picture when going into the post, including text, or better let‘s call it caption, if you like.
Adding text is also a good idea, as the posts will display in the Reader of the WordPress App (iPhone) in the exact same way as regular content from any other theme does. In other words, it‘s a “Photo-Blog”.
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Wow that looks great and professional, plus it’s responsive, nice.
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More great choices for bloggers.
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Ok but I can’t get slideshow to work. Message about needing Java script.
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I checked your site, and the slideshow works for me. If you continue to have trouble, please check out the WordPress help page, and use the contact link at the bottom.
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Looks very great.
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Very nice theme! How do I eliminate each post presenting the same post’s page twice (once at the start of the post and then in the original position?)
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There are a couple of options under the Content Options settings in your Customizer. Take a look there, and you can uncheck “Display on single posts” and it’ll remove the Featured Image from the top of your post. Cheers!
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Great work!
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It looks attractive and professional
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A nice and simple theme. I created a subsite for my self-hosted WordPress setup. That way I keep my main blog and have a dedicated space to showcase my best photos. With a custom link in the menu of my main page, visitors get to the subset containing the photos and vice-versa. The theme is great for quick publishing of pictures including text from my mobile phone via the WordPress App.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Ray,
if professional photographers do not shoot snapshots, this theme is perhaps something for people who do shoot snapshots. WordPress do not claim that it is meant for professional photographers. If you want an additional theme for people like you, say so, but do not deny this one for others. Also not everyone is interested in ‘contemporary website design’ but many wish to present things their own way. Why be intolerant?
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Nice theme to work with.
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Chris, like Ray I am also looking for a single large photo theme. Is there some way I can be notified when your new theme will be available and what it will be called?
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Personally I wish that you would have more themes for WRITERS – I want to create a new blog for showcasing things that I have written and need no more than a banner at the top, with blog posts and static pages with a menu that can be used to find them. These themes are being retired one by one. New themes look like Pinterest. I am not creating this for people sitting in a train on a phone – I need to store a portfolio of what I have written so that somebody sitting at a desk can read it on a computer screen.
I was applying for a remote assignment the other day and the application required a URL for things I have written – a pdf or docx file attachment was not an option, so I need a site of my own to which I can point them. I looked at every new theme paid for and free, but none fit my needs.
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We’ve got a bunch of great themes for writers. Some of our more recent themes are Independent Publisher 2, Penscratch 2, and Libre 2. We’re also working on another blogging-focused theme that will be released soon, so stay tuned!
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NEW THEMES ARE A LIFE OF THE WAYS
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Very good brother.
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It looks attractive and professional.
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Looks very attractive.
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Even though this is aimed at photographers, I’m considering it for my poetry site. What do other people think?
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That is a great idea: Create a square image with a poem or quote. Add more information or the full poem in the body text area, if needed. I will try this on my Photos installation.
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Thank you. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks good in ‘Preview’. I usually include an image of the poet’s book or an author image so (in ‘Preview’) these appear as a grid on the home page. I like the single column of this theme which accommodates longish lines in poetry.
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A nice alternative to Cubic. Good job!
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Thank you. Simple and useful
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Love these themes! also, would you guys mind if you check out my new blog? Thank you so much!
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Super lucky, picked it recently for my new photography blog and wow! Such amazing utility.
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