Today I’m super excited to tell you a bit more about Integer. The blogging theme I released last month right before my talk at WordCamp Europe. Check out what’s under the hood!
Unlike many other themes on the market, it is not packed with features, so if you are looking for another page-builder and slider-heavy theme, you can close this page right now. However, if you don’t like bells and whistles and want to blog in an intelligent and minimalistic manner, you came to the right place.
When planning Integer, I asked myself a question: What’s really important for both the reader and the author of the blog? After some brainstorming I came up with this list:
- Experience the story
- Non-distractive reading
- Connect with the author
- Easily share what you’ve read
Then I tried to address each of these points design-wise.
A quick side note, the story is a generic term. A travel diary, a tutorial or a product description is also a story in some way.
Experience the Story
We gather information online through text, images, and video. The way Integer treats those three things was the main focus for me when I was building this theme.
That’s why the featured image covers the full width of the page to be as engaging as possible. And you can also have same fullwidth images and galleries inside posts or pages. To do that add the .outset
class to an image or a gallery within the post.
Readability is reached by using the comfortable line length, proper heading sizes and asymmetric spacing between paragraphs and headings. This helps structure the post better. Check out the style guide.
Non-distractive reading
This means throwing away all the clutter that steals attention from the main thing – the story. That’s why there is no sidebar on the right and all call-to-actions like newsletter subscription form, author bio, and comments are located at the bottom of the page.
Even the sticky navigation only appears when you scroll up because this usually means you’ve finished reading, or no longer interested in the post and want to navigate somewhere else.
Connect with the Author
To connect with the author, the reader must first know who the author is, right? Because chances are the reader landed on a post first, skipping other pages. For that purpose, there is an author bio box at the end of the article.
And if the reader likes the content, he may want to subscribe to the newsletter. To make it really easy, Integer supports MailChimp For WordPress plugin. It has a subscription form widget and a shortcode (both supported) that you can use to convert readers to subscribers.
Sharing the Post
I won’t lie to you, I am not a huge fan of sharing buttons because I believe we became immune to them. For me personally, it’s just visual noise.
If you like the article, you can simply copy the URL and post it to your tweet or a Facebook post. At least, that’s how I share stuff online.
If you don’t feel the same way, it’s ok too. You can use Jetpack Sharing Buttons — check out this manual to learn how to use them.
Other Features
At the beginning of this article, I told you that Integer doesn’t have too many features. However, there are some that you may find useful. You can set your own color scheme, footer message, choose between one column and grid layout for the index page, and use Content Options to choose what meta data to display. Check out the description here →
Wrap up
With that, I invite you to download Integer and create something awesome with it!
Does the theme support an excerpt or do I need to insert a more tag?
Hello, Anton. Yes, it does, you can also switch between the full content and excerpt using the Content Options feature of Jetpack. Check this link: https://jetpack.com/support/content-options/