Some theme launches here at WooThemes are hyped for weeks and weeks on Twitter and in our blog, others we silently and secretly work on and launch for our community as a nice little surprise. Mortar is one of those that I’ve been working on for a few weeks.
Built on an awesomely flexible grid structure that enables you to select how many columns you want on your home page and archives page and then arranges your posts according to their height and width using the JS Masonry layout plugin built by David DeSandro (Source code available here). The rest of the design is governed by the fabulous Grid 960 framework for easy modifications.
As is noticeable in the screenshots no space is left unused between post boxes and the posts don’t need to be equal heights like other WooThemes, making for a much more fluid, fun, collage-like layout. With an optional Twitter, Ad Banner and About module the home page can take any form you so desire.
The ‘City Life’ theme style is one of my favourite styles with a background image of a London city skyline I snapped a few months ago, with a layered semi-transparent grid over it highlighting its sharp edges and urban feel.
Enjoy building onto this theme’s flexible layout and we look forward to seeing some creative showcase submissions. As can be seen in the screenshots its usage could be limitless, a photographer’s portfolio/diary, a web designer’s showcase gallery or an online magazine for a publishing company.
As with all our themes we welcome your constructive feedback, but make sure you’ve had a good look around the demo and seen the sub-page layout of the blog posts, single pages and full-width content before judging this theme 🙂
The Challenge
A special prize for those who have read to the bottom of this post. I’ve made a Mortar wallpaper for the release of this theme, it is a polished version of a photo I took here in London – which is a place filled with bricks and mortar!
The first 5 people that leave a comment with a link to a picture of them sitting in front of their computer, with the Mortar wallpaper apparent on their desktop, will each win a free standard package of this theme. Easy hey? Competition closed- winners announced below.
The wallpaper is available in 5 different sizes:
About
Here ya go! http://adamkayce.com/pics/mortar2.jpg
Quick moving there Adam. Well done, I’ll link up the Mortar theme to your account asap.
4 to go…
Cool – I already have a Club subscription – but I did this hoping I could do some kind of giveaway or contest for my readers… is that cool?
Yep, go for it! 🙂
Just send us the winner’s name & e-mail addy and we’ll hook them up!
Here’s mine. Webcam broken , took me some extra time…
http://www.girandovoy.com/blog/wp-content/gallery/dandovueltas/fotowoothemes-002.jpg
Very nice theme! I’m sure it’s worth the 70 bucks, and not just the picture…
I’ve already got a subscrip. so I’ll let someone else snag the theme, but this is EXACTLY what I’d been looking for. Great theme! So excited!
Here’s the Wallpaper uploaded to my site.
http://www.wpthemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/mortar-wallpaper.jpg
We want to see our users in front of their computers sporting the wallpaper. Not just a copy of the wallpaper. You still have time so act fast! 🙂
Sorry.. I have updated it.
In defense.. the instruction was clear on having wallpaper displayed.
Thanks
sorry. I wasn’t reading the instructions..
shame on me.. goes out running away
http://yfrog.com/14img2467bj
http://yfrog.com/5gimg2468ij
http://tinyurl.com/jsbwoo
I have some interesting things to try with this one.
http://www.yogadham.com/images/Picture%20005.jpg
You use your PC much!? 🙂 Look at all them dust…
Get the dustbuster out Prashant! 🙂
Sigh…well, I shall be posting a pic again with a cleaner workplace!
🙁
Hehe, that’s cryptic.
And btw… Mark will contact you to get your copy of Mortar when he’s back! 🙂
Ok, cool..thank you.
Here I am: http://bit.ly/3BIamJ
Me here 🙂 http://marcforrest.posterous.com
DAMN. Too slow.
Love the theme–had been looking at Grid-A-Licious as an aggregator for a network of blogs. Infinite Scroll could be an interesting option to paginated views. A little disappointed I don’t have a home page widgets to configure.
A quick try out with Twitter option on seems to make for a really long load. Your own demo page seems a little slow as well.
A great starting point all things considered.
Very nice theme, well done Woo!
Shoot, missed it. Twitter being sporadic and my timing was off!
Woo! http://www.jepson.no/u/67m12o.png
Sorry your too late mate 🙂
Very cool theme and concept! Good job, Woo!
spent the day exploring the new theme. i think it needs widget fields on the home page. it’s very cool though.
Widgets for?
It seems like there’s an opportunity to use the grid-based containers for both posts and ads. Ad fields might be fixed and aligned to the right for example, but might occupy similar widgetized containers as the posts.
You are really close to creating a Buddypress type home page, but because you don’t have an widget real estate, there’s no way to install Site Wide Activity, Site Wide Posts, and Members widgets from the Buddypress plugins list to make it brutally easy.
As an aside one of the interesting things about grid-a-licious implementations (like http://silnt.com/v4/) is the number of columns, so you might want to offer the option to go really wide. These sites often have the Infinite Scroll js installed.
Sorry it’s blurry! http://www.beenup2.com/photos/626263-new-message/edit
Hi Sarah, can’t see the image I’m afraid – it says we need to logged in to view it 🙁
Nice and amazing, love it too much!!
This is all very exciting. It looks like I’m in the first five (huzzah!) – when will the winners be announced?
Thanks for all the submissions guys. The winners have been announced above – http://woocommerce.com/2009/08/mortar-binding-your-website-together/#winnersannounced
Stay tuned to the blog for more fun giveaways!
Hey Mark,
to which email ID should I email to?
info at woothemes dot com 🙂
sent!
Yahoooo..Thx!
Awesome! Thanks Guys.
I love this theme. As soon as Antisocial is available too I’ll pay my $70!
Awesome stuff! 🙂 Antisocial should be available next month.
@Mark – You’re a genious man, thumbs up.
This theme rocks, but could have had more options.
Care to tell us what options you’d like?