Launched: Monotone
May 2nd, 2008
We recently designed a theme for Automattic, called Monotone. It’s now available at Wordpress.com, free for every WP.com user!
It’s a “chameleon” photoblogging theme. Monotone takes the first (and only) image attached to a post, samples colors from it, and analyzes them to present a custom color scheme for each photo entry.
You can hear Matt talk about the theme, at the end of his talk on blip.tv.
It was really great working with Automattic on such an interesting project.
BTW, I just love how well Wordpress deals with unicode.
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Any chance this will become available for those of us who self-host WP?
Noel, thanks for this theme. Really cool, now i can finally start my photoblog ;-). Any chance that this is going to be available for self hosted blogs? Saw some comments on Matt’s blog as well, but did not find an answer yet (so sorry if this is a duplicate). Cheers, michael
Great intelligent theme. The only thing I do not like are the white strips left and right (background). They’re too white (?) and compete with the light of the photo. Could be better with a black background or even better with a background of the same colour of the one choosed by the system. Is it possible?
Also the archives would look better with a dark (black) background.
I am also interested in a version of this for WP.org.
Thanks for the theme. Will it be widget aware soon?
I am trying Monotone but it doesn’t adjust the post column to the size of my photo. Is there a limit to how wide a photo can be?
(see example: http://twentyfour01photo.wordpress.com/)
Thanks, I am having fun with this new feature on wordpress. I admire anyone who can make things like this from scratch. It took me (an amount of time too embarrassing to mention, we’ll just call it “awhile”) to work out how to use it, but when I switched to Safari, it was much easier.
Great idea, thanks again. :)
Love the theme but I admit I’m having trouble with the sizing of images. I don’t understand why an 800×532 picture gets shrunk, while an 800×560 picture gets posted full size?
[...] welcome to my photo blog. may bag-o nga theme template ang wordpress… ang ‘monotone‘… ang theme nga gindesign para gid sa photo blogging… baskug kuno kay ang color [...]
Great theme. Thank you. Your background color engine is way cool. I can see it doesn’t lend itself to a lot of widgets, but maybe a horizontal region at the bottom would be unobtrusive and useful. I mean, nobody really needs a thousand mostly ugly buttons, but a few of them are a must to help visibility
another request for info on using it for self-hosted blogs…
@malisa, @Eric:
I was able to download monotone for self-hosting at:
http://svn.automattic.com/wpcom-themes/monotone/
And I also have to say… this theme is just plain smart — brilliant PHP use, Noel.
The one thing that you need, to be able to run monotone as a standalone, is a script that uses the ?w query string to resize images. I’ll be releasing my Thumby PHP class and a .htaccess rule that does this later in the week.
:)
[...] du thème : chez WebLogToolsCollection et eight6 Démonstration : la VO, ma VF (pour juger de la traduction, mes photos ne sont pas terribles). [...]
Any way that we could get away from the url_fopen() to grab the image for pre-processing? Many shared hosts (including Dreamhost, my host of choice) disable allow_url_fopen for security purposes, thus all photo postings revert to a drab black background.
Also, is there a Trac instance or suchlike to keep tabs on the development of Monotone?
[...] Links: Demo on WordPress.com | Theme URI [...]
[...] WordPressin uutta “photoblogging” pohjaa Monotone (Joel Jackson). Aika kiva, vaikka ei täydellinen. Siihen ei voi liittää valinnaisia lisäosia, kuten laskuria [...]
Thank you, Noel!
I didn’t even realize how much I wanted a photoblog until I read about this at Wordpress.com.
Your chameleon platform is so much fun to use, and really puts the focus on the image…
I have been getting very little sleep, playing with your creation, for the past 3 nights, getting excited about taking pictures all over again…
Thanks for this wonderful plaything of a tool!
Thank you so much! A beautiful, brilliant tool that is just what I needed for photoblogging roses and other flowers. I loved your theme so much that I got a wp.com account to piggyback onto my hosted site, http://www.swdesertgardening.com. But, I have had so much fun just uploading the photos that I have not yet added it to the hosted site. I loved it when I saw the prototype, I love it even more after playing with it. Thank you again!
Wonderful!
I’ve been looking for something to use for a new photo site of mine and this would work great.
Still waiting for it to be available for download to hosted WP blogs…
I am enjoying this great theme. Thanks! But just in case you are keeping a list of ideas for the next version: I wish it had the ability to make extra pages. Any chance of getting that?
Thanks for the wonderful Theme, I really appreciate it, but two things that I don’t like so much. First, the white borders on the left and the right. A black background would be much better. And second, I can’t insert links and pages… If you could fix that ones because I really want to use this theme, it ist perfectly made for my photos.
[...] Launched: Monotone ‹ Blog ‹ eight6 (tags: webdesign theme template photoblog photography image design blog wp wordpress) [...]
Hi, I was wondering if you could please write an article about how to upload pictures in Monotone? I have tried uploading from photobucket.com, some work, others don’t, and I’m wondering why? How do I add images to the “media library”?
Linda, surely! I’ll write up an article this week and get it posted.
Hey Noel, nice work! Do you have any plans to release it for wordpress.org users?
Noel,
Absolutely great theme. Using off-site hosting at gorgeousearth.com. Where can I find the “thumby php class” and .htaccess rule you are being so gracious to let us loyal followers use?
The .ORG version of Monotone will be available shortly.
There are still a few changes to the code that we want to make (based on real-life user testing and suggestions), once we’re there then the theme’s all yours and will be available for download. :)
Again, I’m going to say how I think Wordpress.com is the best place for having a hosted old-skool designed weblog and that hosting it yourself might not be in your best interest if you seriously plan to load up the theme.
The infrastructure and the price of their storage is just ridiculously too good to pass up – Wordpress.com is a dream for bloggers, and now it seems photo bloggers too!
Great! Can’t wait for the .org version!
Hi, Noel. Thanks for the amazing theme. It seems that I’d spend more time in photoblogging :)
Although with a manual image resizing, this theme can be used in self hosted WP blog, it’s very appreciated if you could release the self hosted version :)
Sorry for bothering you with this request. Thank you
Love this theme! Really showcases the photos well. Only one minor thing: I’d love to see a place at the bottom of the page where we could have a blog list, dropdown category list, or other pages. There doesn’t seem to be a way to add a links page or blog list.
I’m also super excited for the .org version. Thanks so much for this excellent theme!
>I’ll be releasing my Thumby PHP class and a .htaccess rule that does this later in the week.
Should I use 800px-width images until You will releasing this scripts?.. :(
I start photoblog today only because I can use this great theme (my new domain photoblogger.su will work in some hours)!
[...] this theme is created for WordPress.com hosted blogs so that as said by the designer, thanks Noel, it is not ready yet to use for self hosted WordPress blogs. For the later, the image [...]
The self hosted version is being packaged up this weekend. I’ll get a download link for everyone shortly!
Thank you for this Monotone theme ! I was waiting for something like that to open my photoblog ! I hope widgets will be allowed very soon !
Hello Noel,
Great. How Can I Choice just 1 background color ?
Hi Guys and Girls please check out my cool monotone photoblog..
http://trcwest.com/photoblog/
Does any one know of a list of top monotone photoblogs?? As it would be cool to have a list of all the different ones?? if not i can make one…
[...] a geeky side note i managed to get it running on dreamhost (fck you, url_fopen()) so [...]