Ness – Minimalist Personal Photomagazine Wordpress HD Theme v1.3
Ness is a modern minimalist personal photo magazine theme for WordPress that can be used on any WordPress blogging niche, but perfect as a personal blog theme. It is responsive, HD (retina-ready) and has unique features to ensure this personal blog theme has great readability. Full-screen image embeds with no shortcodes, parallax featured images, beautiful full-screen gallery post type that is touch-friendly (and portrait-image friendly too), which all leads to a wonderful user experience on all devices and screen sizes and gives your personal blog that personal touch.
New sidebar option in v1.3 A popular request for Ness was an option for a sidebar. And in v1.3 it’s finally here – Sidebar option for posts (Left/right/none) 
Some Features
- Clean, ultra modern and dynamic design for a professional and engaging visitor experience
- Retina Ready (HD) WordPress blogging theme
- RTL & WPML ready
- Comes with .mo/.po files for quick and easy translation. Spanish already translated.
- Integrated lightbox (can be turned on/off in theme options)
- Responsiveness can be turned on/off in theme options
- Touch-friendly sliders and user experience
- Author pages can add social network icons that link to author profile links
- Global featured image style override option from the theme options (Posts have an option inside them to ignore this override too for 100% control and easy setup)
- Logo, Retina logo and favicon upload options
- Code-editor for custom CSS option in theme options that shows if your code has errors automatically
- Option to turn off By Line completely, or just disable specific parts of the By Line (Author, Date and Category)
- XML file with demo content included
Advertising Options
- Posts can have an advertising block appear at the end of the content (input box in theme options and also automatically executes shortcodes)
- Each Category has an option to add an advertising block in between the cover image and posts list
- Each Tag has an option to add an advertising block in between the cover image and posts list, see example here: Travelling Tag
- Footer can have one, two or three columns of widgets for advertising possibilities.
Navigation Menu
- Unique slide-in menu with option to show posts below. They can be random/most popular/latest, and the number of posts to be shown can be set too.
- Unique progress bar to show how much of the article is left, unique and encourages readers to read the entire article.
- Unique progress bar turns into a “Next/previous article” once a user finishes the article (reaches 100%)
- Two styles for navigation bar (dark/light)
Homepage Options
- Optional Full-screen slider to show latest posts or specific posts using Category/tag filters. Also has option to select number of posts to show in slider.
- Offset Option is available when using the slider above posts for posts lists to not have duplicate posts appear on the same page.
- 3 Blog styles for homepages to show the latest posts:
- Infinite Scroll Options: All blog styles can use “Number pagination / Infinite Scroll / Infinite Scroll with Load More Button”.
Posts Featured
- Post Format: Gallery. Beautiful full-screen gallery that is touch friendly and portrait-image friendly too, see demo here: Gallery Post Demo
- Post Format: Video (Able to embed YouTube / Vimeo / Kickstarter / Viddler videos) and appearing in a unique overlay of the featured image by the press of the play button (YouTube starts playing automatically when the play button is pressed, and paused if the X button is pressed)
- Post Format: External Audio(Able to embed any audio embed) and appearing in a unique overlay of the featured image
- Post Format: Self-hosted Audio (Able to upload your own .mp3/.ogg audio files) and appearing in a unique overlay of the featured image by the press of the play button (audio starts playing automatically when the play button is pressed)
- Full-screen image embeds with no need for shortcodes, see example here: Full-screen images throughout post
- Post like system with multiple icons as options. When a user leaves a like on a post, a cookie is left on the visitor’s computer with the relevant post ID, to minimize chance of visitors liking the same post multiple times.
- Change the featured Image style: Parallax, full-screen, slideshow or off (so you can manually insert an image at the top of the post)
- Optional Byline at the end of every post with multiple options (different parts of it can be turned on/off)
- Social Network Share Block (Can be turned on/off in Theme Options panel)
- Unique Visitor Love Count with different icon options: Stars/Hearts/Lightning Bolt (Can be change and turned on/off in Theme Options panel)
- About The Author Box (Can be turned on/off in Theme Options panel)
- Next/Previous Posts Block (Can be turned on/off in Theme Options panel)
- Comments (Can be turned on/off in Theme Options panel)
Category/Tag Options
- Each Category/Tag has the option to have set cover image to appear behind the main title
- Each Category/Tag has the option to have a different pagination style (Number pagination, infinite scroll, infinite scroll with load more button)
- Each Category/Tag has the option to have an advertising block appear in between the cover image and the posts lists
- Each Category has the option to use a different blog style (1 post per row, 2 posts per row or 3 posts per row)
Page Options
- Featured Image Styles can also be used on pages (Parallax/full-screen/slideshow/off)
- Option to turn comments on/off
- Author pages can show social network icons that link to author’s social network profiles
Widgets included
- Ness Social Media Icons Widget
- Ness Latest Post Slider
- Ness Facebook Like Box Widget
- Ness Google+ Follow Badge Widget
- Ness Retina Image Widget
Footer Options
- Select column layout (1 column, 2 columns, 3 columns)
- Set background color and/or image for footer
- Optional to top button
- Custom footer copyright
Typography Options
- Set a color of links using a colorpicker
- Ability to use any Google Font for the font options
- Set a font for headings (h1, h2, etc)
- Set a font for general body text
- Optional font settings for article content area text (the actual post content). You can select color, a fontm font-size, font-style, text-align, font-weight, letter-spacing, line-height, text-decoration and text-transform. These options allow sites to tell their stories the way they want to.
- Option to “Load latin extended charset”: Some languages need these extra characters
- Option to “Cyrillic extended charset”: Some languages need these extra characters
A developer’s dream: Clean code and child-theme ready
Ness was written with very clean PHP, HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript code. The theme also comes with a ready-to-use child theme file that works instantly.
For all theme customizations (i.e. add or change the theme’s code to make it do something it doesn’t do or add specific functionality) you will need to hire a developer to help you out. It is recommended to look for one on http://studio.envato.com as that site is run by the same people who run Themeforest.
Suggestions for future updates?
If you have a suggestion that you think would improve the theme, please leave a comment with the details and it will be considered.
Credits
- Video embeds from YouTube and Vimeo are of Big Buck Bunny ((c) copyright 2008, Blender Foundation / www.bigbuckbunny.org)
- A couple of images used are from Unsplash and a special thank you to Forrest Cavale, Daniel Ruswick, Lacey Raper and Paula Borowska for sharing their beautiful photographs.
- Valendesigns: Option Tree
- Scott Robin’s Backstretch
- Ben Plum’s Boxer
27 April 2015 – Ness v 1.3
UPDATED: Core framework and TGM for recently discovered XSS vulnerability: http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/security-vulnerability-affecting-wordpress-plugins-and-themes/173011IMPROVED: Parallax smoothness/performance by over 40%!ADDED: New option inside posts: Sidebar (No sidebar / left sidebar / right sidebar)ADDED: New option in Theme Options -> Homepage -> Advertisement above posts list: To put an ad block above the posts list on the homepage. Can also be used for custom content.ADDED: New option in Theme Options -> Misc -> Search Pages Cover Image: To put a over image to search pages.ADDED: Polish translation files (thanks to mjczech
07 October 2014 – Ness v 1.2
ADDDED: Basic WooCommerce template file to make WooCommerce pages look normal (without it the layout inside WooCommerce pages break)ADDED: New option in Theme Options -> Homepage. Option to add cover image to header when not using the full-screen slider (similar to how categories/tags currently work).IMPROVED: Post format Gallery on mobile: When users swipe, the dark overlay will disappear and if the user taps, it will re-appearBUGFIX: Read progress on/off option in theme optionsBUGFIX: Next/Previous post in menu on/off option in theme optionsBUGFIX: Translation wasn't working properlyBUGFIX: Missing strings in translation filesBUGFIX: Child-theme has been updated: Child-theme wasn't loaded child-theme stylesheet correctly BUGFIX: Image aligned left/right used padding (using 'em'), which wasn't showing upBUGFIX: Image center option wasn't working properlyBUGFIX: Offset option was still running on homepage, even if using tags/category filters for slider
06 August 2014 – Ness v 1.1
ADDED: Theme Options -> Menu: Option to add/remove search in main menuADDED: Theme Options -> Menu: Option to use regular menu (regular menu / slide-in menu)BUGFIX: Full-screen image in-post embeds now resize appropriately when changing from landscape/portrait view on tabletsBUGFIX: Typography: Post Body Text Option: When Selecting "Other Google Font" issue.BUGFIX: Parallax Featured Image Style Option - Down arrow above image wasn't working on landscape devices/small screensIMPROVEMENT: Disabled smooth scrolling when site viewed on Mac (Mac's native smooth scroll is already really good)
25 July 2014 – Ness v 1.0
- Initial Release