Black Aperture

Black Aperture is an all-in-one news and reviews theme for WordPress, specifically catered to video games. It's built for WP 2 .7+ and doesn't require any plugins to run out of the box.

• Unique featured posts showcase requires minimal effort to take advantage of.
• Dynamic image resizing for various thumbnails used through-out the theme. Upload once, and see the image used all over in different sizes and aspect ratios.
• Custom built theme settings panel within WP-Admin that allows you to customize the theme without editing any templates. Change the accent colour used in the nav and headings using a colour picker, switch from 3 columns to 2 by selecting a checkbox, construct the main navigation bar, and even manage ads.
• Default 3 column layout can be changed to 2 (removes left sidebar) from WP-Admin.
• Both sidebars are widgetized.
• Custom widgets for the 3 main ad spots, along with a recent posts list.
• Change the logo to plain text (which makes use of the Blog Title and Tagline settings) or replace it with your own image without touching any code.
• Super lean markup and CSS , makes advanced customization a pleasure.
• Tested on Windows and Mac - IE6 -8, Firefox 2 & 3, and Safari 3 & 4. Some details are toned down for older versions of IE, but nothing is broken.
• Support for WP-PageNavi and Subscribe to Comments plugins out of the box!

• Black Aperture uses Tim McDaniels' TimThumb script for resizing the images used in the featured posts sections and in archive listings.TimThumb requires the GD library, which is available on any host sever with PHP 4 .3+ installed.

1.6 – 08/19/2010

• NEW Full-width template added.
• Fixed a bug which prevented thumbnails from being displayed on post indexes

1.5 – 08/10/2010

• NEW WP 3.0 Menu support for main navigation.
• NEW WP 2.9 Post Thumbnails – old method still in tact.
• NEW Option in Theme Settings to only display the 3 large featured posts on the homepage.
• NEW Option in Theme Settings to hide the description when using a plain text logo.
• NEW Adjust logo width and height from the admin, which means the header can no adjust vertically to fit any size logo.
• NEW YouTube button added to social buttons in the header.
• NEW Twitter Tools widget can now be used in the sidebars.
• NEW Added CSS box-shadow to some elements to keep the depth consistent across the board. Works in all modern browsers, except Internet Explorer.
• Updated post meta box (Additional Info) and broke it up into 3 separate boxes. Looks nicer, and easier to manage.
• Updated Theme Settings panel with cleaner visual style, new colour picker, and made it a top-level item - now appears at the bottom of the navigation menu instead of under Appearance.
• Updated TimThumb to the latest version and added a modification that allows for scaling while maintaining the aspect ratio. This results in game cover art being more accurate in size and shape.
• Bundled help documentation with the theme itself, so it can be accessed from Theme Settings in WP-Admin.
• Fixed a bug that prevented code from being escaped properly in the head include.
• Fixed how posts clear in the indexes so it's no longer possible for posts with short excerpts to overlap.
• Fixed broken author avatar if no Gravatar image exists.
• Fixed 125×125 buttons widget to allow use of non-image ads, such as AdSense.

1.4 - 07/06/2009

• Revised Theme Settings panel to include headings that categorize options.
• Added options to remove all pages and/or categories from the nav.
• Moved search down to silver subnav bar in order to allow more room for top level tabs.
• Added text-shadow effect to nav and subnav items now that Firefox 3.5 supports text-shadow.
• Comment form now jumps to current position when replying to a comment.  Cancel restores it to original position.

1.3 - Not Released to Public

• Replaced Smart Image Resizer with TimThumb dynamic image resizing script.

1.2 - 06/05/2009

• Removed some code from functions.php which could prevent the theme from being installed.

1.1 - 06/04/2009

• Added ability to disable dynamic image resizing script all together from Theme Settings panel.

1.0 - 05/21/2009

• Initial release.

Screenshots