October 4th, 2009

Transparent WordPress Theme Design


Transparent WordPress with Semiomantics XO

Developing a transparent WordPress Based Photo Blog, I got inspired to use some elements in a Grunge environment. It’s creative, it’s fun, it’s the Semiomantics XO Theme for WordPress.

Grunge Background

The first step is to create a grunge background:

Grunge Background for WP

Grunge Background for WP

This background is 1680 x 1250 pixels big and has a weight of 130 kb only.

Transparent Header Footer and Content Backgrounds

Step 2: make your backgrounds transparent and set opacity to 70 %.

Transparent 80% WordPress

Fancy Fonts

Add some fancy fonts for h1 and h2 using the Fontburner plugin.

Fancy Fonts for h1 and h2

Fancy Fonts for h1 and h2

Background Opacity and Hover Function

It is not easy to read content on colored backgrounds, therefore we add a hover function to show white backgrounds on left content and sidebar.

Transparent WordPress Hover Main Content Transparent WordPress Hover Sidebar

Save load by Scrolling over the Background

No vertical tiling is needed, also on long blog posts when the content scrolls over the background. We fix the background attachment (background image).

Transparent WordPress Scroll over Background

Header Transparency and Site Title

To get the header effect I have loaded a transparent header png with no content and added a top margin to adjust the position of the content.

The blog title is painted on the background with position top left to allow display on any monitor irrespective of resolution and size.

Transparency Variations

Your creativity is the limit. You could create an overlay look by adding a black background with 80% opacity:

Transparent Overlay Look
Transparent Overlay Hover

Transparent Overlay Hover

Try and enjoy!

Transparent 80% WordPress Transparent WordPress Scroll over Background Transparent WordPress Transparent Overlay Look Transparent WordPress Hover Main Content Transparent WordPress Hover Sidebar
This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 2:22 am and is filed under Background, Backgrounds, Blockquote, Code, Color, Design, Dubli, Dubli Networking Business, Dublicator, Fonts, Grapgic, Graphic, Header, Herbert Brown, Herbert Brown jr, Herbert L Brown Jr, Nestoridis, Pullquote, Semiomantics, Transparent, Web, WordPress, Workshop, XO, YORGOO, Yorgo, graphics, grunge, site. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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