Modest WordPress Theme
There are many excellent minimalist themes available for WordPress, but I've never found one that perfectly represents the elements that are most important to me. The Modest WordPress Theme is a project I've been wanting to do for some time now. It's intended to encompass the key functionality that I most desire from a WordPress theme, and most of all, from a content-rich Web site.
Modest Features
Modest is a representation of how I think a content rich Web site should be. There's a heavy focus on minimalism and usability. The Modest WordPress theme has the following features:
- Persistent Header & Sidebar
- Navigation should be simple and easily accessible. For that reason, the header and sidebar have been made to be fixed in their position. That way, when a user is scrolling through content, they can navigate to a different section of the site without having to scroll to find the link. The fixed position of the sidebar also forces the Web site editor to organize their category and page structure so it will fit within the fixed height—thus enforcing a more minimalist navigation and category presentation.
- Easy Access Search
- Improved Text Formatting
- clean, easy to read and digest
- HTML 5
- semantically structured
- Fast Download Speed
- No images, turn on gzip compression
- Printer Friendly Stylesheet
- Reduced External Link Dilution
- blogroll, etc... moved to their own pages
- QR Code for Reference
- blahr
- Asynchronous Google Analytics Code
- blahr
Download Modest
The fact that I've created this page suggests that I will most likely release this theme into the wild, but I'm still undecided about it at the moment. Regardless, it's not ready to be released into the wild yet. I'm also not ready to let other people test it for me, so please don't ask. I do appreciate the interest though, assuming you're reading this and are actually interested 
Recommended Plugins
- sdf
Modest Configuration
asdf
Create Pages
asdf
Exclude Pages from Sidebar
adsf
Enable Author Page
adf
Header/Footer Plugin
override width and colors
Enter Google Analytics Code
asynchronous (speedier)
On Page Anchor Links (Bookmarks)
Since the header is in a fixed position, using the name attribute in an anchor on the page—commonly used to scroll the user to the content that is further down the page—does not work well. That's because the browser correctly brings the target anchor to the top of the page, but the fixed header is on top of that content.
To get around this problem—and to add a cool scrolling effect—there are four things you need to do:
- Add class="anchorLink" to the originating anchor
- Add id="[name]" to the destination anchor, where [name] is the name specified on the destination anchor
- Add class="bookmark" to the destination anchor
- Add a Custom Field with the name bookmark and the following value, replacing [yourblogpath] with domain (and subfolder if one exists):
Known Issues
Known issues will appear here.
Future Considerations
This is a working list of features I'm considering for Modest.
- Ability to modify layout and colors
- Ability to specify META Description (without having to use a plugin)
- GEO Location
- microformat integration (vCard, etc...)
- Add Email and Print options
