Latest Version: 3.00
Updated on: 2015/06/25
The Eco style of the Watercolor theme was originally created for a nature related site.
I made it a point to update my existing themes to ver. 3+ and give upgrade priority to the sub themes that are pending release. With ver. 3 of this theme, you get everything that is available in ver. 2 (several features in options page) as well as a custom header menu feature.
By using this theme for FREE, you agree to accept the external links.
Step 1 Go to the theme Options page in WP admin => Appearance => Watercolor
Step 2 Under “Theme Style”, select “eco.css” and save the page.
The following is an example of a custom design of the Watercolor theme.
Main Features
– User-friendly Options page
– Custom header menu
– Automatic Thumbnails
– Different design for sticky post feature
– Compatible with IE7, IE8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera
– W3C XHTML and CSS compliant
– SEO ready
– Gravatar enable
This is my first theme that allows localization. If you wish to translate this theme into your own language, you can do so with the use of the Poedit program. To find out how this works, please refer to this comprehensive guide.
When you have completed the localization, kindly send me the translated files so I can share your work (with your credit) with other users.
Automatic Thumbnails
Please refer to this page for the details of how the automatic thumbnails work.
Drop-down Menu
The Watercolor theme has a multi-level drop-down menu that is using the latest function in WP 3.0. There are two ways to create the drop-down menu.
1) When you create hierarchical pages, the drop-down menu will show up automatically in the header navigation.
2) You can manually define the header links using the custom menu. To do it, first, click on the “Menus” link found under the “Appearance” tab in WP admin. Then follow the instruction on the page to add your custom menu. This feature only works with WP 3+.
Plugin
There is a featured content section below the header menu. This feature is built in using the Featured Content Gallery (FCG) plugin. Please download the latest version and follow the instruction found in “Readme.txt” to do the setup.
If you do not want to show this feature, just don’t install the plugin.
Blog Title and Description
The demo is showing a special font as below:
By default, after you install the theme, the blog title and description are showing the Arial font.
You can change the font style by following this instruction:
Part 1: Modifying Font Style
– Download this PSD zip file (also include the font that I use)
– Extract and open the PSD file in the Photoshop/ImageReady/Gimp/PaintShop program
– Change the title and description using your desired font (you are free to modify the header image if you want)
– Save the image using this name: bg_header.jpg
– Upload the image to your server in the “/styles/eco/” folder
Part 2: Activating the Style
– Login to your WP admin
– Go to the options page of the Watercolor theme under “Appearance -> Watercolor”
– Find “Theme Style” under “Layout Setting”
– In the pull-down menu, select “eco.css”
– Save the setting and go to your site to see the changes.
Ad Widget
An ad widget can be found under the “Available Widgets” section. You can drag the widget to Sidebar 1. This widget allows you to add your advertisement while keeping the sidebar design. Please limit the width of your ad to 160px.
Change log
2010-08-25 – Released
A very nice simple wordpress theme, I like the design
I’m really interested with this eco theme, but I wonder whether this theme is free or not. If it’s free, how to apply this theme? I don’t find the submenu “Watercolor” under “appearance”…
*I’m a newbie in wordpress, thx 4 your help*
@ainun, this theme is free to use. Please refer to this installation guide for the details of using this theme.
hi brian, i’ve just already used this cool template for my blog. thank
hi,
thank you for this theme 🙂 been looking for days for something that has everything I want, and this has everything I’m looking for. clean but not boring 🙂
just a question, I want to use the original font that you used, is there a way to use that if I wanna stick with the main theme and not the customized eco theme? thank you!
@Chell, please post your question in the Watercolor forum and I’ll address it there.
I would like to know how to translate the word search beside the search box on the home page of the watercolor eco theme.
Thanks,
@Jasmin, the “Search” text is embedded in the PSD file. You’ll have to get the PSD file to modify the text.