BroadScope takes his name from the special features it brings to menus: mega menus. What Kriesi call mega menu are menus with multiple column, even text and description, and spans the whole width of the site.

The rest of the design is pure white and light grey goodness with a ginormous full width slider at the top. The list of options is too long to fit in this column but here are the highlights:

• Dummy content installation for a fast and easy setup, can be activated optionally
• Style switching with color picker and multiple layout and font options.
• New WordPress3 Menu support + Mega Menu Support
• Portfolio custom post types (new WordPress3 feature)
• Any number of slideshows possible
• Unique Portfolio Sorting/Filtering with a custom jQuery script
• Cufon font replacement
• jQuery 100% unobtrusive wich degrades gracefully if javascript is turned off
• Sleek Image preloader
• Working ajax/php contact form
• PSD files included
• Extensive Documentation Included

When you buy Kriesi you know you can’t go wrong as he is the simply the best selling author on ThemeForest and has produced piece of art like Twicet and Avisio.

The colour scheme does not suit you our your brand? Not a problem, there is a colour picker. Fancy some nice and easy columns or drop caps? There is a shortcode for that. Custom widgets? Check. Breadcrumb navigation, Google map integration, the list is huge:

• Valid HTML 5 .
• Cross Browser Compatible
• Translate Ready
• Custom Post Types for portfolio and slider items.
• 3 different Slider with full control (nivo slider, 3d flash Image Rotator , accordion slider)
• Style switching with color picker and multiple layout and font options.
• Cufon Replacement font (25+ fonts ready for use).
• 60+ Custom style shortcodes (easy to use by Shortcode Generator)
• 9 Custom Widgets (Sub Navigation, Popular Post,Recent Post, Flickr, Twitter, Social Icon, Contact Form, Contact Info, Google map)
• Portfolio with sortable or paging support. From one to 4 columns portfolio styles.
• Lightbox with video support (.swf, youtube, vimeo)
• Timthumb automatically thumbnail support
• Ajax Contact form( Add contact form to any Page, Sidebar or Footer, just enter you email address)
• jQuery Drop-down menu
• PSD files included
• Extensive Documentation Included

Theme available from ThemeForest from $37 single licence.

It’s a blog style layout with posts on the home page and right hand side sidebar. It also comes with a massive slider at the top to feature your best articles with pride. The WordPress theme also has a few custom page templates like portfolio and contact page.

Features list:

• Over 20 custom skins, including 2 special Dark layouts not shown
• Easily create your own color scheme.
• Custom Cufon and Typographic loading; choose from a variety of font options and styles.
• Featured slider that can launch lightboxes or full pages.
• WordPress 3.0 Menu Integration
• NivoSlider included! (with a full management panel)
• 4 Unique Gallery layouts.
• jQuery Dropdown Menu, Lightbox, and Image Loader
• Custom Widgets, Homepage Layouts, and more.
• 2 different Blog layout options.
• jQuery 100% unobtrusive wich degrades gracefully if javascript is turned off
• Optional Image LazyLoading
• Optional Site AlphaLoader
• PSD files included
• Extensive Documentation Included (with video screencasts!)

Available from ThemeForest for $37 single licence.

Yeah, pretty big new. Specially when you consider the 30 Million user currently on Live Spaces that will have the opportunity to transfer their blog to WordPress.com using the importer developed by Automatic for the occasion.

They have also added support on WordPress.com to notify your Live friends about your latest update like with the current Spaces platform.

So if all the current user decide to move to WordPress.com, the site would be powering around 60 Million user. A statement to the scalability of WordPress multi user!

Breeze is actually a good looking theme, very slick, detail rich yet simple enough to not distract the reader from the content. In between the web 2.0 look and something a bit more grungy (depending of the skin you choose) it will cover every type of businesses or portfolio site needs.

It comes with some nice features like:

• XML file to easy import test data
• Javascript slider with full width support
• A Full Width page template
• 3 Portfolio templates
• Portfolio item detail template
• Blog and Post detail templates
• Faq and Testimonials shortcodes
• WordPress Gallery with Lightbox supporting full width pages, pages with sidebar and posts
• Custom widgets for displaying Popular posts, Recent Posts, Twitter and fully functional AJAX Contact Form widget
• Skins: 5 Light, 5 Dark, 5 Extra Dark and another 3 Unique Skins
• Styled and built in wp-pagenavi plugin used for pagination
• Threaded Comments and Gravatar ready
• Valid XHTML and CSS code
• SEO Friendly

I needed to display  Google maps for a client in one of those modal box. After 5 min searching I stumbled across SimpleModal, a jQuery plugin that works quite well and is very light-weight.

The brief is as follow: I’ve got a link that point to a google map on google’s site. I want that in a modal box displayed when a user click on a link.

The modal box will be done by SimpleModal so no code needed here. Download the file and include it in your page header. Now we need to attach an event to every link that point to a map to trigger the modal box. To do that I’ve added a class to each link called ‘map’ and added a listener on each of them to trigger a function. In jQuery this looks like that:

jQuery(document).ready(function () {
	jQuery('.map').click(function (e) {
		jQuery.modal('content of the box');
		return false;
	});
});

Now to get the google map to display without anything around there is a simple trick: add ‘&output=embed’ at the end of the url.

The content in the box is something like this:

'<iframe src="'+this.href+'&output=embed"></iframe><p class="larger"><a target="_blank" href="'+this.href+'">View larger</a></p>'

this.href gets you the href value of the link, in our case the googlemap link, then we add the &output=embed to get rid of the rest of the page. After the iframe I’ve added a link to the map in case the user wants a larger version. This link open in a new window with the target blank.

So the complete code:

jQuery(document).ready(function () {
	jQuery('.map').click(function (e) {
		jQuery.modal('<iframe src="'+this.href+'&output=embed"></iframe><p class="larger"><a target="_blank" href="'+this.href+'">View larger</a></p>');
		return false;
	});
});

And a bit of css, taken from the plugin site. I’ve also added a bit to style up the view larger button:

#simplemodal-overlay {
  background-color:#000;
}

#simplemodal-container {
  height:400px;
  width:600px;
  background-color:#fff;
  border:3px solid #ccc;
}

#simplemodal-container iframe{
	height:400px;
	width:600px;
}

#simplemodal-container a.modalCloseImg {
  background:url(images/x.png) no-repeat;
  width:25px;
  height:29px;
  display:inline;
  z-index:3200;
  position:absolute;
  top:-14px;
  right:-18px;
  cursor:pointer;
}

#simplemodal-container p.larger a {
	background:url(images/viewlarger.png) no-repeat;
	display:inline;
	z-index:3200;
	position:absolute;
	bottom:-24px;
	right:-28px;
	cursor:pointer;
	color:#fff;
	padding-left:20px;
	height:20px;
	width:80px;
	text-decoration:none;
	font-size:0.8em;
}

Easy isn’t it?

Whether you are a photographer, a designer, or artist this theme is for you. Each post can be launched in a lightbox or in normal post format, even videos and should be perfect for any image gallery based site.

The premium theme also comes with 12 professionally designed color schemes, with the opportunity to add your own in few minutes.

Rest of the features include:

• Easy setup – add your own logo and content in minutes!
• Unlimited Color Options (with 12 ready-made skins)
• Huge custom admin panel
• Images, Blog articles, Videos, and more.
• Installation instructions (with images!)
• jQuery VGrid plugin
• jQuery Media Lightbox
• Social Media Hotlinks (Facebook, Twitter, and lots more)
• “Build your own contact form” included
• Cufon Font Replacement
• Optional Shuffle Link (just for fun)
• Full PSD & pre-sized PSD ’s for skinning

The theme is available from ThemeForest for $32 single use license.

Like last year, they have released a  new bundle including 50 files, picked from the different market places. All that for $20! At this price it’s almost free Envato themes, audio, flash, artwork and 3D rendering you’re getting.

So rather than thinking about it just click on the banner and get yourself a pretty good deal right now!

The massive learn more button should also work in favor of your conversion rate by getting people to click and look into the offering on your site.

Key Features in Showtime

• 6 Slider Types – Easily switchable with built-in FreshPanel
• Slider Manager – Manage your slides with full power. Add slides. Choose ‘Go to URL ’ or ‘Open Lightbox’, on a click event. Manage transitions. Manage slide’s order. Manage speeds. Turn on/off autoslidings. Change titles, alts, descriptions and much more…
• 6 Color Skins – Choose the color that fits your business
• Custom Widgets – Twitter, Social Icons, Contact Form, Popular Posts, Related Posts
• Menu Manager – Powered by WordPress 3.0+ system
• Classic and Fullwidth Page Templates
• Gallery and Gallery Fullwidth Page Templates
• 3 Portfolio Templates
• Translation – Translate easy and fast every single hard-coded word in this theme via a special Translation section in FreshPanel
• Documentation – also contains HD screencast videos on how to install, use and customize each part of Showtime, very easy to understand and lighting fast to install
• PSDs included – One big .psd plus every small piece of Showtime used in .png or .jpg has it’s own layered .psd file which you can edit and save. Just like that. No more time consuming cropping, slicing, etc.
• Contact Page Template – Fully working, customizable via FreshPanel, with field validation.
• Threaded Comments – with field validation
• Custom Post Types and Categories – Blog and Portfolio
• PrettyPhoto Lightbox – Supports images, videos, anything.

Avisio is also developed with wp 3.0 in mind and takes advantage of all the new features so you know you are set up nicely for the future.

Key features of the template:

• Automatic content installation for a fast and easy setup, can be activated optionally
• Style switching with color picker and multiple layout and font options.
• New WordPress3 Menu support
• Slideshow & portfolio custom post types (new WordPress3 feature)
• AviaSlider included!
• Unique Portfolio Sorting/Filtering with a custom jQuery script
• Dropdwon Menu, improved with jQuery
• Cufon font replacement
• jQuery 100% unobtrusive wich degrades gracefully if javascript is turned off
• Sleek Image preloader
• Working ajax/php contact form
• PSD files included
• Extensive Documentation Included

Avisio is available for ThemeForest, from $42 single licence.

The theme comes in 5 other colour style so don’t be put off by the darkness, there is probably something lighter in the box for you. This is also a WordPress 3.0 theme so onwards with the menu goodness and custom post types.

Pendulum is designed with music lovers in mind but I can see it fit video games sites and photographer portfolio as well.

Features rundown:

• Music manager
• Portfolio manager (unlimited portfolio pages)
• Homepage slider manager
• Unlimited blog pages
• Unlimited widgets areas
• Supports image,video or swf for portfolio items
• Custom style shortcodes
• 5 custom widgets (category, recent posts, twitter, flickr, recent comments)
• Wide pages and posts
• Search page with highlight
• Cross browser compatible (IE6)
• Many back-end options to customize the theme
• XHTML Strict and CSS
• Supported by all browsers
• full working AJAX contact form (without page refreshing and setup in admin panel)
• Live validation forms!

Want an simple to install, easy to use e-commerce solution for your products? Look no further than WordPress. Where professional solutions like Magento are indeed much more robust and feature packed, WordPress paired with the right theme is just what a small shop needs.

Designed especially for online shops The Furniture Store features a plugin free localized ecommerce system, a membership area, creating and saving wishlists, an informative customer service area, unique „Shop by…“ widgets, lots of  independent widget ready areas and sooo much more!

Payment options (available now)

• PayPal Payments Standard
• PayPal Payments Pro
• Authorize.net
• WorldPay
• Bank Transfer
• Cash on Location
• Cash on delivery
• more to come…

Premium theme available from ThemeForest from $47 single license.

The design is top notch and the layout very easy to read and browse. The best addition is the stream of posts on the left hand side that popup when you roll over them.

The theme also comes with its dedicated admin page with custom options to choose and make this premium WordPress theme your own.

Features list:

• Unique design
• 3 different color schemes
• DDSlider built-in
• Fully formatted styles
• Working AJAX contact form
• AJAX loading content on homepage
• TimThumb ready (you don’t need to upload images in different sizes, upload the full size and you’re ready to go!
• A WHOLE LOT MORE

Pretty amazing when you consider the quality of the themes those guys are doing. Don’t wait, go on the site now: WooThemes.

My dream package of 5 for 1:

Inspire

Spectrum

Diarise

Postcard

Delegate

As usual, this WordPress themes comes packed full of features:

• Automatic content installation for a fast and easy setup, can be activated optionally
• New WordPress3 Menu support
• Slideshow, portfolio and testimonial custom post types (new WordPress3 feature)
• 5 different Portfolio/Item slider, also supporting video! AviaSlider included!
• Unique Portfolio Sorting/Filtering with a custom jQuery script
• Dropdwon Menu, improved with jQuery
• Cufon font replacement
• jQuery 100% unobtrusive wich degrades gracefully if javascript is turned off
• Sleek Image preloader
• Working ajax/php contact form
• PSD files included
• Extensive Documentation Included

This great theme is available from $42 from ThemeForest exclusively.

Of course that’s all you get, because WooThemes are also famous for the full package that comes with a theme:

• Special page templates ready to display your content
• Slider to display your best products
• Different stylesheets built in to make your site truly yours
• Special backend pages for greater customisation at the click of a button
• Built of the WooFramework, allowing for robust code that wont let you down.
• Top notch support via their dedicated forum

The simple grid based design is effective and does cut corners. It’s sharp, full of javascript goodness and has all the features you may need for this type of sites:

• WordPress Shortcodes for additional styling and multiple columns
• Additional sidebar widgets to display news, advertising widgets as well as a smart widget which shows either blog or gallery categories depending on which page the user is viewing.
• Utilizes postrating plugin by default, no need to download or activate it
• Supports WordPress 2.9 and 3.0 with new WordPress 3.0 functions
• PSD files included
• Extensive Documentation Included

The theme is sold from ThemeForest and goes for $37 for single license.

The built in search function is also a mice addition with filter like number of bathroom, price brackets, number of rooms and more. The design is also very professional and will make your company look good without doing much. And to top it, it also integrates Google map position for each listing.

Other features include:

• Unlimited color schemes. Just choose any color and you’re done! Gradients change also. Try the interactive demo.
• 27 individual slideshow transitions
• Video support
• “Reduced” and “Sold” banners
• Loan Calculator
• Cufon font styling
• Special typographic effects (see the sample posts and pages in the demo)
• Widget Enabled
• 6 Custom ‘Page Templates’
• Customize the wording of any header or element.
• PSD files included
• Extensive HTML documentation (live and always up to date). Read the docs now by clicking the Documentation menu in the demo.
• Can be adapted to be used for non-real estate sites. I know of 2 buyers successfully adapting the site to sell used cars. Some modification of PHP files necessary.

This premium theme can be had for $32 for single use from ThemeForest.

excerpt_length

The name says it all, it allowd you to change the length of the excerpt displayed. The usage is very simple:

function mytheme_excerpt_length( $length ) {
	return 40;
}
add_filter( 'excerpt_length', 'mytheme_excerpt_length' );

The above function changes the number of words returned by the excerpt to 40. The code goes in your theme functions.php.

excerpt_more

Again pretty self explanatory, this one changes the end of the excerpt to whatever you want. For example, to add a link you would add this to your functions.php:

function mytheme_excerpt_more( $more ) {
	return ' &hellip; <a href="'. get_permalink() . '">' . __('Continue reading', 'mytheme') . '</a>';
}
add_filter( 'excerpt_more', 'mytheme_excerpt_more' );

This code will add a ‘Continue Reading’ link at the end of each excerpt and change the default ‘[...]‘ at the end to ‘…’

The plugin is called WPtouch and is freely available from the WordPress plugin repository here. it comes with a built in mobile friendly theme with an Apple style design that works.

Everything is there to make your mobile users at ease with a nice layout the will fit the screen and display your posts and pages nicely.

It also includes ajax loading for content so you loose less time waiting for the browser to load and more time actually reading. Having the content fitting the view port is much better when using a small screen. No more horizontal scroll and zoom.

There are loads of options in the backend to customize the theme but if it’s not enough you can always get your hands dirty and change the code. It is WordPress code after all and if you are familiar with theme design then you should be able to get by quite easily.

With the rapid increase in mobile browsing over the past few month this is something every site should consider.