The Dawn

“theDawn” is a powerful all-in-one premium WordPress theme that brings to the table many front-end and back-end features. While working on it, I’ve been paying attention to the design and structure of the theme as well as the options variety and customizability and ease of use. With its 30+ layout options, 60+ built-in shortcodes, and many other features (see features list below) it will make your WordPress life easier and joyful. Since many of “theDawn” features are built-in -some of them are exclusive, it will give you more control over your site, and induces your creativity, take “Mbiz slider” as an example.

Update: Version 1.0.2 was just released, see change log below for details.

Features:

* Ten Skins: dark, light, colorful and what I call “luxurious” styles.
* Powerful backend option panels: nearly 70 admin options for managing your content, site design and layout.
* Layout varieties: multiple layouts for: homepage, portfolio, blog, gallery, page, sidebar, footer, and other options. See a complete list of layout variety
* Three Sliders: Mbiz slider, Nivo slider, fixed image.
* Mbiz slider: exclusive slider that provides many features and options which are easily manageable through powerful “Slider manager”. Take a look here. You will find more explanation and tips in the documentation. Free slider background images are also included.
* Four different homepage layouts: two magazine-like layouts which are widgets based i.e easy to manage, blog, normal page which uses shortcodes. Homepage can be given an exclusive sidebar.
* Portfolio custom post type: for easy management and organization.
* Portfolio layouts and options: portfolio can be presented in one of seven different layouts, and can be featured in your homepage. It also has video support.
* Gallery templates: creating a gallery is a cinch and fun with “theDawn” gallery templates. See the demo, and check this YouTube video tutorial.
* Sidebars: add/remove as many widgetized sidebars as you want and attach them to pages, posts, or portfolio items.
* Left and right sidebars: align your sidebars either to the left or to the right, globally, or in a given page, post, or portfolio item.
* Three blog layouts: floated image, full-width image, and disabled image layouts.
* Single-post optional widgets: “ShareThis” on 10 social networks, about the author, and popular/related posts.
* Single post can split and can be protected (password protection is supported).
* Comments: nested four levels deep. Support for comments pagination and avatars.
* 10+ custom widgets: “theDawn” provides its own widgets as well as re-styled default widgets. Added widgets -for sidebar and footer are: popular posts, flickr -which supports user photos and group pool, latest tweets, contact form, contact info, social networks, google map.
* Footer: has three areas:
o Optional big footer: widgetized and provides 9 column layouts.
o Optional sub-footer: located inside big footer, and has 2 widgetized columns.
o Standard footer: at the very bottom, and contains footer menu.
* WP 3 .0 Menus: top menu which has dropdown capability to unlimited levels, and footer menu. In addition to those two, WordPress “custom menu” has been enhanced to become dropdown ready. With WordPress 3.0 menus and theDawn sidebar generator you have the ability to add any menu to any page.
* Shortcodes: over 60 shortcodes available, all are integrated with WYSIWYG editor in a neat an organized way (you will like it). Shortcodes include but not limited to: lightbox, video, typography, contact form, sitemap, price boxes, tabbed content, column layouts, and more.
* Sitemap: a shortcode which has a lot of options, it’s simple and highly customizable. See it live.
* Working ajax contact form: with a spam protection. It’s available as a shortcode to be added in any page, and as a widget for sidebars and footers.
* Header intro: the area beneath top menu which I call “Header-intro”, it’s optional and customizable.
* Optional breadcrumbs navigation
* Lightbox: for single image, gallery, and video. It’s based on prettyPhoto. Could be implemented by shortcodes.
* Video support
* Automatic thumbnails by timthumb
* Price boxes: implemented with shortcodes.
* Admin visual editor: WYSIWYG editor is re-styled so content will have similar look to the front-end page.
* Translate ready
* Browser compatibility: IE7-8, Firefox 3-3.6, Chrome 4-8, Safari, Opera.
* Cufon font replacement
* PSD files: of basic design elements are included.
* Extensive documentation.