It's been a long time since I released anything to the public. Heck, it's been quite a while since I blogged. I've been thinking about doing a new Pivot theme, WordPress theme, some plugin or a code sample. This time however I've chosen to do something I haven't done before. For a long time I've been wanting to put up a website showing my best photography efforts. While Flickr is absolutely great and I love using it, I figured my best images deserve a bit more than just being on there. I needed a dedicated site. A photo blog.

Once I had decided this, I needed to find the proper software to run the site. I considered using WordPress with some appropriate plugins and a theme to run it but eventually decided against it. WordPress is great but it just isn't a photo publishing tool. Fortunately I found out about Pixelpost. Pixelpost is a pretty nice piece of software specifically designed to run a photo blog. Unlike WordPress or any other general purpose blogging tool, it's image-centric from the ground up. There's no 'new post', just 'new image'. After uploading images, thumbnails get generated automatically. It features browsing, commenting (even with Akismet anti-spam support) and everything else you'd expect from a photo blog tool. In addition to that it's also fairly easy to extend it or change/modify existing functionality. All this is done through the addon's mechanism in Pixelpost.

My new Photography site

Before I move on, let me link you to my spanking new photography site. The site is built with Pixelpost, only showcasing what I feel are my very best photos. While I upload quite a few images to Flickr every week, this site will not be updated as often. I'll only post images on it that I feel stand out and deserve their own special spot on the internet.

Dark Matter

After installing Pixelpost I tried out numerous available templates but I didn't really find anything I really liked, both design wise and technology wise. I wanted a slick looking template built with web standards and best practices in mind. That means it should be degradable, not contain any inline styling or javascript and have proper clean markup. I did not find such a template which is why I worked numerous tube rides and some evenings and weekends on my own template.

While working on my new site I decided it would be a nice idea to not keep the template for myself but to release it to the public. And so 'Dark Matter' was born. Dark Matter is a (hopefully) clean looking template giving full focus to the stuff that really matters: the photos. While the template contains a fair amount of enhancements and special effects I tried to never let them get in the way of what people will visit a photography for in the first place: photography.

When visting a page of a site running 'Dark Matter', everything is hidden behind sliding panels except for the actual photo and the comments, which are 'below the fold'. Hovering over the photo will reveal an info panel and previous/next navigational aids. A thumbnail panel showing the photo in it's photo stream can also be expanded at will. In a future release I will turn this panel into an Ajaxian browser with which all thumbnails can be browsed without ever leaving the page. I have this working in 'alpha stage' so stay tuned for that.

Besides the clean interface, 'Dark Matter' has the following characteristics:

• Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict output
• YUI powered behavioural layer
• Strict separation between markup, style and javascript
• Perfect degradation when Javascript isn't available
• Lots of nifty special effects that don't get in your way

Availability

'Dark Matter' is being distributed directly from the Pixelpost website. It can be downloaded right here. The template is licensed under a Creative Commons license allowing free use and modification as long as it isn't commercial. If you do wish to use the template commercially feel free to contact me to talk about terms and conditions.

Note that while 'Dark Matter' is perfectly usable already, it's still in beta stage. I plan to finish at least one more big feature (the Ajaxian thumbnail navigation) and do some cleaning up in the javascript and the CSS.

Like it? Donate!

I haven't really ever done this before but I figured it can't really hurt to mention the possibility of making a small donation in case you use my template and appreciate the time and effort I put in it. Needless to say, this is completely optional. If you feel like buying me a beer, a book or something else, why not hit the button below? Any donation, great or small is highly appreciated.

Closing notes

It took quite a while to finish this template but it's been great. I loved working with YUI again. It had been too long really, unfortunately. I hope you'll enjoy the template and my photo blog as much as I did creating it.