Olive WordPress Theme

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Olive is a simple two column, fixed width, widget ready WordPress Theme designed by Chris Niedojadlo. Normally I don’t review themes which follow the usual blog layout but the color blending in this theme attracted me. And so here is my review.

On top we have the right aligned blog header. The header text is placed on the foreground of the droplets header. Looks nice.

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To the left we have the beautiful header image. I love to see close-up shots of water droplets and therefore the header is my favorite. Though the header image is of good contrast, Chris has taken special care to reduce the visibility of the header image on the right portion where the blog header text comes.

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Now comes the beauty of color blending. I must say Chris’s choice of colors is a bit unusual. Artists don’t usually prefer to mix Green with Brown. But Chris took a step head and experimented it and result is a treat. First we have the search box in brown. Take a note of the tri-edged border effect on the left end of the text box. The light brown fades from edge 1 to edge 3 giving a sinking effect. Also the usage of a gradient image for Go button is commendable.

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Then comes the sidebars. Displayed on green background, the bullets used are blue in color - another fine blend. Other than the edge effect, there isn’t much to talk about.

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The content items are very ordinary following the routine post layout. Chris could have introduced atleast some fancy post separator to get rid off the monotonous feeling. Also the footer portion disappointed me. I was expecting either some footer art or a brown-green blend which would have made the footer standout. But now the footer is too blended with the main contents.

Anyway the post layout may not be my cup of tea, but the color blend sure is. If the post layout and footer were better, Olive would be one of my favorite themes. That doesn’t mean it is bad. Infact I believe most bloggers are going to love this one (the download count shows).

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2 Responses to “Olive WordPress Theme”

themeXpert on April 2nd, 2007 12:06 pm
My opinions
- In the sidebar, you can see that the child categories are properly intended, so that it is distinguishable. Not many designers do that.
- the author could have put a small graphic for the child categories too.(should be doable in the css)
- no support for post pagination in this theme (according to the demo). You will have to add the code manually.
- i like the ” (quotes) style blockquote than the border line on the left, but that is my personal opinion.
Overally, quite a good theme.
Steve Wordpressguy on April 6th, 2007 1:50 pm

Nice theme, shows the value of good photography as a basis for a theme.