Monochrome Pro theme has only a few more options than the Genesis sample theme. But the styling, especially on blog posts with featured images, is much nicer.
Monochrome Pro has it’s own tab in the customiser where you can enable the search icon in the navigation bar and enable the intro style for the first paragraph of all blog posts. It also has a before footer call to action widget area. And you can add a logo in the footer.
If you use the Before Footer CTA widget area as a call to action banner, you can set a background gradient to that widget area via the colors tab in the customiser.
The Customiser Settings.
Go to: Dashboard > Appearance > Customise
And select the Monochrome Pro Settings tab.
You can personalize the Monochrome Pro theme with these options.
- Show Menu Search Icon? Check the box to show a search icon in the menu.
- Enable the “intro” paragraph style on single posts? Check the box to automatically style the first paragraph of every blog post bold and italic (this does not affect web pages).
- This is the Gravatar of the post author.
- Monochrome Pro displays featured images in this stepped way on large screens.
To enable the search icon in the navigation bar, just tick the Show Menu Search Icon box. Then when a site visitor clicks the search icon, a search box overlays the whole header area.
To apply the “intro” font bold and italic style to the first paragraph of all single posts, just tick the appropriate box in the customiser number (2) above.
If the post author has set up a Gravatar account to match the email address they use to sign in to WordPress, their Gravatar image will display above the post title as in number (3) above. The Gravatar will only display if you add a featured image to the post.
Featured images on blog posts…
Monochrome Pro displays featured images on blog posts in a stepped header. The author’s Grvatar displays overlapping the border in the center of the step. If you remove the featured image, the Gravatar is automatically removed too. These headers look good if you choose your featured image carefully. The styling looks a little bit like Essence Pro theme.
Monochrome Pro has two menus.
- Header.
- Footer.
The header menu displays to the right of the logo or site title. The footer menu displays below the footer credits.
Widget areas available in Monochrome Pro…
- Primary sidebar.
- Before footer CTA.
- After entry.
Monochrome Pro does not have a footer widget area. If I need a footer, I use the before footer CTA widget area. If you want to use the Before Footer CTA as a call to action widget area, you can set a background gradient color via the customiser. Go to: Dashboard > Appearance > Customise > Colors.
Page templates in Monochrome Pro…
- Content/Primary Sidebar.
- Primary Sidebar/Content.
- Full Width Content.
- Landing Page.
Image logo, footer logo and site icon
Go to: Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Site Identity
Here you can upload…
- An image logo
- A footer logo
- A site icon
Suggested image logo dimensions are: 320 by 120 pixels. The logo will display at one half of that size, this makes the logo look crisp even on retina displays.
Footer CTA and background gradient
You find the background gradient color settings via…
Dashboard > Appearance > Customise > Colors
If you set the start color and the end color to the same color, the Footer CTA widget area will be a single color and will not have a gradient.
The Footer CTA widget area looks like this…
Footer Logo.
Monochrome Pro has a footer logo, this is a square M in the demo site. It displays above the footer credits in the footer credits area.
The footer menu displays below the footer credits. You have to look carefully to see it.
Breadcrumbs…
Breadcrumbs on blog posts display near the top of the featured image. If featured images are turned off, breadcrumbs display above the post title.
