Got a bug report or suggestion? Email me at mail@leonpaternoster.com or tweet me.
Scherzo is a clean, readable theme that boasts a mobile first design, which means it displays perfectly on all mobile phones as well as desktop monitors. It requires version 3 or higher of WordPress and makes use of HTML5 structural tags, the hatom microformat and ARIA landmark roles. In plain language that means search engines will be able to interpret your content easily while screen readers will be able to navigate it with no problems.
- Download the Scherzo theme (hosted by box.net)
- Visit the demo site
Screenshot of the Scherzo theme
It also supports the following features:
- one widget ready, contextual sidebar
- custom header image
- pluggable functions
- custom background
- post formats
- excerpts
- rtl support
- print style sheet
Support and disclaimer
I offer no support for Scherzo and it’s published ‘as is’; if it breaks your website or upsets your WordPress install I’m afraid I can’t accept any responsibility. On the other hand, if you do email me or Tweet me with a simple request, I may be able to help. Bug reports and feature requests are always gratefully received.
Internet Explorer
Scherzo works in IE7+.
Hi Leon -
This is all very new to me, and I love the basics of the Scherzo theme. One of the reasons I chose it is because of working on mobile devices; however, the header truncates instead of scales, which looks awkward on my iPhone. Is there a way to scale it instead, so it would appear full-width?
Thanks!
Steve
Thanks for the comment, Steve.
Hadn’t considered this, to be honest. There’s a
background-sizeproperty that should do the job (it won’t work in IE, though).I’ll look at adding it in the next update.
Leon
Thanks, Leon.
I discovered another very weird issue just now. I used your instructions about creating a Child theme to modify stuff. The only thing I added to what you had was a line to change the text color. Now, although the header is the proper size, and appears properly in the preview on the Dashboard, the right side of it is truncated on the website (Firefox). Weird!
Steve
Hi Leon
Thank you for this excellent simple theme. It was just what i was looking for. However, i noticed that when adding sub-menu items, the sub-menu is closer to the above menu-item than the rest menu-items. I found the menu a bit out of ballance and fixed it by adding
margin-top: 0.308em;to.sidebar ul li ul,
ul.sub-menu {
margin-top: 0.308em;
margin-bottom: 0;
}
Thanks Michael. I’m not entirely happy with the borders and was thinking of getting rid of them altogether, which would probably help the balance.
The line-height in the sidebar took a while to work out; it’s in
ems and sticks to a rhythm, but I see what you mean about balance.Thanks for your comment,
Leon
Leon, great theme, love it. Just what i was looking for. Two questions:
1. how to change the main page blog post text? (I’m not really savvy with html but I can copy and paste html in appropriate places if necessary.)
2. Is there a way to center it all? Looks like the header isn’t quite centered over the posts.
thanks,
Jason
Hello Jason,
Not sure what you mean by the first question.
The header area is exactly the same width as the main content area and the sidebar. As you have no widgets in your sidebar nothing is currently displayed there. Is that what’s causing the problem?
Thanks,
Leon
Hi
I am currently using one of your themes and am wondering, whether it is possible for me to add a search on the theme I currently use and how do I go about doing so.
Regards
Got it thanks.
Hi Leon! Great theme, just what I was looking for!
May I ask, when logged out, is it possible to remove the small bar that comes up at the top of each page, or at least to make it white so that no one will notice it?
Thanks!
Oh, yeah, btw, I am using a plugin that creates a main index page and daughter pages from it (real estate plug in with listing and then individual listing pages) for a class project. Is it possible to somehow put in a reference to these daughter pages back to the main page? Or would that be a part of the script. THANK YOU!
Hi Jotek,
Glad you like the theme. Both of your requests aren’t really related to the theme itself, so I can’t help you, I’m afraid. You might want to try the WordPress forums.
Thanks,
Leon
Actually, I am talking about the small bar that is at the top of the theme. I don’t think its the admin bar (which I have disabled, but rather a separator that only came into being when using the theme. It’s in all the pictures of the theme example…..
Thanks!
Ah, I see.
You need to restyle the
htmlelement; the theme adds aborder-topto it.—L
Hey, thanks a lot. worked perfect
:)
hi leon!
i really enjoy your theme – its so clean and still stylish.
i was trying to move the sidebar to the left, but without success… is there an easy way to do that? i was fighting with the css-styles but couldnt do it :(
thanks for your help (and that great theme)!
alex
Hi Alex,
Two things:
i) use a child theme to modify Scherzo
ii) you need to play around with
#contentand#sidebarwithin media queries to have an effectL
hi leon!
thanks for that – i figured out how to change it :)
regards
alex
I love this theme, and have a suggestion which you may not love. It would be nice to have the capability to place a horizontal menu just under the header. I’m trying to develop a site for a friend with your theme, but I would like to be able to display wide images across a status home page, but not lose the navigation. I suppose I could do this myself, but then I’m not the best WordPress/PHP coder.
Anyway, love the work you have done.
Way back Scherzo did have a navbar. It’s not difficult to add to a theme.
When I submitted it to the themes directory there was an issue, so I removed it. I’ll have a look at seeing if it’s possible to add a navbar and stick to the theme directory rules.
Hi Leon,
Great theme and I love using it.
Just one quick question: When you go on my website, you’ll notice that many widgets are aligned left. Do you know how to center them?
@Matt R
Thanks. Try finding the relevant
sectionID and then applying some styles to that ID (probablydisplay: block; margin: 0 auto;.L
Leon,
I really like this theme. I looked at alot of the new wave of html5 responsive themes that have started to come out and the weird thing is that especially on non iphones they don’t work well. Infact worse than a non responsive theme in that in a few I couldn’t even pan over to see the sidebar or zoom out fully. Scherzo is the only one that works on all our families devices.
Anyway I have a couple of requests for further development.
Custom Post types (would love an asides post type).
Maybe addition of page templates like archive and links would help people to get their site up and running a little faster also.
@Lewis
Firstly, thanks for you kind words about the theme. Unfortunately, people don’t seem to realise that the unique thing about Scherzo is that it’s mobile first. This means it will work on pretty much any mobile device, not just expensive iPhones, Androids etc. Perhaps I should post something on this.
Secondly, I’ve had a few requests for custom post types now, so I think I’ll look at adding them to the next version. Not so sure about link and archives templates, but it’s a possibility.
Thanks,
Leon
Hey Leon,
First of all, thank you for sharing so useful and cutting edge source! :) It’s a really great start for me to build my website responsive.
However, I’ve found a little incorrect statement from you:
“Wider screens (desktop monitors and the iPad, for example) display a two column version.”
iPad displays a one column layout. I’ve tested it in iCab and Safari, just let me know if you need a screenshots.
But I like it anyway ;) It’s not a problem I think.
@Serge
Glad you like it.
I have a confession—I’ve tested on an iPhone, but not an iPad.
If anyone can spare me an iPad that would be smashing ;-)
It should display 2 columns in landscape mode. Screenshots would be great, if it doesn’t.
Thanks,
Leon
@Serge The Scherzo theme displays two columns in landscape mode. Portrait mode is a single column.
hi! another thanks for building this!!!
regarding the mobile view (also on IE8) I miss a “down to navigation” link in the top part of the site – especially with longer content it’s tedious to scroll down manually on mobiles and it would help IE8 users to not think “no navigation here???” – TIA for pondering to add this, grz!
@noluck — good idea. I will probably add a navbar to version 3, which will display at the top and the bottom of the page.
If you are the person who wrote the post about Minerva Troy, I did know her personally. I’d be extremely interested in that diary for historical purposes. Is it for sale? Thanks.
Hi Leon, I’d love to download and test your 2.4 – sorry couldn’t tweet you my twitter is awry.
Hey Leon! How are you doing? Your newest site design looks fantastic as always :)
I just noticed today that there’s something weird going on with the image for my header – it’s tiling across the page (on chrome and IE at least). Is this because of something I did?
Your expertise is much appreciated!
Jess.
Hey there again Leon! Ok, I narrowed down different options and discovered it’s most likely got something to do with the fact that I customize the fonts on my browser. If I change the size, a lot of things move around but for anyone else everything turns out okay. I thought it was weird that I haven’t touched the code in months and it suddenly changed!
I guess that means it’s sorted, sorry to bother you! :)
Love this theme! Any hints on adding a second sidebar to the right of the universal sidebar so 2 sidebars show at all times?
Thanks, I like your theme.
@Jess—that’d take quite a bit of work.
@Rory. Good stuff. New version out in the not too distant future.
Hi Leon,
Great theme. Just added a header image. Looks fine in Firefox & Chrome, but the bottom is clipped in IE8. I made the image size 816 × 144 pixels.
Thanks in advance and be well, Robert :~)
Hi Leon!
Your theme is really great and I decided to use it for my blog, the only thing I noticed is that if I use the option to paginate the comments, it won’t show the older ones, since I can’t find anywhere the link to the other pages.
Is this a known bug, or am I doing something wrong…?
Thanks a lot, and congrats again for the great work :-)
Oh, found it!
Added “paginate_comments_links” function in the Comments section and now the world is a good place again :-)
Sorry and thanks again for the theme!
Hi Massimo,
No problem. This will be included in the next version of the theme anyway.
I keep saying version 2.4 is just a week or two away, but I’m very busy with paying work at the moment. Will try and get it released soon.
L
@Robert,
My answer to everything is version 2.4 will sort everything. I’ve reworked header images (see the demo site for the latest version)
L
thx that.
i luv it
Hi Leon,
Really great theme!
I wanted to ask, how can I change the amount of blog posts that are being displayed?
Also, what can I do to show only excerpts of each blog article? By default it shows the complete article which is making my home page quite long.
Thanks in advance!
@David
Try Settings > Reading (or something like that).
And use excerpts when you write a post. You may need to fiddle around with the view options on the write post screen.