Apricot – A Minimalist WordPress Theme

Apricot is a text-heavy and graphic-light, widget- and tag-supporting minimalist WordPress theme built on a Kubrick foundation. Apricot validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict and uses valid CSS. It natively supports the excellent Other Posts From Cat and the_excerpt Reloaded plugins, should you want to install them.

WordPress version 2.3 introduces native support for ‘tags’, a method of organizing posts according to key words. Apricot has been updated to use this native tag system. The tag cloud will appear in the sidebar and the tags for each post appear above the meta data.

I used Apricot on this site for over a year, making little tweaks and adjustments the whole time, so the theme is pretty thoroughly tested in a variety of different browsers and resolutions. While the markup is derived from the WordPress default theme, Kubrick, I’ve added a few modifications of my own. I’ve listed some of these changes below.

header.php

  • Title tag reconfigured to display “Page Title | Site Name”

single.php

  • Post title is now wrapped in H1 tags
  • Metadata shows when the post was last modified (if ever)
  • Added links to social bookmarking/blog indexing sites: Del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Google Bookmarks, and Technorati
    I’ve published a fix for the Sociable plugin, which I’m now using instead of hard-coded links
  • If the Other Posts From Cat plugin is active, the theme will use it
  • Comments by the post’s author can be styled independently

page.php

  • Displays the page’s last modified date (instead of date of publication)

index.php

  • Displays the full text of the latest post and an excerpt from each of the next nine most recent posts
  • Native support for the_excerpt Reloaded plugin, if active

sidebar.php

  • Displays tag cloud, if tags are enabled

search.php

  • If no results found, displays the site’s most recent five posts

404.php

  • Displays the site’s most recent five posts

footer.php

  • Archive and index page titles + blog name wrapped in H1 tags

Screen shot

Apricot - A WordPress theme by Ardamis.com

Search engine optimization

Apricot takes care of most of the on-page factors that Google values highly. It places the post’s title at the beginning of the title tag and in a H1 tag near the top of the page. It is free of extraneous markup and the navigation is easily spiderable. It generates what I think is a pretty logical site structure from the various post and category pages, though I have yet to study the effect of the new tagging system.

I’ve had a few top-ranked pages with this and other structurally similar layouts. Your mileage with the search engines may vary, but the layout uses fundamentally sound structural markup, which should give your site a good start.

Download

Download the theme from http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/apricot or from the link below.

Download the Apricot WordPress Theme

What if I want to use an image as a header?

Lots of people would rather use a graphic as a header, including me, but the WordPress guys insist on each theme uploaded to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ display the blog title and tag line.

If you want to replace the blog title and tag line with an image, download this zip file and follow these instructions (also included in readme.txt).

1. Make a PNG image, name it “header.png” and upload it to the /wp-content/themes/apricot/images/ folder. It should be 800px wide by 130px tall, or less.

2. Replace the original Apricot theme’s header.php file with the header.php file from this folder.

Download the Apricot Image Header

60 thoughts on “Apricot – A Minimalist WordPress Theme”

  2. manu

    Truly Amazing theme! That’s all I can say about this theme.

    Wonder if you’d be interested in sharing the theme you’re using for your blog.

  3. Manu

    Looking forward to the day when u put up your blog’s theme for download. I wish I knew some coding, at least I could make my blog’s sidebar look like yours.

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  7. inga

    Hi! I’m using your Apricot theme on my site, and I love it. However, is there a way I can have two sidebars??? Is there a special code I could add or no?

  9. Flavio

    That is a great minimalist wordpress theme. Very clean and allows readers to focus on the content rather than be distracted by too many pictures and extra items.

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  13. ardamis Post author

    I know, lots of people want this.

    I’ve edited the post to provide a downloadable replacement header.php file that uses a PNG graphic instead of the blog title and tag line text.

  14. Yong Hwee

    Hi,

    The default for index.php is as follows:
    Displays the full text of the latest post and an excerpt from each of the next nine most recent posts

    How do I get WordPress to display the full text of all my post instead of only the latest one?

  16. ardamis Post author

    To change the index page to display the entire post, open the Apricot theme folder and find the “index.php” file. Open it in a text editor and change the following lines:



    Then replace them with this line:


    That’s it.

  18. ardamis Post author

    Try reducing the bottom padding on .multipost in style.css to something like 30px:

    .multipost {
    padding: 0 0 80px;
    }

    … to …

    .multipost {
    padding: 0 0 30px;
    }

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  22. ardamis Post author

    Thanks for the comment. I’m working on a single-column design in my spare time. I’ll post a comment here with a link when it’s done.

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  28. bregman

    I love that this template doesn’t scale/cut off images. Is there a way to turn on images for the archive pages though?

  29. ardamis Post author

    I’m glad you like it. The Archives pages only display an excerpt of each post, and any html tags, including tags, are stripped out.

    To display the full posts on the Archives pages, including any images, open archive.php in the Apricot theme folder and replace these lines:

    with these:

  31. John

    BEAUTIFUL theme. I love it. Does anyone know how to add links to “Previous Page” and “Next Page” at the bottoms of pages? Thanks!

  32. K

    How do I make the new threaded comments enhancement works?

    Otherwise, clean minimalist theme. Love it.

  38. murmurs

    Hi, very nice design, could it be possible to put an image as a background for this theme?

  40. kahape

    what a clean and elegant style!!

    I wish to enlarge its standard width from 800 to 900 px, and reduce the left collumns width from 220 to 190. so the width for content should increase in total by 130 px. I´ve changed the settings accordingly (hm, at least I think so), but only the space between content and left collumn extended, and the rest (header and footer) didn´t cooperate either.

    Do You have a hint for me?

    note: if Yo offered this wider size by default, it perhaps could have a great career
    as a photo gallery or photo blog 🙂

    regards, klaus

  42. Konum

    We have a winner! I’va been looking for a simple template for my webpage until i have some time to make one of my own and Apricto is just what I want. The style it’s simple but great looking. The CSS is nicely done, clean, commented and easy to customize.

    Thank you!

    PD: For those who want a wider post column add X px to the #page width and then add those same X px to the
    narrowcolumn width.

  43. Luke

    This theme is a clear standout. Thanks so much!

    I’m also looking for a solution to incorporate previous/next navigation at the bottom of page. If anyone can help, that would be great.

    Thanks again!

  45. Julie

    This theme is really just is beautifully simple and very tasteful, thank you so much! I would like to join the choir of people that are looking to find the older/previous posts – button? Anyone? Thanks!

  46. banhill

    @Julie:

    For that you have to edit the Main Index Template (index.php) of the apricot theme. Here’s what I did:



    ...

    (There might be better ways to do this.)

  48. Clay Burell

    Just started using the theme, and really love the design.

    But on a new post, some images dipped into blockquotes, and those images show a horizontal border on bottom.

    Any way to make those go away? The minimalism that’s so nice gets, um, less minimal with them.

    Thanks 🙂

  49. miel

    love this theme! quick question – on the sidebar my archives and categories show up but my widgets are way down the sidebar at the bottom of the page. any suggestions on a fix? thanks for the great theme!

  50. ardamis Post author

    Miel,

    This looks like a CSS issue. The #content div and the #sidebar ul seem to be trying to occupy the same space. The #content div is encroaching into the #sidebar, and the inspiration link is being pushed below #content.

    You should be able to fix this by adjusting the paddings/widths of #content and #sidebar.

  52. Clay

    Seems my Google Analytics tracking code placement isn’t working, and the only template file I’ve found with the /head> tag is header.php.

    Is that where the Tracking Code should be installed?

    Thanks much. Your theme’s getting great feedback.

  54. Julie

    Hi again, thanks for the reply banhill, but I still can’t seem to get the older/previous posts thing to work? Does anyone know anything?
    Please, this theme is so great, its too bad that this small issue is keeping it from 100 % perfect 🙂

    Thanks!

    Julie

  55. Deb Legg

    I plucked this bit of code from the archives.php and inserted it after <?php endwhile; ?> in the index.php file.

    <div class="navigation">
    <div class="alignright"><?php next_posts_link('Older Posts &raquo;') ?></div>
     <div class="alignleft"><?php previous_posts_link('&laquo; Newer Posts') ?></div>
 </div>

    Adjust Text and alignment to your needs.
    I know almost nothing about php, but this worked for me.

  56. Tomas jahon

    This looks like a CSS issue. The #content div and the #sidebar ul seem to be trying to occupy the same space. The #content div is encroaching into the #sidebar, and the inspiration link is being pushed below #content.

  57. Guy

    Hey there,
    I like your apricot theme alot!
    would like to know how and if I can purchase it and use it with my tumblr blog
    LL THE BEST

    GUY

  58. pti

    the theme is exactly what i’m looking for. i only would add a infinite scroll on the main and the categorie page and have no clue how i can do it. any tips to configurate the wordpress plugin?

  60. P

    Hi there. I was thinking about using this theme for my footwear site – bestfootwear.co.uk because I prefer minimal themes like Apricot. However, I wanted to know if there is a quick fix to make featured images show up on category and archive pages…Thank you in advance.

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