RocketThemes Gantry Framework for WordPress is kind of Interesting!

Andy Miller, founder of RocketTheme started mambodev.com in 2004 when he was working as a core developer for the Mambo CMS. Soon mambodev.com evolved into a template club based site and was relaunched under the name RocketTheme. While this company have been one of the main players in the Joomla theme market for several years, we have also seen releases of really excellent themes for Drupal, phpBB3 and finally WordPress. The recent release of their Gantry Framework for WordPress makes it clear that their focus on this platform is very high. The Gantry Framework was build by RocketTheme for Joomla and have been very popular. I believe it is going to be interesting follow RocketTheme in the following months to see what themes they are going to release for WordPress. The feature list is amazing and really worth checking out.

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One thing that have always amazed me is how well RocketTheme present their themes – I clearly recall this from the period when I used Joomla a lot. The effort put into explaining and showcasing all features must be significant and it is really worth a visit alone to get inspired. Lets start with a look at the first Gantry theme for WordPress. Below I also go a bit more into details with Gantry itself.

Reaction – The first theme build on Gantry

Reaction is the August 2010 Club Theme release from RocketTheme and it is the proud pioneer of the brand new Gantry Framework for WordPress. RocketTheme plan this to be the foundation of all their new themes to come. Gantry offers many great features as you will see in a minute. Alongside the new Gantry core, are many other features well take a look at. Feature overview:

• Gantry Framework
• 6 Style Variations
• 18 Background Combinations
• RT Plugins Styling
• Custom Typography
• Javascript Form Styling
• Fusion Menu
• 3 Widget Variations
• Over 60 Widget Positions
• Fully translatable
• IE6 Warning Message
• FF3.5, Opera 10, Safari 4, IE6,7,8 Compatible
• W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional. W3C CSS 3 Valid

Below I have picked a few features and detailed them a bit. I recommend that you also visit the RocketTheme website to get the full feature overview.

Gantry Framework

Just wanted to show you a screenshot from the Gantry backend. As you can see it looks very feature rich and the design is simple and intuitive. See below for more Gantry details.

Reaction theme comes with 6 Style Variations

The theme have in the box 6 completely different styles. You can go the the site and easily view all of them here. Just use the menu item Preset Styles. On the image below I have picked style 3.

You can use these as they are and many will I think, but the Gantry system makes it a snap to customize a preset to fit your needs better.

Fusion Menu

Fusion is javascript-based dropdown menu system, with extensively functionality. The menu itself is built on the rewritten core of the latest revision of RokNavMenu, the core application behind all RocketTheme menus. Fusion offers a series of new abilities ranging from Menu Icons, Subtext support and much greater controls over the Multiple Column ability for dropdowns. I have seen many attempts to make good looking menus in WordPress, but with this theme I’m kind of impressed for the first time.

It is maintained from the Gantry system. I have still to figure out how this all fits into the new WordPress menu capability…

You can configure Fusion Menu as Widgets and you will find all parameters under the Gantry Menu widget.

The RocketTheme Plugins

The Ajax based search look really cool and it is just incredible this is part of the theme as well. It search as you type and highlight the matching words.

There are also 3 other interesting plugins in the package one for creating tabs, popups and accordion effects.

Over 60 Widget Positions

There are over 60 widget positions with this theme that are collapsible (if no widgets are published to the position, it will not appear). This is unique for a WordPress theme and makes me think if Gantry is going to make WordPress even more interesting for the general CMS market. This flexibility is amazing – see below! Would you believe a WordPress site could do this and pure through configuration? When I see this I just want to try it out and play with it.

The below diagram is of the Widget Variations page.

Get more information on the Reaction theme here.

What is Gantry Framework for WordPress

Gantry is a framework used for assembling, building and maintaining a RocketTheme template. It is an advanced platform for dramatically extending the capabilities of the entire theming system of WordPress. Gantry for WordPress is just as flexible and extensible as the Joomla version, it contains all the key features and functionality too. Some benefits such as Custom Presets, caching, iPhone support etc all work great and features traditionally not available in WordPress themes. Also some new benefits such as being able to create custom overrides of any Gantry setting and then assign them to page types, menu items, posts, pages, categories or post tags, ensures that Gantry will provide is capable of providing some very powerful and flexible WordPress. Lets see in more detail what it is and what features it provides:

• 960 Grid System (http://960.gs) for simple consistent layout
• Cleaner more understandable index.php. All the complicated bits are handled for you in the Gantry core.
• Flexibility to configure up to 6 widgets in row position.
• 65 base widget positions in the Gantry core. These can be easily extended to add more
• 36 possible combinations for the layout of the mainbody/sidebars alone!
• Flexibility to configure different grid-size layouts based on number of published widgets. You are not forced to use the same grid layout for every page
• 12 built-in Gantry Features like Logo, font-sizer, to-top smooth slider. Easily create your own to add more functionality with little coding required.
• Ability to force widget display and ‘blank’ module positions for advanced module placement ability.
• Stunning new Admin interface providing better usability and control.
• Unique Layout controls allow you to configure your layout without having to do math or ever create a ‘broken’ layout.
• Layout controls provide visual representation of your front-end layout for simple and intuitive customization.
• Gantry is XML driven, adding another row of completely flexible module positions is as simple as editing one XML file.
• New flexible field system allows loading preset theme attributes and modifying for a custom design. Also support session and cookie level overriding for development.
• All new table-less HTML overrides
• New standard typography and WordPress core elements styling
• New advanced caching system makes using Gantry really fast!
• Optimized codebase with speed, size, and reuse core tenants of the framework design

Want to read more? Maybe you have a web shop? Improving your webshop is not hard if you choose a great [wp e-commerce theme. Also have look at these Drupal 7 Themes maybe this is what you’re looking for.