code-Mad

Rainier is an elegant single channel theme with an eye for sharp typography. The first in our Cascadian suite, Rainier provides a minimalist, highly customizable blog with gorgeous font and color options.

Overview

- Fully customize your content’s width, with additional controls for photo and video.

- Fine-tune the minutiae with Rainier’s detailed logo and header element options.

- Easily add custom pages, links to other social media, and setup site-tracking and commenting systems.

Documentation

Setup: Content Width and Link Color

Although your content will look beautiful at any screen size, Rainier allows you to customize the maximum width of your layout by setting the Max Content Width field. If left unset your content will default to a maximum of 640 pixels wide.

Choose how your links look by setting the Link and Link Hover color picker options.

Setup: Custom header

Create a unique and stunning header using Rainier’s many customizable header elements:

Image options: Display your Tumblr Avatar by enabling Display Avatar, and choose your own background image by uploading to the Header image option. Want to use an image for a logo instead of text? Just upload an image to the Logo image option.

Video header: Rainier gives you the ability to set a video as your header’s background, and though it can be slightly tricky, the results are truly amazing. First, find a video that you want to use as your header – keep in mind that the video will stretch to fill the width and height of the header at any browser size. You’re going to want to set your Header background image as a screenshot of the video, for browsers that don’t support background videos (such as IE8 or less, and mobile devices). Once you have a video you’re going to need to convert it to .mp4 and .webm format for cross-browser support; this can easily be done with an online conversion service such as CloudConvert. After you have you have your two video files they will need to be publicly hosted either through a web host or a service that allows you to share files publicly – this works well with services such as DropBox or Google Drive. Once hosted, copy the links to your two files and paste them in to the Header MP4 Video URL and Header WebM Video URL input fields. Your header will now appear with a video background. Additionally, you can use the Header colour picker and the Overlay Transparency setting to overlay your background video with a semi-transparent header. Aren’t videos cool?

Elements and Branding styles: To best fit your header’s background, we’ve provided both Light and Dark Header Elements. We’ve also packged Rainier with 3 Blog Title Styles (Montserrat Regular, Montserrat Boxed-In, and Baskerville Regular) and 4 Tagline Styles (Baskerville Regular, Baskerville Italic, Montserrat Regular, and Montserrat All-Caps). Mix and match to create your own combo.

Colors and overlays: Rainier’s default header is a solid color background; you can change the color by using the Header Color Picker, or (as mentioned above) you can choose to upload a header background image. By doing the latter you’ll now have the option to enable the Overlay Transparency. This will overlay the header’s background color overtop of your header image. Set it anywhere from 0% (disabled) to 80% to achieve your desired look. Additionaly you can also enable the Header Dimmer to display a subtle dark gradient along the bottom of your header, enhancing your navigation controls.

Tip: Want a truly minimalist header? Enable Minimalist Header to strip away all colors and just display clean, gorgeous typography.

Setup: Photo and Photoset Options

Rainier comes loaded with a number of options to customize how photos and other media are displayed in your blog.

Setting the Max Photo Video Width field will allow all Photos, Photosets, and Videos to expand past the standard 640 pixel content boundary (adjusting to browswer size). If left blank all media will default to a maximum 640 pixel width.

By default Photosets are displayed exactly how they are arranged in the Tumblr dashboard. If you wish to display them in higher resolution you can enable Display Stacked Photosets to instead stack the photos and expand them as large as possible while remaining within their natural dimensions.

Posting images that aren’t quite wide enough? Enable Expand Small Images to ensure they reach 640 pixels wide or your desired Max Photo Video Width while maintaining their aspect ratio.

Social Media Links

Display icons linking to over 20 other social media by simply inputting your username or URL. These links are displayed in the footer.

Commenting

Rainier supports Facebook and Disqus commenting systems.

To setup Facebook commenting, simply input your Facebook Username and API ID and check the “Facebook Comments” box within the customization options.

To enable Disqus commenting, all you have to do it supply your Disqus Shortname. If you don’t already have one, you can sign up for a free account over at http://disqus.com. They’ll give you a Disqus Shortname, and all you need to do is pop it into the appropriate field in your blog’s customization sidebar.

Google Analytics

Rainier comes with built-in support for Google Analytics tracking. Just create a new property for your Tumblr address and paste the tracking ID in to the GA Property ID field.

Custom Pages

Rainier supports additional pages. Simply create a new custom page in the customization panel, and a link will be displayed in your header’s navigation links.

Support

We’ve been making Tumblr themes since 2009. Truth to be told, we wouldn’t still be afloat had we not acknowledged, early on, that each individual customer is important. Exceptional, human customer support matters to us a great deal.

Each one of our themes comes fully backed by our dedicated support team. We’re good people, with real faces, and we like what we do. We’ve also created a help centre so you can get help at any hour – http://ift.tt/1i0oj6F. Contact us via email at support@pixelunion.net, on Twitter at @PixelUnion or on our staff blog.

We’re always happy to answer questions. Not sure what theme is best? Looking for a particular feature? Get in touch.