This is the release post from 23 July 2012, kept as it was written. Prices, coupons and links are of their time; the theme itself is free and open source today. Translated from the German original.

The Meola Theme Overview

Meola is our newest responsive, mobile-first WordPress theme with a stylish, minimalist design and plenty of practical theme features. You can use Meola with an image slider or a header image, choose your own background and adjust numerous other theme settings on the theme options page. The integration of widgets above or below the main content and the possibility to feature images generously are further special highlights of the Meola theme.

Of course the Meola design also adapts automatically to different screen sizes, so your website looks smart and is pleasant to read both on a small smartphone screen and on a large desktop monitor.

Theme options and plugin support

Meola’s theme options offer plenty of practical customization possibilities without being complicated to use. In a few steps even WordPress newbies can adapt Meola to their needs. You can integrate your own background (colour or pattern image) and a header image, adjust your own colours, upload a logo image, activate share buttons for Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and create custom menus (main navigation and an optional footer navigation).

Meola also supports helpful WordPress plugins such as an image slider for your front page (Responsive Slider), the Contact Form 7 plugin for forms, Smart Archives Reloaded for a blog archive page, Jetpack for WordPress (Twitter, blog subscribe and image widgets, gallery carousel) and WP-PageNavi for an optimized page navigation.

Widgets and post formats

Another special feature of Meola is its versatile widget options. All widgets can be used above and below the main content; custom widgets are an About widget, a social media icons widget, a featured video and image widget, a Flickr preview widget and a latest posts widget with a thumbnail option.

Thanks to Meola’s one-column theme design, post formats come into their own, and images of the image post format or quotes are featured generously (at the maximum theme width of 1132 pixels).

Live demo and Meola theme page

Have a look at the Meola theme in the live demo right away and let us know how you like it. We are very happy about your feedback, suggestions for improvement and bug reports.

You can find more information about all Meola features, detailed theme documentation in English and German, and the link to buy the theme on the Meola theme page.