Over the past few weeks we have been converting all Missouri State blogs to our new redesigned theme, which is designed to utilize all of the new features offered in WordPress 3.x and better coordinates with the 2010 web templates. Now that the conversion process is completed, I wanted to share more detailed information about the new theme and all of the options now available to blog users.

Here are some of the key features of the new Missouri State Blog theme:

Various color options

There are now seven color options for your blog; these colors coordinate with the new skins in Web Press. You can now choose a color layout of Maroon, Grey, Orange, Blue, Tan, Green or Lime.

Updates to header images

The new header images utilize a larger size of 960×198 pixels. We have also created a set of default header images that blog administrators can choose from, and the option of creating and uploading a custom header image is still in effect. The process for uploading header images has also been updated, and is documented on the Header Images tutorial within our blog support pages.

Now that the process for uploading header images is integrated into your blog Dashboard, we will be phasing out the NextGEN Gallery plugin in the near future. We suggest using either the built-in photo gallery for WordPress or the Inline Media Tool plugin in combination with Flickr for any future slideshows or galleries that need to be embedded in your blog posts.

Drop-down menus

The Missouri State 2010 theme neatly organizes your pages into a menu in your blog’s header, and includes drop-down menus for multiple levels of nested sub-pages.

Author box

An box containing information about a blog post’s author is now default on all blogs (you can see an example at the bottom of this post). To have the box appear on your blog, the author must have some information entered on their profile within WordPress. You can enter this information by visiting your profile page.

Multiple sidebars

The new blog theme supports up to two sidebars on the right side of the blog and up to four sidebars above the footer. The layout of the theme will change dynamically depending on how many sidebars you utilize.