Gallery-style sites are so popular these days on the Internet. They’re used to showcase just about anything, from CSS Websites to Email Newsletters.

Design Showcase is a showcase theme with cool Javascript effects and customization options.
But what’s even more cool about this theme, is that you can create a community with it, because it allows logged in users create a favorite post list of entries they enjoy.

The Javascript is smartly used in this theme, allowing for great use of space with options such as tooltips or drop-down menus.

The theme has 3 widgets built in:

  • advertising in the sidebar
  • logged in users see a list of their favorite posts in the sidebar
  • sidebar widget for displaying news (other off-topic posts)

The widgets can be used in 4 different areas throughout the theme:

  • in the top sidebar
  • in the sidebar tabs
  • in the bottom sidebar
  • or in the footer (this makes the footer act like a slide panel)

The Control Panel

Design Showcase Control Panel

Control panels are a key component of any premium WordPress theme.

The Design Showcase theme comes with a simple but effective control panel. It doesn’t allow you to do all kinds of stuff – instead, it focuses on simplicity and effectiveness (not surprising, coming from an Austrian developer :) )

You can:

  • enable/disable all the Javascript effects in the theme
  • specify a category for the sidebar news widget
  • specify the page navigation IDs
  • enable/disable the ability to favorite posts for logged in users
  • insert your Google Analytics code for tracking

Other features available

  • Breadcrumb navigation
  • jQuery CSS Drowpdown Menu
  • Gravatar Support
  • highlight post author / admin comments
  • Comments and trackbacks show separately
  • PSDs for the logo and buttons (easy to edit)
  • Unobtrusive Javascript

The cool options, smart Javascript usage and clean code / good mark-up make Design Showcase a theme to consider for any gallery-type site.
The only downside of it is that the author doesn’t say anything about providing buyers with the full PSD, to make editing easier.