Basic criteria for choosing a video-friendly theme.

Well, the content uploading is coming along fine, but we are not yet satisfied with the video display – it was too small on “Twenty Fourteen” and several attempts to change it resulted in minor improvements only (using the CSS function).

So we scanned the available themes for anything which mentioned ‘video’ as an attribute, and if possible a free one.  We tried a couple, and finally converted to ‘Sundance’ – here it is !  We like the larger screens, and the minimalist design overall.  The typeface was changed and made larger as it was rather small and thin.

So far we have made our own video thumbnails  (would expect video thumbnails to be available automatically but have not discovered them) and then linked each of them to a single full-width video page for viewing (we learned that these are available as “attachment” pages to the thumbnail media images we created and uploaded).  It seems that this theme does not allow a pop-up large screen for selected videos which would be nice – but the full-width “attachment” page and the ability to select full screen is a decent compromise; although not as elegant. The front page video slider is nice (using “sticky” video posts).

We are still looking for a “better” theme layout which handles video as good or better than “Sundance” and which allows full page width header images and a menu which can be displayed as part of that image – if anyone has advice, please let us know – thanks. Or, alternatively, if anyone knows a site which seriously compares theme functionality that would also be welcome.

We tried a black theme (‘Piano Black’) as we do like a black background (background on the page, not just a black surround) – it has full-width header image capability which we like, but placed the menu above the header which we found strange (not sure if that is easily customisable).  And although the theme does offer full page-width video, the normal mode uses a very wide right column which takes a lot of space way from the main area.  So, we have not retained ‘Piano Black’.

Meanwhile, we stick with “Sundance” and are quite pleased with the results.