Nishita Photo theme on Wordpress.com

About a month ago, I got an email from Lance Willett of Automattic that they would be launching Nishita Wordpress theme on Wordpress.com. That was great news!

Honestly, I had not really been maintaining the theme though it turn out be a rather popular one. The wordpress.com version was released sometime back - Nishita Theme on Wordpress.com (theme showcase).

Nishita is a simple, minimally-styled photo blogging theme - now available for WordPress.com blogs. With a choice of dark or light color scheme, the muted design puts all the focus on your photos. Not only is this theme designed for photos, but it also loves big photos: the default layout is super-wide at 1024 pixels.

The new version is much better one. Lance and the team did some amazing work on it (demo).

Some of the salient features of the new Nishita Theme:

• Theme options include two layout choices: “Photoblog” at 1024 pixels wide, or “Blog” at 768 pixels wide. The same form also allows choosing the dark or light color scheme.
• Reduced Photoblog Look.
• Thumbnail Archives: This photo-loving theme also uses post thumbnails to show a small version of images on your archive pages. Out of the box, the theme will crop the image attached to the post and make a thumbnail for you. If you prefer to crop your own thumbnail-or use a different image-use the Featured Image tool to set the alternate thumbnail image.
• Widgets and Sidebar.
• Customize Nishita even more with the custom background feature, a custom header image, and a custom menu.