Huex is awesome. And no… we really aren’t sure how to pronounce it. We can tell you that the name is derived from the word hue; which is an attribute of color… and Huex has an abundance of color and oodles of hues. Not to mention a sharply styled design and the inclusion of the WP Now theme option panel, but we’ll talk more about that later.

The first thing I want to explain are the color options. Aside from everything that makes this theme so awesome, the color options are what stands out the most. By default, Huex comes with six different color schemes; blue, green, gray, orange, purple, and red. If the color switcher is enabled then website visitors can click on a color cube at the top of the right column and then magic happens. The webpage fades with a dark opacity and with a colored rotating graphic, indicating that the newly selected color scheme is loading. Once the loading is complete, the rotating graphic disappears as the darkness fades and reveals your color of choice. It really is impressive.

But that isn’t everything… Ryan, our programming guru, spent many days and nights adding special jQuery effects to make certain parts of the design animate with user interaction. For example, a colored arrow drops down from the top of the page when you hover over an item in the top menu. Sub-menus unfold from above, color blocks brighten to full opacity when hovered or selected, and the share and tag menus within articles expand to reveal more options when hovered over. Also, some shamanistic things happen within the featured section with fading, expanding and sliding of the main images, thumbnails and descriptions.

Even though we’ve focused heavily on the awesomeness described above, we haven’t let the more common and standard features slip through our fingers. Features like threaded comments, several assorted templates, an easy contact form, customizable ad spaces, and a handful of other useful things. But enough talk about the endless features, let’s move onto the shining star you’ve been waiting to hear about… The theme option panel.

Huex is the first theme of many to be released with the WP Now theme option panel. The purpose of the panel is to make certain tasks and customization options much easier to execute for the blog’s admin (you). Say, for instance, that I did not want users to have access to change the color scheme of my blog that is using the Huex theme. All I have to do to change that is go into Theme Options within the WordPress admin panel. Within the theme options, I can find Color Settings and change Allow Color Change? from Yes to No, scroll to the bottom, click the save button and then I’m all done… no more color switcher… no more messing with files on my local machine and uploading via FTP. WordPress is simple by default and with our panel, and having an awesome design will not compromise that characteristic any longer!

Including the color settings, other theme options included with Huex are settings for the featured post, connect with us section, articles, main / page menus, the more articles section, and advertisements. Even if you’re a newbie with these kind of things, our panel will really make everything painless. Most of the settings can be set by choosing yes or no, copy and pasting, or selecting radio buttons or check boxes. It’s that easy. For more information regarding the WP Now theme option panel, visit the post that we wrote that goes into the details. For more information about Huex, visit the detail page or check out the demo. And remember – all of our themes are only $29 now, so there is no reason to be shy!