I’m a Mac user, so I saw Panic’s Coda website quite a long time ago when the awesome text editor (and so much more) was first released. While I don’t use their product (I’m a cheapskate and use Smultron and Cyberduck instead), I was totally impressed by the smoothness of their website. Slick JavaScript effects always catch my eye.

So, as you can imagine, I was pretty jazzed to hear about the new WP CODA theme for WordPress. Crafted with love by Greg Johnson, this theme has everything found in the original Coda website–but you can use it with WordPress. Pretty cool–but it has a few nagging drawbacks.

First off, it uses a lot of JavaScript (obviously) to create those shiny eye-catching effects everywhere. Not really a big deal, but there is a pretty sizable group of people out there who choose to turn JavaScript off permanently. Say goodbye to those visitors.

The other big issue is that, by default, WP CODA only displays pages–not posts. Big bummer. Though it can be changed fairly easily (and the theme’s author tells you how), it’s just one more step that you have to take to make your site actually functional. It’s also the reason I named this post as I did. If you’re looking for a more static looking website, but you absolutely love using WordPress as a CMS, this is the theme for you.

Despite the drawbacks, WP CODA is a very impressive theme, and it’s pretty obvious that a lot of work probably went into this. Well worth a download, being free and all.