For the best look at the feature set for Renaissance it’s probably easiest to just check out the demo. However, for the reading-inclined some features are outlined below.

Advertising

Renaissance was created in part to help you make money off your blog, not in the get super rich without doing anything sense, but more in making it dead simple to place small ads on your blog.

Google Adsense

One of the more unique ways Renaissance handles Google Adsense is it allows you to place Adsense on posts based on their age. It’s no secret that sometimes Adsense can devalue a site when it clutters the design and at the same time doesn’t really make you any money. Renaissance lets you solve this problem by choosing a specific time frame (30 days, 45 days, etc.) and only showing Adsense on posts that are older than the specified time frame.

So now posts that are still getting hits from referral links and search engine results may be able to make a little money for you.

Sidebar 125 x 125 Ads

The Theme Options panel has built-in support for up to twelve 125px by 125px advertisements on the far right sidebar. This sidebar appears on every page, even the 404 page. You have the ability to create your own ads — controlling every detail from the image file path all the way to the title of the ad link — or just paste affiliate code into one box and be done.

Browser Compatability

Renaissance has been browser-tested for layout and functionality and has been approved for IE 6, IE 7, Firefox 2, Safari, Opera 9 and Google Chrome.

Typography

Great attention has been paid towards maintaining professionalism in every typographical detail.

Principles learned from the typography classic, The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst, have been applied to every metaphorical inch of Renaissance. From the complete hierarchy of header styles (<h1> - <h6>) to the line-height of the body text, no detail was an afterthought.

14 Widget Areas

Renaissance has fourteen different areas to place widgets.

• Two in the primary sidebar.
• Two in the secondary sidebar (above and below the space for ads, however you don’t have to place ads in this sidebar if you choose not to).
• One between the post title and post content (excellent for important announcements or advertisements).
• Two between the post content and the post comments (left and right, see the image below).
• One next to the post comments in the sidebar.
• Six in the footer.

Change your header layout

Renaissance allows you to change the header layout for your blog. Four different layout options are included with further customization allowed by the ability to turn off the header image, the blog title and/or the blog tagline via the Theme Options panel.

Elastic Layout

Renaissance’s layout is based on the ‘em’ unit width. This is a unit that is relative to the size of the text, so when you increase or decrease the text size the layout scales with it.

Other features include:

• Easily integrate your Tumblr or Flickr content into your blog using the Theme Options panel.
• Easily add your Twitter stream using the Twitter for WordPress plugin.
• Built-in, optional aside post functionality that is managed via the Theme Options Panel (no coding required!).
• Bold RSS call-out.
• Post author avatars (with the ability to turn them on or off via the Theme Options panel).
• Built-in support for the ShareThis and Sphere plugin.
• Comment RSS link that appears and disappears based on whether comments are turned on or off.
• Gravatars for comments.
• Built-in post navigation.
• Pagination for archives, categories, tags, author, index and search page.

Robust Theme Options Panel

Last but not least the Theme Options panel for Renaissance is shown below.