Well chaps, here’s my new theme. You’re lookin’ at it.
Thoughts? Bugs? Problems? Comment back with whatever you think about this.
Just a few bits to iron out and I’ll update this post again.
Update: All seems to be working fine from my end at the moment. The theme itself took me a little over 2 weeks to develop in total, 1 week was designing it in the first place, and deciding the layout of the theme itself. The theme is based on the WordPress default theme, Kubrick. Its almost probably (bar far) the worst theme to base a new theme on, but I knew that the theme was flawless, so I knew it would be a good base to work from. I used the WordPress Codex website a hell of a lot, which includes a massive selection of almost every single function within WordPress. Infact, I have yet to find something that I needed to do, which wasn’t already coded into the base of WordPress.
Other than that, the main design and layout was my idea with inspiration from a number of other blogs and websites which I have del.icio.us’ed over the past few months. I decided to add a bit a lot of spice to the footer, from reading several articles about "better footers", based on Web 2.0 design (which I like to call, better websites).
That’s about it. I hope everyone finds the new design nicer and easier to use, as well as kinder on the eye.
Update #2: A few more tweaks needed to get it spot on, thanks Adam for spotting them. I’ve also re-written and updated a few of the old static pages:
- The About me and contact page.
- And my Mini specification list.
Just testing a comment, just to make sure you can actually comment back!
The them actually RULES! Nice work!
them = theme
Thanks! Glad you like it!
I was really liking it right up to to the point I got to this godawful pink pink footer!
Personally I would do two things:
1. Lose the pink. It’s far too distracting to be able to read the comments.
2. Make the comments full width and put the “Keep up to date” and stuff either just above or just below the comment area.
I like the idea of the other posts about but I’m not convinced that it will ever get used. There’s a stats thing online somewhere (migth even be Google Analytics) that will show you heat clouds of the clicked content. You could keep an eye and see if it ever gets clicked.
The main post area is great thought bud, I really like it.
By the way, you might want to look at the spelling of “earlier” at the bottom of the index page.
Thanks Collin for pointing all of that out. The “other posts about” are just the tags list.
Shame you don’t like the pink. I actually really do like it. I was wondering about making the comments full-width, but I’m not sure as yet.
Thanks anyway, and spelling corrected
I think it’s awesome, and am all manner of impressed. Especially considering my own experience with WordPress customizing.
And I like the pink, but then, I’m a girl.
Many thanks. I like the pink too, but I’m not gay and I’m certainly not a girl. Weird.
WordPress themes can be a bit of a pain in the arse (just read the title of that post), all depends on how you tackle them, and how much patience you have
As I clarified to Daze when we met on Sunday, I don’t dislike the colour. Hell, I drove a Pink Mini for a while!
What I don’t like is the mass expanse of pink that’s all across the footer. The green header is great (except that it should be in the width of the blog and not across the whole page), but the pink just doesn’t fit.
Oh, I see what you mean. You think it should be limited width, like the body of the post itself, rather than spanning 100% of the entire page? I see what you’re saying, but I didn’t want to constrain the design to a certain width throughout.
I know it already is in theory, but the actual header and footer background colours span right across. I believe this creates a more open feel to the site. I guess its personal preference, and what screen res your running? What is your res?
Any suggestions for another colour? I don’t want it to be green, since it’ll just be “too green”, and I don’t want it to be grey or black, because that’ll be too bland…
Personally what I would do is this:
Lose the comments sidebar stuff right to the bottom of the page, under the comments window. Make the comments area the same width as the main post window. Use the pink as a separator between the post and the comments and lose the “10 comments, wanna add your thoughts?” in the comments. It’s already on the main post window. Put a “Comments” (or similar) title on the pink background. Then you can keep the pink (which as I said isn’t a bad colour) and it will still tie in with the submit button.
I would also keep the white left and right border flowing right down the page to the footer.
It looks strange at the moment because the comment area doesn’t align with the footer (which also looks a little wierd as it’s just “floating” at the bottom of the page with no borders or separation.
Like you said, it’s all personal preference though, feel completely free to ignore me as much as you like!
Excellent, no I’d agree with most of that. Thanks.
I’ll make a duplicate of the theme and have a play around, as you’ve suggested. I think, like you’ve said, the comments area in general could be improved and tied in better than it is now.
Thanks
Thinking about this more, I was thinking about maybe having the current comments and comment box along side each other. Comments shown on the right (directly below the post text – so it flows) and the comment box on the right, just below the post box, encouraging users to add their thoughts.
Splitting the comments from post will be a darker shade of grey (good band name!?) plus pink headings with current number of comments, pink names on the comment author, keeping the pink-lower-half flowing.
After the comments will be the pink 100% width with META at the bottom, along with RSS, etc, as currently shown on the left. I’ll hopefully be working on this tonight!
Sweet, I look forward to seeing it.
I gave it a go, but it was turning out strange. It just looked wrong, so I’m sticking with this for a while, at least. I’ve moved the footer content over a bit though.