I’ve been bored with the old theme for some time and finally decided to go with something radically different – a magazine style theme. They’re a fair amount of work to implement, but I think the makeover was worth it. In any event, I hope so…
This is a professional Revolution theme by Brian Gardner – I actually use these a lot for clients who want a WordPress content managed site. It took about six hours to set up, since I had to tidy up my categories, then modify the basic theme to show the categories where I wanted – then go back and add graphics to posts that were displayed on the home page, because it would have looked stupid if I hadn’t.
Aside from the fact that I’ll be using more graphics, I’ve also abandoned the “linear” listing of blog posts down the home page. You can find the latest post of each category up in the tabbed area, and the latest two or three posts of each category further down the home page. If you click on a post, you can navigate back and forward to each post – something I devoutly wish Hot Air would add, so I don’t have to keep clicking back to the home page to see a different post.
I hope you think this is an improvement! If you have any feedback, feel free to add it to the comments.
Very impressive! One minor thing – on FF3/Mac the box I’m typing this in is wider than the column it sits in.
Glad you like it! I noticed that too. There are support forums for this theme, so I’m checking to see if anyone has any ideas. The CSS is the right width, and I actually set a fixed widh on the div, and when that didn’t work, limited the text area width to 40 cols, and STILL no luck. I’m stumped… so hopefully the forums will prove helpful.
Turns out the Ajah paged comments plugin was causing the problem. I need it occasionally when a thread gets huge, as the old Jena threads routinely went over 100 comments, but these days I’m not writing anything so controversial, so I deactivated it.
Your changes seem to be an improvement, mostly. I like the fact that you can cram more stories up near the top now, and that you use a lot of pictures. Now the site reminds me of FoxNews.com or something, real official-looking. And you have better organized your article classification system.
Also, I’m glad that you re-added the running feet back up at the top. That was the main thing I missed when I saw the new design. But you might want to try finding a running torso or whole body like you used to have. I always liked the running person.
Is there a button you can add to allow readers to scrolls back to past articles chronologically?
I’m going to be tweaking the logo for a while… I’m not really happy with this one either, but I didn’t like just the plain text that the theme comes with. At the top of each post is back-and-next navigation, and in case anybody’s interested in going back and reading older stuff, I added Categories and Archives to the top area of the sidebar.
One thing – this new look is going to force me into tighter writing – that first paragraph is going to have to grab someone’s attention to make them think it’s worthwhile to click through to read it. And I’m going to have fun with the graphics and captions.
Also, just for kicks, I cartooned myself and created a gravatar which should show up soon, if I followed the directions properly. Feel free to add your own, if not a photo, then just something fun. This blog will display all g-rated gravatars.
I really like the new look and it loads quite quickly for me.
Thanks, Angel – also, it’s very belated but I’m so happy for you!! I lost all my bookmarks a while back, and lost track of your blog, but I just went back and read how God has restored your life and even blessed you with a new baby – I’m amazed, and thankful, and praising Him. What a testimony!!
Another comment:
I wish you would try to keep the articles in chronological order. It’s kind of a pain to sort through them all looking at posting dates, and changing the top article continuously will make the website seem more alive. I’m more inclined to log in multiple times per day if I know that you’re constantly moving the articles farther down on the list.
Hmm, looking at it more carefully, I can at least understand your system now. I see that you’re organizing the posts by classification. I still think straight chronology might be more enticing and exciting, though.
It was bugging me too, Drew. I wanted a magazine format, but the fact that some new posts were way down the page was bugging me. I split the difference, kind of the way Hot Air does, and grouped everything in two columns. So it’s still grouped to some extent, but the latest will always be at the top of one of those two columns, or in the Quick Posts section in the sidebar.
Thank you, Laura! The Lord gave me back everything the enemy took from me and then some. I have a wonderful husband who loves the Lord. We have a beautiful little girl named Noelle. It is amazing what God has done!
I am back to blogging regularly again … finally! It feels good to be back too. I missed it.