So, I’ve actually gotten around to it. If you’ve been visiting on and off over the last few days, you may have caught a glimpse of this new theme as I tested it out with this blog. I’ve been working on and off on it for a few weeks now and its ready for public consumption, I think.
There are a few other things I’d like to refine on it, but this is the way that its going go look going forward. Its a tad different than anything that I’ve done before and some of the structure hasn’t been seen often at all. You’ll notice that there’s no traditional sidebar on the side. I’ve moved it below the first post and the treat from the past. I’m moving some of the clutter from the front page to its own page, such as my blogroll. I’ve kept it trimmed for a long time, although my bookmark list is looooong! So, I will get to work adding to it so that the links page is fleshed out. Once I learn how, I’ll probably change the template for that page (and maybe the archives page as well) to a two column design, like newspaper columns. That way the list of links (and older posts) will be lined up in nice neat lines to be viewed with pleasure.
I was originally going to try coding this one from scratch, which is why I didn’t have anything up months ago. If you want to know the inspiration for this theme, you should visit the site of J David Macor, who is the theme author that ported Deliciously Blue from Glossy Blue. I replaced the icons with the excellent free Drunky Love ones by Kevin Wetzels. I’ve left footer links so that you can go and visit their sites for yourself. This theme is sponsored by no one.
You’ll notice that this theme doesn’t look much like the original any more, either by color and artwork, or by design. But, if you dig into the code, you’ll see that I’ve left much of the code intact (even the css naming, which I will eventually clean up). Expect a tag cloud at one point or another and perhaps something in a big block at the bottom, once I figure out whether I want anything down there.
Tell me what you think. I really like how this has turned out - especially the double wordpress loop. I hope that you do too, as I have wanted to free myself of the sidebar for a while. If you see that something is missing, please let me know. If you have browser weirdness, let me know, especially if you use IE6 or IE7, as I haven’t done much testing with IE6 and I’ve resisted IE7 so far on my Windows computer.
Well, its late here (at least for the time I got up yesterday morning) and my eyes are barely still open, so I’m off to bed. Comments are still unmoderated locally. I’m just relying on Akismet and SSP, so you should have no trouble commenting and seeing the results immediately.
By the way, I’ve used the colors in the picture that you see above as my palette for the theme. Those leaves were plucked off a tree on the way to Caleb’s school.
Very cool. I like that you went with different icons. I am planning on releasing a whole slew of colors for my theme, and I wanted to switch the icons as well. Anyways, great job!
Wow! You saw that ping quickly! I just put the theme up a few minutes ago
Thanks for stopping by to comment. When I saw Deliciously Blue, I knew that I had the basis for what I really wanted. Thanks for writing such clear code. I am not a coder and I am still clueless about CSS, for the most part, so your base was just what I needed. I think that if you do a few colors, you’re gonna see your theme all over the place (although it probably won’t end up looking like this).
I like the new theme, but I have a suggestion. Take it for what it’s worth. I think you should add a comments link at the bottom as well as the top. It’s where I usually look for it.
The text at the left edges get hidden by the static image background in this time.
This theme is good, but I now have to get used to it. It’s certainly not the usual theme you find on most blogs.
Thanks for the suggestion, RT. I am still tweaking, as I said. I tried to import my database to my sandbox and was unsuccessful, so I created a few posts (like with the theme viewer) and used that. I see a few areas of opportunity. That is one of them.
I know what you mean, hari. That image may have to go, or at least be altered even more. I’m not so good with image editing, although I usually either create or severely alter any image I’ve used in a theme. So, that is an area of improvement. Perhaps I will make the content background opaque or unfix the image. Thank you both for the feedback.
LOL!
Oh, and yea. I like this theme.
Thanks, bro. Its been brewing in that empty helmet of mine for a while now. Its still a work in progress, though. BTW that thing about the smiley borders was a theme specific css attribute with image borders. I fixed it on the old theme, in case I use it again.