Putting things off is a really bad habit to get into. Tomorrow I shall make a concerted effort to get back to, and hopefully finish, Dark Messiah Might and Magic.
Today though I decided to mix things up a bit. My blog has been around for a little over three months now (and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it), so I thought it was time to have another look at themes.
When I first setup this blog I went through them all, and none seemed to suit. I wasn’t exactly sure at the time what I wanted and what was available. Kubrik is a great theme, it is simple and has everything you need to start a blog. It’s a little bland though, and some of the other themes have nice features such as a top-bar for page links.
I spent ages going through all the different ones, WordPress allows you to preview your page using the new theme without affecting your blog (when it works…). Several had extra sidebar space, this would allow me to expand on the general information, but I felt that would detract from the main focus of my blog, the articles. One of the other themes allowed several articles to be displayed side-by-side, nice but I didn’t like the layout.
Other themes gave the same impression and WordPress has a solution, Custom CSS. When I first signed up I didn’t see the point in this paid for feature, today has opened my eyes. Since this is the free hosting WordPress you can’t have full control of your blog layout, you have to set a base theme from there though you could customise it a lot. Adjusting the position of the articles, picture sizes, picture frames, colours, the list goes on. I haven’t sign up for Custom CSS, but at some point in the future I might want to tweak my blog and this seems to be a great way to go about it.
So I was restricted to the base themes, I tried all of them out with the preview and applied some to see the extra options they had. After a while though I kept finding myself comparing them to Kubrick. The spacing was too large, the alignment wasn’t right. I eventually just went back to Kubrick and tried tweaking it. I made the Avatars in the Recent Comments widget smaller, I like this change, it had been taking away a bit of the focus. I also found that I could order the categories by hierarchy (DS,Wii,PC,Flash all come under Gaming) which is what I had orginally wanted. Next I thought about changing the header. You can choose either a coloured gradient or an image. I’m not good at coming up with ideas when it comes to artistic desgin so I just used one of the landscape shots from Crysis. Tweaking it to fit in with the shaded edges took a long time and never really worked, on top of that the blog would load the original blue gradient before the picture making it pointless.
I was back almost to where I had started.
Having seen the benefits of the other themes Kubrick didn’t have the same appeal as before, I still felt like a change. I eventually settled on this theme, MistyLook. I think it’s a little easier on the eyes than the harsh white of Kubrick, and the photograph-stylised pictures also look good (although they’re not what I originally wanted).
I liked the original image header of the theme:
But it doesn’t exactly fit with the aim of my blog. I tried the header image I used earlier, but it didn’t fit in with the colours, so I went for this other Crysis landscape:
Very mellow.
For every weekly special I have done I have been creating a page containing links to every day for easy access. Now that they show up on the top-bar I’ve decided to place them all within a Weekly Specials page.
A problem I found with a lot of the different themes is that they take different sized images and the only way to fix this is to go through and re-edit all the posts. Considering I’ve now got 75, and some have got thirty-plus pictures I don’t think I really want to do that.
Finally I removed the search bar from the sidebar since MistyLook places one in the top-right corner, and I have reduced the amount of visible posts so that it only shows the current one. I’m not quite sure whether this is the right decision, it has been stretching the page but is it hiding past articles? I had thought about limiting the front page to summaries, but I like having the first post in it’s entirety. Another option would be to add a Recent Posts widget to the sidebar but I think it looks cluttered enough already. I’ll leave it and see how it goes.
So what do you think?
Update:
Alright, I think I’ve found a better solution for the front page. I’ll leave the latest blog in full, but then as they move down I’ll edit them and add a <!more—> tag so that they shrink down. It’s a bit more work but I don’t like the idea that people might miss a blog.
Is it meant to only show your most recent post on your front page?
Anyway it is nice, I spent ages mucking about with themes before I found one I liked, having the text justified was a must for me so this seriously limited my options.
I wouldn’t know where to start with CSS so I don’t think I will be upgrading, it is nice to have the option if you want though.
At the moment yes.
What I really want is to have the first article in full, then the rest just as summaries, the page was stretching on and on before.
I might change it back.
I also don’t know CSS, I’ve messed about with HTML but it would be something new to me. But since it would allow me to almost completely customise I would be willing to learn.
Wow it looks amazing. I do wonder if I should transfer all my blog stuff to wordpress as it has a much more streamlined interface and one you can actually edit a lot more but alas for some reason WordPress has difficulties uploading my pics. Damn thing so that kind of prevents me haha. Mind you blogger is cool anyhow.
Loving the top pic too and glad you chose that one to the other two. Somehow it looks so much more soothing and striking at the same time.
Still having problems?
I’ve uploaded several different types (jpg, png) and sizes (small or full screen 1680×1050) without any problems.
Maybe Blogger is sabotaging it so you can’t leave. 😉
@ AJ: Even if you can’t upload pictures to wordpress you can upload them to photobucket and insert them into your posts with html.
@M_the_C: Ahh I have problems with any size to be honest. Haha good point haha!
@jonhill987: Have problems uploading to photobucket and have also tried using other photo upload sites to no avail. I also have problems uploading videos to You Tube however when I used a video editing program to upload videos via the integrated tool it worked which was odd.
Hmm, could your ISP be blocking something?
Having problems with one site is something but two, especially when they are both used by so many other people.
Exactly and the two other pcs that are on my network will not do it either. Could be the router or do you think it more likely to be the ISP?
I did try and take a look at some settings for the router but to no avail.
If you just used the standard settings for the router I doubt that would be the cause.
Although ISPs blocking something as simple as Photobucket is quite strange too. Maybe worth an email to your ISP?
@AJ: Do you use addblock or similar? I often have to disable that kind of thing on upload pages
Um @Jon: We should discuss via Steam and maybe explain it a little better if that is ok please?
Standard settings on the router – did not start when we first got the router so could be something else. Could write an email to them and ask them what is up. I shall see what Jonhill says first though haha!
Thanks guys.
Hi, Can i get a one small photo from your blog?
Zoran
Sure, go for it.
Thanks for asking. 🙂