WordPress Themes (revisited)

Derek Chirnside — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:06:06 +0000

Tackling again the task of having a new theme here.But what I need probably requires more than I can manage.

Mimbo

A cool theme: but some complexities. A post at DarrenHoyt.com gives some background to using template tags and custom fields to pull out specific highlighted posts (with an image). The instructions on his Blog are superb – it helps someone like me know what you can do without an extensive knowledge of PHP and understanding the tags concept in wordpress.

1BlogTheme

1BlogTheme has a lot going for it: but it has not been updated for a year or so.

Topics in this blog: there are several. A diverse focus, too diverse maybe, certainly according to typical Blogging 101. But Darren’s Mimbo theme may cope with this. If it is set up right. Without the custom fields, the intentional use of the tags you just get a random jumble of material on the page. BUT: once you get the things right: the layout takes care of itself.

The next things: read the comments in the Mkimbo blog. Lots of them. The first few places I went to (people raving about the theme) were no longer using it. That’s the blogosphere for you.

Sliding Doors

OK: something completely different: sliding doors.

Seven themes for the blog, easily customisable, click to view. Hmm. Might just work.

Educational Design
Flexible Learning/eLearning
Community/Leadership
Coffee/Whimsey (ie fun and friends)
My Life/Events/GTD
Cool Tools
Blogging
Teaching and learning

Most – by far most – of the blogs I visit are still vaguely unsatisfying, I have to work to find what I want, there is clutter and noise.

The aim:

A sparse home page with clear links to current stuff and a range of view sof the themes in the blog.

Something will emerge out of this.

A new theme

Derek Chirnside — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 10:05:27 +0000

I need a new theme. I’ve done a bit of browsing, and decided on something a little less busy than the current theme. I guess I still like Anaconda, and tried Cutline (Number 2 on WordPress Themes) for a while, and Talian. I’ve settled on 1 blog theme. More minimal. I’ve browsed a few of the mega sites like 83 Beautiful WordPress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen And then there is the question of plugins: 10 mission critical WordPress plugins

Three blogs designs I really like . . .

Eli Horne: really minimal.

Ed Merrit: dark, autumn tones, live the fonts . . .

Redoable. http://deanjrobinson.com/wordpress/redoable Cool.

To be frank: I am still a little bamboozled by options. But this theme has a few really good options on the setup page, better than having to do a little code hacking.