Summer (Blog) Fashions
How can you tell when I have a little more time on my hands? A change to the look and feel of this blog is a sure sign. For those who don’t read it via the feed (which means, family and a few others, rather than other bloggers), I’ve once again fiddled with the theme or rather the pages of the blog/web site. There are a few minor glitches, but overall, I’m pleased with this one, and if I don’t screw it up, this design might be in place for a while. The picture of the mountains in the header is from a recent picnic at Locarno Beach.
(Warning, geekery to follow : ) I’m still a fan of the Georgia font for body text, but now I’m making the more standard font choice of a sans serif (Helvetica or Arial if you don’t have that installed) font for headers and navigation. I’ve decided to take the chance of using the WordPress ‘widget’ technology for the sidebar, instead of relying on the theme’s own PHP code for generating the calendar, search box, blogroll and category list, which may or may not be a good idea. Already I can see some disadvantages to this approach, as the sort order of the blogroll is no longer randomized and always appears in alphabetical order. I guess the answer is to use a different widget, but I’m new to this approach. I also can’t figure out how I’ll insert Flickr thumbnails between widgets. I’m thinking that will need a widget of its own. Will have to research further.
At any rate, the advantage to experimenting is that you learn more, so I’ll surely be playing around a bit more. I’m already a bit more sure of myself on the CSS side of things, so hopefully there will be fewer layout glitches.
Now I just have to figure out how to get the home page listed in the page list…
7 Comments to “Summer (Blog) Fashions”
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nancy
Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 1:24 pm1I’m liking it, David!
Question: My blog has a money-related blogroll. I’d like to have a section for a local-blogger related blogroll, but clearly separate from the money one. i have no.idea how to mess around with the theme. Are there widgets or plugins I could install which would serve that purpose, do you know? -
David Drucker
Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 1:38 pm2Hi Nancy,
I noticed that the ‘Manage — Links’ section in WordPress Management UI seems to have different categories for links. It looks likely that you could assign the local-blogger category to one group, and the money-related category to the other. Then, you could include a link widget set to each category– which it appears the Widgets section would show if I had another category other than blogroll. I notice that the Links widget has no editable preference (such as category), and once you add one link widget, it doesn’t seem to be available for re-use (in other words, one link widget per category), so using a widget-ready theme (like the one I chose this time, which is called ‘Wallpaper’, although I spent a lot of time altering it) and using the Widgets feature might do the trick for you.
I tried the widgets feature partly because Susie Gardiner used me as a guinea pig for the demo of this feature at the last Northern Voice, and I figured it might be worth trying for once, especially with the more polished WordPress version (2.5.1) that I’ve not really taken advantage of yet.
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West End Bob
Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 1:49 pm3It’s a good summer look, David.
Where is Locarno Beach located, exactly? It has a great view of both the city and the mountains .…
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Raul
Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 1:50 pm4I like the new look of the blog!
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David Drucker
Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 2:39 pm5Hi Bob and Raul — Thanks to you both for the thumbs up.
Locarno beach is one of the set of 3 (or so), that are on the south shore of English Bay, including Jericho Beach, Locarno, and the Spanish Bank. If you go all the way around the coast of the land that UBC occupies, you eventually get to the Pacific side, and Wreck Beach, (which was known for being a Nude beach, although I’ve never been there to say that for sure). Locarno and Jericho, along with Kitselano Beach to the East, all enjoy a nice view of both the city and the mountains.
Fact checker folks — correct me where I’m not quite accurate. I’ve sometimes seen Spanish Bank in plural, so I’m not sure if there are perhaps other, smaller beaches to the west as you approach the mouth of English Bay.
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isabella mori
Posted: May 23rd, 2008 at 9:24 am6hmmm, this new blog look seems to be going around … okay, just to be different, i’m going to say that i liked the old one a bit better. maybe it’s just the header? oh well. i’ll get used to it
btw, i’m one of those people who don’t use feeds/readers all that much. ok, hardly at all. once in a while i try to get myself to do it — right now i’m trying google reader — but it just doesn’t do the trick for me. i think i want to … “touch” people’s blogs
glad to hear that you’re feeling better!
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David Drucker
Posted: May 23rd, 2008 at 11:18 am7Hi Isabella,
I’m glad there is at least one local person who goes to the actual site!
Don’t worry about the header. My plan is to change that, perhaps seasonally, perhaps monthly (like a magazine). It depends on how much time I have, since it does require some minimal graphic editing. What I liked about this first one was merely that the blue seemed to pick up the link colour quite well. I’ll give a nighttime False Creek shot a try at some later date.
There are some advantages to this theme. The collapsible sections in the sidebar in the previous theme were just too difficult to mess with, and I missed being able to put up some Flickr photos. Also, the Archives area was just getting too long, and the calendar takes up far less room. If someone wants to find something in February of 2006, it shouldn’t be that much harder to find it (Why they would be seeking out this, I have no idea). Finally, there was a bizarre limitation that the ‘Home’ link fell under the ‘About’ link on the navigation, and I couldn’t figure out how to fix that.
About the only remaining issue that I’d like to fix is the randomization (rather than alphabetical) blogroll links. The Widget that displays them says they are randomized, but they clearly aren’t. Otherwise, this is getting far closer to my favourite layout so far.
