Working on the blog design

Photo by kylejones

I made quite a few changes to the theme. New header, logo, typography and a nice RSS button. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to make all these changes. The last time I implemented a WordPress theme I wanted to quit my job as a web-designer.


There are a few reasons behind all this easy, quick and relaxing way of creating a new theme:

• I didn’t develop one from scratch and instead created a “Child Theme” – your theme inherits another theme and you just overwrite the css to suite your needs (also helps if you what to update your base theme to a new version)
• The theme template on which my theme was developed, Thematic is really well developed (and it is continuous in development)
• I already had the design done – I’ve thought of starting my own blog for quite some time now, but I’ve only managed to get the Photoshop layout done ( now I realize that I’ve delayed this for quite some time because I was scared of the time and effort I would have to put to create my own theme… guess I was wrong…)
• I didn’t touch a single .php file… not even one… This is I would say is the main reason for such a quick and easy turnover (about 2 frustration free hours). The base theme is so well implemented that from css and a text widget I was able to make the changes… (the text widget was needed for my RSS icon )

This is by far a finished theme, but it’s a great start for me.

On the to do list I’ll add:

• organize my blogroll links
• change the information that is displayed on the right side of the blog
• design the footer
• add extra information to the footer (like popular posts… provided someone actually reads my blog )
• maybe redesign the main body of the blog…
• add information to the About page
• create a contact page
• redesign the comments area (currently it looks ok but it’s the default one from my template theme)
• add link for homepage on logo

I’ll come with and new post about how my theme development evolves in a few days.

I still have a lot to learn from using WordPress. Initially I thought : “4 menu tabs in the admin interface??? I remember it to be a lot more complex… “. It turned out that it is . So besides learning to better communicate my ideas and concepts I’m also learning about this great blogging platform.

Until next time, have fun!

Further Reading:

1. New Web-Design and Development blog
2. 10 design tips for your custom wordpress theme built with thematic
3. Content design – what makes a good landing page
4. When in doubt blog about your Author’s Block!
5. “Digital Experience Design: Ideas, Industries, Interaction” – book review