Reboot: 95% Complete
May 5th, 08 | 16 remarksThere’s still some tweaking to be done, but I’d like to take a moment to announce the fresh new look of Design Adaptations!
I’m excited about this redesign for a couple reasons. First, because it came to me very easily this time, and that almost never happens. I went home last weekend to see my folks and my brother who was also visiting. We played poker, drank a lot of beer, and generally had a great time. :) I also avoided the computer entirely. It turned out to be a wise choice. Sunday evening when we returned I was able to work with renewed energy, and rather surprised myself at the focus I maintained throughout the week, and the speed at which I was moving through the project. If only I could crank out a theme every week like that!
Second, this design was pretty far removed from what I’ve done for DA in the past, having stuck mostly to white backgrounds and open layouts. Obviously this look is more squared off and boxy, but I think it works well for the intended objective, which was to feature more content and create a space for [future] theme listings.
Finally, this reboot was largely based on Solidarity (up next for release). It was time to get on board with a less bloggy type layout, and what better way to do it than by customizing one of my own themes? Not to mention it just makes good business sense. What a convenient way to showcase how Solidarity can be modified! ;)
I want to give a quick mention to Adii as well. This design was partly inspired by his recent redesign. While I’ve not been a huge fan of some of the former designs his site has sported, I really love this latest. It’s extremely well organized and has the kind of appeal that invites you to browse around and read more. It’s light and airy and a good choice for the spring/summer season. With all that in mind, I tried to accomplish the same things with this reboot. Thanks for the creative lift Adii!
I think with a couple more supporting icons, some tweaks to content arrangement, and maybe a few adjustments to form displays, this reboot will stick around for a while. :) Let me know what you think!
Very fresh, Charity. I particularly like the difference between your homepage and the single post pages. That change is something I’d love to incorporate into my own blogs.
I’m curious why you show your homepage as the same as the /notebook/ directory. Is this just part of the 5% you’ve still to complete?
I almost missed the ‘notify me of followup comments’ check box. Funny how you become so used to it being near the ’submit’ button.
May 5, 08 | 10:58 amVery nice Charity! Love the colors and the clarity of the layout. I wish I could find the time to redesign my site!
May 5, 08 | 11:01 amThanks guys, glad you like!
David, I’m not sure why the notebook folder is showing up when on the home page. I hadn’t noticed so thanks for pointing it out to me. Recently I switched hosts and I’m guessing I didn’t do something right… adding that to my to-do list. :)
May 5, 08 | 12:59 pmIt’s looking good charity. I too like the homepage - and I’m interested to know how you manage the images so that you have a picture on the excerpt view… but no picture in the main post? Is there a plugin helping with this?
Also, there’s something weird going on in the comments - the comment numbers are overlaying the text of the comments (viewed in FF3).
May 5, 08 | 4:08 pmThanks Aaron. I’m actually just using a custom field within the write panel, and an IF statement (to check for a thumbnail) on the index.php template file.
Not sure what’s going on with the comments. I have not done any testing in FF3 yet. For one because I’m honestly I’m not sure where to even get it. (Can you link me?) I read somewhere that v3 overwrites any existing FF installations. I’m way too attached to my current setup on the main machine to give up but I suppose I could throw it onto my laptop. :)
What bothers me more is that comment numbers are showing up at all. I have overflow set to hidden… wonder what gives. Any ideas?
May 5, 08 | 4:28 pmI was a bit disappointed when you said you were going to redesign because I thought the old one was great, but this is great too.
May 6, 08 | 12:46 amVery calm, pleasant colours. Nicely ordered. Cool use of category specific recent posts at the bottom. Great work.
Aw thanks Kristarella. :) But you might be happy to know I’m planning on releasing the old theme as a freebie. Just need to remove any personal references, affiliate links, etc. and give it a good once over before packaging it up.
p.s. I love that tree illustration on your site!
May 6, 08 | 8:08 amOne thing, I had to check back here to see if you’d replied, as even though I checked the ‘notify me’ box, I’ve not received any updates. Perhaps it’s just me?
May 7, 08 | 6:05 amHmm. Maybe 95% was an over-estimation huh? ;) The Twitter updates and Similar posts plugin are acting buggy too. Thanks, I’ll check it out.
May 7, 08 | 7:57 amoh, I really like your site’ new look, Charity. Blue and grey look great together, and the light peach adds the right punch. I also like how everything is organized on the site. Well done!
Question: what do you use for your switching Tabs in the sidebar? I didn’t see any jquery links, did you custom code it?
May 20, 08 | 1:11 amThanks Vivian! Although I would love to claim hand-coding the tabs, I used a script called Tabifier. I have never tried any of the JS or CSS libraries that I know are available. I should get smart and do that one of these days. :)
May 20, 08 | 8:56 amThanks for the link to Tabifier, Charity.
May 22, 08 | 3:56 pmBtw, I didn’t get any notifications on my follow-up to comments, I’m sure I ticked the checkbox when I posted my previous comment. So perhaps, you should look into that. I’m ticking it again, to test once more ;-)
I’m kinda stuck on this problem, actually. I’ve poked around, made sure I had the most recent version of the plugin, checked the comments.php page for any weird code lingering around making trouble, but still cannot figure out why it’s not working. Might just have to remove it for the time being. :(
May 23, 08 | 9:04 amCharity, I looked at your code and pretty sure I know what the problem with subscribe to comments is:
May 23, 08 | 7:03 pmbecause you moved the checkbox to the top, in your code it starts before the actual FORM tag, thus its value not getting sent with the form’s submission. All you have to do is move your opening FORM tag right before your P tag with class=”subscribe-to-comments” (currently the opening FORM tag starts after your paragraph with the checkbox). Let me know if it works.
@inspirationbit - I was so excited when I saw your response because as soon as you pointed it out I was sure you were right! But alas, testing it with an alternate email of mine still didn’t work after moving the function. :(
Then I remembered something my mother always says: “If all else fails, read the directions.” And what do you know, I had the plugin file in a directory of the same name, since that’s how it unzipped. The readme clearly says put the file in the wp-content/plugins directory, and NOTHING about a subdirectory. DOH! I feel like such a noob right now. When I made the recent move to MT I must’ve screwed something up.
Anyway thank you so much for taking the time to keep manually checking back and poking through the code! :)
May 23, 08 | 9:12 pmhurrah, I’m so glad you found what was wrong. I had similar issues with the plugins who contained a subfolder as well, so you’re not alone there. ;-) Congrats on fixing this problem, now your readers can be notified of comment replies ;-)
May 25, 08 | 12:11 am