Beware of falling rocks – Redesign in progress

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve decided that now is a good time for me to redesign the theme I use for my blog.  For too long now, I’ve used a WordPress theme that, while it looked nice enough, did absolutely nothing to visually convey the topic or spirit of the site.

nara-burning-sm I’m pretty pleased with the amount of progress I’ve managed to make so far, but I’m no web designer so there’s still much work to be done.  On top of that, there are some very weird quirks about the way my blog works (it’s a modified self-hosted WordPress installation using K2 as a base theme) that make development difficult.  Specifically, I cannot get the K2 sidebar modules to load in my local sandbox installation, so I will undoubtedly have to deal with things that work great on my development machine that are broken on the live site.

Feedback is always welcome, but please keep in mind that this is the first WordPress theme I’ve ever made, and I’m no graphic artist, so please be kind :)

And if everything breaks, well…  You have been warned.  I’ll do my best to fix it, haha.

This entry was written by Takuan and posted on 2008/03/26 at 9:45 am and filed under Software Development, off topic. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

10 Comments

  1. Foxy Kyong
    Posted 2008/03/26 at 9:58 am | Permalink

    I’m liking the look a lot!!! Nicely done!!! :0)

  2. Takuan
    Posted 2008/03/26 at 10:10 am | Permalink

    Oh, thanks! It’s still a work in progress, but if nothing else, I’m extremely pleased that I’m no longer using a “canned” theme :)

    I don’t usually like dark themes, but as I mentioned above, I’m no web designer – I have to take whatever inspiration I can get :)

  3. Colin
    Posted 2008/03/26 at 10:19 am | Permalink

    I like the theme so far! I actually prefer darker themes. I find that it’s easier on my eyes to read light text on a dark background, as long as it’s not white on black. White on gray like you have or even gray on darker gray I think is better than the ubiquitous black on white. Not to mention it takes less electricity to display a dark screen than a light one, so it’s better for the environment ;)

    Colin’s last blog post..Enough with the Frequent Problems!

  4. Takuan
    Posted 2008/03/26 at 10:25 am | Permalink

    I’ve found that reading on a dark background gives me greater eye strain (I feel like I’m getting old), and if I do it for too long I develop headaches. I like the way it can look if done right, but most of the dark WordPress themes I’ve seen I wasn’t really thrilled with.

    Thanks for the comment!

  5. Malachi Rothschild
    Posted 2008/03/26 at 10:34 am | Permalink

    Nice! I like!

  6. Takuan
    Posted 2008/03/26 at 10:39 am | Permalink

    Nice! I like!

    Thank you!

  7. Zero Gee
    Posted 2008/03/26 at 1:53 pm | Permalink

    I think you’ve done an excellent job for your first wordpress skin, and not being a graphic designer as you say. I would however like to suggest that you consider toying with different hues closer to red, for your links. That orange seems for whatever reason to stand out, as being out of place to me. Thats my only suggestion though, other than that Awesome Pants McCool Beans!

  8. Takuan
    Posted 2008/03/26 at 2:52 pm | Permalink

    Hey thanks! Yeah, I still gotta tweak a lot of stuff, and I probably should have waited until that was done before putting it live, but I’m still happier with this theme than the old one.

    I tried various hues, and just flat-out couldn’t find one that I liked. I’m still looking, though :)

  9. Zero Gee
    Posted 2008/03/27 at 9:20 pm | Permalink

    Was noticing for some reason right now when I vew anything on the blog it keeps asking for an access login.

  10. Takuan
    Posted 2008/03/27 at 9:32 pm | Permalink

    crappy!

    Thanks for letting me know, I’ll fix that right away!