Extra! Extra! Check Out The New Theme!
Tagged as: Nov 01So after more time than I’d like to admit, I’ve finally finished enough of my theme to put it on goingthewongway! I’m excited that I’ve changed it. Check it out and let me know what you think!
And now I present to you: Soi-disant
I’ve only changed my theme once to (Not So) Fresh as I posted in New Look. That was 8 months ago and since then quite a bit has changed.
Why I wanted to make my own theme
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Have a unique look to my blog
I’ve come across other blogs that had the same theme, and that wasn’t too exciting for me. I want and like to be my own. So even though the last one did look nice, it was unfortunate because other people thought that it looked nice as well.
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Learn much, much more web design
CSS in particular, HTML and PHP to a lesser degree since I already knew a fair amount before doing the theme. Part of who I am wants to understand how things work and why. So learning new things can be very exciting to me. Not to mention the fact that it’s very pertinent to my profession of computer programming. (Although I must admit that I believe that I lack the creativity necessary to actually ever become a web designer. I know the nuts and bolts but lack the vision. :P)
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Create a fluid display
I wanted one that would show up well on the very popular 1024×768 and 1280×1024 screen resolutions in addition to any other screen resolutions. I’m sorry to say that it’s very likely that anything below 1024×768 won’t look all that great. A fluid display means that the text and page elements will expand according to how much space is available. My previous theme was fixed width so it didn’t look too great to me on higher resolution displays.
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Speed things up
The last theme used a fair amount of images to create all of the nice effects. And that’s nice for people on fast connections (which at this point is a very fair amount of people). However there still are people on slower connections, and I want my blog to be accessible to them as well, too.
Soi-disant
I got the name of this theme (Soi-disant) by looking up a word of the day online. Lame, huh? I thought it was cool because it means calling oneself thus, self-styled, or so-called. Seemed interesting to me so there it is.
So I did it all for this theme: header logo, PHP code, HTML, CSS. It was a learning experience, that is for sure.
Wordpress theme designer: check
nice setup, even if i never can understand the things you write about! however, i personally would add a little touch of pink to it =) i like how the date is in a box in the corner, haha
You can’t understand ANY of the things that I write about? I don’t think that I have all that many geeky posts.
Haha, pink…
Yeah I agree and like the date how it is now. That is probably one of the more interesting points of the theme.
haha, i like the borders! is there a slightly invisible border on the top right-side of the page?
Haha yeah I know that you like the borders. That slightly invisible border actually contains the ads if they’re not being block by your browser. So since you can see the border (it’s just a very light gray) then that means that you are blocking the ads. That’s all it is.
Yeah, I was going to say…I don’t know what any of that means, but it looks great!
Well I guess in the end, that’s all that matters. I’m glad that you like it! And hopefully other people do as well.
Hello Derek!
I think it looks nice. It is clear and very ‘open’.
I specially like the logo, that is awesome! Did you do that yourself?
You may want to reconsider the underlining of tags and links in the sidebar. And I would like to suggest you take another look at the effect of the black font ‘hover’ in the tag cloud. Specially the smaller print is difficult to see when hovering, as the black is not turned into a light gray there (as is the case with the hovering of the blue links). Hope you find this useful
as always, Take Care & Have Fun!
-Jos:)
Thanks for your compliments. I did do the logo myself. I’m glad that you like it!
Those are some good points about the sidebar. I might very well make the tag cloud a special case so that it looks more like a cloud and less like a list of links. I appreciate the constructive comments.
Thank you, Derek! I was a bit worried about leaving my suggestions, I didn’t mean them in any way to criticize you, as I really think your new theme is a big improvement and your blog looks smashing! I am truly glad (and o be honest, a bit releived) that you see them as constructive.
as always, Take Care & Have Fun
Smashing, huh? That’s a good thing! Oh and thanks for the “award” that you gave me on your blog. I’m always glad for some affirmation.
Little late on the uptake, Derek, but well done on the new site. What an achievement to design it yourself, logo and all. It was quite startling to have it open up in front of me like that (and not in a bad way) - great effect to have on a visitor. I’m liking it alot.
And, thank you very much for including me in your links. Much appreciated!
Thank you very much, Rory! I’m glad that you got to see and comment on it. But I guess even more than that I’m glad that you like it. Even though I know that you’re not actively writing to your blog, I still think that it has interesting tidbits to offer. I just visited and noticed that you reverted back to the kubrick theme. What prompted that change?
Thanks for the heads-up, Derek. That shows how much I visit the site, doesn’t it. Some sort of glitch flipped it to Kubrick - I’ve reverted it back to the Cutline theme. Thanks again.
nice theme, honestly, I have been jealous, coz I was also thinking to make my own theme, I am not a educated web designer, thats why it is very difficult for me
but I will make my own, one day.
Cute theme - grats.
I always try to make my own design for all my sites, but (of course) often I just use free themes.
nice share thanks