Mar 14 2007

Thoughts?

Published by at 08:00:03 under General

Well we’ve had the modified “Sleek Harbour” theme in place for a few days, we’ll now move on to the second in our experimental themes. Second was Flat which is another two column fixed width theme for WordPress.

Ok, we’ve moved ahead of schedule to the last theme, “Adventure”, having been only slightly modified for my blog.

Feedback is appreciated.

[These may not be fully functional, any error reports would be welcomed]

20 responses so far

20 Responses to “Thoughts?”

  1. Odinsownon 11 Mar 2007 at 13:16:59

    The layout is ok. No errors seen yet. It looks nice.

  2. Grifteron 11 Mar 2007 at 14:58:53

    Lookin good Mug. No errors with Firefox 1.5, For a second I did think I accidently loaded the wrong page though. Heh….

  3. daveon 11 Mar 2007 at 22:27:38

    live the pic in the header

  4. Mikeon 12 Mar 2007 at 02:18:49

    New WordPress is out?!

    Curse cast iron valve casings….

  5. Mugwugon 13 Mar 2007 at 08:16:51

    Grif and Odinsown: Thanks! Opera, Firefox and IE seem to handle it ok. Appears largely bulletproof. Cool.

    Dave: Ah yes, my Mutt AR15 at the range. Seemed a fitting pic for the header.

    Mike: Oh yeah…new versions, corrupted versions, emergency versions to fix the corrupted versions. Might be time for you to upgrade your version just to capture some of the new features (nothing earth shattering, but nice none the less).

  6. Pieteron 13 Mar 2007 at 22:36:23

    It’s not that I don’t like the new look,
    it’s just that the old look was less yucky.

  7. Mugwugon 14 Mar 2007 at 03:40:51

    So you don’t like the new look then?

  8. Nikkion 14 Mar 2007 at 07:55:28

    No.

  9. Mugwugon 14 Mar 2007 at 08:06:37

    Hehe, ok…let’s take it easy with the detailed constructive criticism here shall we?

    -GRIN-

    I’ll admit that I am partial to this theme (Sleek Harbour) as it seems much cleaner and less cluttered than the “Benevolence” theme that I’ve been using for so much time now.

    I like the cluster of navigation items on the right side, and concentrated at the top. I think the entries themselves are more easily read, and while I’m not a huge fan of the text block at the bottom of each I feel it serves to delineate each entry nicely.

    It’s a fixed width theme which is important for the formatting I’ve used with the zombie movie reviews, and it seems to present well with the browsers I’ve tried.

    In this respect it scores good points with me, and stands above the other themes I’ve experimented with.

    It is time to switch to another candidate, although the Flat Theme is fairly pedestrian by comparison, it also has a clean look to it.

  10. Carbonmanon 14 Mar 2007 at 08:33:03

    I don’t see a picture at the top in either Firefox or Netscape. It loads OK, but I don’t like the color scheme. “Sleek Harbour” was better. How many more themes do you have on tap to show us poor unsuspecting morning readers?

  11. Mugwugon 14 Mar 2007 at 08:49:33

    Nah, Flat doesn’t have a header image (at least not unless I do some extensive modification). Flat is a nice basic theme, nothing fancy and entirely (to me) too reminiscent of Bloggers generic templates and so forth.

    I’ve one more theme in the queue ready to slot. It’d be my second choice after Sleek Harbour, but I’ve done ZERO tampering (or more correctly “tweaking”) with it so it’ll likely appear a little less “polished” than the first two.

    Third, and final, theme “Adventure will go live here on Friday morning. I do want to take a few moments to fine tune it a bit to give it a fair shake, and to modify the header image with something a little more “gunny”, but this is all contingent on real life leaving me the time.

    Meh…

  12. Hanson 14 Mar 2007 at 09:55:24

    Thanks for trying out my theme. If you do find any errors, please do let me know.

  13. Mikeon 14 Mar 2007 at 18:21:33

    I don’t think Firefox likes the new theme. It didn’t work on my home computer.

    I also liked the other one more. Maybe with the new header pic, though. I like that one.

  14. Mugwugon 14 Mar 2007 at 19:29:37

    Strange, this one represented ok on my version of firefox (1.5), which version are you running?

    Not that this theme was without problems mind you, the links displayed all sorts of extra information out of the box, and comments.php was missing resulting in numerous errors when attempting to view and/or leave a comment.

    As it stands it seems ok in my versions of Firefox, Opera and IE.

    You should like the header image, as far as I remember thats you with the M14 on the left.

    -GRIN-

  15. Nikkion 14 Mar 2007 at 20:57:08

    Constructive criticism? Uhm.

    I don’t like this one either and I didn’t see the first. Ignore me though, I’m just resistant to change.

    N

  16. Carbonmanon 14 Mar 2007 at 21:58:26

    “Adventure” looks good, nice and clean. The header picture looks a little ‘Stalingrad 1943′, harsh and grim. Something to cool everyone down when they visit this page in the middle of a nasty, hot summer.

  17. Mikeon 14 Mar 2007 at 23:00:03

    I use 1.5. I’ll check again once I’m home. Might have just been a one-time thing.

  18. Ted Onyszczakon 14 Mar 2007 at 23:32:31

    I findt he layout of the comments confusing without the old delineation, boxes. It all kinda blurrs together to me. Otherwise boring. Hate to be critical, but the old layout had a certain modernist charm to it.

  19. Mugwugon 14 Mar 2007 at 23:50:39

    Nikki: I hear ya, I’m just in the mood for a little change however. The old layout just wasn’t “doing it” for me anymore.

    Meh… personal preference.

    Carbonman: Hehe..Stalingrad, I like that.

    Agreed, I think this theme has the most potential of the three for modifying, although as I said earlier the missing pieces when I downloaded it are disturbing.

    Overall I think it is the look I am going for, or at least one I’ll be content with for the time being.

    Mike: Cool, lemme know.

    Theodore: Nah, critical is what I am looking for.

    As for the comments I agree completely. The problem, or at least the first problem, I encountered with this theme was the absence of “comments.php” which meant anyone attempting to access the comments got a series of error messages. I do plan on modifying the manner in which the comments are displayed as soon as time permits, but for right now getting them to display at all required a quick bit of work.

    Alternately this gives me the chance to configure the comments from the ground up, so I can find a layout that appeals.

    Otherwise “boring” isn’t bad. Clean, as Carbonman observed, is another description for the same thing. I’ll add the various plugins as I play around with this one (and Sleek Harbour for that matter) but I found that reading the old “Benevolence” entries was a little taxing on my eyes. This one seems a little easier.

    Great feedback though! Thanks guys!

  20. Gregon 15 Mar 2007 at 01:37:52

    Bah, I come for the letters on the page and to heap abuse on you.

    Whatever works…

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