What I Like About My New Theme

I’ve had a few days now to live with my new theme. After tweaking it over the weekend, I think I’m ready to stop tinkering and focus on the writing. Before I do, I would like to list why I like my new theme:

  • The obvious, an elegant simple minimalist design that I always aspired to but never implemented.
  • The front page is distraction-free, scroll-bar free, no sidebar widgets, and has only two images (‘contractual’ obligations) totaling to approx. 15kb and five most recent posts. The Twitter update keeps it dynamic.
  • The homepage displays only post titles and contrary to some opinions, I think this is a feature, not a bug. It disciplines me to write precise headlines that conveys what exactly the post is about. More here.
  • The menubar displays links to pages containing content that would otherwise be featured on the sidebar in other blogs. I can lose ‘Contact’ too but not many people know what ‘Colophon’ means.
  • The number of comments on each post are displayed in small(er) font size within parenthesis. Without specifically mentioning what this number means, it is still abundantly clear.
  • Clicking on Next Page displays not 5 posts as WordPress would default to but 10Some bug is preventing this and will be ironed out soon. Likewise for search results, category and day/month/year listings. The number of displayed links can be easily changed.
  • I love how the archive page has shaped up. I freely admit that Chetan’s archive page provided the inspiration. The archives are presented by recent popular posts, popular tags, categories, by year and month, and yes, even a ‘Feeling Lucky’ option without hogging too much real estate. Use of clouds makes it easier. The page is topped with a simple search box that gets ‘focused’ at page load. This feature is provided by code written by Chetan. See the Colophon page for list of plugins I use
  • The now-embarrassing About page is gone. But not exactly.
  • The single post page, like the Front Page, is distraction-free and focuses on the content. All metadata is presented at the end of the post in smaller font. The date format is hyperlinked to their corresponding archive pages; thanks to code also by Chetan.I like threaded comments by WordPress so modding the theme for them was not difficult.
  • Limited or no ads. I couldn’t resist not inserting Adsense since they do generate some revenue; enough to make hosting free and then some. Regular readers will see only one ad block; actually none if you read the post within 2 days of its date of publication. I use Who Sees Ads plugin to adjust settings.

That covers most of the features I like. Hopefully this affection for minimalism will last and let me focus more on writing, which I’m told, this blog needs. As a fierce proponent of minimalism, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said it best, Less is More.

What do you like best about this new theme? Or even what do you not like?

“What I Like About My New Theme” [Short URL: http://www.ipatrix.com/?p=3087] was published Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 7:00 am by Patrix, filed under Design, Personal, Weblogs, and tagged as , , , . Both comments and linkbacks are closed.

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  • http://adityaramgopal.com Aditya

    I like the single post pages, as well as the archives. But I wish there were more post titles in the start page. Perhaps, 8 post titles? I don’t know…

    Secondly — and this is a compromise thought to the opposing views we have on minimalism — how about a ‘+’ beside the post title, where, upon clicking it, we can see the extract of the post (ajaxified/javascript)? Sort of how you have folders expand on Windows explorer when you click on the plus sign.

    I know, I’m still stuck on the post extract thing. :)

    • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

      More post titles can be done as long as the vertical scoll bar doesn’t appear so will experiment with that. But then, its a never ending loop; when you have 8 why not 10, etc.

      The ‘+’ next to the post title sounds like a good idea and might be a decent compromise. See the Movies page and how the one-line review is hidden/revealed so perhaps, it can be done. But it may involve serious PHP coding which as you know I’m no expert in :)

      I’ll have that post on titles vs. excerpts soon. It will let me write down why I believe titles should suffice; not that excerpts would hurt if done correctly.

      • http://adityaramgopal.com Aditya

        Yes, precisely. The Movies page best explains what I was trying to convey. I do understand the coding challenges you’ll face though. Was just a thought.

        Also, currently the vertical scroll bar shows up on my browser. FF on Mac. (I think that’s probably because of an extra bar on my browser.) It’s fine on Safari though.

        • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

          Yup. Too many post titles and the home page will lose its charm. I think it is fine at 5 right now and its not like, I have an Engadget-like frequency :)

          I will dig through the movies plugin code when I’m feeling adventurous and see what I can do.

  • Ash

    How about a “+” expand option like fivethirtyeight.com has? They use it to being in “below the fold” material. You could use it bring in your entire post.

    • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

      Nate Silver simply has an inline more (compared to the default ‘more’) tag. This would result in post title followed by equal number of “Read More”. Not pretty.

  • Chetan

    Happy to see those tiny pieces of my code working for you. =)

    • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

      Thanks. It is the tiny ones that make all the difference :)

  • Chetan

    I looked at your source and there’s still a lot you can optimise. See towards the footer for instance. You’re loading a lot of stuff in the background that the page in question either does not need or does not display. So why not call many of those javascripts and call for those only on relevant pages? Say between is_page(‘archive’) then script_here.

    • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

      I assume you are talking about the javascripts for Smart Archives and the Polls. Those are inserted automatically when I activate the plugins and I don’t see them in my template files. Where can I access them to put conditional tags?

      • Chetan

        Uh, I presumed you were embedding them manually in the footer. I wouldn’t add the conditional statement to the plugin code for the simple reason that it might get overwritten when you upgrade to a newer plugin version.

        • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

          Yup. But I did remember to comment out the get_archives tag in the header. Dunno why it was there in the first place. Let me know if you see any other ways to optimize.

  • http://sherenejose.com Sherene

    Definitely liking the + idea mentioned above!

    There’s some disconnect between the font used for ‘Nerve Endings…’ right on top and that for the post but I can’t quite put my finger on it * shrug *

    But otherwise, yes, I’m slowly learning to live with the minimalism around here :P

    • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

      I would love to try out the (+) option but coding that is beyond my abilities. Only if someone could offer.

      The default font-type for the title and the body are deliberately different. Dunno what other combination would feel right. Not a typography expert but feel free to suggest.

  • http://desinole.com Karthik

    What about the previous and next post links?

    Now that I’m typing this out, I see it below the comments, but I was looking for it at the top of the page. :)

    • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

      Agreed. Moved them to above the comments.


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