I generally liked CommentPress, but when the Institute for the Future of the Book website went down recently, it started throwing errors in the dashboard. So I decided to re-do the Open Source Software For Libraries website using Derek Powazek’s DePo Masthead.

I think it’s a beautifully readable theme, and I only had to make a few modifications. I’ve ostensibly lost CommentPress’ paragraph-level commenting features, but I discovered those may have been broken all along (that was what started me thinking about replacing the theme). I still have lots of work to do on the site, like inserting the footnotes, illustrations, and the final chapter (Ryan Eby’s guide to open source software for the server-side of your library).

For the past year or so I’ve been wanting to design a non-bloggy theme for this site — a beautiful theme with a magazine-like front page showing the most recent post in a handful of categories. But I’m further from it now than last year, so it’s time to move on.

Which isn’t to say that I settled for my new theme. It’s based on Neo-Sapien by Small Potato. I made it a bit wider, the header a bit shorter, and the image is random-ish (random, but cached). I’m still not done tweaking it, but I’m really pleased with where it’s going. Most importantly (this one’s for you, JTPratt), you can now find easy links for things like bSuite and my other projects. And I’m also following Nielsen’s advice with the about and contact pages (though I have slightly hidden the about Casey page).

In my haste to actually finally do this, I decided to do it live. WP Super Cache, without which my blog falls over, made confirming changes a chore, but that forced me to work a bit more methodically. The fastest and easiest way to clear the cache after making a change is to either edit a post or select a new theme (and then change it back again). So if you looked at the site today, you may have found it switching back and forth between the old and new themes for most of the afternoon. And if I’d realized I’d just been linked by Lifehacker (for Sandee’s independence day daiquiri post), I might have done it differently.

I stumbled across the sometimes funny How To Live Your Life and got curious about the theme. Turns out it’s by Sebastian Schmieg, who keeps things real at kingcosmonaut. The theme is Blix, but the kingcosmonaut site is much cooler.

tags: blix, kingcosmonaut, sebastian schmieg, theme, web design, wordpress, wordpress theme

Theme change not yet complete, but looking good. It’s a widened version of Clemens Orth’s Relaxation_3column, itself a derivitive of John Wrana’s two columned Relaxation theme. I found it on the WordPress Codex, and though it was among the first group I looked at, I dutifully clicked through to every other three-columned theme listed there.

Anyway, expect the banner to change, and I’m working on how I want to handle the width on smaller monitors (where “smaller” actually equals anything narrower than 1280px). Eh, life goes on.

Technorati Tags: codex, derivitive, relaxation, theme, upgrade, wordpress