Days after telling you about bringing back commenting, I’m pleased to share I upgraded the design of the site.
Long-time readers of my blog (and thank you) may recall I experimented with simpler blog designs as early as 2009. I always strived to focus your eyes on my words and less on distractions. Here’s a blog post I wrote in 2010 that highlighted some of those designs.
Brian Gardner to the rescue! He founded a company called StudioPress and created Genesis, a framework that runs on top of WordPress.
To the uninitiated, think of rungs on a ladder: WordPress is at the bottom and is the platform; Genesis contains features and functions; and themes enable customizable design and coding.
Genesis has run on my blog since 2013. I’ve used a few themes since then; but the No Sidebar Pro theme is the newest. It’s based on Brian’s No Sidebar blog which is focused on minimalism and simple living. I’ve read his blog for about a year.
Some of the things I like about this theme:
- It’s built for one column.
- The site loads damned fast.
- Mobile responsive.
- Custom header and menu options.
- Ability to add widgets after every post.
- Threaded comments.
- No sidebar.
I also installed a premium plugin called Social Warfare which is responsible for the social sharing buttons and other stuff I’ve playing with before turning on.
Here is an updated list of every plugin on this blog, if curious.
P.S. Please scroll below (or visit the blog if reading this in an email) and confirm you’re subscribed to receive future blog posts as they’re published. I have a lot of topics in draft mode and I hope you’ll enjoy reading and participating in the comments.
Looks great. Love the new user experience and your openness to comments. Best regards.
Thanks Lee. Nice to see your name here!
Well you didn’t ask what people think of the site, but I’ll stick my nose in anyway.
I find the Genesis themes a bit staid, even though I use them because the coding and the reliability are good. We’ve got Beautiful Pro running on one site and we like it because it creates a feeling of being spacious and open.
The No Sidebar Pro theme does what you say you want – concentration on the writing – which is a good thing.
I am not so sure about the full width header and the way the site forms a ‘T’ shape with the grey sidebars as soon as I scroll down. It’s not a big thing and overall I like the site – easy to negotiate and not squished.
I was just looking at Dear/BrunchPro/Foodie Pro and the small font size and thinking how a year or two ago everyone was saying how important it was to have big font sizes.
A List Apart is a good example of that, although I see they have now restricted their monster-size fonts to the opening paragraph of posts.
I have started using the Make theme from The Theme Foundry. It has a nice range of options in the customiser.
I am not overfond of the Warfare plugins at the foot of the pages here. They are just too dominant on the page and more so on mobile. Is there an option to reduce the size or remove them from that position? I get a slight feeling that I am looking over a fence to see your content.
Hi David, thanks for your thoughts — and I’m glad you were proactive with them.
I think I understand what you mean by a “T shape” and maybe if the border wasn’t greyish or even a lighter shade it might be less noticeable?
As for the sharing buttons horizontal, I understood what you meant by a “fence” so do you mind taking another look and seeing what I did with the placement? It’s now on the left of the desktop browser; and if you go with your cellphone, it’s at the bottom. Hmm?
The side position for the social shares is much better. Now I feel like I can ‘get in’ to the blog.
And yes, it is the contrast with the grey colour – I would find something nearer to white less distracting. Or box the header if that is possible – either way.
In WordPress, anything is possible.
hi,
I dont know how you got hold of my email and send me this reminder of your blog.
But I am pleased to read you are a legitimate blogger who wanted to share your knowledge.
Yes, I will subscribe to you blog
All the best to you and your new blog design
cheers
Dr. L M Foong
Cheers. You commented here in the past. I could look for you; or you could simply search for your name. Welcome back.
Hi Ari,
Minimal is the way forward it would seem, and you’ve always been ahead of the trend in terms of web design.
Having serif text at the top in the navigation bar and then sans-serif everywhere else makes for an interesting contrast. I think I like it, but I’m not sure yet!
Two things that bug me about the new design: firstly the search box isn’t visible – I kept clicking the magnifying glass symbol waiting for a search box to pop up – and when you type in it, the text “Search” stays there, it’d be good if this automatically dissapeared to save having to deleting it every time! Secondly, on articles pages, your social buttons would look much tidier if they were all on one line. I’m not sure what it looks like for you, but for me, the email button sits rather poorly aligned on a line underneath the rest of them. Personally I prefer the buttons on the side anyway. Do you need the ones after the articles too? Can’t you just have the side social buttons visible all the time? It’s a clever bit of code, but I’m not a fan.
Also, I think it’s great you’ve decided to bring back comments. I’m yet to try your comment via email thing out though!
Christopher
Hi Christopher, been a while since I saw your face here. Thanks for chiming in about the “search” text not disappearing. I’ll inquire how to remove; must be some php code.
As for the sharing buttons, I want them below every post because otherwise they wouldn’t be seen for people on the phones. The floating side buttons are shown for desktops, laptops, and tablets as you scroll down the article.
Floating buttons don’t seem to work well on mobiles, but I didn’t realise they didn’t show up at all – just tested it and you are of course correct. Saying that you’ve fixed the issue I had with the email button, so I’m happy now!
I’ve still been reading your posts by email each day, just not visited your site in a while.
I removed the pinterest button. I don’t think that’s used much off my blog.
🙂