New WordPress Theme Is Here

The new WordPress theme is here, no more mega-font default WordPress ugliness! Thanks to everyone for the feedback! Over 75% of the votes were in favor of either the Test2 or Test3 options, while the bigger and bolder Test1 and the previously-current mega-font combined had under 20% of the vote. So the message you sent was clear, go for something compact and concise, which led to this theme! In some ways, it looks a lot like our previous-previous TypePad theme.

This is a responsive theme, works with desktops, laptops and smartphones. The responsiveness is not ideal with some tablets but it is still readable/usable [you can adjust the browser window on a desktop/laptop to partially simulate this]. More adjustments and customizations will happen in the next few days. The Main Blog will switch to a new theme next week. Please feel free to opine using the online contact form or the comments below or Twitter.

This is the TL;DR. If you are interested in more details about the making of this vegan sausage, there’s much and more after the jump…

UPDATE for Samsung S-Pen Users: you can use the S-Pen to hover over the menus on top (“Manufacturers”, “Camera Mounts”, “Camera Types”) and they automatically expand to show all the options. Then you just have to click on the option you want. (this works if the S-Pen hover feature is enabled – it’s somewhere in the TouchWiz labyrinth of menus).

After doing a WordPress theme immersion this week (it was actually fun but time-consuming!), the previously-current WordPress 2015 default theme became a LOT more annoying and obnoxious. So it had to go right now, I had to take action!

As you can see, this new theme is not Test1 nor Test2 nor Test3, but it is kinda somewhere along the lines of Test2 and Test3. The nature of this particular blog (quick short posts that need to be easily scannable and skimmable) meant that I had to spend time customizing T2 and T3 to trim and simplify them. At the same time, I did not want the ugly mega-font theme to “survive” past this weekend.

So a compromise was needed, and a compromise was made. I went for something good enough right now, with adjustments/improvements in the future.

This new theme is actually related to Test3, both are part of the Genesis framework, with this one being part of the default/example themes (that’s why it may look a bit dated design-wise). The very datedness is that what made it a good right-now solution, because a lot of the newer WordPress themes are too design-y and/or too space-y for a blog like this.

So since this is part of Genesis (Phil Collins not included), the various child themes can easily be changed or adjusted, while the underlying framework remains the same.