Burning out on themes
I am, much to Sneha’s relief and my own delight, beginning to mature on my urge to slap-on a new deco every year. Instead of the out and out redesign, it’s now turning out to be more like spit and polish, starting this year. So, although I had started some work for this year’s theme, it is shelved for good now.
The spit and polish includes subtle changes in the way text flows (Do refresh; hold Ctrl and press F5 to see). Category filter pagination now serves full content, instead of post excerpts (an example); A more humane and usable 404 error page. The other thing to notice is the listing of site search results (an example). Results include all content, not just blog posts (with the exception of direct links to images and files).
In future, I might change the backend structure to make it more standards compliant (at the moment, it’s not; and may be, work on cellphone, handheld device compliance), but otherwise, the layout looks just fine, beautiful and simple — to my eyes — as time goes by.
Update: I updated search results to include post categories.
have been in the same trap as you for long…have decided to just stick to what I have and see if good content is indeed the king
May 5, 07 at 20:01I have no doubts in my mind that good and only good content is what makes writing, blogging tick. In the same breath, making that content a bit less cramped by changing the way text is rendered by default (line height, paragraph separation margins, well spaced bulleted points, etc) probably goes a long way in making people sit back and read it more comfortably. At least, that is what I’m attempting to
.
May 6, 07 at 07:18I will wait till you refine it and one fine day copy it :). Check out ani’s entry on living costs :). While posting it we found we are not good web content friendly folks.
May 7, 07 at 07:36What do you mean?
May 7, 07 at 09:15Meaningful error page, hmmm, I don’t know where I got the code for mine at http://www.indibloggies.org/xyz but that seems quite informational too.
May 7, 07 at 12:13I take it that your error page is a plug-in, inspired by Dunstan’s famous error page. Mine isn’t — I’m trying to be original
. The plugin looks a bit complicated (since it ties back to Akismet), I’d be interested in something simpler, sans the contact form (since I already have one).
Coding Horror has a nice post on the topic, if you’re interested. I particularly like the idea of auto-sending error info to the author, instead of asking the site visitor to submit it.
May 7, 07 at 13:14May be, I looked at the Plugin manager and the plugin was not acttive and I though may be I got the code for the 404 page from somewhere else. One could still be original without reinventing the wheel
May 7, 07 at 16:08Are you denying it? LOL! Your (Indibloggies site) error page markup matches apple-to-apple with the code in that plug-in code (just about right now). Any way it’s none of my business, it’s your site
.
You mean use someone’s plugin (or idea) and be called original? Not in my book. So, I don’t know what is “without reinventing the wheel” all about. In any case, it is called “site personalization”, not rocket science to write a custom 404 page.
May 7, 07 at 16:311. Ability to have clear succint flow. (css mucking around is tedious)
2. Readable content, notice that table:), it just loses itself.
all this at low investment of time, tool should do it:)
May 7, 07 at 17:36Govind, if you want my suggestion, honestly? You should use either WordPress or Textpattern for blogging. Writing is so much more fun then.
Spaces.live.com is really a bad choice. I tried modifying Ani’s page with custom style (using Stylish plugin for Firefox), no juice. Spaces.live.com spews html tag soup, hard-codes style into HTML (so you can’t really blame CSS); reminiscent of late 90s (Just look at its source). Let me know if I can help.
May 7, 07 at 17:43You are possibly right, I have waited for too long for the infrastructure to improve there. Way back I started on radio
without much content but things have changed dramatically. I will send you message for the same. I love the cleanliness of your site.
May 8, 07 at 05:14Why would I deny? I never said, “I wrote” the code, I said I don’t recall where I “got it” from, PHP has never been my niche anyway.
I meant save your “originality” for some stuff that has not been done already, that way one wouldn’t probably use Wordpress itself, it’s somebody else’s code, right?
Anyways, the purpose to tell u about the Indibloggies error page was not to brag about or make fun, a thing I never ever do, but to share information. And if this interest you, I have been working on ‘Portal’ technology since several years where ‘personalization’ is a frequently used term.
Good Bye.
May 8, 07 at 13:13In case you didn’t read the title of the post, I am talking about the originality of the theme, and the way it is presented in a personalized form; not blogging software. There’s a difference between a tool (as in Wordpress) and something created for using with it (like a theme).
Yes I know, and thank you for sharing. I didn’t think you were bragging or making fun of anything here either (which is why I shared Coding Horror’s link, for the sake of discussion.)
You’re taking this personally. Please don’t. Looks like a case of healthy discussion gone wrong. Anyway and if it helps, I’d like you to know that there was no intent on my part to rub you the wrong way.
May 8, 07 at 14:04