My first original theme ever!

  • Well it’s been a long day of fooling around but here is what I have so far for a 100% custom theme from a pre-existing static page design. All coding done by hand…

    https://linesofexcellence.com/blog/?theme=LOE

    I’d like to do something fancier for the left sidebar and I like the way the right sidebar is nested. The only table code in the whole thing is the subscribe to newsletter box, because that is legacy code from the static site, and is easy enough to redo w/ CSS.

    The static site is:

    https://linesofexcellence.com/

Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)

  • Blog looking cool. Some suggestions:

    1) Change the width of the “sign up for newsletter” to match the block of the “Conversation” block so that the site look uniform.
    2) Increase the left hand sidebar width

    Thread Starter Jonas Grumby

    (@ss_minnow)

    Thanks. As I mentioned the “sign up for newsletter” block is legacy code from the old web site. I will fix that.

    I may widen the left sidebar but I haven’t decided what I ultimately want to do with it. I’d like to do something with graphics instead of straight CSS. It would be no big deal to widen it but I also want to be conscious of leaving enough space for the content.

    This whole thing is just an experiment. I have a client who has a legacy static web site and a “blog” who I have been trying to convince to merge the two…

    Definitely thanks for the feedback. Like I said this is a first attempt and I am happy to be able to create a custom theme without any kind of theme generator software. Hopefully this is a step toward bigger things.

    Thread Starter Jonas Grumby

    (@ss_minnow)

    FWIW the site is live now. You can see some groovy things like the image rotater script on the pages (image in lower right sidebar changes), the way the sidebars change in different cases (only blog pages have the cloud tag in the right sidebar, archive pages do not have the META section of the left sidebar…), the changing header graphics on the pages…

    https://linesofexcellence.com/

    oh, and the fact that the root of the domain is now the WordPress folder instead of the site being in a subfolder…

    1st theme?
    Great job!
    It’s very clean and easy to read/navigate
    I commend you…

    my only nit pick

    Thread Starter Jonas Grumby

    (@ss_minnow)

    Yes it’s my first and totally hand-coded. I don’t have Artisteer or any other theme generator. I did it all w/ HomeSite. Thanks for the nit-pick. I will address those issues. I should have checked that. I laughed because the first error that comes up “Attribute “role” is not a valid attribute” <form role="search" method="get" id="searchform" is code straight from the WP Default theme.

    some of the errors are silly…

    Thread Starter Jonas Grumby

    (@ss_minnow)

    Some of them are also caused by the content and not the theme.

    that’s why I called it a nit pick – the errors were nothing that would bork the site

    I like the site, but it reads slightly unbalanced with the header shifted the way it is and not directly over the content. Since you almost have 2 sidebars going, one for each side, you might consider making it 3 column all the way up and center the title and purple banner over the blog posts. If you dropped the search and rss down too it might fit nicely. Your wordpress implementation seems spot on though.

    Thread Starter Jonas Grumby

    (@ss_minnow)

    and now with the lovely scrolling Twitter search widget…

    I also made the sidebars widget-ready today, not that you would notice…

    Nice theme for your’e first attempt ??
    You’ve nailed the key elements and the basic structure. Now you could go the next step and create a really attractive theme with the help of photoshop ?? But great job!

    Thread Starter Jonas Grumby

    (@ss_minnow)

    Thanks @woohoosims. Very funny. This theme is actually based on the static site design that the client previously had, and some of the code is straight out of the Default theme. I know it’s fairly basic but hey it’s my first one! More to follow…

    Thread Starter Jonas Grumby

    (@ss_minnow)

    Thanks @matphoto. I actually like the way the second sidebar is nested rather than having a straight-on 3-column design. I don’t plan on changing that. You may notice that the right sidebar is different on the “pages” than it is on “blog” pages.

Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
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