Site Redesign
August 31st, 2008 by Carl Thomas.
The old site layout
As I do from time to time I redesigned the Revival Blog. There were several reasons and i think I am about done with the mods. This post will only appeal to the nerdiest of the revival folks but that is the way it goes.
- My old theme was based on the famous K2 theme. It is good but it had a tendency to lose the second sidebar when opened in a screen to narrow. That irked me to no end. I wanted one I had a little more control over the layout.
- I wanted my blog to look more like my ministry site The Mission. There was none that did so I needed to mod one that could come close. This current theme is based loosely on the QuickPress theme. After extensive mods I may call this an official fork in the theme.
- I added page tabs to the top. I will freely admit that this current code is based on my modded k2 code.
- Added a large rotating image box on the right side. The original box there was set for an advertisement. Religious blogs don’t make any money. And I like pictures.
- I used a plugin to only show post excerpts of everything after the first post. I was trying to clean up the front page. This helps with seo as well.
- Added threaded comments. I have wanted to do this for a long time.
- Re-activated my servers ability to mail you when people comment on a post you commented on.
- Added related posts plugin.
- Cleaned up the colors. I like sove variation of a deep red in blogs but they don’t read well.
- Made a default gravatar icon.
- Colored admin comments and added it to threaded comments. (I am not done stylizing comments.)
- Added an archive page. The jury is out on this one.
- Dumped popularity contest. Not the greatest plugin.
There was more but that is all that comes to mind right away. If you find any issues please let me know.
By the way, I am experiencing an outpouring in my house as I type this. I don’t exactly know why but I am being overwhelmed by the presence of God. I need to take my family to dinner but I just want to lay down and enjoy the presence of the Lord.
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I really like the new design. My blog would desperately need a new one. But I’m really busy here at the moment.
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September 1st, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Thanks bro
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I’m very much enjoying the new site design. Very nice!
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September 2nd, 2008 at 10:27 am
thanks man. i have not decided exactky what to do with the header yet so I am going to leave it blank for a while.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 9:02 am
Thought about using this plugin to make your blog mobile friendly? http://imthi.com/wp-pda
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September 3rd, 2008 at 11:49 am
I will check that out. And I gotta say, I am lovin threaded comments!
Like the new blog, threaded comments are great! (I did love the old look, but it took longer to load, and sometimes was hard to read, so this is better!) The related posts feature is pretty good, but I don’t like where it is… between the article and the comments. It interrupts the page flow. Perhaps at the bottom would be better? Thanks for the great blog!
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September 3rd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I miss the old layout but it was a bit of a color nightmare. I am a decent designer but I can never pick a decent color scheme. I will browse around and look into the related posts position. I also need to tweak it for date. Lots of really old posts getting traffic now.
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