Out & About UK WordPress Design
The last design I did, suchislife, wasn’t great. It was as simple as you can get in the case of WordPress themes. Zeta and myself were using a modified version of suchislife for Out & About UK, an adventure (b)log we try to update after all of our day hikes/walks. To be honest, the modified version of suchislife just didn’t work. It was way too personal to be used for something like Out & About.
So, the plan was to create a completely new theme, that was fresh, a little different, something that fit with the idea of the website, and yet something somewhat professional. The plan went well, and I created my biggest pride and joy to date (besides nyssajbrown.net, of course).
Out & About UK has now taken on a more professional look, rather than a cheap personal blog look. The major work of the design has been done, though there are some minor changes to be made, and naturally so. Unfortunately, I have no idea at all what it looks like on other browsers besides Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7. I know that it’s going to look like something you would put in your garbage bin in Internet Explorer 6, but I realized that I don’t care this time. Why? Because it is time that people started updating their browsers. This of course doesn’t mean I don’t care about other browsers such as Opera. I do. But right now I don’t have the means of checking and making any changes should I need to.
Eventually, we will take the next step into making Out & About slightly more professional by getting a domain for it. But for now, the new theme/design will do.
Some information about the design and how it came about: First of all, I designed a “sketch” in Photoshop. I always start here to get an idea of what I’m designing. I pretty much never complete the sketch and move on to the HTML and CSS document (no WordPress functionality at all). I code most of it if I can to get a rough idea on the code. I then do the WordPress stuff and continue making any changes to the CSS that may be needed. Fairly straight forward. Perhaps one day I will write a proper guide on it.
And hopefully, soon, I will have more WordPress themes out. :)
The site looks really good, I tried it in the latest release of the Opera browser and it all seemed to work OK. :-)
Have you thought about using Lightbox or one of its variants for your images?
UKStevieB: Thanks for the heads up :)
As for Lightbox, I currently use it for this blog, but the other author of Out & About doesn’t like it at all, so it’s a no go area. =P
It looks awesome Nyssa, much better than before.
I also only just noticed that things have even been simplified here too :P was that when you upgraded?
“I also only just noticed that things have even been simplified here too P was that when you upgraded?”
What do you mean? =O
And of course the new design is beautiful. I really love what you have done with post headers and comment links on the front page.
Wish I could spring a new design out like that myself… guess I just better practise more.
“Wish I could spring a new design out like that myself… guess I just better practise more.”
I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to, Phil. It’s fairly clear you’re more than capable of it. And like you said, maybe practise more. Practise makes perfect (or close enough to it). :) I guess time restraints don’t help either, eh?
Like how it looked like each item in the menu across the top used to look like tabs etc.
I like the more simplified look.
Ohhhhh lol I got you now. Oh man, that has been like that for a while now, Kym :grinnod:
After applying those designs the site looks like a good corner for several circumstances.Has it been upgraded in page rank?
Arthur: I’m not quite sure actually. It’s only 3/10 at the moment, though it’s a relatively new site and haven’t checked it before you asked, so no idea. :)