New themes

My old theme, [Journalized Blue][], didn’t *quite* survive yesterday’s [WordPress upgrade](http://sonicchicken.net/blog/wordpress/2007/08/15/wordpress-upgrade/). I’ve downloaded [Journalized v2][] (beta), but while I was at it I decided to go “theme shopping”. I was looking for a 2- or 3-column *fluid* layout–<rant>I **hate** it when web pages don’t display properly merely because my browser window’s geometry isn’t what the author expects!</rant> Anyway…

I found [Srini G](http://srinig.com/)’s [Fluid Blue][] theme. Nearly a perfect fit, it’s a two-column theme that’s truly fluid! (Lots of the “fluid width” themes on the [WordPress Theme Viewer][] are merely fixed-width themes that center themselves in wider-than-expected browser windows and pop up horizontal scroll bars in “narrow” windows. Oops! Ranting again…) It also supports sidebar widgets, which I’d like to fiddle with. Added bonus: version 1.1 is ultra-fresh, having been released a mere three days ago.

Now, in spite of the above rants, I found a fixed-width theme that I just can’t do without: [Dean J. Robinson](http://www.deanjrobinson.com/)’s [Redoable][] is *gorgeous*! I’m gonna have to see if I can hack that into a fluid layout. Even if I can’t fluidize it, I’ll keep the theme around just so I can gawk at it once in a while with a theme switcher.

Speaking of theme switchers, I stumbled across an excellent how-to for Ryan’s [theme previewer](http://boren.nu/archives/2005/03/08/preview-theme-plugin/) over on YGG: [How to work on your blog without anyone having the slightest clue](http://www.younggogetter.com/2007/05/24/how-to-work-on-your-blog-without-anyone-having-the-slightest-clue/). Granted, installing a WordPress plugin is easy: Upload to your wp-content/plugins directory, then activate via the Plugins tab on the admin interface. (Still, it would have been good to include those instructions in the plugin.) The thing I found very cool about Travis’ post on YGG was how he’s using the theme previewer to tweak/debug themes and/or plugins *without exposing the code-in-progress* to his viewers. Great thinking!

So now I’ve got some new themes to play with. I had to disable the old theme switcher, since it wasn’t working quite right under WP 2.2.2. “Fluid Blue” is the theme du jour, at least for the time being…

[Journalized Blue]: http://zed1.com/journalized/themes/journalized-blue/
[Journalized v2]: http://zed1.com/journalized/themes/journalized-theme-version-2/
[Fluid Blue]: http://srinig.com/wordpress-themes/fluid-blue/
[WordPress Theme Viewer]: http://themes.wordpress.net/
[Redoable]: http://deanjrobinson.com/wordpress/redoable

About Jim Vanderveen

I'm a bit of a Renaissance man, with far too many hobbies for my free time! But more important than any hobby is my family. My proudest accomplishment has been raising some great kids! And somehow convincing my wife to put up with me since 1988. ;)
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One Response to New themes

  1. Jim says:

    Damn, “Redoable” is just *too* attractive! I’ve broken down and made it the default theme. I’ll definitely have to see about making it a fluid layout though…

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