A new theme, yet again

Ok, I’m a little late writing about this, but I got a new blog theme.

Yes, I just did this a few months ago. I switched from Adapation to Ryu because I wanted less clutter on the and more emphasis on my writing. I want what I write to set the tone—not the surrounding colors and widgets.

My new theme, Editor, aligns with that goal, but does allow readers to scroll down through my posts without losing sight of my blog’s menu. In other words, only the right column scrolls. The menu bar on the left remains static no matter what. Losing the menu after scrolling to view my posts was something I did not like about Ryu.

I like this feature. I also like how it looks. I like having the menu on the side of the screen and not at the top. I also like how posts in Editor are tagged and dated to the side of the post content and not at the bottom or at the top (between the post title and the post content). I don’t mind so much if the tags are hidden at the bottom, but the date and categories are things that I think belong before the content.

So Editor it is. For now. I don’t like switching themes all the time, especially as I gain more readers, so I do intend to keep this theme going for the foreseeable future.

That said, I do like the book-ish look of WordPress’s new Twenty Fifteen theme (screenshot below). Very clean. Very readable. It’s overarching structure is actually quite similar to Editor—menu bar on the left, scrolling only on the right (mostly), sleek social links icons.

screenshot - TwentyFifteen

What I don’t like about Twenty Fifteen, though, is it’s placement of post tags and dates at the bottom of the post. I think this frustrates readers who want to know if what they’re reading is current before diving in. They can scroll down and check, of course, but posts can be pretty long and this can be a hassle when you’re trying to read or work quickly. At least, that’s my reaction to this format.

You’ve probably noticed by now that web design is a hobby of mine. Not coding, but critiquing. I spend so much time online—after a while, I really do start to notice how tiny, seemingly insignificant features affect user experience. I used to think it didn’t matter and that most people just cared about the content. Now I think it’s more of a 20-80 ratio, design to content, that affects how viewers will react to web content.

Just my little theory.

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