Sometimes, dear readers, simpler is better.
During my week away from the office, I spent a bunch of time working on rebuilding/redesigning this blog. Midway through the process, it occurred to me that this involved three tasks:
- Learning how the WordPress database system runs the site
- Learning how Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and plain old HTML display the site
- Doing the actual graphic design for the site
I picked up a bunch of tricks as part of 1) and 2), but I also found a template that I liked, which eliminated a chunk of 3). So I uploaded that and have been tweaking away at it all day. I’m trying to add a third column on the left, so as to redistribute some of the stuff that’s currently in the column on the right side of the page. At present, I’ve been stymied, but once I’m back at the office, I’ll be able to ask our IT guy for the incredibly simple thing that I’m overlooking.
Why did I want to get away from the old site? I was bored, and it was either this or spring $1,500 on a new MacBook. That said, I really like the cleanness of the site. I spent a while trying to figure out the right array of fonts to use, before I decided to visit a million different design-oriented websites and blogs. There, I realized that you just can’t go overboard with web-fonts, since it leaves the reader in the lurch if he doesn’t happen to have the right ones on his computer. So it’s Arial and Helvetica for you!
I may update that a little, or come up with some alternate fonts for different stylization purposes, but I’m pretty satisfied with the legibility of this layout. I’ll add a “change font size” function in the next few days, and will probably use a few more neat little WordPress add-ons, once I get that third column going.
Let me know what you think.