As mentioned a couple weeks ago in my category vs tag post, I’ve been tweaking the blog layout. The first step was more than just a tweak, I changed the whole theme. I used to use Paper 1.0, which made the blog look like this:
I used this theme for quite a while – I loved the bulldog clip and the scribbly, sketchy lines. I also loved the Etsy favourites widget that came built in in the top corner. When I was selling stuff, it was full of my items, but more recently it was my favourites.
Now my blog looks like this:
But also like this:
This:
This:
And this:
The new theme I’m using, WordPress Twenty Eleven, lets you have a rotating header image. Every time you click around on the blog somewhere and have to re-load the header, 1 of these 5 photos pops up! It took a lot of restraint not to add 20, and I’m still second-guessing some of my choices. I think I may delete the yellow one… but I do love the texture of up-close-and-personal knitting photos. What would you do? Do I need a baking photo in that mix?
Another cool thing about Twenty Eleven is that is supports multiple post formats. I’m still not sure yet what most of them do, but I am using the ‘Image’ format in addition to the standard one. Posts like this one are Standard. An Image post looks like this one, although there is much more difference if you are on the main page of the blog and scroll by an image post. The date, category, and tags are in a big block at the bottom of the photo, like a caption. Image posts are just one image, no words, so if you just used those on your WordPress blog, it would end up looking a lot like Tumblr. I’m enjoying using them to share a random Hipstamatic photo on days when I don’t have a post go up.
I’m also trying to see if I can post 3 times a week, then fill in other days as I feel like it with Image posts. I don’t want to force the blog though – I don’t want to write something meaningless just to get to my self-imposed quota. So far it’s looking good though, as long as I keep myself a few weeks ahead. I use a calendar plugin that lets me see scheduled posts in a calendar format, and drag posts around to re-arrange. That way it is easy to see if I’ve got 3 posts in a given week, and shuffle them around if one week have 3 food posts and others have none. I try to work on posts at least a week before they’re scheduled, I find that’s the easiest way for me to post consistently. I’m also very careful to never have more than one post go up per day. I hate that, in most cases (communal blogs like Weddingbee are an exception).
This Twenty Eleven theme is all sorts of customizable, and it makes it easy for non-coders like me to access most of it, which is great. It’s a nice, sleek, plain change. Although I think I’ll have to put the Etsy widget back, I did love it so.
What do you think of the new look?
