I’ve wanted to try a new theme for my blog for quite some time. I’ve seen a few themes I like but not enough to go through the “work” of switching. Too many format changes to the content would have to be made to make the theme work well for my blog.
I have a wiz-ee-wig 😉 obsession when writing my posts in draft mode. I know I should just write until I’m finished and then format. I’m always using the Preview button to see what the post looks like and to read through it searching for errors or possible re-writes.
From Twenty Ten to Twenty Sixteen
The year is nearly over and I decided to try the WordPress default theme for 2016: Twenty Sixteen. It took me several hours to customize the widgets, background, menus, headers, and fonts. I didn’t do it in one sitting. I put it aside several times, never closing the dashboard. There may be an easier way but I wanted to keep my old theme, Twenty Ten, active until I was satisfied with the new theme.
I became quite frustrated with the logo feature. Here I have what I think is a great logo – mainly because I made it all by myself – and it wasn’t showing up in the upper corner during the customization. In the end, after I had made all the changes to the menu and widgets, I went back to the headers and logo section, tried again, and it finally worked. The new theme went live last Wednesday and on Sunday I tweaked the size of the title to the dimensions available in the image field. Instead of using a picture I chose to make an image with the name of my blog in the fonts I used for my logo and hid the default title.
Some things which will have to be fixed
I haven’t gone through each post but I have found two issues that I will have to deal with.
My sources (endnotes) no longer appear in small print. They are now in a larger size bold print. This will have to be fixed as most of my posts from last year, when I did the Luxembourgish families, have between 20-50 items in the endnotes. This does not look “neat and clean” like the rest of the blog.
I’ve fiddled around with solutions and have decided to switch the formatting to Paragraph (same as the rest of content) and then change the font color to a middle gray to set it off from the rest of the post.
Another difference I will have to get used to is the numbering in the Twenty Sixteen theme hangs the numbers or bullets to the left and places the text flush with the other content. I was used to the numbers/bullets being flush to the text and the rest being indented to the right. My boxes with the Genealogy Sketch have this numbering and the numbers are nearly attached to the left side of the box. I’ll be fixing these over the next few weeks.
Some things I love about this new theme
When quoting the old theme used indentation of the italicized text, This new theme still used italics, although the font size is a tiny bit larger. The text is flush with the rest of the content and sets it off with a thick vertical line to the left.
The featured image in a post now shows up at the top of the post. I have a few ideas of how I am going to use this to my advantage. For example, a recurring image for posts in a series or using my collection of photographs of doors (like the one at the top of this post) or photos of signs of the towns an ancestor lived in. I think this may work really well since I am not using a photo at the top of my blog.
I’m ready for the New Year and my blog is ready for another year. If you are a blogger, have you recently updated or changed your blog’s theme? To all of my readers, I’d love to hear what you think of the new look.
© 2016, copyright Cathy Meder-Dempsey. All rights reserved.
It’s looking good so far. I like it! I thought about a new theme last year, but like you, I put the idea aside because of the work involved. I’m still thinking it over!
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Every now and then I would look through what was available. I’m sure when you find one you really like you may be happy to do the “work.” Thank you, Linda.
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It looks great, Cathy! As you know, I switched themes a while back, but for me, it was very simple . Maybe I just am not as careful about things like font and indentations. I am sure you will get this to work the way you want. I don’t know what wiz-ee-wig means, but I do the same thing when writing posts. I start in Word, get it to where I think the text is 90% ready, then post in WordPress, then add images, etc. And then I switch obsessively between Preview and Draft. And even after ALL that, I still make mistakes! And thank you for being my back-up proof reader. (My brother caught one today. I still don’t know how I miss these things!)
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Wiz-ee-wig is how you say WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) – that’s why I added the 🙂
You always have nice, large images centered. I have lots of posts with the images at left or right with text on the side. Some templates don’t like that.
Love being your back-up. I recently found one of my own in an older post – so embarrassing – it was in the title.
Thank you, Amy.
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Posts on cell phones don’t like images to left or right, either, so I’ve pretty much gone to centered pictures only. Even though I really like to wrap text around photos in other positions. But must accomodate the changing times. And more people read on mobile devices than on computers. Sigh!
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Exactly, Vera! I like to wrap text too. I’m still one to read on my laptop and only recently began using a cell phone. If times are changing and more people are reading on mobile devices, then I may also have to consider shorter posts to accommodate them. Thanks for your insight.
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Cathy I love the new look!!! I’ve wanted to change up mine for a long time, but I don’t want to take the time to do it, and if I have to go back through all the posts, well that’s enough to depress me. And you have wayyyy more posts than I do. I just want to wiggle my nose and have it all magically appear – but you know that’s not going to happen. Be proud of yourself – it looks very professional.
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If we could wiggle our noses we’d make more than just a new theme magically appear or disappear, Jeanne. I am proud of myself. Thank you for the compliment.
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I like your new look. You definitely have a skill and talent for blogging. Like some of the others I’ve thought about changing but it takes so much time and effort. I struggle just to write posts as evident by the lack of regular postings.
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Kendra, the ones you do write are always fascinating. Thanks for the compliment.
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Cathy, I really like the new look!
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Thank you, Karen!
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I love the new look, very bright and easy to read on my desktop widescreen, ipad and iphone (all three are perfect!). But of course my favorite thing is the content!
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From one of my favorite bloggers, that is high praise. Thank you, Janice.
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This looks great! congrats!!
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Thank you. Appreciate your stopping by.
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Oh, lord, yes! I’d been thinking about switching for some time. I liked the look of my blog, but didn’t like that readers had to scroll and scroll and scroll to get to older posts. So I finally just DID it and then spent hours cleaning up the mess the change created. It was worth it. I love the look of your blog!
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Thank you for the compliment, Karen. I like the overview on yours with the photos for each article AND that you can “older posts” opens up more and more each time you click it. Great theme for blogs like yours with beautiful photography! Did I inspire you or did we do it at the same time?
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