Alright! Site updated (finally!!!). And a proper post coming tomorrow.

Compare the before and after pictures:

Before & after pictures of the site

 

I’ve been meaning to change to a more personalized theme for the longest time. The theme I used before this was a theme someone else coded (it’s called the Graphene theme by Syahir Hakim). I merely used it.  It fit most of my criteria but it just wasn’t really there. It looked too.. busy. There was just too much on the page. And you know how much I love minimalism in design.

So I worked on a new look on the site in my spare time. That’s why it’s taken this long to make any progress. I used a completely different base called Responsive, which is a “responsive design” by Emil Uzelac. What’s a “responsive design” you ask? What it means is that the website should look similar whether on a desktop, phone or ipad. It simply rearranges things so that you can read the website better. Try it!

You can try the responsive design by making your current browser (chrome/firefox/internet explorer) window smaller. Actually, make it thinner. As the window becomes horizontally thinner, you see the website start to rearrange itself so that it’s easier for mobile devices to read.

I tweaked the look as well. There’s still a long way to go before the site looks decent but I thought that the theme seemed to be “ready enough”. Feel free to leave feedback on changes that you’d like!

Improvements

The new site should now be:

  • Simpler. Less useless stuff around.

  • More Social. To share to Facebook/Twitter/etc, you can just use the bar on your left at any point during a post. Now you don’t have to scroll all the way to the bottom any more.

  • Mobile-device friendly. You can use a tablet/ipad or an android/iphone/smartphone and get a similar website, but one that’s arranged nicely to fit your screen.

  • Faster-loading? I’m not too sure about this. It only took me about 2 seconds before this anyway. I can’t tell differences that are less than a second. Tell me if the site is slow to load.

  • More accessible. I’ve added a “top posts” box on the right (when on the home page). Later on I’ll add a whole page that shows previous posts. This way, I hope past posts will be easier for you to find.

  • More elegant? I think so. What about you?

I’ve changed the look before this intermittently (at random) over the past few months. I’ve always changed back after realizing the looks/themes that other people made just didn’t fit what I wanted.

I’m happy with it so far, but I feel that perhaps it’s lacking some colour. Should I leave it like this and go for the minimal look? Or add a splash of colour somewhere?

Let me know if you have any feedback.