FlyWEB's

Switch

Okay I made a decision. Let’s go back to basics. After spending much time in trying all sorts of themes I switched to the default WordPress theme Kubrick by Michael Heilemann. The themes I have tried out so far:

• Emire from Phu Ly
• Glued-Ideas Subtle from Christopher Frazier
• Hemingway from Kyle Neath
• Regulus from Ben Gillbanks

To name just the ones I enjoyed quite a bit. Another theme that caught my attention for it’s nice layout and use of AJAX snippets is ‘Lush’ from Marco van Hylckama Vlieg and Christoph Boecken. I haven’t decided yet for it has some limitations on the way it’ll render on FireFox.

So why the change to Kubrick?

Well I was a bit bored. It clearly seems that the more a theme offers in colors, layout, useability the faster it bored me. Anyway that’s one explanation. Another might be that I am still charmed by the raw simplicity that Kubrick offers. It’s almost like this theme is the foundation of all blog-themes. And maybe it is. Offcourse I adjusted one thingy or two. To name a few modifications I have made:

• Added LiveSearch AJAX powered search, instead of the default/conventional search method, by John Nunemaker.
• Altered the rather dull <h2> font family by a more stylish one, Century Gothic. I like it’s typography more.
• Added a more efficient way to navigate my blog by use of Liew Cheon Fong’s ‘SuperNav-bar’.

The plugins I use

• Taragana’s Del.icio.us mp3 Player. Which you can see in action here.
• WP Lightbox 2 and Falbum mashup by Lokesh Dhakar and Elijah Cornell respectively and Adrian (a.k.a. GrinGod) responsible for the mashup.
• Ultimate Tag Warrior by Christine Davis.
• Viper’s Video QuickTags by Viper007bond.
• The Excerpt Reloaded by Kaf Oseo
• WP-PageNavi by GaMerZ
• SEM Recent Comments and Recent Posts by Denis de Bernardy
• Anti Spam Image by Krazy Nio
• DD Formmailer by Aleister
• FlickrRSS by Dave Kellam
• Subscribe to Comments by Mark Jaquith and Jennifer (ScriptyGoddess)
• Related Posts by Alexander Malov & Mike Lu
• AdSense DeLuxe by Acme Technologies
• Gravatars by Scott Merrill a.k.a. ‘Skippy’.
• InlineRSS by Cal Demaine. In action here.
• Exec-PHP by Sören Weber

And a few more I didn’t mention because it’s use isn’t visible on the blog but in the admin section.

Another nice feature I discovered was the Kubrick-Headermaker a.k.a. “Kubrickr” by Owen Winkler at RedAlt. You really should try it out. I realize that this might be old information but I was glad I found it. Result…look at the header image. Like it?

Conclusion

I am defnitely going to change again. I just love the work in getting a theme modded to my likings and making it XHTML Strict 1.0.

Wishes for Kubrick

I am still very interested in more AJAX control. This site is powered with the Script.aculo.us scripts. But other, maybe lighter/easier script suites are waiting like Moo.FX. And even maybe Ruby on Rails stuff. I have a lot todo. But to stick with Script.aculo.us seems difficult because of its bugs. In certain situations IE and FF crash because of Script.aculo.us. That’s a pitty.

Possibly related posts

• Another day another theme
• Sneak preview WordPress 2.1?
• Another WordPress Error and Fix
• Ecto for WordPress
• A quicky

This entry was posted 3 years, 6 months ago, on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 and is filed under design and graphics, internet, tips and tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. There is even the possibility to  Print This Post this page in a printer-friendly layout. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.