Retheming the blog, again

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Bob Sutor

I’m looking to change the theme of this blog and website, again. That’s not too bad for me, really, since I’ve had this look and feel for almost 10 months.

At the end of 2009 I decided to archive the blog I started in 2004 and begin anew with the latest version of WordPress and a new theme, Atahualpa. I very much liked the look of Atahualpa and I could customize it in many, many ways. I especially liked that I could have a two or three column design, since I do not want the blog-specific right hand column to be on the standalone pages. I want to thank the developers of Atahualpa, but I’m looking to replace it.

The problem is with all those options. For some time I’ve had the lingering feeling that the maintenance of the theme is more difficult than that of WordPress itself. My version of the theme is slightly backlevel and I’m nervous about upgrading it because of some of the problems I’ve seen noted in the forums. Moreover, I want to upgrade to WordPress 3.0.1 and I’m not sure that the theme is going to survive that change.

So I think it is time to switch themes. I’m going to find one that is in active development, appears to be well supported, and has a history of smooth upgrades from version to version. I know that moving to a new version of my current theme will be work, so I’m going to apply that work effort to make my overall self support of this website is easier.

I haven’t found the new theme yet. When I do move to it, the appearance of the site may be erratic for a bit while I stabilize the new look.

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2 Responses to Retheming the blog, again

  1. stephen o'grady says:
    September 26, 2010 at 1:12 pm

    have you looked at Carrington yet? if not, it’s worth checking out.

  2. David Ing says:
    September 27, 2010 at 2:23 am

    @bob_sutor Theming WordPress upon major revision upgrades is generally the reason that I’m slow to update my own blogs. For the blogs of my family that I maintain, I try to keep the customization to minimum, and live within the constraints of widgets.

    Since I want to pack a lot of information on my own blogs, I’ve considered an investment of a day or two on layouts worthwhile. In the past, I’ve searched on GPL themes (since searches bring up many commercial options that I’m not interested in). While hacking CSS to handle differences across browsers isn’t one of my favourite activities, starting with someone else’s theme reduces the effort a bit.

    I was glad that my upgrades to WordPress 3 were uneventful (with one plugin that had to be backported, because the author seems to have gone AWOL).

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