A few of the sticks and twigs holding the old Aerie together were starting to weaken, and the old home wasn’t quite as sturdy. In addition, some of the shinies I used to decorate weren’t quite as shiny…and I’ve found new shinies! The footer contains a link to the original theme designer, and you can see what it looks, unadulterated by me, at kestrelsaerie DOT us SLANT sandbox. (Comments are enabled there, but I’d much prefer if none were added; hence the absence of a link.
There are still some details to attend to: The background image (not the top banner, which I retained and improved with Photshop) still needs some work. Categories and Links aren’t up yet; my plugins for those aren’t working. I think that’s due to a lack of Javascripting in the theme, so I’ll be working on that. Most images have a blue border around them; I will at least play with removing that: Right now, it’s not esthetically pleasing to me. What do you think? (Take a look at the Blog Azeroth badges for examples.)
But about 90-95 percent of the work is done, thanks to a couple or three very late evenings (as this one is turning out to be).
As always, I’m interested in your feedback, and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about the modifications I made to the original theme.
And now it’s bedtime…ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….
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{ 19 comments }
The EASY way (to me), when you’re using an image link, is to put “border=0″ after the img src code. so you’d have img src=”picture.jpg” border=”0″.
Looks good though Kes, I like it!!
Ohhh….Shiny and pretty….
I admit, I read you through a reader, so I would not have noticed unless you posted the changes…but I like this MUCH better..
Very nice Kes!! easy on the eyes and nice and clear.
Very nice, easy on the eyes for sure. I read through a reader so it’s not something I’d notice until I commented but I think it’s quite a pleasant change.
I’ll agree on the picture borders too, it would probably look better without. I’m not sure the icons match up in the comments however. It’s a little hard to tell who said what.
Awlbiste’s last blog post: Some Things Make Me Laugh
To get rid of the borders page-wide, place this in your CSS:
img { border: none; }
Also, if you want to play with CSS and you’re using Firefox, try the “test styles” and “edit styles” bookmarklets here: https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/webdevel.html
Just drag the links on the left up to your bookmark toolbar (or into the bookmarks menu.) Then, when you click on them, they’ll open up a window that will let you test new styles, or modify the existing ones.
Oooh looks very nice! Much easier to read that’s for sure
I think the gravatar thingys are a little off with matching to comments, as Awl mentioned^^
My gravatar is like my shadow…it never goes where it should…
Gratz on the new design. Good luck with bug stomping.
Leafshine’s last blog post: AFK – At The Tabletop
Oh! Finally I’m able to read your blog! Thats really, really lovely because I suspect your content’s good. But my reader just broke down everytime I tried to acess it (IE). Now there are no more error codes. And a bright, easy-to-read layout as well. Congrats! Looking forward to pay more regular visits.
Looks slick, very nice. All it’s missing is one angry moonkin in the header
Looks fine in IE and Opera, but in Firefox comments are ‘nesting’ in a wierd way: http://www.locksucks.com/kestrel.gif
(I just decreased font size so you can see it better)
And sorry for another comment
Looks nice and clean.
Well done!
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YAY, no more stack overflow!
megan’s last blog post: #100,000 Winnars, Shapeshifted Indeed
Nice.. and I love the little bird on the link..
Zahrah’s last blog post: Learn2JUMP ( off the Rock on EOS )
Looks awesome, Kes!!
Place cleans up pretty good!
Very nice! I like how you managed to retain the header image but also incorporated a lighter background with dark text. I was wondering how that would out, but it looks great!
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@ Jess & Itsnoteasy: Yep; I know how to get rid of/change the image border; just wasn’t up to it at 1:30 this morning.
@ Its: Thanks for the link; I will have to play around with it some.
Bookmarked for now!
@ Leafy: I love Gravatars (not so keen on the Identicons, so they’re gone). Will do what I can to fix the comments.
@ Larísa: So glad to have you here! I did fix the old version a couple days ago so at least it was readable in IE7 (as I stated in an earlier post, if you’re still using IE6, just stop!
). At any rate, glad I was able to get you here, and hope you return often!
@ Horns: Hmmm…interesting screenshot, but I’m not seeing that at all here (FF3). So of course, no way for me to troubleshoot it. Wonder if you have a Greasemonkey script, or Stylish thing going on that might cause that? (Grasping at straws here!)
@ Megan: Yay! However, I’ve NO clue what caused the Stack Overflow error; I’m pretty sure it was in the theme author’s code though.
@ Lassirra: Just look before you sit, though.
@ Mania: Thank you!
I do notice when refreshing pages, the black background flashes, which is a bit distracting. No way I know of, though, to limit it just to the margins outside the content portion. Might be something for me to play with though.
General comments:
I’ve disabled WP-Gravatar for a short time, so I can at least respond. It was REALLY screwing things up; I’m not sure why.
I may play with the overall Comment styles a lot; I’m not happy with the layout, even with Gravatars disabled. And if I try to display the admin icons for AJAX Edit Comments, that’s screwed up. Not a huge problem there: I wasn’t that fond of the icons anyway!
One thing I have done is played with CommentLuv to clean up the syntax/grammar, and put an apostrophe after the commenter’s name (Kestrel’s, vs. Kestrels). I also stuck my nose in Get Recent Comments to make those (in the sidebar) a little more readable: Floated the gravatars to the left (pretty proud of myself for deciphering that bit of code!); added a break between posts; added the horizontal rule between comments (although IE7 doesn’t recognize the “color=#abb” property for the HR; sorry about that, and I’ll see if there’s something I can do for IE readers).
Finally, I want to thank you all for the overwhelming (and overwhelmingly positive) response! It really is gratifying to know all the work I did just to make myself happier with the site, also helps you to enjoy it more!
Update
Obviously I solved the Gravatars issue: I simply moved the “cite” line (in comments.php) (which is what WP-Gravatars uses for positioning the image) above the comment text.
That small change really improves the look of the comments, IMO. (Of course, if I didn’t want gravatars…but I know many of you have them and want to display them!)
Kestrel’s last blog post: Welcome to the New Nest!
Whatever you did seems to have fixed it, only a couple of comments are slightly indented now, others are fine.
And I do have Greasemonkey, tried disabling it and refreshing a few times but still the same.
@ Horns: I can only guess that somehow, your browser is interpreting my comments.php somewhat strangely; however, there really isn’t anything “odd” in there. Glad that it’s improving, anyway!!
Kestrel’s last blog post: Welcome to the New Nest!
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