A new day a new theme! I think we are getting a lot closer to a final decision on themes. This one offers nice beautiful pictures, number of comments and a excerpt of the story that you can click to get into the full story. Comments are ordered nicely (If not a little too zoomed in, but we may have to live with that.) I do like the coloring and the font. I think we’ve finally nailed that down. With the change, it messed with the featured images. They are now SO LARGE! May need to go back and clean some of that up. I expect the constant changing to give us some issues like this, so please bear with us until we get a theme finalized. I haven’t checked it out on mobile yet, so hopefully it’ll be suitable.
I’m also experimenting with filling some of the dead space on the side and bottom of pages and playing around with some widgets. We have a lot of posts coming in, so the right sidebar is keeping track of the most recent articles. Below that you can view our archives. (I’m not sure I want to keep that, or potentially move it to the footer.) I also have a list of the most recent comments. This may prove to be too much, so I may kill that feature.
At the bottom of the page is a small list of our current authors. Once we have solidified our staff, I’m going to put together a page were we will all have a little write up on who we are, what we are covering, and what teams we will focus on. I’ve also added a link to the RSS feed for those that use that, and a search box to help find older articles.
One more thing, I have not added any tags or categories yet. I probably will at some point at least add a few standard categories, but that’s a pretty massive undertaking so do me a favor and let me procrastinate that a bit.
Speaking of staff, we are growing rapidly! I love it! The more of you that are willing to help out, the better we will be. If I’m lucky, we’ll get to the point where I can just sit back and comment while you all do the work! Then when we hit it big, I can sell out like a new era rock artist! Wahoo!
So a special welcome and thank you to the following Authors!
- Clydeserra
- Delawarephilliesfan
- Historiophiliac
- Indaburg
- Longfootlefty
- Mrelbravoheyward (El Bravo)
- Professormaddog31!
Fan Interference 
hate the new format, join me at a splinterblog
er, i mean, neat, thanks again for doing the legwork
my dryer guy canceled.
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hahahaha
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Having the number of comments in each article on the main page is good.
But I think I liked the way the comments looked/flowed on the last theme better.
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I agree, however this theme does about 10 things better than the last, so some sacrifice will have to be made. I may try a few more, but so far this one does the most things correct. This one also actually works on mobile, which the last most certainly did not. I want a theme that works on both.
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What about the one I mentioned earlier? Does that one not work on mobile?
The greyish font and greyish background really does a number on the eyes….
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Remind me which one that was? I think I lost that one. I can also change the background by the way. White may be a bit too bright for me, but if we can all agree on a different shade/color, I’d be happy to try it out.
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I’m pretty sure it was this one….https://untitleddemo.wordpress.com/….but there’s so damn many of those things, it’s hard to be sure.
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Shoot, I remember that one and thinking it looked good. I’ll give it a shot tomorrow.
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Ok, Untitled is a great theme and from the preview it may also be a winner. I like both that one and this one equally. I’ll give this one a day for everyone to take a look and then try untitled the next time, and we’ll put it to a vote. I think we are nearing our final theme ladies and germs!
By the way, this theme is: Cerauno. Take some screen shots if you want.
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Am I the only one unable to see a “reply” button with the new layout?
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It should be there, try looking up, it’s next to the date/time.
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Sigh, I’m such a moran!
Thanks
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Took me a minute myself. We are trained to look below for replies.
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It’s up next to the timestamp, under the username.
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As far as I’m concerned the “recent comments” are unnecessary and semi-distracting.
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I think I agree, but I wasn’t sure if anyone else might like it.
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Okay – was going to make a joke complaining about the format, but I thought a new comer may think I was erious.
New format looks great, you are doing awesomeness work with this!
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Thank you, this will be in the final running for our permanent theme. There’s still one or two more I want to try out. Take note the name is: Cerauno for the final vote.
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I applaud the effort you have put in here. keep it up and some corporate borg will be knocking on your door.
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A new day a new theme! I like the new look, probably my favorite so far. Still not perfect, but at this point, I have come to the realization that nothing will be.
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It’s definitely my favorite as far as the main page is concerned.
But the article pages could use a bit of help. Looking back at the demo pages, specifically this one – https://untitleddemo.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/fusce-neque-enim-cras-amet/#comments – two things stick out.
First – The image at the top of the page is MUCH smaller on the demo than it is here. Here, that image takes up my entire laptop screen, compared to less than half of the screen on the demo.
Second – It might be a minor thing, but I like the little lines between posts. Helps to break up the giant grey background a bit.
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The picture taking up so much room at the top was the one thing I hated about the last theme. Don’t know why either are doing it, but it seems to be stretching the image across the page. Unfortunately there isn’t much I can do about that.
The lines I agree about. They are technically there, but they are the same color as the background. The only thing I can do is change the background, but I can’t seem to find a color I like enough.
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Looks like we can be rid of the large image by not using the Featured Image feature. Maybe that’s the solution.
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I just uploaded a resized version of the same image in the “Previous Proceedings” post, and it seemed to work. It’s a bit squnched, but oh well.
But now I see that your catcher’s post is actually posting the full article on the main page. How did that happen?
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It happened when I got rid of the featured image. So it seems to be either use the featured image, but use a resized version so it doesn’t eat up the entire screen, or don’t use one and it puts the entire article on the front page. SO annoying.
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If there’s not some kind of setting to restrict the size of that featured image so it doesn’t take up the entire screen, then that’s a significant design flaw.
Shame….it seems like everything else about this theme would work out nicely.
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Unfortunately there is no such setting. We just have to know to make sure the image isn’t above X height. I think it can work though, as long as everyone posting just makes sure to post a panoramic type picture for the featured image. Once we get set on a theme, I’ll write up a little list of rules and regs regarding posts so they are all uniform.
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Ok, that looks a lot better. Basically what has to be done is when you pick an image, you need to crop it so it’s very wide and not very tall. Then that needs to be used for the featured image. Any images included in the article would need to be uploaded separately. It’s a little more work for the writers, but in the end it gives off a much better appearance. Now we just need to settle on a good background color.
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I think a dark text with a light background is easier on the eyes. Or at least on my eyes anyway. So anything that fits that, and allows those little separator lines between posts to show up, would be fine with me.
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My only suggestion is to make sure there’s enough contrast between colors you choose for background and font. I’m colorblind, so anything without contrast is impossible for me to read.
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Is that a little better?
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