Solo Technology

I thought I’d take a few moments and do a “post-mortem” of the design/theme changes for Solo Technology and this blog. I’m probably 95% done with it all … who knows when I’ll finish that last 5%!

The WordPress theme I based it all on is awesome, but I wanted the sidebar and bottom areas to have different content.  Nothing too exciting to report there, but I did find and incorporate a new plugin.  It is called Share This and you’ll see it on the side bar of the single post views.  A nice and less obtrusive way to handle the social bookmarking stuff (IMHO).

For the non WordPress site I’ve learned that starting with a WordPress theme and converting to a web site template is… weird!  I’ve always started with a template and converted it to a theme.  The reverse, as I did this weekend, is (mostly) much easier.

Basically, I grabbed the source from a blog page, pulled it into my editor and stripped it down to the bare layout with some minimal sample text.  From there I attacked the style sheet with a hacksaw and ripped out much of what wasn’t necessary in a “non-blog” realm. It’s not as slim as it could be, but it’s certainly a lot smaller than it was.

Speaking of the CSS stuff, Expression Web made that awesomely easy.  It has reports that will look at all the pages and note helpful things like unused classes, or classes in use that don’t exist in the style sheet. I’m getting used to the tool and really like how it handles the CSS. (maybe a future post topic) The more I use it the more I love it.

Which sums up the Firefox extension Firebug as well. That thing is fast becoming my number 1 favorite extension ever. Diving in to examining the selectors and hierarchy is a breeze. Modifying them live, just to see if you’re on the right track, is priceless. Yep, Web Developer Extension does a lot of this too. I’m not sure which is “best”, but right now I’m really digging the way Firebug does things.

Most of my stuff validates now, just a few more bells and whistles and I think I’ll be content. But it’ll wait as I have some football to watch.

5 Responses to “Post Facelift Notes”

1. Rich G. on December 31st, 2006 5:59 pm
   

   I like how uniform it is now. The main site and the blog have a unified theme now. They don’t look ‘put together’ but instead look as if they were made to go together. Much smoother look, much more professional.

   I’m not a fan of the footer. I prefer sidebars, but that’s just me. I almost never scroll to the bottoms of pages and didn’t even notice you HAD a footer until you commented on it.

   I got a new monitor and it’s HUGE so there’s a LOT of whitespace on this, but there’s a lot all over the place with this screen size so that’s something I’m getting used to.

   If I liked orange I’d be a bigger fan, but orange and I have agreed to leave each other alone for the rest of the year so I can’t comment on the color choice.

2. Chris on December 31st, 2006 7:20 pm
   

   I’m back and forth on sidebar vs. footer, so we’ll see how it shakes out.

   I also got a new monitor (for Christmas!) and it runs at a “wide” ratio. That’s when I decided that my next layout wasn’t going to be liquid. Reading articles (full width) on a browser 1400′ish pixels wide is just beyond nuts (to me, at least).

   I love orange enough to cancel out your hatred.

3. jez on January 2nd, 2007 12:59 pm
   

   it’s really a nice theme, but the image url doesnt really blend like you probably wanted it to blend. I am using firefox 2.0.0.1, maybe you should try to change the index color of the gif file or something.

   best regards,
   jez

4. Chris on January 2nd, 2007 1:22 pm
   

   Hey jez, you’re right about the logo. And that’s been bugging me.

   I’m also entirely graphically retarded and was happy that I got it as close as I did! I’ll be trying again soon though.

5. jez on January 3rd, 2007 11:44 pm
   

   You can try to duplicate the grafic http://www.solo-technology.com/blog/wp-content/themes/orangew2/images/bg.jpg in width (like put it 4-5 times next to each other), then cut out the gray part and put your circle on there. this way you get the background that blends. (if you got the circle on a transparent layer, else you got to make sure it ‘overlays’, meaning: inherits the background of the layer below).

   best regards and back to my studies,
   jez

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