I have updated Playground to a new WordPress theme. It’s pretty much derived from the old theme, 100% hand coded. These are the things I want from a new theme.
- Simple one column layout. White background, dark gray fonts, and nothing fancy.
- Bigger text font. Probably better for those who do not have 20-20 eye sight, but it also looks better with a wide one column layout with no sidebar.
- Fixed 728px column. That’s about 50 pixels wider than the old theme, so I can fit a 728×90 leaderboard across the top :)
- Breadcrumb at top. I find them helpful for navigation, also tells the visitors where they are.
- Extended footer. All the guts on the sidebar (actually I did not even have a sidebar before!) are now moved to multiple columns in the footer.
Everything else pretty much retained from the old theme — quickies on the home page, gravatar integration, etc. I am still tuning the layouts and fixing bugs, especially those browser incompatibilities.
Looking good Scott! I decided to go with the 1col, sidebar in the footer look myself, I like the fact that all the extraneous links are underneath all the real content, but they’re still there if you want them.
Your bigger font size makes a difference too, I think that we’re starting to see then end of everyone wanting their site to be in 9px fonts (thankfully!)