New Year, New Theme

Two months after my last theme update, I felt it was time for another change to this site. While I was very proud of the previous theme, it had its own set of problems:

1. The look didn’t fit the theme. It was my first “grunge” design, and I was happy with the result, but it didn’t really have anything to do with clean, professional web design – a friend who saw it said “it looks like a site for genealogy buffs.”
2. Not enough contrast. The site was overwhelmingly blue, with little contrast between elements, so that everything just muddled together on a quick glance.
3. Too hard to maintain. The old theme was built from scratch, and while it worked, making changes to the theme required a lot of tweaking and work under the hood. It wasn’t a sustainable base for future growth.

The new theme is built on Thematic, which essentially takes care of the markup portion of the theme and lets you focus on styling. This makes updates a breeze – just wire up a new PHP filter or action hook and you’re all set. There’s a lot more contrast, a great photo to catch the eye (and an alternate header for “inside” pages), and everything is a lot more clean and professional.

So, I hope you enjoy the new look, and I’ll be posting my next design in the 104 Designs for 2010 series soon.