New Theme: Send Me On My Way
Sep 04 2008 • Web
While watching old music videos earlier, I got nostalgic for ’90s music and went though a listening spree in my iTunes library. As soon as I heard Send Me On My Way by Rusted Root, it got stuck in my head (again). Over the course of several days, I tweaked the sketches of this design, waded through color coordination hell, and came up with some dark - the complete opposite of the song. Still, it’s the thing that fueled this coding spree so it gets the name.
Photograph © Claude Estèbe
Part of this desire to change was influenced by changing circumstances offline. Due to work and constant studying, my time to blog has been reduced greatly. Instead of being able to turn out a post every day or every other day, I’ll be lucky to get 2 a week. Additionally, I’ll only be doing initial thoughts, mid-season, and final thoughts reviews for anime series, rather than try to keep up with the episodic writers. I simply don’t have the time or energy for that anymore.
I also cut out my my Flickr photostream. As much as I love taking pictures, the majority of my account is private and will remain that way. I found that I wasn’t updating the photostream fast enough so the same pictures would be displayed for weeks, something I personally didn’t like.
The one thing I didn’t like having to do is move the blogroll to its own page. Originally, my blogroll was quite short but as I started reading more blogs, the list grew (and is still growing). In the old design, I noticed it was beginning to dominate the sidebar and in some instances, the content. With its own separate page, the links will be organized rather than be shoved together in a huge alphabetical listing.
As always, this theme is still being tweaked. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Related Posts
Comments
Wow i thought i landed on the wrong blog for a moment^^
The theme is pretty nice but loaded pretty slow.
I can totally understand the reason you moved your blogroll.Its a real pain to do so but looks much cleaner afterwards.
I love the color scheme and layout. Very nice!
Really highlights your awesome logo. Sure, it’s just your name, but it’s rendered so well and memorable. It’s a great branding. With a name and logo like that, you should start your clothing label. :-P
The one thing I’m a little iffy about is the main index page. You’re only displaying one excerpt of one of your posts on it. Simplistic? Yes. But it might not be enough information for a first-time reader on your site.
Maybe include a couple more posts. Give the reader a good sampling of what the “caitlin omara” branding is all about. (^_^)
This is a beautiful new theme! I love the fact it’s dark but not overbearingly so- very nice balance. The subtle background pattern is beautiful too.
Only thing I’d say is optomize your header image. It looks slightly fuzzy and that’s the only reason i can think of :)
A new theme is always nice if just to have something new to look at. I don’t have anything else to add because everything else has been covered.
Hey girl ^^ I like it. Blogging is a toughy to stick with, but just don’t make it a task. And remember, to blog about anime, watch it first [and enjoy as well] :)
Cheers Caitlin
love the colors and the simplicity. minimalism is the way to go.
@Panther: Annotating 90+ blogs?? I don’t read that many (yet) but I’ve been contemplating annotating them. Maybe I should do that before I get a huge list….
@Blowfish: Hmm, I’ll have to test out the slow loading problems. Can you tell me what browser/version you’re using and connection speed? I cleared out my cache and got it to load under 5 seconds. The slowest element on the page was the host banner, which I can’t remove.
@Scott: *L* Thanks. It’s a simple 2-color logo but I suppose it’s just finding the right 2 colors.
The template’s set up for multiple posts, but I should probably change it to display the approx. weekly. At the moment, the blurbs are short enough so it should be okay.
@Catherine: Thanks for the heads up on the image - I didn’t notice that until you mentioned it! Should probably get my eyes checked again. x.x
@Yamcha: Definitely! I thought about switching to another premade but I like making my own just a little too much….
@Ryan A: Yeah, anime at times seems like a chore. I just don’t have the time to watch TV like I used to. Thanks. ^_^
@biankita: Thanks, I’m also a huge fan of minimalism. I read somewhere that it was just being lazy but I disagree. It takes a lot of work to eliminate the fluff!
Im using the newest Firefox and 16000 connection.
It seems that it was a temporarly problem tough since it loads pretty fast now.
Oh new lay out; its neat and easy for the eyes. (: However, with the new lay out, the right column seems to be a little empty. :(
Take your time in annotating the blogroll. Its best to write at your own time, trust me with this, I write more positively when there isn’t anyone rushing me. (:
@Blowfish: Glad to hear it! I went back and removed some old JS calls (that’s what I get for reusing the base templates from previous layouts!) and I think that sped things up a little too.
@Hynavian: Yeah, the right column bothers me as well, particularly on the single posts. I thought about moving the sidebar up there but I’m not sure about shifting core elements around like that.
I really like your new theme it makes the content look fresh no matter how often I swing by. It’s good to hear you put some thought into the changes that would matter too. Also I really like the small yet.. eye-catching twitter bar you have at the bottom. It’s almost like a reward for reading and commenting on a post xD!
@mellow_bunny: Thanks! It’s nice to know I have regular readers. ^_^ Twitter has actually been one of the headaches for me - I love it but the debate on how many updates to show affects its placement. In this design, I used it kind of like an expressive HR to separate the main content from the footer.
Leave a Reply
Recent Posts
- Japanese School Lunch: Week 22
- The Regression of My Anime Fandom
- Japanese School Lunch: Week 21
- Japanese School Lunch: Week 20
- Japanese School Lunch: Week 19
- The Introvert At Work
- Baskin Robbins: November Flavors
- Mos Eisley’s Got Nothing on a Japanese Preschool
- Final Review: Chi’s Sweet Home
- Purple for November, Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month
Lol you faced the same problem I did, ever-growing blogroll. I changed to Wordpress partly because of that, and did a separate page for it. Had to annotate 90+ blogs over 3 separate pages or so.