Those of you arriving on the Twelve Mile Circle probably noticed a new look today. It’s the first redesign since I started the blog in November 2007. A “theme” governs the visible aspects of a blog in the parlance of WordPress, the underlying application, and I’ve simply swapped one theme for another.
I liked the old theme and I’m sorry to see it go even though I’ve known for awhile that it had become threadbare and obsolete. It frustrated me that I couldn’t take advantage of numerous features added to WordPress in its most recent incarnations. The theme wasn’t broken; it simply fell behind the times. Three years is ancient history on these Intertubes.
Some of this will be apparent unless you use an RSS reader exclusively and then it will seem as if nothing has changed. For the rest of you, the different color scheme and font will probably be the most visible artifacts. Maybe you will also notice the increased width of the text block, the support of avatars, the nested comments and things of that nature.
Most changes will be invisible to you. These allow me to administer the site more effectively behind-the-scenes and will result in a better reading and commenting experience for you. As an example I can now drag-and-drop various predefined “Widgets” onto admin screens rather than hard code functionality into template files. I can also take advantage of various search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to help the vastly dispersed geo-oddity universe participate.
Other aspects remain the same. I’ve retained a portion of Johnson’s 1862 map of Georgetown and the City of Washington as the header image. It’s become an easily recognizable marker, more like an old friend than a logo. I’ve also retained the exact text, images and maps for every article ever posted. Content hasn’t changed, only it’s formatting and presentation.
I’ve tried the new theme on a variety of platforms including MAC OS X (Safari, Firefox, Camino) and Windows (Internet Explorer, Firefox), and it seems to work. I could use a little help test-driving it though, particularly for the more esoteric combinations. Please let me know if you uncover anything. I’m still not done tweaking it. I suppose I can always go back to the old format if this thing fails miserably.
I still haven’t brought myself to delete those old files. Is it possible to feel nostalgic for a template?
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