The Makeover: New Header, New Button, New Posts

 

You may have noticed the blog, favicon and button is different, as are some of the fonts. Oh, and also, the search and sign up buttons are also different. They are green now!

 

Code Changes

The theme I’m using, Sugar and Spice, which is the theme I fell in love with when looking for a free one, is highly customizable. but everything has its limits. And those limits where starting to box me in despair because there were all these little things I wanted to change. Like the search and sign-up buttons’ color. And none of that would’ve been possible without code. So, for a mess-with-the-code-and-accidentally-delete-your-blog person like me, I was starting to run out of options. Plugins are awesome to some point, but I was growing terrified that one day a plug-in developer decided to take it our or something, and that it’d affect my blog somehow.

 

Believe me, I wasn’t planning on changing crap in the code

I’ve been there, done that, and… let’s just say this isn’t the first blog I’ve created. 😉 But I reached a point where I decided that if my theme was going to be one that most likely other people had too, then I should probably do an effort, and customize it more.

I put my smart girl pants on and searched the internet like crazy about mostly, CSS help. Thank god, because it’s slightly less problematic than messing with the php files.

This is what has been done:

• I created a Child Theme, which I’d been terrifed of doing too. Since like I said, I didn’t know a thing about how to create one.
• I changed the background color of comments by me. I’d actually been trying to change something else, but… then backed down 😀

You can do so too by inserting this code in your CSS Stylesheet:

 

.bypostauthor {
background-color: #fff1e9;
}

 

• And also changed the style of my blockquotes using this:

 

blockquote {
font-family: Georgia, serif;
font-size: 16px;
font-style: italic;
margin: .25em 0;
padding: .25em 40px;
line-height: 1.45;
position: relative;
color: #3e3e3d;
border: 3px dashed #f46f49;
background: #ffece7;
overflow: hidden;
}

 

These are examples of my code, but you can make the changes you’d like.

 

Image Changes

As for the new header and icon: the book and the flower; I’d been thinking about changing those for a few weeks. The girl with the book flag just wasn’t convincing me anymore.

Look at her! I didn’t think it was general enough to hint at everything this blog is about. For starters, she’s a girl. And while my blog design is pretty girly, I didn’t want to have it branded like that. Like saying, only girls read, because that’s bullshit. So, today I was playing with some icons and came up with the book and the flower together.

I feel happy about the change.

Also, thanks to the plugin, Google Fonts, I was able to easily change the font of the different headers of the blog. I really wanted the post titles’ font to match that of the one I used in the header.

Though, you can expect a background change soon. I’m not sure if it works anymore. I totally accept opinions on this. My issue: I don’t know if the flower background suits the header. The horror.

-> Also, I cleaned the navigation a bit, and removed some of the clutter. I did like my resources for readers and writers pages, but I thought it’d just a well to put this info in a post, instead of in a page, so that’s also coming soon.

-> And, at last, bu not less, my front page feed is now all excerpts, and not first post full and the rest excerpts anymore. Since I added the slider, it seemed like the reader’s attention would be all over the place if I kept a full post just below the slider. The slider’s purpose is to direct attention to some discussion posts, so I had to decide which element should I give priority to. I chose the slider, and figured that if the featured image and/or post title of the excerpt didn’t attract the reader’s attention, then it wasn’t worth showing them all the text! Better to put more of an effort with titles and graphics, so that’s something I’ll be working on.

 

Post Changes

This I’d been pondering about almost since the month after I bought my domain name and a Writer’s Tales was born. I named it A Writer’s Tales, because more than just a book blog, it was also going to be very personal; with boook reviews, discussions, and posts about writing. Only…

I’m not very good talking about my writing

Yes, I can go on and on about my stories , as much as the next person; and I also like to comment on what other people share; but I discovered it isn’t easy for me to come up with something to say about my own writing struggles and experiences. If you look hard enough, you’ll notice there just a few posts related to my writing in all the archive! Which was bugging me because this blog is called A Writer‘s Tales! 

That’s why from now on, I’ll try to write more posts about the writing journey; its joys and miseries.

 

I’m satisfied with what I’ve done here and love that while I still have a loong way to go compared to developers and designers, I was able to do something myself, without the help of a plugin.

You can do so too! (If you haven’t already XD)

 

 

Related Posts