Time for a makeover: a webpage design thread

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by liberal japonicus

I guess it is time for the site design here to diverge from the roughly imitated classic look at the archive. I’m still working on the archive, right now going thru to get the correct authors for the posts and to try and write a history of the blog, (other folks interested in doing cleanup stuff with the archive, please let me know) but here, I want to take advantage of the responsive design and other elements that have appeared in the 20 years since ObWi started. (Yes, for a place that became a liberal blog, the designing has been remarkably conservative)

So here’s your chance. Text choices, font choices, color schemes. If anyone has any WordPress experience, remember 1 Corinthians 3:14 If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. (Gemini pulled up the version in The Message, a ‘dynamic interpretive’ translation, which is If the building survives, the builder gets a bonus.)

    8 thoughts on “Time for a makeover: a webpage design thread”

    1. I won’t be of any help here. I have a piece of JavaScript that runs on every page that I download. It forces my own choice of fonts, sizes, vertical spacing, and color adjustments on the text. I’ve already changed the small part that is specific to Obsidian Wings. Between a good adblocker and my script, my view of the Web is much more consistent and less garish than what non-fanatic people see. Y’all may decide that Papyrus is the official Font of Moderation, but I’ll still see Noto Serif.

      The JavaScript thing got started one day when I encountered too many pages that made you want to find the designer so you could ask, “Did you study ugly and unreadable in school, or are you just naturally gifted?”

      I’m a believer in the original spirit of HTML — the writer gets to specify structure, but presentation decisions belong to the reader. If it’s important that the text be rendered in some obscure spidery gothic font, well, that’s what PDF is for.

    3. OK made the font a little bigger. I totally agree with Michael, but the whole installation seems to have as its goal, keeping you as far away from the html as possible.

      If anyone has an urge, here are some wordpress themes
      https://wordpress.org/themes/
      Everything seems more for an e-business website than for a group of people to communicate with each other. More’s the pity.

    5. The Academica theme is oriented a little more towards discussions. It’s what I used when I was fooling around at the beginning of the month and trying to recreate the old layout. I prefer the new look overall. My main complaint (with my script disabled) is that there’s way too much vertical white space.

      WordPress provides an “Additional CSS” textbox in one of its configuration places that’s a convenient way to override the theme’s styling. Of course, using it requires that you have some understanding of the theme’s use of CSS classes, ids, etc. Or you can define a plug-in that has just enough PHP to load a CSS file that overrides the style. I probably haven’t said this here before since the old site was Typepad, but between the core/theme/plugin model, PHP, and CSS, WordPress has managed to recreate all of the development nightmares of late-90s Microsoft Windows.

    6. I once declared on the old site that it was perfect IMO. Being fickle, I say this one is perfect too. Lacking Michael’s god-like powers, I am not tempted to customize the presentation for myself, and anyway I like it as is. FWIW, my laptop browser is Firefox and my Android browser is Chrome. From the start, I set Chrome to show me the laptop version of the page, as I had done on the old site. Works for me.

      A preview function would be nice, but I haven’t seen its absence be a problem so far.

      So, that’s my 2 cents worth of opinion. My gratitude for setting up the new site and for creating the archive site is boundless.

      –TP

    7. Yes, a preview button would be great if not too troublesome to set up. Otherwise, it’s taking me time to get used to the new layout, but no doubt it will get easier with more use.

    8. i have some minor WP coding experience: i’ve written a couple of plugins that i use on my own site, and i’ve tweaked the PHP for some theming things I couldn’t get from plugins.

      if there’s anything specific you need, i could possibly help. or possibly not – WP is large and ever-changing.

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