Like a virus, it seems the Thesis theme is spreading to more and more blogs everyday. There’s no end in sight and deservedly so. After previously winning the Thesis theme, but not actually receiving it, I held a grudge against the theme, which was obviously silly. A few months back, Jim Spencer (@fairminder) ended up finally convincing me to add Thesis Theme to The 42nd Estate‘s repertoire. I enjoyed working with it enough that I wanted to bring the simplicity and intuitiveness of the front and back end to this blog.
So, to all you feed readers, today is one of those days when you should for sure click through and come check out the site’s new look and feel. To be honest, the new look and feel isn’t drastically different. I kept much of the basic look intact but did increase the post font size and expanded the post width and the sidebar width a bit, giving the blog a bit more room to breathe and leaving more space for wider images and video. Also dropped a few plugins and widgets and added a few new ones.
New Stuff
- Added Google Friend Connect widget
- Added FriendFeed widget
- Added new social media icons
- Added BackType Connect to import external comments
There’s still a bunch of things I want to upgrade and tweak, for instance the header image and the photos section. For now though, it’s a nice upgrade that’ll free up some maintenance time and make for an easier read.
Let me know what you think of the new look and feel!
I like the subtle changes — it’s kind of like a facelift!
I really like it. It’s a little more cleaner and simple and I really like the small changes like the fonts, etc. Looking forward to your new header and what it might look like.
I noticed that Thesis seems really fast. That’s my favorite feature.
I wonder if Disqus can import comments like Backtype..
It does seem faster Jim. A big reason might be that it has a lot of built in features so you need less plugins running to get those features.
Disqus can import comments (there’s a section called social media reactions that lets you choose where to pull comments from).
I’ve got it running on We Demand Videos, but so far it’s not doing a great job at pulling in external comments. Going to keep testing the two (and Intense Debate) to see what delivers the best results but for now sticking with BackType here.
Where is the theme? The one you use as this page’s theme? If so, I would say clean and neat. But personally, the dafault letters (in your post) are too big.
Thanks for the feedback yasinta. The theme is the look and feel you see on the site. The Thesis theme is pretty clean and neat out of the box and I’m really looking forward to tweaking it a bit more to make it even cleaner.
What type of screen are you viewing this site from? I toyed around with other font sizes but the 16 pt font seems easier to read from my end. It is largely a personal preference but I’m wondering what your screen size is and how that affects how the fonts look…
Well done Adam. Clean and uncluttered. I like the large fonts, they seem to welcome everyone. You social media icons have style.
Thanks Jim. Still looking to clean it up a bit more. Considering dropping the huge RSS icon and rolling a smaller version in next to the other social media icons. Big fan of keeping the clutter low. Big fan of the large font too, makes reading on an iPhone much easier on the eyes.
Oh, and btw Jim. Those social media icons are from JWLOH via My Social Buttons. Agree, they’ve got lots of swagger style.
Like the facelift heh very clean indeed
Hi i liked it … and also your blog .. keep working thanks for your information