I finally took the time to put up a new design I can live with for this blog (for now… this is again temporary). I trashed the design with the gray header and took a new direction. This uses the same logo as v2 and integrates design elements from the original pixelyzed.com like the pixels/boxes but with a different treatment. I also tried to simplify as much as possible. I still have some typographic tweaking to do but at least I can live with what I have for now. But in the background, I’m going back to the drawing board and starting from scratch.
The one thing I’m excited about though is that this site is now powered with the Headway WordPress theme framework instead of Thesis. I find that it is far more flexible for integrating your own design as you can easily change the layout of individual pages. Headway’s Visual Editor is simply phenomenal as it enables you to do so in context of the page by clicking on elements and editing its properties. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m also starting to get a good grasp of WordPress now and I’m working on redoing Isabelle’s site in it… using Headway of course. Headway is even more impressive when working on “regular” site where each page is unique. Its Leafs feature is unique and, when coupled with the Visual Editor, it makes for a very powerful design platform for WordPress as a CMS.
But as great as Headway is, it doesn’t help me much if I don’t have a design I’m excited about. I’m having fun with Headway on Isabelle’s site because I’m working with a solid existing design and I’m just porting it over. Here, I still don’t have anything I love to replace the old design with. I’m even thinking about upgrading the blog to WordPress 3.0 RC1 and use the default 2010 theme until I finish a design I can get excited about again.
I also plan to make a french version of pixelyzed.com or at least a “child” of it in French for my local readership and friends. I would not do that with this design so that’s on the backburner for now.
Will keep everyone posted as things evolve…
(this post was last edited on June 1st 2010)
I liked the previous design, too, btw!
In a future post, you may compare these two popular WP theme frameworks — this will be helpful to many…
What previous design? The one with the gray header or the original? If the original then yes, it was a cool design. I got a lot of praise for it through the years but you have no idea how sick of it I was!
I was the right time to retire it.
If you mean the gray header one, the very embryonic design I started last night is starting a bit in the same direction so, we’ll see…
Hmm, I mean the design right before this one!
It was pretty cool, IMHO.
You new (current) design is pretty good, too.
Thanks! Looking at it again i agree with you, the previous one was better than this and I’m using parts of it to do my “real” 2.0 design
Don’t know when that will be ready though.
“A work in progress” — cool!
I’ll be watching it!