I was playing around with WordPress themes last night and came up with this one… which happens to be the same one I use for my other blog, Piano Black, with some different colors.
What do you think?
I’ve kept the old theme for nearly eight years. Is it time for a change?
Addendum: For reference, you can see the old theme layout here.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
The color was blue, then green, and now gray-ish. My goal was to have white column with black text, but I need to dig into the CSS for that, and that means getting out some books and trying to remember the little I learned about CSS in some past life.
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Poll results being split 4 ways so far is hilarious.
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In 8 years, no theme change has lasted more than 36 hours. I always just go back to Regulus. I am thinking that will be the result this time as well.
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Looks good,I always seen you as one of the more ‘colorful’ bloggers so will be interesting to see if this darker theme sticks.
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Be honest I like it mostly because it’s easier on my eyes than a full white background.Spend all day mostly looking at white backgrounds with black text eye strain (and getting older)….sucks. lol
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I also tinkered with the fonts to make posts a bit more readable… to me at least. Basically, I got the 10 day free trial of the customization pack for WordPress and am playing with the dials and switches.
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+1 for anything but black text on a wall of white, the grey-ish colors right now are a little odd but so much more comfortable to read.
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Overall I like it. But I will say that some areas are hard to read. Your comment above for example, is white text on a light tan background which is really had to see for my old eyes. Seems to be only your comments though.
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The whole color selection thing is a bit odd. I can select a pre-set pallet of colors OR I can dig through the CSS and try to find the right element and change that color. The latter is not helped by some inconsistent naming conventions. I cannot for the life of me find the element that sets the color for my comments. Bleh.
There is a third option, where I upload a header image and let it pick colors based on that. Those end up very dark, with dark text on a dark background and dark highlights, like Hotblack Desiato’s sundiving ship, which probably says something about my choice in header images.
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I think it’s weird that people say this theme is so much easier to read than black text on white background, which I personally find both very easy on the eyes and very clean-looking too.
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“Other” responses to the poll:
“Move away from the boring WordPress look”
Not sure what that means. But I am fond of the body of text with a side bar of links on the right, so if that is what you meant, I am probably going to disappoint.
“I mostly read you on RSS so go to town”
Me too when it comes to most blogs.
“It feels terribly familar. Wasn’t there an EVE blog which used this exact theme?”
You mean the one I mentioned and linked to at the top of the post? You only think you are being clever.
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I am no traditionalist when it comes to text n fonts…
I quite like this theme but am unsure of what the old looked like now!
Can we get a comparison and then vote again?
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@Ming – In general I am fond of black text on a white background because it does give a clean look. But for legibility, I spend a lot of time looking at various console outputs that are white text on a black background and find that has its own benefits.
Of course, I grew up in an age when all computers displayed text in green, amber, or white on a black background, so I may be used to it. The Mac was bizarre in 1984 because it reversed that norm.
@tsuhelm – Okay, here is the web archive version of my site from February of this year.
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I like the additional contrast compared to the gray-on-white. Except for the link colors. They blend in too much with the background in my opinion.
You have a picture-heavy blog. Have you checked whether you like how the this oliv-ish background color works with it?
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It’s fine. Easy to read. looks neat and tidy. Don’t like the colors. I voted “theme ok, don’t like color” in the poll.
I wouldn’t say I prefer it to your traditional look though.
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At first I was scared but then I reduced the page zoom from 175% back to 100%.
It looks nice, but I care more about the content here.
Please continue writing the way you do.
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My eyes!
Aaaaaaaaah!
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@sid67 – Was that “Aaaaaah!” as in surprise and alarm?
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I have to admit I felt some distress when I looked at the blog this morning and it suddenly had a puke-green background and the text that was so tiny it was hard to read even for me (and my eyesight is fine). This is much better, both in terms of colour and legibility, though I think I still prefer the original look.
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I like this theme. Has a modern clean look. The sidebar seems a lot cleaner too.
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Really like the new theme. Most of my day is spent reading black type on white backgrounds. Very pleasing. Kudos Wilhelm!
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I like the white on dark theme.
If you still want to change your comments’ background, you need to change the rule applied to “.commentlist > li.comment.bypostauthor, .commentlist .children > li.comment.bypostauthor”.
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I have used this very theme for a couple years now. I like it. It’s functional.
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Apart from the color scheme of YOUR comments everything is awesome. Just make your comments background darker.
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As I’ve jsut voted, I find this theme barely readable; it’s really, really awful.
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After looking at your archived version I support the change completely!
Just noticed the nice black curve under the comment box…nice touch!
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@sid67 – Was that “Aaaaaah!” as in surprise and alarm?
No – as in the kind of “Aaaaaah!” where the vampire screams when the holy water is thrown in his face. Not the Twlight fairy vampire variety but your good old fashion “Lost Boys” kind of vampire.
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@sid67 – Heh, in text I could have assumed you meant “Aaaaaah!” as in the sound you make when getting in a hot tub to relax at the end of the day.
Clearly this is going to be a “you cannot please everybody” sort of thing.
I am still torn myself. The new theme isn’t everything I want, but neither is the old one. And the old one has the liability of being very old and unsupported by WordPress, so that they break something with it every few months.
I could just go with the Twenty Eleven theme that Syp uses. It has all the basic functions and is still supported. But it seems a bit dull as well.
Anyway, I am going to let this roll for a while longer and see if it grows on me or if I start to hate it.
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Not a fan of the current darker theme. I far preferred the old lighter theme of many years.
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I changed back, for now. At least until I work out an issue I was having with CSS that was fixing one of my gripes while causing havoc elsewhere.
I make no promises to stay with the old one however.
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