If you haven’t been to DotWeekly today, then you are likely seeing the new DotWeekly WordPress theme for the first time! Pretty white, but I think we will all get use to it. It was a very stressful day for myself, because doing these things cost money (which I don’t have much of) and I really do not consider myself a developer of any kind, so small tweaks in code can take hours!
[icon name=”icon-plus”] So why the new theme?
DotWeekly, like a lot of websites was falling behind in technology and my last theme was not “mobile ready”. In development terms, it wasn’t responsive! Well, that is a thing of the past now and DotWeekly will look and function well on your smartphone, tablet etc. This is becoming more and more important by the day, so I really needed to address this.
[icon name=”icon-ok”] Function!
I looked for about a month for a theme that I liked. I wanted something clean looking and I wanted it to function differently than “most sites”. You will notice on the right side of the screen, the “sliding sidebar”. I like sidebars but I also hate when my article is “longer” than the sidebar features I provide the reader. With a sliding sidebar, this presents you, the reader with something at all times on the right side of the screen (not on your phone) and I like the options of what I can put there that you can see all the time. Advertisers will be happier with it I’m sure! The sliding sidebar will slide down as you scroll down and at some point become static for a little bit and then slide and reveal the footer section if you get to the very bottom of the page.
Sliding Main Menu. This function isn’t something overly different with many of the new themes available on the market today but not all of them have it and I like it! It allows the reader the option to click something in the main menu bar without having to scroll back up to it! If you see something in mid story and want to contact me for some reason, put your cursor on the Connect button in the menu and email me! Want to get back to the home page, etc. click!
[icon name=”icon-magic”] Faster!
Articles load a bit differently, mainly as you scroll down on the home page and this will help the load times of DotWeekly.
[icon name=”icon-award”] Overall!
I like the new theme. It will take a little bit to get use to like anything new and I will do little tweaks all the time. I will play with the amount of “white space” as that is one little thing that is bugging me a little. I still have pages to build and make pretty but most of the function should be in place!
Options, I have so many options now it’s crazy! Mainly from a design and how things look but also function!
Even though you didn’t see any new articles today besides this one, I was busting butt, stressing out like crazy as things were not going well and sometimes it doesn’t hurt to call in the professionals, so a special thank you goes out to Tia Wood and Chris Budzban for lending me a couple helping hands today when I needed them with issues I was having!
I purchased the WordPress Theme on ThemeForest.net and the themes name is RT-Theme 18 which is no way a “blog” theme.
Hi Jamie, I like the theme, I think it was the right decision. HG ad that you have for VPS is not displayed, I’ve tried both Chrome and IE.
Thanks Mark. Odd on the HostGator ad. I can see it in Chrome and Firefox. Does it show an error or just a link? I used a javascript link so maybe that is causing some issues.
I like the theme….good for my eyes
clean and nice.
Good job!!
Nice, just find the font color should be a bit more dark, mainly on comments with gray background.
Thank you Francois. I have upped the font color a touch and it should pop a little bit more now.
Congrats, step by step domaining is becoming a real industry…
Congratulations on the new theme, Jamie. I like it more than last one. It looks more clean and professional.
I agree with Francois here. You can try to use the same font color of posts with the comments. I tested it with Chrome Developer Tool and it looks great. Also, your LinkedIn link is broken. I guess it may be missing “http://” in the theme settings.
One last suggestion, You may try to reduce the extra padding (space) above and below your logo as well as above your post title to increase the content above the fold.
Best of luck!
Thanks Sameh!
I have fixed the text color in the comment box. I thought I did before but it didn’t work. I also fixed the broken link you suggested. I have to work on the padding up by the logo. The post title, there was something there that was removed from the theme, so I will have to look into that area as well. First time playing with CSS so I use extreme caution playing around 🙂 I did fix the text color via CSS in the comment box, so… so far so good 🙂
Awesome! I can offer a solution for both suggestions I made and you can try it out or ignore it all together. 🙂
———————————————
To remove the extra space around the logo change the following line:
padding: 15px 0;
to
padding: 0;
in this css rule:
#header_contents{
display: table;
margin: 0 auto;
padding: 15px 0;
position: relative;
}
———————————————
To remove the extra space above the post title remove the following line:
margin-bottom: 20px;
from this css rule:
div.breadcrumb{
clear:both;
position:relative;
display:block;
border-bottom: 1px solid #F0F0F0;
padding-bottom: 10px;
margin-bottom: 20px;
line-height:100%;
color:#aaa;
}
———————————————
Again, feel free to try it out or ignore it all together.
Thanks Sameh! I will have to dig into that one a little bit. It’s often “finding” the file to edit is the harder part for me. Did it show you the file? Still learning the code editing part, but getting better.
WordPress has a built-in editor under (Appearance > Editor) but you still can edit the file directly if you want. Here is the file path:
https://dotweekly.com/wp-content/themes/rttheme18/css/style.css
Please feel free to contact me anytime with any questions and I’ll do my best to help you.
I really wish you all the best!