Compare and contrast {smashing magazine}

After 7 months of using a modified Kubrick theme, TKBB is now using a new theme – the free Magazeen theme from Smashing Magazine (be sure to check out some of their other free themes!). Although this theme doesn’t look too different (the goal was to keep it minimal), it provides greater flexibility for the blog even though it is designed as a magazine-style theme. After a good month of understanding and gradually modifying the CSS and PHP files, it is now in respectable shape for display on this site. The layout may not be perfect quite yet, but it gets closer every day. Plus, it seems to work in all browsers, from IE6 to Chrome.

What has changed from before?

• The sidebar stays put on different screen resolutions – before it would move all over the place
• Thumbnail preview w/ titles of 10 recent posts
• Sharper looking titles and post info
• Updated index page layout – a few full posts followed by excerpts
• Bold comment buttons
• Drop-down categories on the main page
• New bottom nav-bar
• Footer dividers

How does the current look differ from the initial Magazeen theme?

style.css:

• header: larger image, border, removed search, moved rss box, removed nav bar
• footer: added nav bar, modified dividers
• colors: changed everything (a, hover, visited, blockquote, image), removed background images
• sidebar: added border, sponsored ad
• single/page: added border, changed title and post info attributes
• comments: changed colors, borders

index.php:

• changed # of visible posts
• eliminated multiple columns of posts
• modified excerpt posts
• altered post title and info layout and format
• problem-solved issue with Twitter plug-in and thumbnail gallery titles

single.php

• added navigation
• changed position of comment button
• moved location of categories, tags, ShareThis

Still to do:

• clean up page layout and search
• figure out pagination for the index
• clean up margins
• clean up server