It’s not the new “blog year”, but a new on our calendars. In previous years, I often wanted to finally start reworking the theme of my blog over the holidays. This time I finally did it … but only started at 1 January 😅
Continuing #project26
First things first: I will continue with #project26, posting every two weeks. I usually don’t plan blog posts in advance, but this year I have a second project, I want to follow, so topics will hopefully be easier this year. But I will also post about other topics in between.
A new, old theme
I’m currently using the nice Waipoua theme from Elmastudio. I have been using this theme since July 2012, and I still love its classical blog design. But given how old it is, there are some aspects that don’t make it the perfect theme anymore. Especially, some accessibility issues are reasons to replace it.
Start fresh, but copy the overall look
The optimal outcome would be a theme on a new technical foundation, but with the exact same “pixel perfect” result. As I only want to use the Site Editor for the new theme, that might not be possible. Not being sure about what I would set myself as a goal, I’ve asked around at Twitter:
From the results and the comments, most people say, I should just try to re-create the overall look of the theme. And this is what I’ll try to do.
A step by step blog post series
For the future blog posts, I’m planning to document every step I take in re-creating the theme. I hope that this will potentially be helpful for many of you with a similar idea. And since I’m usually not creating (new) themes in my daily work, it’s also a great learning opportunity for me, to get more familiar with the Site Editor.
My first long blog series
I’ve had some blog series before, but this one is expected to last well into the second quarter of this year. Maybe I can launch the new theme for the blog’s birthday in June.
I will also try to publish the progress in code in the open and also create a staging site with the current state. But more on this on my next blog post.
If you happen to use that theme as well, I would highly appreciate your feedback on what you would like to see in the new theme. Or maybe you’ve done something similar, then I would be happy if you leave a comment here.