Flintlock
Pro Adventurer
Our self-imposed deadline for picking a new WordPress theme is just four days away. I had put it to the back of my mind while running the music event, but there's going to be a lull in that for a couple of days while the last round 2 polls close up, so I thought now would be a good time to cast my eye over everything that has been suggested/discussed so far. Thanks to Lex for reminding me.
I'll start off by saying that Claymore had some good ideas which he shared with a few people by PM - Claymore, would you object to us discussing them here, publicly? You had some good ideas which deserve to be seen.
Now, onto the theme suggestions:
I'm not sure if you were suggesting that theme or just saying that we should just look for something with a similar archive section, but in case it was the former: the drawbacks are the price (almost double the cost of Oblivion, which Lex said was expensive in itself), the content density at the top (I think it's ridiculous to arrive at a page and only see one headline, "Bloodborne Gameplay Walkthrough") and the feeling that, once you get past the box of six top stories, it feels much more like a blog than a proper news site. I can't recommend it.
I worry about what it would look like after a period of inactivity, though. I know we want to become more active in publishing articles but it's good to think about what would happen if we don't manage that. If four of the top seven articles are podcasts, it's going to look ridiculous - unless we can find some way of prioritising certain articles over others, so that only one podcast post appears at the top at any time, for example. Something like the "health" layout might actually work better for us (I know it looks bland in the preview, but as Lex has said before, we're just finding a base to customise here). I'd go as far as to say it's the best option of the themes suggested so far. One concern I have with it is the different image ratios: the four images at the top use three different ratios. That might make it difficult to predict exactly what pictures will look like on the front page when we create/edit/upload them. The right-hand-side of the page also scrolls a bit oddly, but not in a way that makes the page feel sluggish, like the Oblivion theme. Most problematic might be that the top of the page displays a horizontal scroll bar when the page becomes narrow. Horizontal scroll bars should be avoided at all costs.
Let's keep looking. I'll see if I can find anything decent and I'll happily critique any other suggestions that are put forward in the next few days.
I'll start off by saying that Claymore had some good ideas which he shared with a few people by PM - Claymore, would you object to us discussing them here, publicly? You had some good ideas which deserve to be seen.
Now, onto the theme suggestions:
This theme (Oblivion) was my favourite of the three you suggested to Yop and myself over PM, and while I still think it's visually impressive, I have significant reservations about it. It might be possible to turn off all the unnecessary features, like the "smooth" scrolling, the parallax images and so on, but like you said, if we're going to do all that, why not just find another theme that suits us better? The bottom of the page feels a bit cheap compared to the rest of it - and I think we should give our forum a lot more exposure than that - while I also don't think the narrow (mobile) version of the page looks particularly good.
That lower section reminds me of one of my old draft images for the front page, which contained some tweaks that were never implemented. We were aiming to increase the density of our content on the front page. I don't like the way the articles get truncated with a [...] in that layout, but I imagine we could change that to show excerpts instead.
I'm not sure if you were suggesting that theme or just saying that we should just look for something with a similar archive section, but in case it was the former: the drawbacks are the price (almost double the cost of Oblivion, which Lex said was expensive in itself), the content density at the top (I think it's ridiculous to arrive at a page and only see one headline, "Bloodborne Gameplay Walkthrough") and the feeling that, once you get past the box of six top stories, it feels much more like a blog than a proper news site. I can't recommend it.
Newspaper looks like a great design for a busy site. I can see seven stories as soon as I load the page (on the "video" layout preview), and plenty more without having to scroll down too much. I like the way it highlights different topics - "Don't miss", "Lifestyle news", and so on. The drop-down menu on the demo seems to contain more news articles but I could see it being a great way to highlight static content as well.
I worry about what it would look like after a period of inactivity, though. I know we want to become more active in publishing articles but it's good to think about what would happen if we don't manage that. If four of the top seven articles are podcasts, it's going to look ridiculous - unless we can find some way of prioritising certain articles over others, so that only one podcast post appears at the top at any time, for example. Something like the "health" layout might actually work better for us (I know it looks bland in the preview, but as Lex has said before, we're just finding a base to customise here). I'd go as far as to say it's the best option of the themes suggested so far. One concern I have with it is the different image ratios: the four images at the top use three different ratios. That might make it difficult to predict exactly what pictures will look like on the front page when we create/edit/upload them. The right-hand-side of the page also scrolls a bit oddly, but not in a way that makes the page feel sluggish, like the Oblivion theme. Most problematic might be that the top of the page displays a horizontal scroll bar when the page becomes narrow. Horizontal scroll bars should be avoided at all costs.
Let's keep looking. I'll see if I can find anything decent and I'll happily critique any other suggestions that are put forward in the next few days.
You definitely raise a good point.