Well there are a lot of new templates on this blog and you can choose your own. Many of them don’t work too well with the current content. The Direct Path Reads blog is a particularly interesting template test 🙁
I’d be interested, though, to hear which are the most popular and more important, why?
Feel free to be very rude about the bad ones, too 😉
I have my own ideas but I’m interested to see if they’re just mine or not.
A couple of quick thoughts, if I were you:
1- I would get rid of the template chooser. Why? because everytime you post a blog (especially one with lots of code and formatting), you would need to make sure that the format works as expected in all of your templates.
2- I would make my “Syndicate This Blog” block a lot simpler. I would include just the following three:
RSS 2.0 feed
ATOM 1.0 feed
RSS 2.0 Comments
You can even remove the version numbers. Most, if not all, of the news readers and aggregators nowadays are able to consume RSS 2.0 and ATOM 1.0 feeds.
HTH.
If it were me, I’d pick one template I like a lot and which works well for your content, and then maybe dabble a day or so with CSS to produce a couple of colour/font variations. Of course, I’m biased, because that’s exactly what I’ve just done at Dizwell. But the reasoning behind it is that (a) most people never change the template from whatever default is offered; (b) although it makes for a lovely demo of CSS capabilities, readers tend to dislike sites which look radically different, with content flying around all over the place, just because they clicked one little option; (c) users tend to actually dislike excessive choice, because it means they’re missing out on something. Instead of reading your content, they sit there wondering if things would look even better if they picked a different template, which causes frustration and disenchantment; (d) it becomes an administrative nightmare to know whether something which works well with template A works just as well with template Z. If all templates are variations from the “master”, however, then you know if it works with one, it works for all, and the administrative chores are considerably lessened.
To sound a little dictatorial about it, therefore: find something you like, and make everyone else put up with it.
Thanks for the comments, gents. Quite in keeping with what I was thinking anyway.
Eddie said
“I would get rid of the template chooser.”
Somewhere in the lost remnants of Saturday’s chaos was a blog (on this blog) that said more or less the same thing. When you have code examples, most of the templates don’t work too well, so the template chooser means too much work for me.
“I would make my “Syndicate This Blog” block a lot simpler. I would include just the following three:”
Fair comment. I’m not sure I can do that *easily* as it’s a plugin, but I will if I can and I don’t hear any opinions to the contrary.
Howard said
“To sound a little dictatorial about it, therefore: find something you like, and make everyone else put up with it.”
I agree. It would still be nice to hear what other people think are the best options there at the moment though. I mean the ones that they like most, even if they’re not working as they should.
That would give me some idea where I could focus my time. I have pretty strong views myself, but I’m no designer 😉
Put a line between comments, it’s a bit confusing who wrote what as formatted.
Okay, here’s where we are just now.
1) Added links to websites and other blogs
2) Reduced the number of feeds available (thanks Eddie)
3) Stuck to one template (thanks several people). The common consensus of 2 or 3 people (including me) is Serendipity 2.3 and I’ll see if I can tweak it to my needs.
4) It has lines between comments (thanks Anon)
All in all, I’m starting to feel a bit better about things. There are one or two wrinkles to iron out, but nothing unachievable I don’t think.
And I’m up to joint 10th in the World Cup Apex competition 😉