New Design!

I just couldn’t help myself! I was planning to wait until we left Mexico to load the new theme, but everything was ready and I was so excited about it, that I just couldn’t wait. Plus once we’re travelling and back in Perth my Internet access might be a bit sketchy so I didn’t want to load it up and then disappear. For now, my header says “almost back home”, but pretty soon, it’ll change to “now back home”.

So, let me show you around the new look Roaming Aussie Mum…

(if you’re reading this in a RSS reader, click on over. Go on!)

First things first - the theme I am using is the Thesis Theme by DIY Themes. This is actually a premium WordPress Theme (meaning I paid for it) and its the first time I’ve ever used a paid theme. I could never see the point before since there are so many free themes out there, but as soon as I saw this theme I fell in love with it and you get so much more than just a theme with this one.

It was developed by Chris Pearson of Pearsonified, whose blog I already read. His blog has great articles on customising themes, WordPress and blogging in general. You’ve probably all seen one of his other themes before, since his Cutline theme is one of the most popular themes out there. He’s also responsible for the Neoclassical, Copyblogger and Pressrow themes. I don’t fully understand all the ins-and-outs of SEO and theme structure, but Chris’ themes are certainly easy to use and beautifully presented.

Probably the most impressive thing about the Thesis Theme, is the support that comes with it. There’s a blog, with articles about how to use the theme, a user manual, and a forum where thesis users can get help with customisation, troubleshooting and just sharing ideas and inspiration for using the theme. The theme author is a regular contributor to the forums and not only have I got help over there from him, but I also discovered new blogs to haunt. Here’s a few I found through the forum (great blogs and great examples of ways to customise this theme):

Scribbles and Words
Wild Keys
Simple Mom
The Blissful Pixel

As well as all this support, when you buy this theme, you are then entitled to all the upgrades to the theme, for free. So every time Chris adds a new feature or fixes a bug, and releases a new version, you can upgrade easily.

Ok, so that’s my plug for this amazing theme. I love it, and I hope you do too. To find your way around, here’s a couple of things to notice:

• the pictures in the big image box at the top right are rotating so you’ll see a different one every time you visit or click to another page. These are some of my favourite photos an I’ll be adding to them as time goes on.
• Up the top left you’ll find tabs to various pages for my blog - most of which were already there, but one new addition - the Design page which sets out all the tweaking I have done to this theme, and to my previous theme.
• Underneath are a few more of my favourite photos (because I can’t help but put photos of my kids everywhere!). I’m using the Photoxhibit plugin for this but it still needs a little tweaking. When used in a post the plugin will open the photos in a lightbox, but in my sidebar it doesn’t want to do that. Bear with me while I sort that little glitch out.
• There’s a new blue box of text in the first sidebar, with a welcome message - click anywhere on that to go to the about page

For those of you who followed my previous post on getting ready for my new theme, some of the points there might make more sense now - like my custom background, made in Photoshop with a pattern using a “lace” brush, and my header image using a few swirly and heart brushes and fancy text. The little heart swirl is also my new favicon - the tiny image you see on your browser tab when my site is open, and also now in Google Reader in Firefox if you have the Better GReader add/on installed! Check out the design page for information on how to make one of those.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that it all goes smoothly with the new theme. One of the plugins I used to make sure everything would look right is the excellent Theme Test Drive Plugin. This lets you activate a ” test drive” of your desired theme that only you (the logged in administrator) can see. It’s fantastic for trying out new looks and I used it constantly to make sure all my little tweaks came out the way I wanted to. The only problem I found with this method was that moving widgets around in my sidebars when it was activated caused the sidebars to wig out. I suspect this had something to do with going from 3 widgetised sidebars to 2, but in any event, I would be wary of making “structural” changes while you’re in test drive mode. I found I wanted to move a lot of things around for the new theme and doing this even in test drive mode would also change things in my existing theme, so I also used a spare test blog to try out all sorts of fun and crazy stuff to see how it looked. Even if you don’t happen to have a spare domain name lying around (because I know you’re not all as crazy as me), you could probably test it out on a subdomain - something like www.subdomain.yourdomainname.com, if you are able to have another installation of WordPress on a subdomain (not sure about all that - check with your host!).

Other than that, everything else should be pretty straight forward. I’d love to hear what you think, and if you come across any problems or glitches or something just doesn’t seem to display right, please let me know!