This week, I decided to do another Blogging University course. Although I really want to dive into the Branding and Growth course, the current course I’m taking is Intermediate Customization. I really should make some tweaks to my theme first.
As I discussed in my Blogging 101: Zero to Hero (now Blogging: Fundamentals) course, I decided to change over to the Lovecraft Theme from the Baskerville theme. I have stuck with it ever since, but I would like to do some more customization.
Looking at My Theme Again
As part of the first assignment in this course, I was asked to take advantage of a feature I never tried before. However, I have taken advantage of most of the features of Lovecraft, from what I understand.
For starters, I played with the widgets months ago. The widgets are where I want them and I wanted to have a fairly even and clean footer. From time to time, I have made revisions with the widgets, but I opted to have a clean look for the footer and sidebar.
Also, I already played with the page orientation. I have a wide-screen orientation for my home page. The other pages have a sidebar.
When it comes to publishing posts, I have taken advantage of many of the features, including:
- The headers (from h1, h2, and h3), although there are six levels.
- The block quotes function, even in responses to visitors.
- The “Read More” tag, in order to cut off some of my posts for emails and to entice people to view the full posts on my blog.
- The horizontal line function to separate larger sections of my text.
- The link function, keeping in mind that I have to edit links to other posts on my blog to keep from tracking back my own posts.
Additionally, I found that the standard format for my posts work better than aside.
As you can see, there wasn’t much left for me to do for the first assignment.
Deciding on a Change I Could Make
The first assignment did call for me to view Lovecraft’s informational page(s), so I did that. When scanning the links for the demo, I did come across a suggestion to add my logo to my header, so that is what I have done.
Before, I didn’t include a logo on the first page. Here is a screenshot from February of this year:
Of course, you can tell that I went back to a plain white background.
Here is a screenshot with my logo:
I had the vector for the logo in an Illustrator document, so I played with the size until I was pleased. (However, I could have edited the image within WordPress.)
The current size of the logo is 100px by 100px. It’s not too large or too small. However, I don’t quite like how it sits. If there was a way to change the orientation for free, I would do that.
Shmaltz and Menudo 
I love what you’ve accomplished with this theme. I started loving this theme early on when I didn’t have the stones [really don’t have stones] to tweak around with it. You have made a wonderful effort, and your blog shows what’s possible. I especially like how clean and bright your blog is. I feel right at home here, and can easily navigate & enjoy your posts. You logo is smart, and has the word “elegant” shouting out to your visitors. Cool beans!!!
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Aw, thanks a lot, Sparkyjen.
When I first adopted this theme, it was difficult to make the change and step out of my comfort zone a little bit. But I found a way to make this theme work best for me and it started with the widgets. And of course, I was thinking about navigational and visual concerns for my visitors.
I feel the same way you do. The setup makes me feel right at home (and moreso than the previous theme did). There is such a clean look to Lovecraft and that is why I loved it from the first try.
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it looks fantastic and works wonderfully! I have blundered around in the themes and attempted to change things around. I wrote acres of pages of bloggery about it..but went back to what i understand. I wish I understood exactly what you wrote, but am satisfied that though I will never understand this computer stuff, my blog works anyway! Jealous of your ability to make the changes!
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Thanks, Suze. It took me some time to be brave enough to change my theme from the one I initially chose.
But you can mess with your theme, too. When you have the time, test things out and see how they look you can preview changes and click out of them without saving.
The real heroes are the ones who developed these themes. I know a little bit about coding but not enough to make awesome themes like this one.
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the only thing i know about coding is “code blue”
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