Finally – The Look!

Okay, so I have been tinkering with the look of the site over the past few days. Thankfully, I seem to have found exactly what I want the site to look like. Earlier there were lots of transparent textures, even as content backgrounds. Well, they’re gone now. And the biggest (and the best, IMO) change is the big background image at the back, which can be changed to impart an altogether look whenever needed. :D

Oh, and the backgrounds are all a part of my little photography collection, so no infringements there, for a change. :)

And another thing – this site looks the way it is meant to look, if you use Firefox/Opera. I have not bothered to make it compatible with Internet Explorer, sorry. So if you’re still stuck with IE, do yourself a favour and get Firefox! ;)

So what has changed?

Alright, I said I would list out the changes and why they were made. So here they are, in a neat list:

  • The site is no longer ‘just a blog’. I wanted to make it a platform for all my future endeavours. The scope for expansion through a blog is limited, in my opinion.
  • There are 3 additional sections now, namely Art, Digital Art and Photography. Earlier I used to publish all of my creations in posts under a category. But this time I decided that it would be better to allocate a separate page where I can showcase them. It could have been possible through WordPress, but I decided against it.
  • The site is no longer based entirely on WordPress. I wanted to design something that had my unique imprint on it. Designing a WordPress theme was too cumbersome and hardly left a lot of room for experimentation.
  • The blog now uses a custom theme, matching perfectly with the look of the rest of the site. That was probably the second most difficult part.
  • The most difficult part was deciding on the layout, colours and such. I borrowed ideas and resources from other websites that I had seen and admired, tweaked them, added lots of my own inputs and conjured up something that looks like this.

And most importantly, now I can call this site another one of my own creations. It’s an altogether different feeling to make something from scratch and then watch it running flawlessly (almost). :D

And before I forget, I’ve also lost most of the links in my blogroll so if any of you were on my list, do tell me so I can add you back! And if you were not on my list earlier, you can be now! :)

Oh, and another thing. The site is still in BETA, so if you spot any odd behaviour or if something looks out of place, do notify me through the comments or through e-mail.

Cheers! :)

A *New* New Look

It didn’t last long. I thought it would.

But sadly, I’ve decided to discard the theme that I customized for myself and revert to a run-of-the-mill WordPress theme. Gone is the big header that screamed ‘Abhi’ and gone are the  plans that I had for creating something more than ‘just a blog’. The gallery which had a measly 3 photos is no longer there. The homepage or index has been sent packing. All that’s left is this blog. Mind you, it wasn’t a hasty decision to scrap the entire structure. There were quite a few things that I kept in mind while doing so.

First of all, it was getting too difficult to maintain a consistent look throughout the entire site. Make one change and I had to repeat it 3 times over.

Then, the colour scheme didn’t look too good after a while. I had worked hard to put it all together and in the beginning I was awestruck by it. But slowly I realized that the structure of the site and the look were just not good enough.

It was too plain. It was static. There was hardly any content. In short, it was too boring.

And then I suddenly realized that I don’t actually need all that stuff which I had planned on making.

So this is how it all looks now. Barebones but better than before, methinks. Maybe now I can concentrate more on writing rather than fiddling with the HTML and CSS. ;)