Adding layer upon layer of uncommented complexity.
If all I want to remove is “Posted by admin” I should not have to write a child theme, nor should I have to guess through code.
If you write themes and you want ME to be able to make MY site look how I want then you should make it easy for ME to make changes.
But you don’t.
TIL that her Italian home has a dungeon.
I could rarely justify the price of the magazine given it’s multi-format nature and the information I didn’t care for about industry types. But I was always interested in their scores. Games had to work hard to please this mag and pre-metacritic I used it as one of the more trusted sources when I wasn’t sure about a purchase.
This is a paid review. Ridge Racer Unbounded review – Edge Magazine. Whoever wrote that has not played the game. Whoever wrote that has never played Ridge Racer. Whoever wrote that was too busy counting the backhander while copy-pasting the text they were sent.
I recall lots of EDGE reviews where they would call a game crap when others would call it okay. They would call warm when others said Hot. But I cannot recall a review where they said Excellent and everyone else scored it less. 14 reviews and they lead the pack with that score of 9. My memory serves me correctly (for once) – their stats pages show that in 84% of their 2,033 reviews they score harsher than the average critic. In fact “On average, this publication grades 9.5 points lower than other critics.”.
Metacritic has Ridge Racer Unbounded at 75 which is where I’d expect an arcade racer to be these days. They are less about racing and more about gimmicks now. But if ever there was a signal that the company behind this game needs a high metacritic score and are willing to pay this this is that signal. If you don’t play games and don’t realise the impact Metacritic has – check this post at ars technica on what a single point cost.
As for EDGE? No point reading that site any more and their reviews are now worthless.
Is there a theme anywhere that is designed solely for writing? A design that focuses solely on the words? I cannot find one and I have looked in many different places.
Call me old-fashioned but I think blogging is about writing. Not pictures, embeds, widgets, shortcodes or multiple layouts. I see that WP is used in different ways by different users for different purposes but what I do not see is a theme that has been designed solely for the writer.
Here are 4 that I think get closer than most:
Journalist is a smart, minimal theme designed for professional journalists.
Blaskan is a forever free high quality theme focused on what WordPress does best: blogging.
The Erudite – A theme for writers who want readers
Manifest – A clean and streamlined theme that focused on the content and not the distractions.
I think these along with those at http://www.plaintxt.org/ but none seem to hit the right spot where typography and overall design have been honed to perfection. The above stand out because they have no images when compared to almost every other theme.
What is stopping a designer crafting a theme that caters solely for the writer? Complexity maybe? The design would have to take fonts and all their properties along with the width of the theme, make the display of everything such as author, date published, comments, cats/tags/links customisable and optional then create some suggested defaults. Give the blog owner control of just about everything without using those two words ‘child theme’. (When a theme creator says “Just make a child theme” it should be treated in the same way as an established coder saying “Write a patch”. It means “if you can, do. If you can’t, ask someone else or put up with it”. Saying ‘Codex’ at this point means ‘go learn how to write a patch’ to which my reply would be “If you are so hot, create options in your themes not the obstacle that is a child theme”).
This post was inspired partly because this has annoyed me for a while but it was more so because over the last few days I have helped someone install WP and as a writer all they want to do is write. They have a very tidy sidebar, want no images apart from incidentals in posts and despite installing numerous themes not a single one looked or acted like it has the words at it’s heart for them. I was asked if I could help find and I could not get the answer. It looks like we’ll have to use typekit or google fonts but that’s not a great solution. What she wanted was a theme which had been very carefully created for a writer. Neither of us believe there is one.
Finally got round to calling Dell back regarding the microphone not working after the laptop display was replaced. Got through to the right dept quickly, let him access remotely so he could check everything and uninstall/reinstall as needed. He was efficient, told me what was happening , what he was expecting. The upshot is that a new display is needed and someone will be round to the house tomorrow to fix this. Like last time I spoke with them over the phone I could not find fault. Perfect Support from Dell.
“We can either end up living a life that others expect of us or lives based on our own truth. The difference is the difference between living a conscious life or one that is unconscious. And that’s the difference between living and not living.”
The Naked Rambler: The Guardian.
For the first 20 seconds .. ‘was that it?’
I didn’t realise until last week that Liveleak was the new name for Ogrish.