In my last post, I announced the release of my Hybrid theme framework, which is a damn sweet WordPress theme. I figured it was time to give it a live test run here on my own personal blog.
Plus, I was really tired of my last design. I simply needed a change.
This is more of a pit stop for my site though. This isn’t the final design, but it’s nice to look at something a little different for a change.
I also stole the header design idea from Cozmoslabs.
Why change if this isn’t the final design?
Other than needing change, I wanted to take advantage of some of the SEO benefits that weren’t included in my last design. Hybrid takes care of this need.
This theme makes things so much easier to use. I’ve always used custom fields to input things into the post, but the extra Hybrid meta box on the Write Post screen makes things much quicker.
I also wanted to see how quickly I could put together a child theme and write some custom functions for it. I think I finished in just under five hours. Granted, a much more complex design would take much longer. This let me see what types of things needed changing within the Hybrid theme itself.
This is the first time I’ve used widgets on my site. Widgets aren’t my thing because I like to have a lot more control, so I’ll be writing a custom function to handle a more dynamic sidebar. Or, maybe writing some custom widgets.
You definitely need to be using Hybrid
This blog is in no way representative of what you can actually do with the theme as this is just a personal blog.
So, hop on over to Theme Hybrid and grab the Hybrid theme to try it out for yourself.
I like the new design on here Justin, the black and white looks really elegant. I can’t help noticing the search field looks a bit out of place though when it is selected, maybe it would look better a bit thinner?
When I opened the site I thought am in the wrong place :p. I like the site simplicity, and use of black and white colors.
Jylan Wynne
Yeah, I’ve gotta get around to fixing that search a little. I was having a little trouble with Internet Explorer so I was compromising a bit.
Ba7eth
You’re the second person to tell me that you thought you were in the wrong place. After the first, I thought I’d get off my butt and write this post.
I’m glad its temporary. Looks WAY too much like http://www.themeshaper.com.
mkjones
Ian Stewart is always one of my biggest inspirations for design. I’d love to have a blog that looks as good as his. But, if you can put this design in the same league as ThemeShaper’s design, then I might keep it for a while.
Hey Justin,
I understand why they look quite similar. You are creating a theme framework, much like he has so it makes sense that they would inherit the same type of elements.
For 5 hours work its technically good but missing the design polish which I’m sure you’ll add later.
Not keen on the darkness, how about some colour
My last design had too much color for my normal tastes, so I wanted to go pretty bland with this one and try to focus solely on typography. I might add a bit of color here and there at some point though.
Yes, Ian and I are both creating frameworks, which draw heavily from the Sandbox theme and lots of other places in the WordPress world. That’s the beauty of the GPL working for ya’ there. He’s actually the first person listed under the Credit section in the
readme.htmlincluded with the theme.Yeah I wanted to say the site looks like ThemeShaper, but not in the style, just the colors and the general layout. I cannot say the two sites are identical though.
Back to the design this looks great, Justin. This design looks a book which is easy to read
Will you convert your old retro theme into a Hybrid/Options/Structure/Visionary child theme?
I’m thinking of releasing Retro-fitted as a child theme for Hybrid. It probably would have to be a WP 2.7-only child theme though because I’ll need to overwrite some of the layout from the child theme.
There are some vital differences between each theme’s structure within the post section that I’ll have to change. Other than that, it’ll be easy to convert the design over.
Things are looking good here. I look forward to seeing where they wind up. You know I’m watching Hybrid development closely, right?
This might ease your widget pain, Justin: Widget Logic.
Yeah, I know you’re watching it. I’m just hoping to make it Thematic’s fierce rival.
Thanks for the link to the plugin. I was looking for that the other day too. I’m going to try out a few different plugins to see if they give me the kind of control I want. If I like any of them enough, I’m going to drop off a few page-defined widget sections from Hybrid and add a few more in various places in the theme.
hi justin
i have been a follower of ur blog and themes for a long time.
i like this new design but not the same as the older one . the previous one was really great one the colours the search bar and everything was so great. could see everything on the page with in few seconds of getting into the page. the lack of differentation in this page some thing i dint like.
anyway its just one opinion. hybrid theme is great. looking farward to using it on mysite.
all the best for popcritics.com
I was a bit tired of the old design. I liked it a lot for the first couple of months, but looking at it every day for as long as I’ve had it up got a little old. I’ll definitely be sprucing this up with a more full-featured design at some point.
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