Since launching this website, I’ve been checking out some of the themes for WordPress. To my shock, there actually aren’t very many that I like. I think it’s because what I want is a specific combination of features that aren’t possible to get with a generic theme unless I custom build one. So for now I’m using the Twenty Fifteen theme made by WordPress themselves since it checks most of those boxes. The funniest thing though is I have built many custom themes for businesses and government departments already, yet I cannot be fussed to make one for myself! The irony right? Well a lot of work goes into building a theme, and let me tell you, after a while you start to appreciate the simple things.
Well let’s see, if I did custom build one, what would it look like? Well honestly, it wouldn’t look much different in terms of layout, but colours and fonts yes maybe! Let’s dive in a bit though and see what else I can muster up in this post.
I don’t need anything too complicated, or too fancy. I just need something that lets me connect with people and for people to find my content easily without much fuss, and to be able to engage meaningfully with what I have written which is also why I have a comments section.
I would actually keep it somewhat similar to how Twenty Fifteen is already because it has a sidebar for customising links which works well on modern displays that have larger horizontal space than vertical space these days. It also gives each post the appearance of a piece of paper which I also quite like. If that’s not enough, it also has all of the necessary accessibility features, print features, reader mode features, and is using best practices in web development in terms of how the elements are set out in the DOM (Document Object Model).
I would probably lean more into this “paper” feel. It also means I get to keep important links on the side so the user doesn’t need to scroll all the way back to the top of the page to get somewhere. It could have some WYSIWYG improvements, especially with the code formatting in different languages with a copy button and syntax highlighting, but for now it’s good enough.
Another aspect I like about this design is it’s modern enough to support responsive layouts like phones and tablets, yet old enough to feel a bit timeless which is what good design is to me personally. I mean it’s ten years old now yet I could have sworn it was new just based on the practical application it has. When I first took a good look at it, I didn’t care how old it was, I just saw it and knew it was the right theme for me for now. In fact I was shocked when I realised how old it was.
Ever notice how certain designs just do that and suddenly the age no longer becomes a factor of consideration? I mean just look at Wikipedia. Sure they tweak it, but that’s just it. They tweak it. And over time they will slowly but gradually add new features like dark mode and allow you to set the width of the content and the size of the text like they have now. They don’t just decide to change it completely and decide to add lots of padding in between paragraphs like some modern themes do, or chuck a bunch of parallax backgrounds like everyone did back in 2012.
It actually amazes me that when something serves a practical purpose in it’s design, it becomes a fixture and no longer needs to change because the form is the function, and the function is the form. They are a complete unit working together. You cannot have the one without the other.
Form without function lacks reason, and function without form lacks identity. Form and function must coexist in order for the design to make sense to the user. Design communicates to the user what it looks like, and what it does.
Another thing that the Twenty Fifteen theme does well is it doesn’t rely on any plugins to actually work. It simply just does. The less plugins the better. They normally introduce additional CSS and JavaScript assets into the browser, further consuming bandwidth. They also increase the surface area for potential vulnerabilities that hackers can get into the site with. A simple WPScan can reveal so much about a site. This theme is also free and didn’t cost me a cent! It was just thanklessly made by WordPress and I appreciate everything they’ve done for the modern web in developing this software! A lot of companies could make something like this expensive and proprietary.
There are a few other things I would enjoy having in a custom theme as well. Such as dark mode, and more theme colour and font adjustments, but other than that, it’s a very good theme and overall I’m pretty impressed by it at the moment. So I’m likely to hold on to this until I eventually start building my own theme. One last thing I really like about this theme too is if I want to change it, I can because it’s open source too! And that’s just what makes this theme even more fitting for me.