Blog Tinkering and Upgrading
I spent my evening tinkering with some colours on the blog. I think about the theme of the blog a lot and see saw on what I want it to look like. I started with the terminal theme, but I am enjoying my adaptation of archie. You can see a history of my tinkering on my construction page.
Before I started this blog1, I had very limited exposure to Markdown, CSS and HTML. Almost all of it is new, and I have enjoyed learning, particularly the interplay between the three. I am still a novice, but at least now I know where to look when I want to find something out.
This evening it started as just a couple of colour changes. I changed the tone of the background in dark mode, and I changed the pink/orange combo to a complementary red. The dark mode bg had really been bothering me, and I think it was the complete lack of saturation. It is now a really dark green blue, which I think is better.
After that, I returned to the idea of the terminal theme. I originally wanted a terminal-esque theme because it fit the focus on 40k I pictured this blog having. As it became more general, it felt better to have a more neutral theme. I still want some 40k posts to have a terminal theme, particularly army fluff or battle reports.
I first tried using some style CSS at the beginning of a post to give the post a unique feel. This worked, but I realised I would have to add this to any posts I wanted to have the effect. Not the end of the world, but not ideal. I could include it in the template, and delete it for most my posts, but that feels a bit clunky.
Next, I used class_name to add custom styling to any posts with that class_name. After a few failed attempts, I got something to work in the theme. There has to be a better way, but I have managed to edit the theme in the body. I updated the class_name on an old 40k post to test.
This works okay, but there are some elements on the page I want to look different. And it feels a bit jarring jumping from one page to the next, as there are so many shared elements, but the pages look completely different.
Then there are fonts! I want to use system fonts to keep the page nice and speedy and minimal. I have updated the font for my blog, which also meant updating the separate font for the 40k post class!
All this got me thinking about the Bear Blog upgrade which gives access to a whopping 10 sites! I am very tempted by this, as I could have a site themed for each of my tabletop armies/games. I haven't taken the plunge yet as I want to be sure Bear is the best place to host all of this. I don't see why not, but I just want to check.
Once I am sure, I will be all in on the lifetime upgrade. What Herman has created here is ideal for me (I am still checking though!). It is the right level of accessible and technical. If it was more technical, I would have bounced off it, unable to get started. The built in themes are really good, and the community has added to them in the way a good community does. The markdown syntax page gives all you need to get started with markdown. And then after a few posts, the tinkering can begin!
I am sure Bear will be the place for me, so I will almost definitely be upgrading. But I'll sleep on it at least.
If anyone is still reading, please inspect my page and check out the styling! I would like to know if the way I have done the theme really is janky! Especially on the Terrain Template post (the test post for different post theming). Let me know by email.
Quack
Site? Page? Blog will do.↩