New Look

I spent the weekend, off-and-on, working on the theme for this site. I’m not completely happy with the result —  there are a few things I need to hammer out — but I feel like I’ve spruced up the place adequately to take down the Maintenance sign and let the site be open to the public again.

While I was at it, I reorganized some of the material here. I’ve implemented redirects for pages I removed or combined, and they should be working–the pages I had up for every musical project available for download are now all on the Music page, for example–but if you see anything that looks odd, or behaves strangely, please let me know.

(Except for the Read More function on the main Blog index. I know it looks weird as-is, and I’ll have it sorted out as soon as I can.)

Some might say the old site was working fine, and that updating wasn’t necessary, but I think a website should look good, not just good-enough. I’ll explain that in another post later this week, about what I did with our film production site…

8 thoughts on “New Look

  1. Sorry to be brutally honest, but I hate it. Mainly, because the text is now so much more difficult to read: the font size is much too small, and the dark grey color against a light grey background is not enough of a contrast for easy reading (the previous black on white was much better). I’m seriously squinting at the writing, and it’s difficult not to get distracted – if not overwhelmed – by the colorful pictures, whereas I felt they really complimented the writing previously.

    Also, why is my comment in italics as I write it, if not – I don’t know yet – in the final, published version? It makes it a little confusing if I do want to add an actual italic to it!

    1. Hey,

      No worries. The font color and size are a couple of those little things I was thinking about changing, once the basics of the theme were finally working. It’s just I’ve been in front of a computer long enough today that I’ll put that bit off till tomorrow.

      I don’t know what’s up with the italics in the comment box — I’d never have known if you hadn’t mentioned it, since I usually reply to comments through the backend of the site — so thanks for pointing it out. I’ll see if I can’t fix that, as it really is inappropriate.

      Thanks for the comments. I’ll see if I can’t make the template more likeable in the next day or two…

  2. Hm… no more italics in the comment box. That’s kind of a relief. But it’s possible to write italics if you want them.

    Also, the color scheme is a work in progress, as there are all kinds of colors scattered through the stylesheet and I have to figure out what they’re for before I adapt them to whatever I decide I want. Still thinking about blues instead of browns…

    Doing away with that background helped, but I do miss having something textured. Maybe a semi-transparent, re-colored version of that background might be preferable.

  3. I like the layout, but I’m forced to agree with James about the font. I don’t know if it’s the font itself, or its serif-i-ness, or just the background/foreground color combo, but to my eyes it looks as though everything (and not just the headings) have a bit of drop-shadow.

    1. Huh, yeah, I’m not 100% crazy about the font either at the moment, just kind of overloaded with other things. I’ll try experiment a bit and see if there’s something I like better.

      1. Changed the font, but it looks like there are still some nitpicky font-size changes I’ll need to make, or more likely lines of CSS code I’ll want to cut. I’m not sure why italicized links in the sidebar are subtly different in color from surrounding text, but absolutely requires addressing.

        As for seeing weird drop-shadows on text, I think it may be a side effect of seeing the drop shadows on the header menu above the text. Not sure, I’ll experiment with fonts and see…

        1. Gord, may I just add, that I also met alot of wonderful Buddhist and Atheist Koreans during my time in and around Seoul. I did seem to find amongst both Catholics and Protestants there, that there was a disdain for religions that were not “Christian”. While I find this attitude with some Evangelical Christians in Toronto, I do not find it with many mainstream Protestants and Catholics. May I also add that there were one or two Korean Protestants that I met who were cool folks. Keep in mind this attitude is not just found in Korea. My friend works at Tyndale College in T.O, and has found the same disgusting attitude in most of the Evangelical Christians there. As for that priest who made that comment, keep in mind there is an inert prejudice found in Korean culture against Korean women dating foreigners. My Korean friend (she is of no faith) told me that Korean women who date foreigners are looked down upon. It seems they think that foreign men only want Korean women for sex or Korean women only want foreign men for money. I’m quite surprised that Korea isn’t as Christian as I once thought. If you lived in Munhak Dong area in Incheon, you’d be almost convinced that they’ve taken over. The Church that my school headmasters were always trying to get us to join is LifeSpring Church in Songdo. Apparently, the pastor is from California and says God told him to build a church there (funny there and not some place like Dong Incheon). If you look at their Facebook Group, you’ll notice that they have to show off ever baptism, prayer circle and the like. That’s not something you find amongst Catholics or mainstream protestants. Anyways, good to hear Koreans are turning their noses up at them.

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