I will always have a soft spot in my heart for one of Drupal’s default themes, Chameleon, but it was time for a refresh. Sometime this morning, my own custom theme “Instant Design” will turrned on.

It’s based on BlueprintCSS, which truth be told is a rather great CSS framework once you’re used to it. The default fonts it provides are gorgeous – when I can get them to work.

The front page will show the biggest differences, particularly as it now looks more like a front page to a bona fide website rather than just some blog.

The design is still very much a work in progress, but I would estimate it’s 85% done and (hopefully) 100% serviceable, so I’m launching it live to work out the bugs and to slowly update the features over the next couple of weeks. This will allow me to hopefully resume my regularly scheduled blog postings.

Some known bugs/to do’s:

  • Weird graphical glitch on front page images
  • PHP problems don't let me put HTML text beneath the list of latest Instant History posts
  • Too many links are hardcoded rather than Drupal-administrator editable
  • The header is kind of ugly. I have a font I want to use, but it's being tricky
  • Did I include a space for ads/promotional?
  • The left sidebar images will made mouse overs
  • As I build out content to fit, the three columns will include more inbound links
  • The analytics information on the front page is made up - and will probably be just deleted
  • Site search is only available on a dedicated page
  • Images should be better web optimized, for the sake of my poor server

I’m a bit worried about how this will effect Google spidering, but the update shouldn’t break any links except possibly the front page RSS. Feel free to e-mail me or comment here with any other problems you notice: ANY feedback is very appreciated.

Coincidentally, I upgraded the spam blocking from manual to Mollom yesterday. It should reduce CAPTCHAs you have to deal with while providing near instant (no pun intended) joy as your comments are moderated in real time.

Further Reading: