Continue reading »]]> The new design around here is based on the latest work by the guys at Revolution Two.  Brian Gardner is the lead developer with Revolution Two, and actually developed the shell for our auction and real estate site, prior to launching Revolution Two.  From the initial shell, I got under the hood and did a serious mod.  In fact, much of the original functionality has been changed to meet our needs.

Based on my knowledge of Brian and the Revolution series, I was excited when they announced they would be rolling out open-source Revolution themes.  In fact, Revolution Office really caught my eye.  That is the basis for my current design.  However, I just couldn’t leave well enough alone.  I had to get under the hood and do some mod work.

Most of the core remains the same.  I did do some work on the padding of the sidebar to allow better display of two line post titles.  I also changed how the “featured image” posts display.  Well, the title of them anyways.  If you hover your mouse over a feature image, it will now tell you the title of the post rather than a 25 word excerpt of the post.   Also, the feature image on top now shows all my posts rather than just a specific category.  I may play with that in the future, but for now, I wanted to feature all my posts.  As far as the featured posts along the bottom of the home page, I again included all my posts rather than limit them to a specific category.  This is a bit repetitive of the upper feature box, but you get more information along the bottom.

I also updated the links on single post pages.  Out of the box, it was impossible to determine where permalinks where in a post.  So, I added a css division for links within a post.  They are now underlined.

For the most part, the rest of the theme stayed pretty close to the out of the box state.  For me, some of the most fun is getting my hands dirty and getting under the hood and tweaking, improving, and changing the themes.

If you’re interested in starting your own site, or have questions about my modifications, feel free to connect with me.