Shanghai Tech Writer

DailyBlogTips just released a new WordPress theme called DarkZen. It’s a simple, minimalist design and I’ve adopted this new design to this Shanghai Tech Writer blog!  I tweaked the templates a little to adjust the width as well as modify the sidebar content. The layout isn’t too different from my previous layout, but I like this style much better. I like having the navigation menu at the very top of the page instead of next to the blog title. Also, I like having a list of popular articles at the top of the sidebar. The post date as well as the category links fit nicely in the post title. However, I don’t like the gray color for the linked text. I have to do some experimenting to see what color will work well with this color scheme.

Total time to implement and tweak this new theme: 2 hours

It should really take only a few minutes to implement a new WordPress theme. Many themes are widget-ready and allow users to customize the sidebar content easily. However, I prefer working with the actual templates and customizing the stylesheet to my heart’s content. That’s the beauty of WordPress! Changing themes can be as simple as one click or as advanced/customized as I want.

A year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to customize a theme template the way I do today. Thanks to my job at National Instruments, all technical writers are well-trained in working with HTML, XML, and CSS.  With this new skill, I’ll probably be updating a new theme every few months, or whenever I get tired of the current theme.

DailyBlogTips has several WordPress themes you can download for free. Check out their WordPress Themes page!

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