Welcome To The New Frontier (WordPress Theme)

Last night I committed to what I had posted in my previous article (Why I’m Ditching The Graphene WordPress Theme) and said adios to the overall much beloved and very well used Graphene theme which I had run on my site for many years now, instead switching to what has been an alternative for some time now – Frontier.

I had originally discovered this theme in use on fellow typewriter enthusiasts Ted Munks blog (which I strongly suggest checking out) and really enjoyed the overall look and feel of it. This, of course, was me only seeing it from the reader’s end, but damn if the pages don’t load fast and look pretty sharp. I debated switching to it at that time but decided it would be better to keep it as a reserve on the site, as a “just in case” measure. This was a decision which would prove to be a good one.

I tested the theme on a side project to acceptable results, but I didn’t think there was a reason to finally change over – not until yesterday, of course, and last night around 11 P.M. I made the change, switching the theme over. This in and of itself is as simple as a few mouse clicks, but the secondary steps were a bit of a chore. I had to reset all the widgets to how I like them, had to double, triple and quadruple check that everything seemed to work right, had to tweak a few basic things here and there, and then accept that there are still about a dozen more tiny tweaks that need to be done before I’d consider things back to normal – but hey, the change happened and so far I’m liking what I see. The customization options are very to-the-point, less in-depth than Graphene but it seems most everything I feel I need to change is right there ready and waiting.

Honestly, the biggest complaint I have at the moment is the side ads don’t line up quite right, and a few other bits of code need to be wedged in one way or another, but beyond that, well, at least I know my articles aren’t getting obliterated by a formatting engine that’s just not cooperative. That’s kind of the most critical thing here, I’d think – I can fix the ad display quirk, but I doubt it would be worth my time to try to “fix” the formatting issue I was having with Graphene – a change that would just get reverted in the next update, I’m sure.

I just wish all this mess hadn’t come on a day when I was planning a few semi-major articles. Ah well, I guess those will have to wait until Friday.

More to come, as always.