Blogging Feature Random musings RPG Site News

Look at the shiny new theme!

I did a major redesign of “Stargazer’s World” yesterday and although not everything is working as it should, I am very happy with the result so far. Of course there are some minor drawbacks, like the loss of the starscape background. I tried to put it back in, but it looked a bit weird.

Stargazer's WorldOk, let’s have a look at the new features after the break then…

  • Featured Posts
    There’s a javascript-powered carousel at the top of the page now that shows a few featured posts. By clicking on the small numbers you can jump directly to one of the slides and by clicking onto “Read more” you get transported to the post Featured Posts
  • Social Widgets
    Links to my site’s Facebook page, the RSS feed, my Delicious bookmarks and Twitter now appear directly in the new theme’s sidebar to the right.
    Social Widgets
  • Subscribe by email
    The new theme also has a nice Feedburner widget that allows you to subscribe to my blog’s posts by email instead of RSS. Just enter your email into the given text field and click subscribe. The counter left of the button shows how many people have currently subscribed to the feed (in either format).
    Feedburner Widget
  • Google Ajax Search
    The Search function in the sidebar is now powered by Google and uses AJAX to directly show the results in the sidebar instead of reloading the whole page.
  • RP Media Network Banner
    The new themes sidebar is luckily wide enough to allow me to add more social widgets in the future. I already added the Role Play Media Network’s banner to the sidebar. I am currently considering adding Google Friend Connect again.

Of course not everything is working as it should and there are a few things I want to add in the future. For example I had to remove the Flash-powered category cloud, because it obviously messed with the code of the theme and since I have reworked the main page from the original theme almost completely, there might still be a few kinks to work out.
I will also shorten the blogroll a bit, but I am thinking about adding a dedicated blogroll page. A lot of things are currently in planning, but I am not sure what will see fruition and what not. So please bear with me and let me know if you encounter anything that doesn’t work as it is supposed to.

Update: I actually added the blogroll page, I mused about while writing that post. You can check it out here.
Stargazer

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team. In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games. Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

view all posts

Related Posts

5 comments

comments user
Misterecho

It's very nice, you have to fit in something spacey somewhere though 🙂

Perhaps a little planet in the title bar. 🙂
.-= Misterecho´s last blog ..What’s wrong with a good ole Dungeon delve? =-.

Reply
comments user
MJ Harnish

I like the new theme.

What plug-in/widget are you using for the carousel? I've been wanting to add one to my blog but the ones I've tried so far have been pretty buggy.
.-= MJ Harnish´s last blog ..What happened to Shaintar? =-.

Reply
comments user
Stargazer

The carousel is part of the theme.

http://www.skinpress.com/greymag-wordpres-theme/

Reply
comments user
Sal Abdin

How can I move or disable the Twitter Entries feed in the sidebar? I can’t move it from 1st position in the sidebar and when I leave the Twitter info blank it still stays there. Cheers
.-= Sal Abdin´s last blog ..Did Google Steal My Soul? =-.

Reply
comments user
Stargazer

You can either remove your Twitter username from the Greymag Skin Options or you have to make some changes to the themes' source code. When you have some basic PHP and HTML skills, it should be either enough.

Reply