E.Share

The poll is closed, the votes are counted, and the results are interesting. The table below shows the actual breakdown of the poll votes, of which there were 2,651. As you can see, there were four main contenders: Dean J. Robinson’s Fluency-based submissions (two variations), the existing 2.7 interface, and Matt Thomas’s comp (MT), which exists somewhere between them in terms of style. Note: GB was a late entry, and was posted after over 900 votes had already been collected.

As several people have rightly pointed out, the Fluency-style designs not only took the top spot, but in combination added up to a higher percentage than any other. We’re not focusing solely on that statistic, though, because had other designers submitted multiple versions, the numbers might have looked different. What was most interesting for me was checking in on the votes over the course of the two days the poll was open. The top three (Fluency-dark, Current 2.7, MT) kept beating each other out for the #1 spot as they cycled back and forth through the top three slots, and had the poll closed on time (left it open a little longer in case anyone translated the time zone incorrectly), the order would have been a bit different.

What’s more interesting to me is the overall style that seems to be preferred among voters, as Matt’s comp has some stylistic similarities to Dean’s (see image at left). It also would be interesting to know how many of the votes for the current 2.7 interface were based on thinking it looked the best vs. how many were votes against changing the interface at all so soon after the 2.7 redesign. If you want to comment on what you liked best and/or least about any of the designs, this thread is a good place.

So what happens now? However we look at it, the Fluency-style designs clearly have a lot of fans. Then again, so do the designs of Matt Thomas (he’s behind the current style of 2.7, remember, in addition to the comp labeled MT). To give the interface the attention it is due, and to take seriously some of the interface feedback around usability and accessibility, we’re going to leave the looks alone for 2.8. It’s our guess that a revised style will make into 2.9 early in the development cycle to allow us plenty of time for user testing and revision. How close it winds up being to the comps submitted in this design tweaks challenge will depend, but in the meantime:

Congratulations, Dean J. Robinson, on winning the vote!

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Today we have a very clean ported theme, originally designed as a free template by Brad of DemusDesign, and ported into WordPress by myself. This theme has the usual Gravatar support and WordPress tag support. This theme is coded for WordPress 2.7 and above only, which means it won’t work in previous versions of WordPress, but also means you can take advantage of threaded comments and comment pagination.

There are three widgetized areas as well as a convenient theme options page where you can change a number of things, both of which will be gone over below.

Live Demo | Download

And now onto the widget areas and theme options page…

Widgetized Areas

This theme is broken up into three widgetized areas. Two are in the sidebar and one in the footer. The following diagram will illustrate where exactly these are located.

Okay, the sidebar and footer are pretty straightforward, but what are the “testimonials” for exactly? Well, you can put any text you want in there pretty much whether it be a site slogan, testimonial, or something else. It’s best if you use the text widget only for this widgetized area. If you can’t think of anything to put there, no worries, because it can be easily removed in the theme options page.

Theme Options

This theme comes with a simple options page, where you can control a few aspects of the theme. Simply go to Appearance -> Mountain Leaves Options. Here’s what it looks like:

The first part of the options page is for the “About Me” portion of the footer, since I figured it wouldn’t be practical as a text widget.

• Title: You could change this to something like “About Us” or “About This Blog,” whatever you think would be appropriate. The default is set to: “About Me”
• Image URL: If you have a small avatar-like image (around 42×42), simply put the full path to that image in this box. If you don’t have one, no problem. No image will be displayed if that is the case.
• Message: You can write a little about yourself and/or your blog in this box. Just a few sentences would be enough.

The second part of the options page are just quick options for the sidebar area.

• Sidebar Title: This is how you change the green text displayed directly above the sidebar widget area (mapped out in the diagram above). The default is set to: “This is the sidebar”
• Disable Testimonials Widget: Like I mentioned above, you can disable the testimonials widget. You can do this by simply checking off this box. Even if you have the text widgets defined for the “Testimonials” area, they won’t be displayed if this box is checked.

Thanks once again to this post from the Theme Forest blog for the code used, which I also used for the Underwater theme (also designed by DemusDesign).

Conclusion

I really like this design, and I think it could be customized into different looks, while still using the same theme code base. For example, replace the autumn trees header background image with something else, change the colors, etc. If anyone has any suggestions on possible styles to be based on the Mountain Leaves theme in the form of child themes, I’m all ears.

Well, that should be just about everything. If you have any quick questions, feel free to comment on this post. Remember, support related queries should go in the support forums. I do my best to check there daily. Hope you like the theme. Enjoy!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mgyYTW2w19c/RoVzuNwhm8I/. MLA: “Details Women in Civil War.” ProQuest. 8 May 2009 <http://proquest.umi.com/ pqdweb?index=3&did=1438828061&SrchMode=1&sid=4&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309 ...

2009 edu:2048/journals/resources_for_american_literary_study/v027/27.1plu…>. Sainer, Arthur. The New Radical Theater Notebook. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema, 1997. Shepard, Sam. ... Topic : [Sculpting Society at Theatre in the ...

2009 edu:2048/journals/resources_for_american_literary_study/v027/27.1plu…>. Sainer, Arthur. The New Radical Theater Notebook. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema, 1997. Shepard, Sam. ...

Downloaded 12/11/08 from http://www.academicleadership.org.ezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/ideas_worth_merit/453.shtml. Perlmutter, D. D. (2007, January 5). Managing up. Chronicle of Higher Education. ...

Luis Valdez: Early Works, Actos. Houston, Texas: Arte Publico Press, 1994. Wood, Peter. “Behind the Bars.” Project Muse 16 Feb 2009 ezproxy.umw.edu:2048/journals/performing_arts_journal/v030/30.1wood.pdf>. ...

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http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/pqdweb?index=2&did=1630386312&SrchMode=1&sid=3&Fmt=10&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=HNP&TS=1241009213&clientId=3740. The article titled "W.H.O. Supports Wider Use of DDT to Combat Malaria" by ...