Personal

Personal is a blue, 3-column WordPress theme with two widget-ready sidebars, custom templates, a banner switcher, custom text styles, integrated plugins, and a unique way to display entry dates and comment-number links. You can preview it here. It’s compatible with WordPress 2.3 and has been tested with in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, Opera, and Safari.

Features

• banner switcher
• custom templates:
  • archives
  • links
• integrated plugins:
  • Author Highlight
  • Comment License
  • WP-PageNavi
  • WP-PostRatings
• typography / text styles:
  • alert
  • download
  • info
  • note
• translatable

Upcoming Features

• more plugin integrations
• theme options
• more text styles

Known Issues

Alex fixed the only known issue (invisible entry date and comments link).

Design notes

(Since the preview, I’ve changed the green to blue because SO MANY OF YOU complained about it.) I realize this final look doesn’t actually scream Personal, but I like it the way it is. This is the finalized version because I ran out of ideas. And usually, when you run out of ideas or don’t know what else to add, it’s time to stop or start taking away some elements to clear up the design. Otherwise, you’ll clutter it. Also, I can’t work on it now… even if I want to. I accidentally… MERGED ALL OF THE LAYERS!!! so now the PSD file is one big layer. Fortunately, I can still slice this design and then code it. But of course, it’ll be more time consuming to do it with only one layer. Furthermore Before coding it, I’ll be working on a new design for another new theme. What I wanted out of this design binge was to delve deeper into grunge, line art, and general illustrations because those are my weaknesses. However, I don’t have several more weeks to experiment with shapes, colors, textures, and etcetera, which are all required to hone my skills and develop a unique style that I can call my own.

The preview above is the not-yet-finalized version of the latest design that I’m working on. At this moment, the Personal theme looks ironically not-so-personal. Generic is more fitting. That’s because I pulled this design together through CSS design galleries. After finalizing it, I’ll show you all of my sources and show you how easy it is to simply mash up good lookin’ designs, then end up with a horrible lookin’ one. By the way, just to clarify it for you, the name of this theme is Personal. It doesn’t mean I’ll use it for my personal blog.

2.0.0 — Rebuilt as a modern block theme with accessible templates, responsive layout controls, and current WordPress and PHP compatibility.

We will keep the theme compatible with supported WordPress and PHP releases, refine accessibility, and publish focused improvements based on real user feedback.