I think it's about time I talk about the WordPress theme I use throughout this website. It was originally born as a ‘test project', until it wasn't anymore. It started as a playground to explore building WordPress themes and plugins, but then I figured I could put in features I wanted from a theme. Here I'll explain the principles I used to build it.
📱 Responsive & Mobile-first
Long are gone the days where browsing was a purely desktop activity. Making a theme for desktop browsing alone, it's not enough.
That's why this theme is responsive and optimized for mobile, because the majority of web browsing nowadays it's done from a mobile device. Responsivity ensures that no matter what device you're browsing from, the web pages will be rendered correctly.
🖌 Structure & Coloring
First off, I expect from a theme, to have a designed structure (shapes, shadows & similar). I wanted a modern and minimalist theme, because I think the user has to focus more on the content, than the theme. Overcomplicating the structure would destroy the purpose.
Given a certain structure, I want the freedom to change colors and I'd rather not do it in code, as I don't always have the patience or the time to do it that way. This can be achieved by making a dynamic theme. I achieved this by taking the Bulma
css and put in a few ‘holes', that will be filled with the user color preferences.
📰 Content
With regards to content, there are customizations a theme could implement to emphasize the content better. Make sections stand out, use icons and the like.
Within this theme, I implemented CSS classes
that do that. The theme embeds Material Design Icons and Font Awesome, you can use them throughout your articles.
👥 Social Menu
A website is a fantastic way to make other users find you in other parts of the internet. That's why it's important to let you have full control over this aspect. I could embed the most used social networks, but what if you didn't use them?
Therefore, I decided to let you specify what elements to have in the menu. All you need is the icon, the colors, the name and the url. You can customize it directly in the WordPress customizer interface.
📊 Analytics
The majority of the users that own a WordPress website, shouldn't be concerned with technicalities, they shouldn't be editing files if there's another way to do things.
That's why I decided to make it as simple as could be. When your analytics software gives you the tracking code, all you have to do is paste it in the Analytics section of the website, and the theme will do everything else.
❤️ Credits
This theme has been made possible thanks to various users and pieces of technologies, such as:
Every person that shares free knowledge on the web
Esky Theme
is open source software licensed under GPLv3. You can download the latest release here
. To get the most out of the theme, and to know how to use this theme proficiently, reading the wiki
is recommended if not required.
If you want to chat about this project, ask questions, or have a chat, feel free to join us on telegram
, or in our matrix community
, see you there!
I created this project for fun and I maintain it so anyone who wishes to, can enjoy using it as much as I enjoyed creating it. If you like what I do, and wish I could keep it alive and do even more, please, consider supporting me
.
Would you like to give your impressions on this post? Write it online, then paste the link of your response here to send me a Webmention