New Edublogs.org Vertigo Theme Ready for Prime Time
Other February 18th, 2008
With a HUGE thanks to James, the new Edublogs.org Vertigo theme is ready to be shown off. Actually there are a couple more minor tweaks, but it is basically ready to go. It is a nice, clean, 3-column (sidebars to the right), 960-pixel wide, custom header, with easy-on-the-eyes viewing (nice for we older folk). It also has an interesting bottom bar which allowed me to remove the META widget from the main area. I may also remove my blogroll since it is there, too (also monthly archives, recent posts, search, etc).
If you don’t like the look and feel of page tabs or links, James’ version of Vertigo removes that visual clutter in the heading area. Apparently, many of you say that you dislike tabs. I simply put my navigational elements in the far right column at the top, where the eyes can still quickly locate those important items (especially if you have added pages as I have).
Faces of Web 2.0 ★ 21st Century Teachers
A couple other features of this theme that I like are: “Leave a Comment” link is at the start of the post, not at the end. Just in case a reader doesn’t read the entire post, they have already been prompted and are orientated to the comment feature; the individual post subject titles are BIG AND JUICY, grabbing the eye’s attention; and last but not final, I also like that the 2 sidebars are wider and the same width (225 pixels) which allows me more freedom of where I choose to insert widgets and such.
For the keen of eye; yes, we still need to tweak the “Recent Comments” formatting and the main body text will be changed to a serif font to help your (and my) eyes out a bit.
The Vertigo theme is available to all edublog.org members in the “Presentation” area of your site administration panel. Also see “Widgets, themes, languages, and more“.
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Frank's Blog - 21CT is licensed under a 
Nice design!! I like the Visiting From widget you have on the side. I would like to put one on my site but I am not sure how you did it as the code they give is in javascript. How did you get around that?
Thanks
Ian
Hi Ian, your blog is very nice as well. Just try sticking the widget code in a text box under Presentation>Widgets. James is allowing some JS.
HI Frank – love how your new theme is working. Actually really jealous. Looks like the font has been fixed? Almost considering it for my personal blog as it is much cleaner than Cutline but I like pages across the top.
@Sue … I would be OK with page links similar to the original Vertigo theme floating across (overlayed) the top of the header and right justified. I would have to redesign my header again … but that is minor. If you want to approach James before too many people get settled in with Vertigo … I’d be willing to go with page links, too.
If the links are on top of the header image, then I don’t have to worry about the page fold dropping further down. I don’t want tabs for sure .. hehe
Frank
Oh no – let me get this right. James worked hard to customise this theme and now you would like me to mention that some might also like pages under the header. I think I might just go into hiding about now – poor James. Thinking that maybe we all like it without the page links under the header (ROFL).
Hi Sue … I am happy as is, really! No complaints. James has been fantastic! I can go either way and be flexible about design changes to suit more people.
Off now to give feedback sessions to teachers that I observed in their classes this week … later…