In an effort to focus time spent here more on content and not mucking about with design and bells and whistles, I’m conducting a bit of an experiment by going with the straight up stock default WordPress theme vs. a Studiopress theme and/or various plugins. It’s also my effort to better understand the stock features of WordPress and Jetpack – many of which I currently have no idea with regards to their usage or function, even though I’ve been developing WordPress sites for several years now.
In addition with the increase of doing actual day-job work on WordPress sites, my desire to noodle with the design and features of my own has dwindled. In fact, part of the reason I never post here is because visiting has become quite ponderous. Social media has – for all intents and purposes – supplanted the blog for the most part. I often forget though, that the Jetpack Publish feature will automatically post these to my various social media sites.
I keep telling my clients that the web has shifted from a few years ago and more emphasis is now on both content and usability – particularly mobile responsiveness/friendlyness – with regards to sites and less so on fancy designs and gimmicks. One benefit of the stock WP theme is that it’s mobile responsive right out of the box. (Not that the Studiopress themes aren’t – they are, but just saying.) Websites have essentially become online apps that people use to execute a need – be it read your post, find you company, buy your thing.
Among other things on the to-do list is to once and for all try to assemble some sort of online portfolio of my design work. Over the years I’ve used various methods including galleries on this page, galleries on photo sites such as flickr or Google+ and third party sites like Behance all to various levels of success/satisfaction. I’d really like to find one solution and stick with it.
Call it an exercise in minimalism if you will, but really what I’m trying to do is strip things down in order to get more. It just occurs to me that coincidentally, I’m trying to do the same in the real world as well.