Cutlock & Co has had a design makeover.
Nothing greatly wrong with the old look, which has been the same since the start. However it wasn’t perfect for meeting Google’s new emphasis on being “mobile-friendly”. And I’d been on the look out for a simple “magazine” format for ages, although not necessarily for this website. This new WordPress theme {1} appeared to fit the bill, so time for a play!
The design allows, indeed encourages, greater use of images. I’ve started bringing out ones already somewhere on the site, to brighten up individual items and creating a ‘feature’ strip on the front page – to highlight favourite, most read or perhaps most overlooked pieces. There’s a danger that this adds to download delays, so if you find page load times too slow, or any other issues, please say. It’s easy to switch back, not that I want to.
No new content to see (yet), but this might just make some material more readable. And also spur more delving into the image archives – your contributions welcome too!
Anyone want to knock together a little logo to replace the rather boring site title? {4}
We may experiment a little more … Done so far: tweaked the colours for the front page excerpt. Also banner image has been re-done.
Notes
1. The new design theme is ‘Gazette‘, produced by Automattic. Available for wordpress.com sites, and self-hosted too although not yet on the wordpress.org theme directory.
2. The ‘featured’ image on this post is of the Scott family. The photo of our namesake Ann Harriet Howes nee Cutlock, with daughter Gertie, resides on the Howes family page.
3. The ‘Favourite’ button was added a few weeks back, but is more prominent with the new design. Any articles that you’ve favourited are listed at the top of the ‘Full Listing‘ page (uses cookies, so will also depend on browser/device). UPDATE: have decided that this additional element wasn’t really worthwhile – switched off.
4. Have now done a cheap and cheerful job on a logo myself, from a fairly obvious source. Thanks to Pete for the tweaks to make it half way decent.
Have something to add?