TheAkiba v2 Starts8

After a couple of weeks on the theme, the second version of TheAkiba is launched. The blog of TheAkiba was set up September 2008 and among these several months I have switched several different themes which now I consider as inadequate for the coming design work. Inspired by Dannychoo’s theme (old version, new layout), I created a WordPress theme and used it for a few months. Everything seems fine but friends keep on talking about the lack of an identity of a website and to me, a lack of a sense of recognition. For sure, building things basing on other people’s work rarely seems fine to me, and that’s why I hurried for the second theme which aim to discover my own sense of design and aesthetics.

Of course, at first, the new design still inspired by lots of websites which I considered to be a mixture of bubbles and textures. After some time spending on the polishing work, things turned out to be fine and I think I’ve found something that is useful for my own taste of design.

Some highlights of the new design. One thing you may noticed before is the navigation menu. In the website performance survey, many friend complain about the poor navigation system and they rarely find things they need and confused by the structure of the site. And that’s how the directory of sitemap was introduced. Scrolling down to the bottom of the page or simply clicking on the “Categories” in the menu and it will take you to the directory/sitemap of the website. In the directory, you can have a clear view of where you’re standing at and what’s next for you. Basically every contents and links are included in the directory. You may also notice a “Project” column on the right side. This is some experiment projects/scripts TheAkiba is using and these projects don’t have direct relation with the blog, maybe cancel some day, maybe not, just for more entertainment. The project will continued to grow and you can always find something new here^^

You may notice the new selection “Random Post” in the navigation menu. Click it and it will redirect you to a random post of the site. If you can’t find what you need or simply poking around finding nothing to do here, have it a shot!

The most remarkable change of the new design, to me, is the structure of the page view. In the previous theme (which is the Dannychoo one), I can post a max 750px image in the post. This is really cool, but leaving only a small portion of space for relevant contents on the sidebar (used to be ads and blogroll only). With the redesign of the theme, we can now only post a max 640px image in the post (larger size will be auto-scaled using JQuery that coded by Mike Wittmann) but leave a larger space for more sidebar contents. The space can be very useful and I’m considering put lots of information on.

The next change is the top carousel I used for recommendation of products. But the layout is not ideal for me thus there might be some change later. The site uses many JQuery and I think it may delay the speed, tell me if this bothers you.

I’m still polishing the theme and many works still left undone. Any comment is welcomed.

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