Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

Free WordPress Theme: Child of the Moon

October 27th, 2009 | Author: Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

A two columned theme with a dark background and red accents meant to be an energy efficient for monitors.

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Child of the Moon follows my other themes in being named after a song. In this case, one by the Rolling Stones. I have been thinking about how to make a green theme that may be good for a business. If you notice most sites dedicated to green causes do not seem to consider the energy usage of the monitor that their visitors are using. Darker themes use less energy. I think that what most sites have discovered is that legibility is better with the white background, or user expectation dictates the lighter colored backgrounds.

    We may be concerned about being green, but dark themes are not for everyone. If your business relies on displaying any type of image, darker themes have an advantage. They make the image pop. Also, if your business is promoting a green agenda, then you might want to consider educating your visitors with a darker theme.I thought that the lettering style did allow easy reading, so maybe a site focused on articles could work with darker themes.

    I have experimented with different header heights. I converted several headers to a height of 125 pixels recently. My reasoning falls along the line that if most visitors will only be on your site for a few seconds before deciding to stay or leave, you will want as much of your site above the fold as possible. With a header of this size, the title of the blog and slogan still make an impact. The menu items will be seen, and finally the title of the page or post will be in site. The menu is the drop down type, so the menu bar will not look too crowded. By letting them see a creative title, the visitor may decide to stay.

    If you have a high impact header design that will draw the visitors in, then change the header size in the stylesheet. I would look at the sidebar to find ways to attract visitors. Search towards the top is fairly standard, but I would either have the Categories section on top, or I would include a personal note. I have found that readers will search your site if they are interested in more information, so placing the search function in the middle of the sidebar seems more effective to me.

   The theme would be great for more artisitc endeavors. As always, look to editing the footer. I left the rss feed there, and I have added pages, like a TOS, which are business oriented, so remove them if this is a more personal site.