Customizing My Website Theme
For this lesson I customized more of the appearance and design of About A Native. I use WordPress regularly for work, but this assignment was still more confusing than I expected. At work I am usually working within an already established website, brand and set of standards, and I have a team giving direction on what should be changed. Setting up everything myself from the beginning was different, especially when I was trying to figure out where certain color settings were located and why some colors changed in one area but not another.
One of the main things I worked on was the overall color palette. I wanted the website to reflect some of my own life experiences and where I grew up, so I used softer earth tones like browns, beige, green and blue. I did not want the colors to look pastel, but I also did not want them to be too dark or harsh. I used a light brown for the mobile menu, darker brown for text, cream for text over images and green for some hover and accent colors.
I also added a background image that fits the theme of the site and used photos that relate more closely to the type of environment I grew up around. I also added a new site icon using the initials AN for About A Native.
Another customization was the navigation menu. I added Home, Posts, About and Contact, as well as links to featured posts, the Lesson Concepts category and an external link. I also added a sidebar to the Blog page because I thought it made more sense to keep certain widgets there instead of putting everything in the footer.
Widgets
There are several widgets available in my theme that could help visitors move around the website and find content.
Search allows visitors to search for specific content on the website. I added this to the Blog sidebar because someone may remember a topic but not the title of the post.
Categories allows visitors to browse posts by category. I also added this to the sidebar because About A Native will eventually have different types of content and this gives visitors another way to find what they are looking for.
Popular Posts highlights posts that may be interesting to visitors and can encourage them to read more than one post. I added this to the Blog sidebar as well.
Latest Posts can show the newest content that has been published. I tested this as a footer widget, although I ultimately preferred the sidebar layout because it felt less crowded.
Social Icons can link visitors directly to social media accounts connected to the website. This could be useful in the footer if I add social accounts for About A Native later.
The widgets I kept were Search, Categories and Popular Posts because those made the most sense for the Blog page and gave visitors useful ways to find more content without making the page feel too busy.
One thing I noticed while previewing the website on different devices is that I would eventually like to make the header smaller on mobile. Right now it takes up more of the screen than I would prefer. I did not make that additional change during this lesson, but it is something I would adjust later as I continue working on the site.
Scheduling Design Changes
There are several reasons why scheduling design changes can be useful. One benefit is being able to prepare seasonal or temporary changes ahead of time. For example, a business could schedule a holiday promotion or special event design to appear and disappear automatically.
Another benefit is that it allows website owners to plan changes without needing to be online at the exact time they need to go live. This could be useful if a promotion, announcement or campaign needs to launch early in the morning or outside of normal work hours.
Scheduling changes can also help make sure temporary designs are removed when they are no longer needed. This can keep a website from displaying outdated promotions or information.