As I said in my last post I’m looking for a new Wordpress theme for the Classroom Displays Blog. I’ve narrowed it down to three possibilities. Now I need your help again

First the current theme - Regulus:

Then a suggestion from a couple of friends - Cordoba Green Park:

Finally a theme that I’ve used on other sites - Cutline

I need help to choose! Vote here:

I’m thinking of updating the Classroom Displays Blog theme. I’ve identified enough problems with the current one to make it seem like a good idea. But I think I need some help. Who better to ask than my Personal Learning Network?

My Wish List

I need a theme that:

• Allows me to post images without them getting chopped off by the sidebar
• Has a background that doesn’t detract from the images - nothing too dark or busy
• Two columns, otherwise it looks too cluttered for those without widescreens.
• IE compatible
• Uses a clear font in a good size, preferably not grey.
• I’d really like something that used blue lines underneath links - I know this is a bit old fashioned but then so are my readers!
• Quotes are set against a different background colour, have either 2 apostrophes or none. Not like this theme!
• No giant apostrophes
• Easily customisable header image - I don’t want to be confronted with a really complex template file to edit.
• Up to date - current for the latest version of Wordpress.

If you’d like to help me find one, please have a look at the Classroom Displays Blog and then either add to the wish list here or make suggestions for themes you think might work.

This scriptlet can display not only a flickr photo in a web pages or blog articles, but also the notes.This means you can embed a flickr photo with its notes in your own website. Just mouse over the image to reveal the note.

There’s a handy bookmarklet to pop on your toolbar. This means you can just generate the code whilst you are looking at images in Flickr & then nip into the blog, switch to code view & paste it in. Cool or what?
Don’t forget to only use Creative Commons images though or you might run into copyright issues.

See a more detailed use over on Classroom Displays

I’ve added a new tag line to the blog:

Informal learning, Internet technology and Action research

This is taken from my degree title, of course, but as ever with the degree adapted to my own context! These are the main topics I blog about here so it seemed logical. I am also slowly, slowly, writing an About page like Andy Roberts and John at Sandaig. I can’t believe how quickly they’ve done it. Still, I’ve been busy writing an article so I might let myself off!

I’m currently updating the blog’s design so things might be a bit lumpy for a few days. In return for some research work Andy upgraded the blog to Wordpress 2.2 for me. This is a huge improvement and means I can start to use some of the techniques I’m used to having over at Classroom Displays Blog.

Still in order to make full use of the update I’ve had to change my blog design. After much swithering I think I’ve settled on MooPoint. It is very plain and functional which is what I want at the moment. I’m kind of tired of fussy blog designs. I suppose it might be a reaction to all the dark colours I was considering in my last post!

Having said that I will try to get a few more visual elements into the design, but I’m not sure how yet. I’m just enjoying the purity of the clean lines (lol - there speaks the daughter of a modernist architect!)

It would be great if people let me know what they think of the new design and any suggestions for improvements.