I have just switched my Wordpress theme to Milkia, a nice clean simple design based on The Sandbox theme.
I haven’t been happy with the standard themes, and most of the themes I’ve found on the web seem rather heavyweight. They just get too carried away with the graphics. I started thinking that I needed a theme that uses CSS classes intelligently so I can customize the themes layout and appearance with a CSS stylesheet. I also wanted a theme that looks nice, but is clean and simple. Then I found the plaintxt.org blog and the The Sandbox theme. Very nice. The Sandbox is designed just this way — relying heavily on CSS for layout and appearance — and Milkia leverages this to extend The Sandbox.
I plan on delving into the template (or stylesheet) to tweak things the way I want (I’d like to move the sidebar to the right, for instance), but this is a nice change from what I had before — and I like the minimalist design philosophy.
Update: OK, I’ve just noticed an annoying bug with this new Wordpress theme. It seems to be always showing certain widgets in the sidebar even when I customize the sidebar in the widget editor. As a result, I’m currently seeing duplicates of some widgets. This is annoying. I guess fixing this is as good an excuse as any to learn how to write/customize Wordpress themes. In the meantime I’ll remove the duplicates in the widget editor so the sidebar doesn’t look ridiculous.
I also had problems with the sidebar when I tried using the Simpla theme. That’s too bad. It’s a very nice looking theme. I think I’ll investigate and find out the right way to handle sidebars in Wordpress themes and try fixing these myself.
