[SL Blogger Network: This post is not for consideration. Thank you!]
Virtual Bloke is now just over seven years old, my sartorial darlings. It’s hard to believe that you lot have put up with me wittering on for that long, but here you are and here I am, and… well, I’m getting a bit antsy for some change around these parts.
Specifically, I’ve been looking at the blog’s theme. It’s old as shit, customised like hell (I spent hours combing the CSS to alter the colours when I first set it up) and—crucially in this age where more people are browsing sites on their phones rather than on computers and laptops—it really doesn’t work too well on mobiles. Sure, it does have a mobile theme that serves it decently, but when I check it for usability it doesn’t measure up to some of the more up-to-date themes.
The only thing I’ve changed since I set the blog up initially was the background image. Mesh heads weren’t really even a thing back in 2013 when I made my first post, so the first background was typically glam and dark for me, but definitely good ol’ system head ;-)
A few years later—and by then fully meshed up—I decided to change the background image to something different, with Virtual Bloke moving away from its initial personal journal style and into a more professional presentation, with increasing focus on tutorials.
The next change that the blog will be undergoing will be a lot more drastic. I’ve already settled on a theme, which will be similar to the one that you’re already familiar with—the magazine style with multiple images—so that will stay the same (if sized a little larger) but gone will be the background image. Instead, I’m still wavering between white text on black, or black text on white. In all honesty, the latter looks so much better and cleaner, so this post is me giving you a heads-up that over the next couple of weeks you might get one hell of a shock when you visit the blog and see it looking VASTLY different.
I know that many people dislike change, and that many people dislike a lot of white space on websites. Hell, I’m one of those people who always looks for the ‘dark theme’ option on every website I visit regularly. I’ve canvassed a small handful of people and have received as many responses of “I prefer the black theme” as I did “I prefer the white theme”. Since this is going to be a case of Not Pleasing All The People All The Time, I may as well please myself instead!
Nothing else about Virtual Bloke will be changing. You can still expect all the same tutorials mixed with the occasional style post (and maybe a few nice new surprises, if I can get my arse in gear and work on them!) but the site will be cleaner, and easier to read. I apologise in advance to those of you who struggle with vision impairments, and I recommend this excellent article on changing websites’ colour themes using Firefox, or trying some of the many add-ons such as Dark Reader that are available for all major browsers.
So brace yourselves, my sartorial darlings. Change is coming ;-)