After 2 months, the “learning project” that wouldn’t end is off my todo list. I took the H5 blog theme which is coded in HTML5 and designed a minimalist blog theme with it.

One of the things I wanted was a sidebar with columns so there are four widget areas in the theme. One in the footer, one that spans the whole sidebar and two that float underneath it and form two columns.

During the design process I found this article and fell in love with several of the color palettes. I since I couldn’t choose just one, I used several. So the there are a number of different color schemes to choose from. It’s easy to create your own, just copy one of the files in the CSS directory and replace the colors with yours. Put the new file in the directory and it’ll pop up in the pull-down list.

Allowing users to switch between color schemes meant needing an admin page. I’m not an expert with PHP but I have no problem experimenting, so I borrowed the code from another theme and customized it to meet my needs. Which is why you can also upload your own logo.

The beauty of all this is that both the themes I used were released with a GPL license that meant I could not only modify them but release the end-result to be used and/or modified by others.

If it’s accepted into the WordPress theme directory, I’ll post the link here.