An update.
hypocrisy
If you’ve visited my blog in the last 3 months, you’ve probably noticed some changes in layout this week.
Now I know what you must be thinking:
Didn’t you mention in your first blog post that you were too pre-occupied with the appearance of your blog to actually create and post content?
Yes! Absolutely. But hear me out.
The readability of my posts was suffering. The blog looked clean, yes, but it also looked bland. It lacked contrast. The text was a bit too small. The spacing wasn’t quite right. And I was having trouble formatting my posts to make them easier to read.
Blog theme from February 2021 to May 2021
the migration
elementor
I had been using Elementor, a popular page builder for WordPress, to create a completely custom layout. Not too bad for a novice, right? In the beginning, I loved using Elementor because it gave me a ton of freedom to design my pages almost exactly how I wanted them to look.
However, what I created wasn’t eye-catching. I found that when I was reviewing my own posts after publishing them, I didn’t want to read the entire thing. I was squinting. The walls of text were… well, walls. And there were hardly any images. I was overcomplicating things, and frankly, I didn’t know what I was doing.
Elementor is a great tool for some content creators, but it was no longer working for me.
So I decided to try something new.
gutenberg
I picked out a new base theme and transferred my workflow over to the Gutenberg Blocks editor, which is native to WordPress. It’s certainly an adjustment and I’ve had to learn a lot on the fly, but I think this is a step in the right direction. With Elementor, I was almost paralyzed by the amount of freedom I had. I wanted to include all of the features all of the time.
With Gutenberg, I can craft posts within specific confines. Prior to making the switch, I didn’t want my creativity to be held back by my lack of coding experience. But it turns out that I actually work better within a set structure. There’s just enough room to try a couple of new things with formatting, but it’s not something I need to spend hours doing to get just right, making tweaks that only I will ever notice. Gutenberg allows me to focus on the content more. It does everything I want it to for the purposes of formatting posts. And as a bonus, my blog actually seems to be running faster despite the fact that I’ve added a ton of images.
Speaking of images, when I started my blog I was so averse to the idea of including featured images with my posts. I figured this is a blog about writing, so readers would just be content to read, no? I was wrong. So I’ve gone back to my old posts and added featured images (the ones you see under the title). Most of them don’t really add value in terms of content, but they help to break up the text a bit and give the post a nice theme.
the future
As it turns out, you don’t need a ton of advanced features to build a beautiful and readable blog. Who would have thought?
It’s important for me to write this here: I will only revisit the format of my blog twice per year (barring any major issues). This post will keep me accountable. I do mean it when I say that I sometimes get sidetracked by dreaming up ways I can modify the appearance of the blog. I’m acutely aware that undermines my ability to output quality content, for if I spend all of my time fawning over WordPress themes, when will I put in the research for an outstanding post?
This weekend I’ve tasked myself with improving the readability of all of my previous blog posts. It’s a post formatting issue, not a site layout or theme issue, so I do consider it a more worthy endeavour. And fortunately I’m taking the steps to do this before my blog has too many posts. The posts are not perfect yet, and there will probably be a few glitches to sort out, so I thank you for your patience.
Migrating my blog from Elementor to Gutenberg has been rather a time-consuming process, so this is the only post this week. However, it’ll be back to business as usual next week with another conventional post about writing! It’s a good one.
Have you ever created a blog? Have you ever tried using a page builder?
What do you think of the new layout?
As always, feel free to discuss in the comments below or reach out via the contact form. I’d love to hear from you!
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