• blogging,  writing/reading

    This Theme’s New Look

    One of the sculptures at Benson Sculpture Gardens

    If you visit here often you will notice visual changes to this blog. I have changed the name of this blog from Monte Stevens Photography Blog to Monte Stevens Blog. I am still using the same free theme, Savona Edge by Optima Themes, but made a few tweaks to it. I have gone back to the theme’s original fonts. That way, I get rid of the Fonts Plugin. I am liking it so far but I could still add the plugin later. I have also removed the right sidebar so that blogging is more the focus. I blog because I wish to share my images and words for the joy I receive from that experience and not my ego. I now have a dropdown menu located in the footer for Categories, Archives, and giving the reader the ability of subscribing to notifications of new posts, it that interests you. Be aware you will get an email each time I post which could be 20-25 days a month. The Blogroll that was located in the sidebar is now on the main menu at the top which loads up a page of blogs I follow and websites I have interests in. You can check them out if you’re bored or can’t go to sleep or want to see if you’re listed.

    If you do take a look at my Archives menu you will find my blog posts from 2009-2011 do not have images attached. And, this could be true of any post due to the import process. When I exported those posts I failed to also export the media. So I’ve imported the blog posts without them and will add the files later when the snow is falling and it’s too cold to be outside or I just say to heck with them. I’m not sure they are that important to anyone but me as I’m finding I actually am enjoying the process of looking back over those old posts.

    Please let me know what you think of the new look and if you find any issues.

  • blogging,  leaves,  Plants

    Changes

    Changes are being made to this blog. First will be the look of this theme. Secondly, I am changing hosting services so there may be a period of silence from me. You even may see the Error 404 code. If I’m not back up and running in 5-7 days, send out a search party. I’ll probably be drifting somewhere in the World Wide Web.

  • shadows,  Software

    Here we go again…

    Solar eclipse shadows outside my condo.

    Well here’s another theme made by the same developer, Optima, called Savona. It has a few of the things that I could not get to work on the Graceful theme. It very much looks like Graceful and my older theme. It is clean and uses more of the screen. It also defaults to a white background, which I want.

    My primary concern for this website is simplicity so I’ve decided to eliminate the featured image as it does not have the lightbox function. I do not see where that can be added except through code and I’m not going there. 

    The only way I can get an image on the blog post page is with full content instead of excerpt. When I choose an excerpt it displays 50 characters of the post but not an image. With full context on this allows the image to be on the blog post page and the full article to be read. This way my millions of readers can read my content without going to the continue reading link. This is true on both these themes. I have also enlarged the image just a bit.

    This theme also shows the number of comments on the blog post page, which Graceful did not show. Anyway, here is another theme and hoping you will see what I don’t and let me know. Hope you had a good Saturday.