It was bugging me that the MistyLook theme I’ve been using for this blog had a fixed-width section for the text that sometimes resulted in my stuff being clipped (when I’d put an HTML table in, for instance). Being too cheap at the moment to buy the upgrade so that I could tweak MistyLook’s CSS to not clip, I decided instead to try to find a theme that works better for a tech blog. There’s a whole category of flexible width ones, so that’s the list I evaluated.
And now that I’m thinking in tables, here’s a table of the ten flexible width themes currently available for blogs on wordpress.com, with my evaluation of each’s suitability for a technical blog:
| Flexible-Width Theme Name |
Well-suited for a Technical Blog? | Comments |
| Silver is the New Black | No | Sans serif font not as good for code |
| Shocking Blue Green | No | Sans serif font not as good for code |
| WordPress Classic | No | Sans serif font not as good for code |
| Andreas04 | No | Odd font, hard to read |
| Girl in Green | No | Low contrast (and I wanted a theme without a girl image :) |
| Garland | No | Too narrow; still chops my tables |
| Rounded | No | The hippie look feels really odd juxtaposed with technical writing. (Some people might love that though – kind of an irony of style!) |
| Rubric | Yes | |
| Fadtastic | Yes | |
| Andreas09 | Yes | I judged this one the best choice (which is why I’m now using it!) |
Others may not have the issue I do with the source code showing up in a Sans Serif font — I just really like to see it in a monospaced font.
For any other technical bloggers out there using WordPress.com though, try previewing what your blog would look like if you switched to the Rounded theme — crazy, huh? : )
Our Craft 